Guerrilla History - Decolonizing Science w/ Sibusiso Biyela

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

In this really great discussion, we talk with science communicator Sibusiso Biyela about decolonizing science, from both theoretical and practical standpoints!  This is a fascinating topic that we hope to explore further in upcoming episodes, and a topic that doesn't get nearly the attention or comradely discussion that it deserves. Sibusiso Biyela is a science communicator and journalist in South Africa.  He also co-hosts the isiZulu language science podcast iLukuluku.  You can find more of Sibusiso's work through his Linktree, and follow him on twitter @astrosibs.   Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory

You don't remember Den Van Booh? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to guerrilla history. the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history

and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm your host for today, Henry Huckimacki, unfortunately not joined by either of my co-hosts. I'm sure much to the disappointment of our listeners, both Professor Adnan Hussein, who is, of course, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, and Brett O'Shea, host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast,

are otherwise occupied at this moment. But we have other episodes that are being recorded very soon where they both will certainly be there. So listeners, you'll just have to bear with me being the only host of this one. I apologize. Before we get into the conversation today with our really great guests and a really fascinating topic, particularly for me, and I'm sure many of our listeners will also really enjoy it, I want to remind the listeners that they can follow Gorilla

history on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod. G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-L-A-U-L-A-U-L-A-U-R-A-U-L-A-Hod. And you can help support the show by going to Patreon.com forward-slash Gorilla History. Again, Gorilla being spelled G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. That'll help us keep the lights on, keep the show up and running, expand what we're doing, and you'll get some bonus episodes and early releases by doing that. Our guest for today, or my guest for today, I guess I should say, is Cibosiso

Biala, who is a science-comer. based in South Africa. So, hello, Sibu Siso. How are you doing? Hi, Hedri. I'm feeling good. How are you? Oh, tremendous. Like I was telling you before we had to record, I'm actually not feeling that well physically. But I'm really excited for this conversation and I'm sure that it's going to raise my spirits, if not my physical health. So the topic that we have today is something that you've been working on for a while now and something that we're hoping to record a couple of episodes on with various guests that focus on this issue, which is decolonizing science. So many of the listeners of this show are intimately aware with decolonial theory. Many of our listeners come from backgrounds of political science and history.

But many of our listeners have not thought about applying decolonial theory and decolonization to the field of science. So I want to open this conversation by allowing you to introduce yourself to our listeners. How did you get into the field of decolonizing science? And what kind of projects are you working on right now that are with the goal of decolonizing science? And then we can get much deeper into the conversation from there. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much for that intro, Henry. So, as you said, my name is Silvers Hisobiela, based in South Africa.

as a science communicator, I'm currently interested in the deconization of science. So as a science communicator, I've been doing this since 2011, writing a lot of popular articles and columns, just doing, I would say, guerrilla science education, but basically trying to get people to identify with science,

because, and I always tell people the science affects you, whether you care about it or not, it's better if you know how it's affecting you and why. So some of the work that I do, well, I got into the decolonization of science. The story that I usually tell is one specific event, but it took a while. the while was that just looking back at how I learned about science in school and on television and other media was quite difficult in the sense that it was in English. So I had to learn English at the same time that I learned science. And it took me a very long time to identify with science because I was still getting to grips with the language, right?

and I didn't think of it as a decolonization issue until after many years of writing science articles in English I decided to write one in Zulu and I mean science writing things is never it's not that easy in a sense or science communication is quite the skill in itself but I discovered new problems, new challenges when it came to writing a science article in Isizu. One particular one, one of the first ones that I did around 2015, 2016, was about a new scientific discovery or description of a dinosaur in South Africa,

like just a description of a new dinosaur species that was quite important. And I decided to write certain it says Zulu in Zulu. What happened was that the challenge was that there was no word for Zulu. I mean, there's no word for, there's no word for dinosaur in Zulu. That's the first problem. And then there's no word for millions of fears of fossil or fossilization, all those sorts of processes and things that we take for granted when we talk about science in English. And I had a problem with that, that it shouldn't be this difficult. Like, the work that I'm trying to do is communicate science,

but then I have to do extra work to translate the science because this sort of alienation between with people who aren't native speakers of English when it comes to science, and there's a lot of history attached to it, especially in South Africa as well. So looking at the history, history of science and how it's treated black and indigenous people all over the world and to

now try to help those people connect with science today and the other and the added um issue is that you can't talk about science in your own language it's just there's a huge disconnect there so that's that's why i got into decolonization basically um i think one of the first books i read on it uh was decolonizing the mind by Ngo Kewatiyongo and it wasn't about science or anything, it's about literature

but I connected with it for reasons that we can discuss in this conversation but that was my first experience of just looking at the world differently that I'm lucky that I can speak English I'm lucky that I can speak Zulu my home language, my mother tongue as well

I'm also lucky that understand science, which in its own way is a different language as well. So just this confluence of all these perspectives just gave me the idea of, hey, why don't I try to get into this thing more and try to create opportunities and tools that can help people feel more at home with science. Yeah. Yeah. And I do want to underscore that science communication is deceptively difficult. The reason I'm underscoring this is because as many of the listeners may know, my background is in immunobiology. I know I host the history podcast, but my background is in the hard sciences. But my transition from being a researcher in an Ebola lab to my current

profession as well as doing this podcast, the transition was through science communication where I was trying to break down studies that were coming out from various labs around the world in a way that people would be able to understand them. And even with the paper being written in English, being broken down by a native English speaker, two native English speakers, it is still a very difficult undertaking. Now, I know immunobiology is kind of a particularly difficult field to do this And but science in general is very labyrinthin. There's very, very complex terminology, very complex, not only the terminology, but even like the pathways and whatnot that you're talking through, the concepts within science, they're

difficult and you have to explain those to lay people. Otherwise, it is just a lot of jargon that doesn't mean anything. And when you're having to use terminology from a different language and trying to adapt that for speakers of a different language, it only compounds the difficulties that you face. Now, before we get into some of the other topics that you had raised, you mentioned that this is something that's particularly difficult in South Africa, and this is because not only do you have many, many languages in South Africa, many of which the terminology is not available in those other native languages of South Africa. It is, you know, in English or

you don't derive from Latin or Greek. But in addition to that, you in South Africa suffered under the apartheid system. And I know that I had read one of your articles in which you talk about coming to that realization of the experience that your parents had living under the apartheid regime in South Africa. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about what was that experience of apartheid in South Africa with regards to science? Because I'm sure that many of our listeners are at least fairly familiar with the many depredations that the apartheid system exacted on the people living in South Africa, the black community in South Africa.

But they may not have thought about specifically the field of science, because most of our listeners aren't in the field of science. So why would you go out of your way and think, oh, okay, science. You know, there's a million things that you could think about when it comes to apartheid. But with regards to science, what were the impacts? What was it like in apartheid South Africa? So many things to talk about there. I hope my ADHD doesn't make me lose my train of thought. Oh, I put out as many threads as you want, my friend. The more, the better.

Yeah. It was going to be a lot of weaving. So it's, to start with the first thing about how science and a bad date is related racism for a long time like before it used to be science I mean racism for a very long time like go back hundreds of years ago

used to be there used to be like a moral or a religious justification oh black people are are lesser because God made them that way, right? And through the Age of Enlightenment, science becomes the new excuse for racism, right?

You've got pornography, you've got all sorts of things to make people who are becoming progressive as the world is becoming more scientifically minded, but with becoming more progressive over time and more enlightened, so to speak, it's difficult to justify racism unless the leaders of science in the day

then justified for you by saying, oh, it's okay to be racist towards these people because they are less evolved or anything like that, right? Like, and there's still some inklings of that even today. But that's where about it comes in as well, because like the worst of apartheid since like 1948 until 1990 until the early 90s

they felt morally and scientifically superior to the rest of us and they used a lot of science to justify their racism as the world did to some degree at the time as well so for a black person

experiencing racism during apartheid science is one of those things that was used as a justification and even today if someone if you're not well-versed in scientific discourse um or you feel less adequate than than an expert talking about something scientific you tend to just um recoil back um and just let the other person say whatever they want about uh scientific facts and you're not going to dispute it so that's what what basically happened back then you were told that you are and the term that was used back

that in South Africa you're a monkey, you're less evolved. It's funny that they'd say monkey because like we evolved with apes, not monkeys, but that was the idea. That's why even today a lot of South Africans only talk about evolution to them

it's quite sensitive because they just remember those times where they were compared to apes and were considered less evolved than the white man and even today when news of paleontology come out

there's always a lot of controversy about it because of the racism that was attached to it a long time ago so coming back to my own experience with a bad date and how I was exposed to science it goes back to just

learning science in school in about the second or third grade, I think you learn, that's when you start learning English and around the same time you learn scientific stuff like geography and other things. So it's difficult to understand science at that time. So it's very limited to things that they can tell you about the world.

But over time you grow up as a nerd, like myself, you want to do science. You're really interested in it. it's really fun for you but then you're told um that science isn't for you it's difficult um like white people are better at it because they came up with it not us we don't understand it is very difficult for us you have to work really hard like you do have to work hard for any profession but it's like for us you have to work extra hard to be able to do any part of it um but just growing up getting that sort of uh narrative from all the adults including the teachers

themselves right um like there's this joke that i um i usually uh talk about in my articles this colloquial term that um when we refer to science and technology it said that is in those abelung which is zulu for uh this stuff is for white people like this is white people business right so when you're having trouble with uh something scientific or technological uh like the tv doesn't work like isn't those I belong right so like we started to we start to internalize all that um stuff that was um perpetuated by the upper date government um especially when during um the mid 70s uh like with the famous the cause of the famous soota uprisings uh soota youth uprisings um it's that the government was had instituted a separate education system for

black people called a bunch of education. There was much less emphasis on science and related topics. So anyone who wanted to do science, it wasn't easy for them. They were discouraged. It was a different system, right? So all that becomes, it snowballs over time to have the teachers who grew up in that system, being the ones now we have to teach science to the new generation

they call people born after 94 born frees I was born in 91 but I don't remember the first few years of my life so I am so I am in a way born free in that way not having experienced about date legally in that sense but

just growing up in a community attending a school that still who are relative to other parts of the country where the white people are. So with that understanding, I had to fight a lot of negative ideas about what science is in order for me to love it the way that I do. And a lot of people have to fight that urge to see science

as a tool of racism as being difficult, as being difficult, particularly for black people and all that sort of stuff. So for me, and this is something I've recently started saying because I'm not embarrassed by it, decolonization is rewriting history. That's what it is. History is rewritten all the time, and decolonization is the rewriting of history, not by changing things and saying something happened that didn't happen, it's

looking at the things that were left in the dark, things that were ignored and re-contextualizing it for the current like reconceptualizing it to show that to dispel these myths about science and where black people like myself fit into it. So like that's the long and short of it

about how apartheid relates to science and where the colonization of science comes in. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot there that I can work with as well. I just want to mention you said something that I think is very obvious for people like you or me, but it's not taught this way, which is that you said that the black community

in South Africa is often referred to as apes as if, you know, that's less evolved than human, Whereas in reality, apes and humans come up at the same time, evolutionary. This is something that most people are not aware of because this is not how it's taught. We are told in school, at least in the United States, and at least in my school, it was taught humans evolve from apes. Like the apes currently existing apes are your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, grandparents, you know? This is not at all the case. and it's

like there's no debate about it within the science community it's just not presented this way humans and extant apes extant meaning they're still currently on the earth

they share a common ancestor we don't evolve from them and part of this thinking goes back to thinking of humans homo sapiens our species as like the terminal end of evolution

everything that has happened evolutionarily up and to this point has culminated. The ultimate. Exactly. With the pinnacle of Homo sapiens on the top of this giant pyramid, everything else was kind of refining itself to reach this final form. And you know, maybe humans will get a little bit better in the future. Maybe we'll evolve into something better.

But as of now, humans are the best. This is essentially how it's taught. But that's not. We're part of nature. We're part of nature. But anything we do is. synthetic, like, it's not natural that anything that humans do, but

it is. And, and, and thank you very much for, uh, uh, mentioning that, uh, idea. Uh, because people, like, we forget sometimes that, uh, we didn't involve, we didn't involve from apes. We evolved with them. Yeah. Um, like, and I chose my words very carefully with that, like, at the moment I'm working on a project where we are creating a new exhibit at the

National Museum of South Africa in Cape Town, talking about this idea that not only did we not evolve from apes, apes and ourselves have a common ancestor, same as with the other human species as well. Like we didn't evolve from other human species. Like it's a braided stream of different evolutionary paths, right um we are related to all these other human species not that we came from them and it's very complex um and weird like all relations uh of humans today right so yeah it's it's it's difficult

to get into those conversations um before you um just talk up to talk to people about evolution in the first place it's it's difficult like you have to dispel two things at the same time basically so But I'm excited about those sorts of conversations. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Well, and just I think that when people are thinking of, and they may not even know the word, but phylogenetic trees, when they see that tree, that is presenting of the evolutionary history of that species, where did it come from? What is it closest related to? The way that they're constructed is often in a way that makes humans look like they're the pinnacle of the tree. Whereas biologenetic trees are roots.

You know, they're branching off from that central point, getting more and more complex as they go down. But it's not one thing leading to one thing, leading to one thing. The root that is next to another root come off of the same bigger root. They don't necessarily lead one into the other. So that was kind of what I was trying to get across because I think a lot of our listeners probably, even if they did hear it, maybe they don't remember it because it's usually we come from apes is what's presented. But the other thing that you brought up that I want to hit on a little bit before we get into some of your projects that you're working on now

is how some of this really despicable thought works its way into the institutions of science. And I know you're interested in paleontology. I don't think I've ever mentioned before on this show, but I also was a big paleontology nut and studied it for a while. But some of the most famous scientists within the field of paleontology, and we're talking like people like the head of the American Museum of Natural History and one of the two guys that was in the Bone Wars, and specifically these are Henry Fairfield Osborne and Edward Drinker Cope, respectively. These two guys were avowed eugenicists and they were not alone. And not even alone within the field in science in terms of

of, oh, there was this, in paleontology, there was a strain of eugenics that wasn't present within other fields of science. No, absolutely. It was everywhere. It was a badge of honor that you said to think genetic, that's unpopular, but it's because you're a scientist and people will just have to suck it up because it's true. Right. And the reason that I bring up these two specifically, though, even though that, again, eugenics was, and in many cases still is everywhere in science. These two were at the pinnacle of their field and they utilized eugenics to, they utilized their work to further their theory of eugenics and they utilized their theory of eugenics to further their field, in talking about evolution and whatnot. So it's a very

despicable trend that we see that not only do we have this inaccessibility of language, which I know we'll talk about probably next. I want to talk about your translation project. But also we just have the most depraved thought imaginable. I mean, there's not much lower than eugenic thought. And these are these individuals that I pulled out specifically, but again, you could just name a litany of people within the fields of science. These are people that were at the pinnacle of their field. They were the director of the American Museum of Natural History. They were one of the two foremost paleontologists in the world at his time, and they were utilizing eugenics to further their work and utilizing their work to further the fury of eugenics. So, I mean, I'm not really even putting a coherent question out there.

I'm just getting angry that this is something that was allowed to perpetuate itself within the field of science. And in many ways, it hasn't really gone anywhere. We may not have anybody, we may not have anybody as explicitly eugenicist as Henry Fairfell. Field Osborne today in prominent positions, but eugenic thought is still prevalent within science. It's just dressed in different ways today. And just to get back to the basics of that a bit, like, just to, like, eugenics in itself, for those who don't know where or need a refresher, it's...

blissfully unaware It's the idea that you can control the the kinds of people desirable that you want in a community

and of course it's the people who decide that. are the people who, well, most of the time it is capital, always, who decide that, oh, we are rich, we're wealthy because of our good genes. Everyone else is not wealthy, so therefore it's their problem. I like it I find it funny that when it comes to like the many times

that capitalism has failed in the past the people at the top being rich as they are, being wealthy as they are they very easily slip into eugenics instead of seeing the capital system for the flow system that it is they will claim that well I worked hard

I have all the things that I have the system works and the reason that it's not succeeding is because of all these undesirables holding all of us back therefore if we want to have the system work better like it should

quote unquote then we should get rid of these undesirables and the best way to do that is to control births, right? It's like people used to be sterilized against their against their will and all sorts of things that happen

even today and there was this recent article that came out in one of the American publications about this couple who are proudly eugenicist and part of a larger eugenicist think tank

so I'd offer one to perpetuate their elite superior genes to save the world So yeah That's the history of eugenics And it continues to be used today Even though it's much less

Prominent in terms of visibility But it's still out there It's it's been used in for racism And the people who've been badly affected by it Can see it Every time something like Bad Bad science communication happens

like with with vaccinations which all the conspiracy theories were ridiculous of course but dismissing them without acknowledging the history of human experimentation

eugenics and all the horrible things that have been done to black people and other minorities other economic minorities all over the world it's it's it's it's it's quite dismissing

and you can as someone trying to debunk some theory and ignore the racism of the past and the present when it comes to science, you're going to lose your audience. So, yeah, debunk

bad COVID science and COVID science and bad COVID science and bad vaccine science communication, but still be aware of the audience that's angry about mass vaccination campaigns, where do they come from, like, why are they so angry like this?

And every time I try to talk about the benefits of vaccination and things like that, I always try to acknowledge that as well. And people tend to listen when you do that. So that was long-winded, but yeah, yeah, that's my thoughts on that. No, and I'm going to have to apologize. I did want to talk about your projects next, but since you brought up the topic of human experimentation, this is something

that I absolutely want to talk about. Don't know. Yeah, yeah. Well, I promise. We will get there. But human experimentation, I've talked about it on the show before. A long time ago though, so I'm going to just, you know, run through it. Human experimentation

has been a huge impediment to marginalized communities being willing to go into science and also take scientific advisory on board because of the history of the exploitation and the outright savagery exacted on them by the medical and governmental establishments for the purpose of quote-unquote experimentation or scientific discovery. And there's numerous examples of this. And I'm not even going to get into the experiments that were done by Nazi Germany or Japan, the list of which is far too long to recite in a podcast episode.

Honestly, a recitation would be an episode in itself. But even let's look at some more quote unquote enlightened societies, like Australia. You know, in Australia, in the 20s and 30s, I know this is a while ago, but Aboriginal Australians had medical experiments done to them all the time. where they were forcibly given dosages of pain or forcibly had blood collected from them without any sort of consent. It's almost the same in Canada where there was with native children who were in these residential schools were forcibly given various vaccines without consent and not in a way that was like the mandatory vaccines that many schools have, but in terms of it was a study. They gave it to half the kids and then measured what happened to them

and then half the kids and measured what happened to them. Again, there's no consent by these kids that were snatched away from their families and put into these residential schools. In Guatemala,

the United States government infected thousands of people with STDs, especially syphilis. And talking about syphilis, of course, reminds us of the Tuskegee Syphilis experiments in the United States

in Alabama. where these individuals were all black individuals. They told them, come in to our clinic and get tested for syphilis. And if you have syphilis, we'll give you free treatment. As long as you stay in this follow-up study where we can track how the treatments are working for you. And what happened. And these individuals come in, they get tested. And instead of getting treatment, they pretended to give them treatment.

They were giving them placebo treatments, and the entire purpose of this study was to record the natural history, which is to say the progression of the disease from beginning to end, of syphilis on untreated individuals. On a person, yeah, it's, exactly. What percentage dies? How often does it go into the bones or into the brain? You know, and the whole time they're being told, oh, the government is sponsoring your treatment, as long as they're coming in for follow up. They're being lied to. Yeah. Sticking in the U.S. for a little bit.

There was instances of where the United States government wanted to test how airborne pathogens would spread. So what did they do? They dropped a pathogen, which they didn't think was pathogenic at the time. If I recall correctly, it was serratia marcessans over San Francisco. And they just wanted to monitor where these bacteria were flying to. Only later did they find out that if somebody was immunosuppressed, they would end up with very severe lung infections. I believe I've talked on the show before about the radiation experiments in the United States, which again, primarily targeted marginalized communities. It was in large

part racial minorities, the black and Hispanic communities, particularly in the United States, but also one of the most egregious radiation experiments that the United States carried out. And these were carried out over a 30-year span of time. This is not like a three-month trial thing. One of the most egregious ones, or I guess, let's say two. One was giving radioactive iodine cocktails to pregnant women to see what the effects of radiation on unborn children would be. And they wanted to record what is the likelihood of birth defects or stillbirths or things like this. if our water system is contaminated with radiation in the event of a nuclear war.

And probably even more egregious than this, and keep in mind, these are all not, there's no consent, they're not being informed of any of this. Probably the most egregious one was one that was co-sponsored by the United States government and Quaker Oats. Now, Americans particularly will be very familiar with Quaker Oats because it's one of our major cereal brands, you know, oatmeal, cereal. Quaker Oats makes like whatever, 20% of pre-packaged foods in the United States. They co-sponsored a study where they laced oatmeal with radioactive elements

and fed them to mentally disabled children. They sponsored these get-togethers where these mentally disabled children, again, no consent or even, you know, they didn't even inform them that this was happening. the parents would come into this Quaker Oates sponsored event, which was co-sponsored by the U.S. government, and they fed the kids radioactive oatmeal to see what would happen if people were eating irradiated food in the case of a nuclear war. I mean, this is egregious stuff. And the reason that I've run through this list, which I understand has probably gone on far too long at this point, although I could go much longer and perhaps... There's so much...

Yeah, I mean, of course, we didn't mention, like I said, Nazi Germany, Japan. We didn't get into MK Ultra. We didn't get into, I mean, many of these things. We have an episode on MK Ultra for listeners who want to check out that episode specifically. It was a long time ago, probably at least two years ago now, but it's worth listening to. The reason that I bring this up is not to just document the litany of unethical human experimentation, but to use it as a way of demonstrating that these experimentations are almost always carried out against underprivileged or marginalized communities, whether that's racial minorities, whether that's

mentally disabled children. I mean, really, can you get much more marginalized than that? And when these come out, when these instances come out, it creates distrust in the populace. And I'm sorry, just one more example, which I think is probably the best exemplar of this. We talked before in one of our previous episodes, again, a long time ago. I don't even remember what one it was. was the history of vaccine clubs. That was the episode. If listeners want to hear the full story, the CIA, when they were looking for Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, went around with people that said that they were going to be administering hepatitis B vaccine to children. But what was happening was they were not administering hepatitis B vaccine. Instead,

they were taking DNA samples from children in various parts of Pakistan where they thought that perhaps Osama bin Laden was hiding. And what they were looking for was a DNA signature. They had Osama bin Laden's DNA. They wanted to see if they could find any of his children by DNA analysis. And if they could, they figured, well, he's probably in a similar area to this. Of course, it didn't work. That's not how they found Osama bin Laden.

But it eventually came out. Hey, people in Pakistan, one of the only at the time, it was there was four countries in the world that had polio cases, which I know is not hepatitis B, but we'll get to polio in a second. At that time, it was Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, and Nigeria, still had active polio cases. But, hey, people in Pakistan, this so-called aid supplier, the people that say that they're coming in with free hepatitis B vaccines to make sure that our kids are treated, they're not actually giving us vaccines, they're doing blood test, DNA tests, things that we didn't consent to. And so what happened? Yeah, what happened? Polio vaccination rates plummeted and they experienced

their biggest spike in polio cases the next year, the biggest spike that they had had in like almost 20 years at that point. So it so is distrust in these communities that have these experiments done on them. And it makes it much harder for these communities than to buy into science. And that is what makes your job as a science communicator so much more difficult. So I don't know if there's anything that you would like to reflect on that. And as you finish your reflections on that, if you have anything that you want to add, feel free to take us into some of your projects because there are some projects that I do want to talk about. And I'll just leave you the floor because I've blathered on

far too long at this point. Yeah, but all about it. So, as a beginning, as a beginner to this point, I always come back to this. One of my favorite passages in any book is from this book

called Decolonizing Methodologies by Professor Linda Tuihawe-Wi-Smith. and the opening line is quote From the vantage point of the colonized A position from which I write And choose to privilege The term research

Is inextricably linked To European imperialism And colonialism The word itself, research Is probably one of the dirtiest words In the indigenous world's vocabulary I think that just sums up a lot of indigenous people's feelings about research.

Now, I think it's a powerful opener because if you know nothing about the racist and oppressive history of science, this is an indicator of the people who have been affected by it and how they see it, right? For a lot of people in the West, white people in wealthy countries, science is programmed. it's it's you get all the benefits from it in the technology and how it's improved the knowledge that you gain and things like that but much like colonization extracted from the continent of Africa and other indigenous peoples all over the world extracted resources and benefited people back home it's the same with knowledge um like Africa at the moment is is is is is is is is devastated, ravaged by the resource extraction of the past and the present that it's very difficult for us to come out of. It's the same with the resource of knowledge itself. And the scars that have been left by all the mining are psychological when it comes to science

and knowledge, right? So how do you convince someone who's been hurt and injured by science? to then take part in it, see it as a valuable thing without it being a tool for further extraction of knowledge, which is something that happens with a lot of decolonization efforts

in a lot of westernized institutions at the moment. But that's something, that's the topic for another time. But when it comes to the other part of the distrust and science it's when we take science

and make it an elite thing that only if you can possess it those who don't will see it as a negative and will distrust it because every experience they've had with it

has been negative right and another thing that I want to talk about with that human experimentation and distrust in science is that when you look at a lot of these studies they are bad science

beyond the evil and just the abhorrent things that they did nothing of value can be gained from all those horrible experiments but the people who were doing them had the justification that it's it's for the progression for for for the progression of humanity we're going to gain more information and sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet but they broke all these eggs and there's no omelet like that's that's the beyond the horror of the evil that was done it's the horror of realizing all that evil was done for nothing right like with the testes Kiki experiments, nothing of value came out of that study. By the time, they were looking at people's mortality or the disease progression of syphilis in what it did to people's bodies.

For one, the treatments for syphilis already existed, right? So there was no need to, uh, to, to, or it began to exist during the time of the experiment. The penicillin came, around I think like four years into the experiment and the experiment went for almost 30 so it just goes to show like you know five sixths of the experiment was under the time when we had still the

treatment of choice for syphilis like it was the treatment yeah but they continued with it anyway didn't tell the people that they were doing these experiments on without their consent they didn't tell them why they were doing it why they were doing it and they didn't let them know that

treatments for syphilis exist right so it was just it was horrible it was pointless it was evil and at the end of the day you read the research that comes from it the results are useless like they're pointless like there's not that them being useful would be a justification in any way but still a lot of these experiments were it's just heartbreaking to realize that they were all just pointless and that includes all the other places like in Japan Nazi Germany and other places that that sort of work happened yeah so

to get into the work that I do at the moment there is the decolonized science project it's called in full the full name is Masakane decolonized science in this project it's

it's a meeting of many experts from across the continent, consisting of computer scientists or coders, programmers. You have translators and you have science communicators and also some scientists who specialize in different fields who help us with some of the terms that we are translating. So the problem with a lot of translations of science these days, is that since a lot of the scientific terms don't exist in these indigenous African languages, it's difficult to translate a lot of the complex scientific stuff that you find both in popular media and also complex scientific papers. So it takes a lot of work for people like myself, journalists, science communicators, and others. Each one of us has to do with our own particular.

way and it's very difficult to standardize things. Afrikaans is considered a linguistic miracle. Since, starting in the 70s, they basically turned Afrika in South Africa, up to South Africa, into a language of science. Lots of investments in lexicons, dictionaries, all sorts of language development stuff was done to make sure that you can communicate about science in Afrikaans. But none of the other languages, indigenous African languages, in South Africa

was afforded this opportunity and they understood back then the upper tit government how important it is for Africans to be a language of science

so that they can be taken seriously as a culture and as a language and in understanding this today we're trying to make sure that we're able

to communicate science in Zulu and other African languages on the continent and a lot of people ask like why bother translating science into African languages

why don't you just teach people English? Well, that's the way, that's where the decolonization comes in. So the model that I usually like to use or like to demonstrate decolonization of science

and what it means to me when it comes to science is that in order for me to communicate about science to another Zulu speaker, I have to speak English. This is for myself and the other person. This is our second language.

When it comes to sports, politics, or anything else that is important to us, we can talk about those things in our mother tongue of Zulu. But when it comes to talking about scientific and technological things, you have to code switch basically in more than one way. you change the language and you change the way you speak about certain things because the words don't exist in your own language. And something that Gukiwa Tiyongo says about languages, that language is a crucible of culture, right?

All the things that language is able to do, that culture is able to do. So if a language is unable to carry and communicate in science, then it's unable to generate or create knowledge, otherwise known as just doing science. It's not as easy to do, right? In order to do science, in order to communicate science with a fellow Zulu speaker, I have to convert my Zulu thoughts into English and then scientific speak. And then that person has to convert that scientific speak and English back into Zulu

in order for them to understand even though we can speak the same language we have to consult a third party English in order to speak to each other so for me decolonization is the idea that there has to be a way for myself and another sort of speaker to talk about science

without having a third person a monitor to to to to to to for us to be able to do science we need permission of of the white man, right? I want it to be such that we can just do science amongst ourselves and sometimes a lot of people ask really scary questions like how could you do science amongst yourselves without doing it in English? How are we supposed to know what you're doing? Why do you want to know? Like this is

about me doing science with my fellow speaker generating knowledge and using scientific knowledge for our own benefits as well without consulting a third party. Yeah, that's the reason. trying to do this project, which I haven't explained well. I realize it's basically we are trying to create, so artificial intelligence has gotten very badly translated in the last couple of years, ironically. But it's, it's an automated tool, so to speak, that once we're done, creating it, will be able to translate existing scientific texts into African languages. But with every AI tool out there, I'll say, it's as good as the data that you give it, right?

That's why so many of them these days are a racist and they have so many prejudices. It's because the people who, like, they excuse a lot of times with, with, with, with, with, with AI advocates is that AI is great because you don't have to program the system and programs itself. But even if you remove the person from

creating the machine and letting the machine learning learn on its own, the way you create that machine in order to learn has its own biases. The data that it uses is generated by people and the people who are the most

who have the access who have access to this data are white guys, young white guys, such as yourself, Henry. So it's, it's, it's, it's like, like, the best way I can describe what it's like experiencing science and technology in, in, in, in the real world is, I don't know, just, just try to be a black person on Reddit.

I just try to be a black person or a woman on Reddit. it's it's it's it's it's um i can imagine it's something that it's the closest way i can demonstrate what it's like to experience these things but um yeah the idea behind this project is to then create the data ourselves so it's translators or professional translators um in six different languages from across the continent uh we have science communicators uh like myself uh we have scientists as well who we consult and we have the specialized um computer scientists the the programmers um the the the most important thing about this project is that there is no perspective that we prioritize over others we all have to be on the same page about something so that it can move on

with it so that we can sort of understand what's happening And it's quite difficult because it's many different fields, right? Across six African languages, seven if you include English or even eight, if you include scientific discourse. So like seven or eight different languages, multiple, what you call multiple disciplines and priorities and things like that. But still we found a way to actually be able to make it work because we all subscribe to the idea of decolonization

of not taking for granted that you can only do science in English. You can do it in other languages as well. We're trying to create the tools that will allow people like myself and anyone else

to communicate about science in their own mother tongue. So yeah, that's the That's the big idea with the project. Yeah. I think that it's critical that we not just limit our scope of decolonization to decolonizing lands, but that we also have to focus on decolonizing minds as well.

And I think that this is what your entire projects, not only this project that you just described, but all of your projects in science communication and whatnot have been out to do is to decolonize minds. So this is something I really wish Adnan was here particularly because Adnan is, you know, our Fanon expert. And while I know and love Fanon, I can't articulate many of the things that Adnan would do. So this is a topic that we plan on revisiting. And hopefully Adnan will be there to do that for me because he would be much more eloquent than I would. But, you know, Fanon's whole deal was that the psychological trauma of colonization makes the process of decolonization both simultaneously more difficult, more violent in many cases,

but also that we have to focus on decolonizing the mind. We can't only focus on decolonizing the land or else. We still have that colonial mentality, which, by the way, is a great song, Colonial Mentality by Felakuti. I don't know if any of our listeners are familiar with Felakuti, the great Afrobeat musician. Many of his songs I do. That's something I'll definitely check out.

I think that many of our listeners would really resonate with his story. He was actively fighting against, not like violently fighting, but like standing up musically to the government of Nigeria at their very neo-colonial phase. And, you know, so much so that when he was calling out the Nigerian military for basically being outposts of white capital abroad, that the Nigerian military stormed his recording studio and threw his mother from the window, which eventually ended up killing her, not immediately, but, you know, and then he continued to make music afterwards about this exact same thing. If listeners are interested in a couple of cuts of his, zombie is his most famous song,

and the idea there is that the soldiers of the Nigerian army were just essentially mindless zombies doing whatever the neo-colonial government was telling them to do to uphold capital. colonial mentality is another great one but he I mean really if you look up any Felakuti albums you'll find some some great cuts on there that are very deep in terms of the the content but also Afrobeat is just great in general I'm a big proponent of it but yeah colonial mentality so we have to actively decolonize this the psychology the colonial mentality as Felakuti was pointing out and as Fanon does and all of his works.

So just, if I remember correctly, I believe I heard you do an interview one time where he said you were having some problems translating the word fossil. Am I remembering correctly? It was a funny story, whatever. Was it fossil? I think it was fossil or it might have been planet as well.

Oh, I list those stories. I think it'll be fun. Yeah, okay. Yeah, so before I get into that, I wanted to get more into the decolonization of science and what it means and not just like you were mentioning like it's it's not just decolonization of lands, it's also decolonization of knowledge as well and how we see ourselves and to do a certain degree philosophy as well. So speaking of philosophy, with some more reading, I found that the colonization is related to some other, another theory of philosophy. I think it's called standpoint theory. It's where feminism or the academic arm of feminism stems.

and one of the biggest things that I read in some of the stuff I was reading about it is the idea that when comes to science standpoint theorem comes to science it challenges the idea that knowledge can only be held by the elites people who do science like that's the only thing that counts is knowledge

and also the somewhat new liberal idea that scientific knowledge the only thing that counts scientific knowledge is what's known by individuals and the individuals who participate in it

instead of the idea that knowledge is held collectively by communities right and the current scientific institutions that we have are ill-equipped

to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, what they do, to change themselves to understanding and making use of, uh, collective knowledge. Like, they, they, they tend to, um, discount it as invalid. Um, so what they do, they'll take indigenous knowledge and they'll try to convert it to the model of, I'll call this neoliberal idea of science, um, take from the many, give to the few, they know what to do best with it. And that's why I've been so disappointed with that some universities in South Africa and sometimes in other parts of the world, something that they called I-K-S, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, which is recognizing the importance of indigenous knowledge,

and then those universities working with traditional healers and other specialists who know who are well-versed in indigenous knowledge, such as in medicine and other things like that, they will do interviews with them, try to get information that will put in a thesis somewhere or recorded in a library somewhere. It's just more extraction, but with the progressive lens now, right? and another example is

a lot of frustrating things that I've seen where a lot of frustrating things that I've seen where I'll say well-meaning scientists or advocates will misconstrue the decolonization of science with the idea of inclusion

or diversity that if there's more black people institutions, then that's a good thing, that's decolonization. But the systems as they stand, they're not equipped to be able to take seriously or to understand or to validate for one collective knowledge, indigenous knowledge, without converting it into their own kind of knowledge first in order to find it acceptable, right? It's another sort of form of translation and translators know that when you're translating something from one language to another, a lot is lost, right? So we don't want to

lose as indigenous peoples, we don't want to lose part of our collective indigenous knowledge for the sake of it being placed in a moldy book somewhere, right? So yeah, that's the big idea for the decolonization of science that I wanted to touch on there. And now I'm going to ask you again, what was your question again? Your translation of fossils and planets. Ah, yes.

So what happens is that in a lot of the articles I write about the process that goes into translating such of scientific terms, is that as a science communicator I don't like to I want people to be

not just be aware of the results of the science but also the process right like even if no result comes out it's just a great deduction that goes into scientific questions

and trying to answer scientific questions and things like that so when it comes to my own process of translating scientific terms as well I look back at, there's another chap, a South African chap who was writing a book of scientific terms a while ago.

And his reasoning for coming up with the word for planet was looking at the etymology of the word planet itself. I think it's Greek or Latin or a bit of both about the word planet means wanderer, right? So if you don't know what a planet is, you already know, okay, if it's wanderer, it means it's something that wonders, as opposed to what? Like, it moves around, moves around where in the sky? As opposed to other things? Yeah, technically the moon used to be considered a planet as well. But if you look at the night sky, all the stars almost don't move at all, right? Except a few that just wander around.

those were the planets and they were named after Greek and Roman gods as they were being found so for someone who hears for the first time the word planet and there's no idea what it is they have no idea what it means or what it's about

but if they knew the etymology of it and they hear the word oh wanderer you start inquiry start thinking oh that's what it is it wonders and you want to know more, right? And that's the beauty of my home language, of my mother tongue,

notwithstanding my bias. It's very descriptive, right? When you learn a word for the first time, you might not know what it means exactly, but you know what it's about, like it points to something, right? Like it relates to something. Even if it's a word that you're hearing for the first time

and it doesn't make any sense because you've never heard it before and it's not related to anything that you know the sound that the word produces or the way that it's written kind of tells gives you a clue of the properties of the of the thing that you're learning about

right? An example I like giving is ancient Zulu weapons two spears, two kinds of spear one is called Iqwa and the other is called

ipapa right so the reason they are called that is the longer one the longer spear is called epapa ipapa because when you throw it

that's the sound that it makes in the air right and the other one is iiqua which is as you might guess is the sound that it makes

when you stab someone right um so that's the kind of fun and versatility of the Zulu language that I want to put in science for the benefit of Zulu speakers or for anyone interested in learning science in an interesting way, like how cool it would be if you learned a lot of scientific terms in that way, right? Like you'll never, you never have to memorize a certain term for the sake of it, like you get rid of rogue memorization, rot memorization, you sort of understand something,

you own it in a way, in a much better way. The way it comes to planet, that's how I later on learned to sort of try to translate a lot of the scientific terms that I come across. So what I like doing is doing that, going to schools, and then giving them a clue about what would you, how would you call a planet, right? And then they will ask me, okay, what is a planet? Let's talk about what a planet is. We'll talk at length about what a planet is, its properties and whatnot. And we'd boil it down to the simplest property that it moves, right? And then I asked these kids in middle school and different levels in the lower grades at school,

what would you call a planet? And a lot of them come up with the term, Umhambi, or similar terms in other African-Indigenous languages, which is amazing because now they know more about what a planet is. than they would in class when they've been asked to memorize what the planet is, right? And it's something that even if you forget everything about what a planet is,

this is the one thing that you'll remember that it moves, right, across the sky. So one example that I gave them was, as an exercise, was how would you describe a fossil, right? So they'll ask, well, what is a fossil? And I would say, okay, well, it's sort of an organism

or part of an organism mostly stuff that's hard like bone and sometimes leaves and bark and shells plants and animals that can it sort of leaves an impression in some special rock

over millions of years like that stuff itself is gone but that impression that's left behind is what a fossil is basically it's a special kind of rock that comes from living things that have died and were preserved over a long time, right? So the first instinct is to hear Amatambo Amadala, right?

Which is translated, direct translated, like old bones. And then I tell them, but, well, fossils can also be plants. They can also be seashells. There can even be footsteps, like footprints that have been left behind. That's a fossilist and impression that's left by a living organism, even though no part of it is left, but like the impression leaves. So it was very interesting to hear a lot of the different interpretations and things that they would say, they would correct each other.

What they were doing, they were doing science. They were talking about science in a way that they wouldn't be comfortable doing otherwise because they're only told, okay, this is the new English and science thing that you have to learn. Even if you don't understand it, just memorize it so that you will, get a passing mark but just the excitement you see from them asking more questions

challenging each other what I like about the translation of science which for me is a decolonization of science as of just trying to translate science communicate science automatically in ways that

are difficult to do in other ways so like that's the fun thing that I see happens when I try to help people translate scientific terms into their

African indigenous language, something that most of them think they're not capable of, right? And I have a whole podcast basically based on that idea, like between myself there's a shameless plug here, between myself and my colleague and Dogosomsoomi,

we just, she's the translator, I'm the science communicator, Aythro science fact at her, it is Zulu, and she tries to translate those scientific terms and things until we come to her content is that, okay, this is the term that works.

Like that whole time, listeners are just listening to two people talk about science delivered in a way that they wouldn't see otherwise. And they are also participating because we invite listeners to also take part in correcting us

or coming up with better words and stuff like that and shouldn't throw the secret out there, but my favorite kind of science communication is, like I said before, a guerrilla science communication where I do science communication without people realizing that that's what's happening because they, the minute you mention science to a lot of people in South Africa, it's, Like, you kill the room, basically. Unless you've got something exciting to say, you're just taking them back to school. It's frustrating, it's sad.

But when you talk about scientific things without mentioning the word science, or just talking about scientific things in general in their own language, and then in the end you say, hey, you just did science. That's all that it is. It creates a trust in science. And, oh, yeah, there's a lost thread that has just come back into focus. with the distrust of science. I just remember that I worked on a project

where a local community was complaining about very bad smells and bad air from a local rubbish disposal company, open field landfill, processing plant, and they were complaining about the smells

of different chemicals in the air that were making them sick. So the local company created these presentations for the community explaining to them that everything was fine but then they didn't trust them because it was in English

right so I was brought in I was part of the company that I work for we created the materials in Isizulu and also simplified them because even in English

they were so complex so even the English speakers benefited from that which is another benefit of translation and really does benefit everyone. In the end the community understood the science better and they were more confident

when they were chasing out that company from the community because before they weren't sure, they distrusted them but now they were sure they trusted the science and they understood the science better and the science told them that yeah, there's stuff in the air that's making you sick. So that's just

part of the whole distrust in science thing and how language plays a role and yeah just the decolonizing of science a big thing for me is removing the idea that science is only for certain people up in their ivory towers that everyone can take part in science

even if you're not being a scientist yourself and doing the science in the lab your knowledge as a community is as valid as the knowledge of any scientific or knowledge knowledge hosting institution out there. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that we're, I mean, there's a lot more that I could say, but I think that we should get towards the end of this conversation. So the way that I'll give you a final question and you can be as lengthy as you want with it and then we'll close it up is.

Be careful what you wish for? No, no, no. Believe me, you can go on as long as you want. We have episodes on our show that are up to three hours long. So you've got to, Like, you know, we're going to have to go before we get to that point. But the question is, essentially, science communication and this process of trying to decolonize science is constrained by many factors.

And, I mean, we could just call them resources, financial resources, time resources, outlets that are willing to publish this sort of material, you know, benefactors that are willing to push this sort of material. you know, benefactors that are willing to push this sort of material, because of course you're trying to upset the apple cart here with the whole project. So the question is, given the constraints that we have, what is the avenue for success and what is a benchmark for success in decolonizing science? And if there were no constraints, what are some ways that you'd like to push this project forward, assuming like ideal world, you had infinite amounts of, you know, money and time and any other resource that you could possibly use. So those are the kind of like the two prongs

of this question. What is the realistic goal that we can have given the constraints? And without the constraints, what would be a viable tactic to pursue? Well, that is a very good question. I'll start with with a positive optimistic view of if I were president for a day like so if there were no constraints

the thing that I'd love to do is to take our small team of fewer than like 20 people or so make it a hundred people right and go from there to at the moment we're translating a lot of scientific texts, scientific papers from Africa about Africa and we're covering a lot of terms but like it's still very slow going

like to happen is if I was able to get some of the most popular science books from different devils from high school, primary school, to tertiary, like in college. Take the whole book from scratch, just translate every single word from every single page and just work on that, like have different teams do that sort of stuff. Because I find that it's a very great way of doing the translations themselves. Like it's, it's, it's, it's, and make it an open forum of different people coming in, making the best way this works is that the whole process from the beginning

until the final product it's open to anyone to take part in every step and I want to be able to do that with college books and other books as well so yeah that would be the the big thing

because yes there is an end of the project where we've created the tool and it works but I want it to be a continuing thing over time. And if I had all the money in the world, it would be a continuing thing like a living wiki of new scientific terms translated in Zulu and other African languages, but the process being so open that everyone is confident that a person speaking, talking about a certain thing in Zulu, about science and then another person doing the same thing,

that they can understand each other and the fact that they're talking about the same thing. At the moment it's very disjointed and I want that to be very open in that way. I know it doesn't seem like very big of a thing but part of the fun of this project is yes, there's a problem to solve

but part of solving that problem a lot of great work is being done, a lot of good data is being produced, a lot of I would say good science is being done at the same time as well, just looking back at why are we doing this project in the first place, looking back at the history of scientific discourse or how we talk about science and why it is the way that it is, it even illuminates a lot of stuff about how we talk about science in English

as well, but just all that stuff that we take for granted when comes to science, I wanted to put it out there so that people can see that it's not so much a big deal as we look, as we see it. Yeah, that's the, that's the biggest thing. So the constraints at the moment, they tend to be political before they are mandatory, political and psychological. Really doesn't surprise me.

I was hoping that you would bring that up. Yeah, yeah. It's, it's just mentioning, like there was this, one time I was going to speak to an astronomy group about the declinalization of science and using translation for that and a senior

astronomy guy I would say that's sort of like my mentor in a way people or someone I look up to when it comes to amateur astronomy and just because I'm trying to build

a telescope at the moment has been delayed for a while because of well ADHD and COVID and I'll be using those excuses for at least for the next two years but like he said that

he's glad to see me talk about science to the broader community and stuff like that but he is concerned about attaching politics to this whole discussion and I'm always fervigested when those sorts of questions come my way or those sort of comments come my way because it's

the idea that oh um because I'm I'm doing science I'm a scientist uh therefore I don't have any major biases and I'm objective um um I'm I'm I don't I don't I don't subscribe to any of these small-minded ideas of looking at the world through a political lens and things like that. It's quite concerning because they do

have a political lens that they're unaware of, because they're unaware of that political lens that they have, they're unaware of the bad effects that it has on other people. And just on science, like the bad political

effects that it has on science, and the people who don't look like them, right? So that's the first hurdle. At first, I was sort of advised and I wanted to use the term decolonization much less in order to make my work more palatable. But it's sort of a disservice to the whole idea of decolonization to do that. So it's the first step.

first challenge then would be if you're not going to help us in the process of decolonization don't be a hurdle in the way, right? Just either help with decolonization

or don't be a hurdle. Don't, don't be in our way in trying to, in the work that we're trying to do. And also, if your science is so robust and strong that because you're the most reasonable person in the room a silly little word like

decolonization shouldn't hurt your size like it shouldn't hurt Francis Bacon shouldn't be shaking in his grave because I just brought up decolonization of science suddenly all of science is going to collapse or anything like that like that's not the case so that's the first challenge that we have to overcome because instinctively

there's a lot of people when they hear about deaconization of science their response the knee-jerk response is to say like what's the point like science has already

de-clonized like what's the point of translating science we already have English right so it's a lot of decentering of Western perspective

that we have to deal with that we have to talk about before we even get into the work that we're doing but all that

notwithstanding we're still trying to do the work of de colonization with this project so yeah after dealing with the I mean after knowing and being aware of the psychological issues and political hurdles we then get into the work that we are doing

so yeah at the moment the work that we're doing is incredibly cheap considering like the billions of rents, which I think number in the hundreds of millions of dollars that were put into work of, into the work of turning Afrikaans into a language of science, right, and many decades of work. But that hasn't been done for African languages. And Afrikaans is a derivative of a European language. It is related to English and other languages in Europe. You can imagine. and how much more difficult that is for Zulu and other African languages which have completely different structures and philosophies and things like that, right?

So the excuse from entities like the South African government, which is in our constitution that local languages should be developed for science and technology as well, but the problem is so expensive and it takes a very long time to get a lot of these things done. So they can drag their feet a lot like. the same for a lot of African countries as well, like they'd rather put that money in other things. But we've demonstrated that, like, we've created about just over close to 300, like,

2050 or so papers. And remember, each paper has to be translated by a science communicator and six different translators. And they all have to have the same method. And it has to be everyone has to be on the same page on each thing. It takes a lot of work, but we are trying to make it such that we're creating the data that will make this sort of work easier and cheaper in the future, right? So, yeah, we're hoping to get more funding. I think at the moment in the past two years,

we've just spent about, we've gotten funding for around, say, $20,000 or so. and like a lot of people have been working on this have purchased a lot of good data already even before the tool itself starts working and we've been presenting it at international conferences and people are starting to see their value in it so we are hoping that more and more people realize that it takes a lot of money to do something

like developing a whole language for science but we have tools today and people willing to put in the work to make this sort of work possible and much easier in the future as well. So that's the constraints that we have, but we're hoping to advertise the idea that we're doing it for dirt cheap because it's a lot of people coming together to make this sort of work that goes into developing a whole language much easier in the future, but we want to do it right as well. So it's going to be expensive at first.

But relatively speaking, instead of the hundreds of millions of dollars that it would normally take, it doesn't take that much money. But yeah, that's the long and short of it in terms of constraints. at the moment, yeah. Well, I'll just tell a quick story and then I'll let you tell the listeners how they can find you in your work. So you mentioned that a lot of scientists think that politics is not part of science. These people are just willfully ignorant. I mean, I've, again, I come from a science background. So I have met dozens and dozens of scientists who vehemently will state that there is no politics in science. In their science or in science generally, they're all will. willfully ignorant, they say that. And one very funny. The monster believe wrong. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Here's one very, here's a very funny example that I remember very well because it was in a lecture I had in grad school, one of the professors, actually one of the founding directors of the institute that my grad school was located in, like very renowned German scientist that I was studying in Germany. in about a two-sentence span of time, maybe three, he stated that there is no role for politics and science and then immediately followed it up with complaints about animal welfare regulations in Germany being too strict and impeding science and also complaining talking about the human animal ecosystem interface and encroachments of humans into the animal ecosystem. of overbreeding and overpopulation in certain parts of the world and that, you know, this is

something that needs to be curtailed. I mean, there is a very explicit political message there and it's targeted against a specific group of people or some specific groups of people. In about three sentences, that was what you got. There is no politics and science. Regulations for animal welfare are bad and those people in the global south are breeding too rapid. exactly. What do you think politics is? Yeah, exactly. I mean, like, I cannot be more honest when I say that these were like consecutive statements. There was almost no filler words in between other than maybe he mentioned like, you know, Spatzler or something like that because he was a German guy. But other than that, like these were consecutive statements. So it's just a very funny example, but this is something that is very prevalent in science. So again, all the time. Absolutely. So listeners, again, our guest was Sibu Siso Biela, who is a science

communicator based in South Africa. Sibu Siso, I really enjoyed the conversation in case you weren't able to tell. Can you tell the listeners how they can find you and your work? Okay. You can find me on Twitter, that's where my link tree is.

If you go onto my Twitter, you'll find in my bio, my link tree where all my other links can be found. So on Twitter, I am Astro Sibs, that's Astro, S-I-B-S. You'll find me there. So at the moment, my profile picture has been an awesome looking unicorn with trans colors. That says bodily autonomy for all by any means necessary. So if you don't see, if you don't see. my picture with my dreadlocks there and you see a gnarly horse for bodily autonomy, that's me.

So that's Astra Sibs. That's where you can find my link tree that will take you to all the work that I've been doing and how to get in touch with me, including my email address. And what's your podcast for any Isuzu speakers that may happen to be listening to our show? Yeah, so my podcast is called. elogu logo you can find on apple podcasts and all the great places that you listen to to podcasts and i've been told um and that's one of the big reasons i i continue with the podcast um from the stages is that um when you listen to the podcast you can just even if you're not a zulu speaker

you can just hear some of the stuff that we are talking about because it's partly in english but it's a lot of people find enjoyment in listening to myself and my co-producer and yeah in one of the links you'll find a short clip of one minute where I tell my co-host and doggoso about the fact that yes dinosaurs most dinosaurs went extinct but there's still some form of dinosaurs that exist today being birds and just that moment when she hears me say that and she loves so much and lets out this amazing reaction where I just continued talking about how yeah well that's that's how

evolution works over 65 million years basically so yeah it's it's great for Zulu speakers but for anyone else wants to have just some positive energy, some great vibes thrown you away, you can listen to it in the background. It does have heard our viewership as also. Yeah, please look for e-lupu-lubu and you can share it around

all of those great to get new listeners. Yeah, and of course I'll share all of that information in the show notes. So listeners, if you're looking for it, you can just go down below, click on the link that I put there. As for me, listeners, you can find me on Twitter at Huck 1995. Again, we said that my two co-hosts were not able to be here, but you should still follow them on Twitter as well.

We have Adnan at Adnan A. Hussein, H-U-S-A-I-N, and you should listen to his other podcast, The Mudge List, which focuses on the Middle East and Muslim Diaspora. We have Brett O'Shea. You can find all of his work for both Revolutionary Left Radio and the Red Minus podcast at Revolutionary Left Radio. And of course, as I mentioned at the top, you can follow Gorilla History on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-L-A-U-Sk, and you can help keep the lights on and support us,

get some bonus content by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. Again, Gorilla being spelled, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And until next time, listeners, Solidarity. Thank you. Thank you.