Seismo Lab Brown Bag Seminar

Most people learn about earthquake science during a brief interval following large or impactful events. During that period, the available information is generally practical in nature, focusing on damage and the possibility of further events like aftershocks. After as little as one day, public interest wanes and the opportunity for engagement decreases. However, each earthquake briefly opens a door for a wide cross-section of people to enter the fascinating world of earthquake science. In 2023, we founded the Earthquake Insights newsletter on Substack. We want to provide readable, data-focused, visually rich, and timely discussions of earthquakes and the Earth itself, accessible to a general audience. We try to avoid simple repetition of facts and figures, instead focusing on telling an engaging story for each earthquake. Our hope is to catch and hold the interest of a diverse array of people, including those directly impacted by events, all around the globe. Since February 2023, we have published 299 posts ranging from short rapid reports, long-format articles, and critical reviews of high-impact research papers related to earthquakes. In this presentation, we will give a broad overview of our goals and methods, and will discuss some of the challenges and rewards of our work. We also solicit feedback and advice from the broad earthquake science community at Caltech.