The PlanetGEO podcast: An Educational Partnership for Advancing the Stature of the Geosciences in the Public Sphere

The Geosciences are often undervalued by society relative to similar fields. For instance, most people have some idea how biology or physics directly benefits their everyday lives, and have some idea what scientists in those fields study. The same is not true for the Geosciences. Here we present preliminary results from a high school-university partnership focused on conveying the passion, intrigue, and importance of the Geosciences to everyday life in society. This project entails the publication of PlanetGEO, a discussion-based podcast that highlights key concepts in the Geosciences, explores common misconceptions, and interviews top academics and leaders from the geoscience community. By combining expertise in research and education across the K12-university divide, we hope to present a clearer picture as to why the Geosciences are critically valuable. We will present results from preliminary implementation of podcast episodes in Introductory Geoscience courses at both the High School and University levels. As this outreach initiative continues to grow and mature we will present and update on the strategy, lessons learned throughout the process, best practices in creating educationally valuable audio content, and a discussion of principles for success using existing metrics and feedback. We look forward to discussions and feedback from colleagues in education and research.