Don’t Be Such a Scientist_ Talking Substance in an Age of Style.

Don’t Be Such a Scientist_ Talking Substance in an Age of Style. Don’t Be Such a Scientist_ Talking Substance in an Age of Style.

Talking Substance in an Age of Style

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study the ocean and have fun doing it.

“You think too much! You motherf***ing think too much! You're nothing but an arrogant, pointy-headed intellectual—I want you out of my classroom and off the premises in five minutes or I'm calling the police and having you arrested for trespassing And I'm not f***ing joking, you a**hole.”

Well That was my introduction to Hollywood, complete with the personalized

profanity Thirty-eight years old Just resigned from my tenured professorship ofmarine biology Invested every cent to move to Hollywood Entered film school

at the University of Southern California and signed up for an acting class withthis crazy teacher, now blowing her lungs out at me in front of the class

I'm looking at this beast and flashing back to Antarctica, 1985, Cape Byrd,getting chased out of the water by a ten-foot leopard seal Thinking that the sealseemed less threatening than this teacher Thinking that the seal was morepredictable

To make matters worse, I had been warned A screenwriter buddy got me intothe class He was friends with the teacher His warning went like this: “She haslaser beams for eyes and can see into your soul Don't even think aboutquestioning her Just listen to every word she says and know she's always right.She's the best acting teacher in Hollywood—she's worked with everyone fromDustin Hoffman to Al Pacino Don't think you're smarter than her.”

He said that over a game of pool, along with a variety of tall tales involvinghis Hollywood adventures, some of which I felt certain were hugelyexaggerated The “laser beam eyes” bit made it seem like just more of his hype

So here I am Standing in front of two dozen kids—all twenty-somethinghipster/aspiring actors, now roaring with laughter as this version of Bette Midler-on-angel-dust tears apart “the old dude.”

I stand before her, hands at my sides, palms open, saying, “I'm sorry, I'm justhere to learn about acting.” It's the first night of class She teaches the Meisnertechnique—one of the most highly respected forms of training for actors It

revolves around repetition exercises: Two students stand in front of the class.One says, “That's a lovely blue sweater.” The other replies, “This is a lovely bluesweater?” The first one repeats, “That's a lovely blue sweater.” If the originalstatement is sincere, the repetitions take on a sweet tone until someone finallyfeels an emotion and expresses it by saying something like, “Thank you for thecompliment.” If the original statement is sarcastic, it doesn't take long for thesweater wearer to end the exchange with an insult.

year-old Malibu party girl, stands opposite me and is told to begin the processwith an observation She could have commented on my shirt She could havecommented on my posture But instead she looks me over and says “You'regoing bald!”

I shrug I've been living in university settings for twenty years Baldness hasbeen a badge of legitimacy in that world I've looked in the mirror I can see it

No need to get mad at me Everyone says I'm a nice guy I'm just here to learn “Idon't know,” I reply “No big deal.”

The fire escalates “What do you mean you don't know? We want to hear what

you're feeling We want to see what you're feeling Don't try to stand here and

tell us you have no feelings This beautiful young girl says you're going bald,like a pathetic limp-dick old man She's insulted you Now I'm asking you again,

How does that make you feel?”

Again I shrug and smile—and even make the fatal mistake of saying, “I'm notfeeling anything.” To which I should have added, “Why should I? I'm ascientist.”

I did leave the premises that night, and I was definitely rattled They say thatfear of public speaking is one of the most widely shared phobias I'm guessingthat fear of public acting in front of a pack of attractive kids who are laughing atyou has to rate right up there, too I stayed up for hours that night talking on thephone to old friends, wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into andgiving some thought to the possibility that the move to Hollywood was simply abad idea It wasn't too late to slink back to New Hampshire and cancel my

resignation, though I kept flashing back to the scene in An Officer and a

Gentleman where Richard Gere is doing push-ups in the rain, crying and

screaming at the sergeant, “I got nowhere else to go, sir!” That was kind of mypredicament

I spoke with my screenwriter buddy the next day He called the teacher up.She didn't know I was his friend Being pure Hollywood, she melodramaticallyapologized in front of the class the next night for having treated me so poorly,then told me to sit down and shut up, and continued to abuse me for the nextyear

The class was of moderate interest then and for a while after But it allchanged in 2002, when I returned to working with academics Suddenly theexperiences of that course came raging back like a flood of suppressed

I found myself listening to scientists and, even worse, science communicatorsand thinking back to that wretched woman screaming at me—“You're too

my previous profession For fleeting moments I could actually see and hear theconsequences of so much education and development of the brain All of whicheventually led me at times to begin saying to old science friends and colleagues,

in trying to help them communicate better, “Don't be such a scientist!”

A Scientist Turns Filmmaker

This may sound like a lot of silly fun, but guess what's at stake here—the entirefate of humanity Let me explain

What's the most important problem confronting humanity today? I think mostpeople would agree it's the question of whether we're going to exceed theresources of the planet, destroy the environment, and end up in total chaosleading to the post-apocalyptic visions that centuries of science fiction writershave warned of Science can avert such a nightmare

be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.”

Now, don't get me wrong—James Hansen is a superstar of the science worldand deserving of the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his efforts in speakingout against the George W Bush administration's tampering with scientificstudies But this book isn't about making people think scientists are cool If that'sall you're looking for, you should go elsewhere It's about examining the truth,which, by the way, is what science is supposed to be about.

And the truth is that the idea of trying energy executives for “crimes againsthumanity” is somewhere between laughable and insulting to the general public.This shows the extent to which scientists and the general public are not on the

It doesn't matter if the reality of the situation is that neglecting global warmingcould kill more people than a crime against humanity like the Holocaust Theonly thing that matters in American society is perception (the old “perception isreality” bit) And, to the general public, accusing quiet businessmen of suchcrimes gives the impression that scientists have lost their minds

I got to see how bad it all is when I was invited to take part in a specialsymposium in December 2006, at a meeting of the American Geophysical Uniontitled “Communicating Broadly: Perspectives and Tools for Ocean, Earth, andAtmospheric Scientists.” It's the largest annual gathering of climate and oceanscientists, and that year it was in San Francisco, with nearly 15,000 inattendance I don't like the meeting because of its enormity, so I initiallydeclined, but the organizers made me an offer I couldn't refuse

They put me in the middle of the opening session, amid the nation's top globalwarming scientists, including the very same James Hansen; Stephen Schneider,head of Stanford University's climate center; Michael Oppenheimer, head of

Princeton University's climate center; and a half dozen other big names Plus AlGore was set to give the keynote address in the session It was too huge aninvitation to turn down.

I spent three months working on my presentation—I edited a ten-minute videofor which I would provide the narration live, perfectly timed to weave in and out

of the audio It had both silly clips from my comic work and a very seriousmessage about the role of likeability in the broad communication of science

The experience turned out to be stunning, but in the worst way possible

I sat there that morning in disbelief as the speakers—supposedly the best ofthe best when it comes to presenting science to the public—gave some of thedullest, most uninspiring presentations I've ever seen

Worst of all was Hansen (again, a true scientific hero), who gave a tedious anddisorganized presentation This comes as no surprise to any major climatescientist They all know Hansen's a nice guy but not a dynamic speaker

Now, yes, I know that many in the science world feel that someone like himshouldn't be criticized They're saying, “If you want to help the cause of science,just keep your mouth shut.” But most scientists know that science is built on atradition of honest, at times (as I will explore in chapter 4) harsh, criticalevaluation So I'm not about to just sit quiet on this issue

Hansen spent the first five minutes showing a single graph of temperatureversus atmospheric carbon dioxide The audience was dutifully respectful ofhim, given his greatness But all he was doing was talking “science” rather than

“science communication,” the supposed focus of the symposium He finallylooked at the crowd and said, “I guess you guys want to hear what it's like totestify to Congress.” Everyone nodded yes

He stumbled on, reading his talk haltingly from a laptop to the audience offive hundred Then, after a total of twenty minutes, the moderator told him hewas out of time He turned to the crowd and simply said, “Well, I've got a bunchmore slides They're all on my Web site if you want to see them.” Then heslapped shut his laptop and left the room, presumably headed for the airport No

conclusion, no summary, no overall point to what he said Just “That's all,folks!” followed by the twenty-three skidoo, exit stage left.

The other speakers weren't much better They tossed up one PowerPointpresentation after another After a while it was just blue slide, blue slide, blueslide (by the way, don't miss “The Blue Slide Pioneers” in chapter 4) And yet allthe while they were held up as experts on “communicating science broadly.”

Now, as I discuss in chapter 3, two main errors can be made in presentingscience to the public The first is an error of accuracy Had even one of thespeakers made a significant mistake in accuracy—maybe stating that currentatmospheric carbon dioxide levels are around 800 parts per million (ppm) ratherthan 385 ppm—the audience of experts would have torn the speaker to shreds

But the second is an error of boredom, in which the speaker fails to make apresentation that holds anyone's interest Such mistakes are traditionallyshrugged off as no big deal—“At least he got the facts right.” No harm Well, Imaintain that today there is in fact harm

So I spoke with the organizers of the symposium the following week Theysaid they were disappointed They had thought their cast would have done abetter job But they also said I was about the only person they'd heard anycomplaints from Most of the people were so dazzled by the credentials of thespeakers and excited to have Al Gore at the end of the session that they didn'treally consider whether the title of the symposium had been justified I foundthat distressing, especially given the attacks that are under way against sciencethese days

A backlash has developed against science, in disciplines ranging fromevolution to global warming to mainstream medicine An entire antisciencemovement has emerged that truly does threaten our quality of life Large groups

of people are fighting against hard, cold, rational data-based science and clinicalmedicine, simply saying they don't care what the science says Major groups arenow arguing against certain childhood vaccinations on the basis of fears that aregrounded not in scientific data but in anecdotes and innuendo These arevaccinations that have been responsible for eradicating terrible diseases It is agenuine threat to society

Seeing Is Believing (That Communication Is Important)

As you read on, you will realize that much of this book focuses on filmmaking—making films, watching films, and understanding “the language of film.” Manyscientists will say, “This is not for me; I'm not a filmmaker.” Well, guess what—

if you aren't yet, you probably will be soon

I came to this realization in 1997, near the end of film school, when I met withElizabeth Daley, dean of the USC School of Cinema-Television (now called theUSC School of Cinematic Arts) She said that film is a language that everyonelearns to “read” from a very early age A young child has no problem watching ascene in a television program that changes from a man picking up his car keys tothe man driving his car The child doesn't sit and wonder, “How did that mansuddenly go from picking up keys to driving his car?” No, the child is able to fill

in the missing scenes of the man leaving his house, starting the car, and drivingoff (called “ellipses” in the language of film)

But when it comes to “writing” the language of film, over the past hundredyears only select individuals have mastered this technical medium That is nowchanging rapidly

Daley envisions a day in which everyone in every discipline will routinelycommunicate through the use of film—both writing and reading in the medium.And I have seen the beginnings of this in the science world since the 1980s—slowly at first, but quickly in more recent years as a result of new videotechnology.

Today, when I run a video-making workshop at Scripps Institution ofOceanography with graduate students, almost all of the students have alreadyhad some experience with shooting and editing their own videos That's a drasticchange from just a few years ago

So the fact is, the science world is in many ways converging on Hollywood.What?! Think that's a heretical thing to say? Don't believe it? Let me hit youwith a little anecdote from my recent past

I was helping a large science organization set up an evening event inHollywood for which the organizers wanted a couple of scientists to talk, andthey wanted them to be truly exceptional speakers The communications directorleft me a phone message asking for help I called back and told her about twoscientists I know who are tremendous public speakers She left me anothermessage a few hours later, saying, “A bunch of us got together in my office andfound clips on the Internet of one of the scientists, and you're right, he's amazing.But we couldn't find anything on the other one Could you send us some tape ofhim?”

When I heard that last phrase, I got a minor case of whiplash I called her backand left her a message saying, “Do you know who traditionally says that phrase

—‘Send us some tape on this person’? That's what Hollywood casting directorssay to agents when they want to consider an actor without having to trouble theactor to come in for an audition—‘Just send us some videotape of the actor's bestscenes.’”

So take a moment now to think about what this means In the near future—maybe it's already happening—prominent scientists who are good speakers aregoing to edit together their “demo reels” in the same way I've helped dozens of

my actor friends in Hollywood edit their demo reels Instead of taking scenesfrom movies and television shows, the scientists will take scenes from talks they

Scientists will post their “reels” on YouTube for event organizers to consider.And, with time, they will realize that the best parts of their reels come from thetalks they give where the lighting and camerawork and sound recording are best.They will realize that even if the substance of their talk is identical in all thetalks, the style of the talks that are recorded effectively is what makes thosevideos better

As they look at their reels over time, they will realize that it really does matter

if they dress well and comb their hair and maintain good posture Thoughtraditionally scientists have focused more on substance, in the future they willincreasingly realize that style matters when it comes to communication, just asthe people of Hollywood have known for over a century

And I have nothing to do with this transition of scientists becoming moreaware of these elements With most of what I have to say, I'm just themessenger

From Sea Stars to Hollywood Stars

So my message, that science communication is extremely important, is notparticularly novel, but my approach to it is, to say the least, unique I say thisbecause I undertook a journey, starting in 1989, that few (if any) tenured scienceprofessors have ever attempted It's been a journey to the epicenter of the mostpowerful mass communications machine on the planet—Hollywood

After spending two decades battling my way into the inner sanctums ofacademia, I switched careers at age thirty-eight and did my best to party my wayinto Hollywood (yes, party; that's the main work mode for Hollywood)

And I do feel that Hollywood is the most powerful, albeit hard to control,mass communication resource of today When a blockbuster movie suddenlymakes dinosaurs more interesting than ever, the subject permeates every level ofsociety, from magazines to elementary schools to dinner conversations Theimpact can last for many years And when a Hollywood celebrity pulls a

shocking stunt (like a “wardrobe malfunction,” as I mention in chapter 2), itsends equally powerful waves throughout society.

Two Other Books

In addition to this book, there are two others I would like to publish A wholetome could be filled with adventures from my twenty years as a marine biologist

I got my start when I dropped out of college in my sophomore year and ended up

in Puerto Rico working on an oceanographic project I spent years in theCaribbean studying coral reefs—Jamaica, Panama, the Virgin Islands—and thenmigrated west to the Pacific I spent the 1980s in Australia doing fieldwork for

my doctorate from Harvard University, going back for a postdoctoral fellowship,and then finally settling in for the pot of gold at the end of the academicrainbow: a tenure-track professorship at the University of New Hampshire

For the uninitiated, tenure means employment for life They can't fire you It'swhat every academic dreams of By 1994 I had earned tenure at UNH I had agroup of graduate students studying with me, a major grant from the NationalScience Foundation, and twenty published research papers; at thirty-eight, I hadessentially achieved the sort of career success I'd hoped for way back in college

I was professionally content But, just as tragically as a happily married personcan fall in love with another person, my heart had begun wandering from science

to another career: filmmaking

My affair with film had, actually, been slowly developing Throughout the1980s I gave countless slide shows about not just my research but also all theadventures I'd had diving around the world—from living on an island onAustralia's Great Barrier Reef for a year to diving under the ice in Antarctica toliving in an undersea habitat for a week and eventually meeting the guru himself,Jacques Cousteau I enjoyed giving the talks and telling the stories And by theearly 1990s I'd become intrigued with the power of video to supplement what Ihad to say

I often thought about putting those stories in a separate book, and in fact thatbook exists, sort of In 1989, in a blinding blaze of passion I wrote a 120,000-word manuscript in four weeks, titled “Coral Reefs and Cold Beers,” whichcentered on my best and most favorite stories, starting with the years I'd spentliving on Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef It was full of tales of getting

drunk with fishermen, dodging sharks, and having the time of my life studyingmarine biology—including thoroughly enjoying the hypothetico-deductiveprocess of science in the field But alas, its brow wasn't sufficiently high for theliterary world, which demanded in 1989 that scientists write only in a voice ofdeadly seriousness Despite three literary agents, a couple dozen publishers, and

at least one academic press that gave it the green light, it never made it topublication The overall opinion was summed up by one editor, who said, “Thepartying theme gets in the way of the science.” (Bah, humbug.)

The other book I've thought about writing is a thorough review of the state ofscience literacy in America today It would examine the literary and popularimage of scientists in our culture—how they are portrayed in movies and whateffect that has on the public's support for science in general Fortunately, that job

has been covered by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum in Unscientific

America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, published about the

to present to the world a story about how life is Same basic creative process.One group just tends to be a little better at the art of storytelling, as I'll explore in

chapter 3

My formal entry into filmmaking began in 1990, when I made a first, silly

short film, Lobstahs, a five-minute piece on how to eat a lobster that starred a

couple of New Hampshire lobster fishermen By the next year I was receivingawards at the International Wildlife Film Festival for my films, including

Barnacles Tell No Lies, a jazz music video about the sex life of barnacles And I

had begun exploring the bigger picture of the film world, including initial trips toHollywood

Academic friends would ask, “Why are you so interested in Hollywood?” and

By mid-1993 I had approached USC's cinema school and spoken with anadmissions advisor, who asked my age I said thirty-seven He said, “You'reright on the cusp—better act now or it will be too late.” Suffice it to say, I acted

I made my move to Hollywood in January 1994, fittingly just in time for theNorthridge earthquake I rented an apartment in Beachwood Canyon, right belowthe Hollywood sign, and lived there for more than a decade as my journey led

me to film school, through the two-year acting program, to premiering my films

at festivals from Telluride to Tribeca, to short films and commercials with suchactors as Jack Black and Dustin Hoffman, and eventually to my documentary

feature Flock of Dodos: The Evolution–Intelligent Design Circus, airing on

Showtime

It's been fifteen years now since I jumped ship on academia, and I have lots ofgenuinely insane Hollywood stories from the countless nights of partying andnetworking But, in the end, it all comes back to that acting teacher screaming at

me That was the golden moment That was when I knew I wasn't as worldlysmart as I had been led to believe in academia

And that's most of what this book is about—the fact that academics (and

scientists specifically) tend to think that the solution to all problems is education.

Which seems logical at first But the extension of such a notion is that, all elseequal, highly educated people are better at everything

I thought that was true in August 1994 I had several college degrees I knew alot I figured I must know more about communication than the “idiots” inHollywood Boy, was I wrong As I hope to make you see

In 2000 Premiere magazine ran an article about the making of the movie The Perfect Storm The actor Mark “Marky Mark” Wahlberg talked about filming scenes off the coast of Massachusetts and told of glancing over his shoulder and spotting gray whales passing nearby Even though it had been six years since I had resigned from my professorship, the scientist's eye never fades, and I couldn't help but be tripped up by that detail I wrote a letter to the editor of the magazine explaining that those whales were either something other than gray whales (long since extinct in the Atlantic Ocean) or stunt doubles flown in from the Pacific Ocean They published it A couple of months later I ended up at a Hollywood party, spotted the issue of Premiere with my letter, proudly said to the group, “Hey, everybody, listen to this,” and then proceeded to read my letter to the editor aloud When I finished I looked up, beaming, but instead of applause I saw expressions of “Huh?” My best friend from film school, Jason Ensler, finally broke the tension by saying, “You know, the thing about Randy is, half the time he's like the coolest guy any of us know in all of Hollywood But the other half of the time he's a total dork.”

So we begin with the crazy acting teacher and some of the simple concepts she

pounded into our heads night after night There was one that emerged supremeseven years later, when I returned to working with academics It is so simple andyet so powerful that I choose to start this first chapter with it Most of what Ihave to say descends from this notion

That's it Others have heard me mention this in talks and put their own spin onit—talking about the chakras and “mind body spirit” and other sorts of NewAgey gobbledygook Also, there's vast work in the field of psychology exploringthese sorts of dynamics Carl Jung talked about personality types, and the Myers-

Briggs Type Indicator, developed during World War II, explores this verticalaxis of powers in the body But, for our purposes, let's keep it simple and free ofpsychobabble If you've had lots of classes in psychology, you may find thisannoyingly simplistic If not, I hope you'll find it as useful as I have.

It's about the difference between having your driving force be your head and

having it be your sex organs There is a difference.

Let's begin by considering each of the four organs

The head is the home for brainiacs It is characterized (ideally) by large

amounts of logic and analysis When you're trying to reason your way out ofsomething, that's all happening in your head Things in the head tend to be morerational, more “thought out,” and thus less contradictory Academics live theirlives in their heads, even if it results in sitting at their desks and staring at thewall all day, as I used to at times “Think before you act” are the words they live

by When they ask, “Are you sure you've thought this through?” they arereflecting a sacrosanct hallmark of their entire way of life

The heart is the home for the passionate ones People driven by their hearts

are very emotional, deeply connected with their feelings, prone to sentimentality,susceptible to melodrama, and crippled by love Religion tends to pour out of theheart, and religious followers feel their beliefs in their hearts Actors usually

have a lot of heart Sometimes annoyingly so In an episode of Iconoclasts on

Sundance Channel, you can see it when Renée Zellweger (heart-driven actress)and Christiane Amanpour (head-driven reporter) visit the World Trade Centermemorial in New York City Renée is overflowing with emotion, crying for thepeople who died, agonizing over the tortured fate of humanity, practicallythrowing herself to the pavement in empathetic agony, while Christiane offers upanalytical, dry-eyed, rational commentary on how sad it is that humans doterrible things like this (which she's seen firsthand all around the world in herreporting) It's a perfect side-by-side comparison of head versus heart

The gut is home to both humor and the deeper levels of instinct (having a gut

feeling about something) We're getting a long way away from the head now,and, as a result, things are characterized by much less logic and rationality.Humor tends to come from the gut, producing “belly laughs,” but also isextremely variable and often hard to understand There's nothing worse thansomeone trying to explain why a joke is funny.

People driven by their gut are more impulsive, spontaneous, and, mostimportant, prone to contradiction Where the cerebral types say, “Think beforeyou act,” the gut-level types say, “Just do it!” When things reside in the gut, theyhaven't yet been processed analytically For that reason, when people have a firstgut instinct about something, they generally can't explain why they have theinstinct, where it comes from, or how exactly it works As a result, if you quizthem about it, you're going to find they are full of contradictions You'll end upsaying, “But wait, you just said X is the cause, and now you're saying Y is thecause.” And they will respond with crossed eyes and a look that says, “I know!Can you believe I'm so confused?” And yet they are still totally certain theyunderstand what's going on

We heard a lot about the gut-versus-head divide during the 2004 presidentialrace between George W Bush and John F Kerry Bush even proudly spoke ofhow he based much of his decision making at the gut level He told author BobWoodward, “I'm a gut player I rely on my instincts.” Not surprisingly, Bush'spresidency was characterized by a great deal of contradiction

As soon as you finished reading this sentence, you probably smiled for reasonsyou don't even begin to understand All I have to say is “penis” and you're eitherphysically smiling or internally smiling Why is this? Well, let's ask Bill Clinton

—remember him? He's the man who obliterated his entire historical legacythanks to this region Let's ask the countless men and women who, over the ages,have risked and destroyed everything in their lives out of sexual passion

There is no logic to the sex organs Look at those arrows in the gut in figure 1-

2 Now picture them moved lower and spinning in circles You're a million milesaway from logic in this region And yet the power is enormous, and the dynamic

is universal

Not universal, you think? Some people have no sex drive? That is, of course,impossible to test, but one thing worth taking a look at is the life of the novelistand philosopher Ayn Rand She was one of the most prominent popular figures

to suggest it is possible not to be driven by such irrational forces She authored

the massively best-selling Atlas Shrugged in the 1950s and founded her

“objectivist” school of thought and way of life on the principle of suppressingone's irrational side And guess how her life turned out She eventually got eaten

Seriously One of the greatest books I've ever read was Barbara Branden's

biography of her, The Passion of Ayn Rand In a nutshell, Barbara and her

husband, Nathaniel, became followers of Rand, went to work for her, andbelieved and lived every word of her teaching about living an objectivist life—not allowing oneself to be controlled by pointless, frivolous, irrational thoughtsand feelings Rand's objectivist school of thought in the 1950s grew to enormouspopularity; its followers even included former Federal Reserve chairman AlanGreenspan And then

Rand ended up secretly boinking Nathaniel for a couple of decades When hedumped her, Rand turned vitriolic, and the public began to catch glimpses of theinsanity she was living (proof that the story wasn't just Branden's fantasy) Totalhypocrisy of the highest magnitude—telling the world to suppress its irrationalside while viciously shoving the man who had scorned her out of her institute.According to Branden, Rand went to her grave still simmering with rage over it

So don't even begin to think that the lower organs are not a universal drivingforce, for everyone from the local FedEx delivery guy to the president of MIT.And once you've processed that thought, you can appreciate the age-old adage

“Sex sells.” It's the truth, mate If you are fortunate enough to get yourcommunication down into that region, you can connect with almost every livinghuman—even the most anti-intellectual NASCAR fan Who doesn't like BradPitt and Angelina Jolie? They're sex-eeeee

But you still have the attention of a lot of people through humor—most folkslove humor But then you move higher and lose that element Well, with the

heart you still have actors and the religious folks But then you move up abovethat, into the head, and who do you have left? Just the academics Which is okay,but the point is that you're communicating now with a very small audience.You've left most of the general public out of the story.

So this is the fundamental dynamic And it began to resonate with me in 2001

as I drifted back from the Hollywood environment I had been immersed in sinceleaving academia in 1994 I started working with academics and sciencecommunicators in ocean conservation And as I did, the words of that actingteacher began echoing back at me

I learned of a large project called the Less Than One campaign The idea wasbuilt around someone's revelation that less than 1 percent of America's coastalwaters are protected by conservation laws Someone thought, “If we cancommunicate this factoid to the general public, when people hear it they willthink about how small 1 percent is and they'll be outraged.”

Well They should have called it the Less Than Outraged campaign, sincethat's what happened with the general public The Less Than One campaignopened its Web site in July 2003 It had a number of ill-conceived mediaprojects (I'll talk about one of them in chapter 4), and, to make its short storyshort, by July 2004 the site was gone and not a trace of the project could befound on the Internet

Suffice it to say, the masses simply do not connect with “a piece of data” (i.e.,

a number) Could you imagine a presidential candidate making his campaignslogan “More than 60 percent!” with the explanation that, if you elect him,eventually more than 60 percent of the public will earn more than $30,000 ayear? For some reason I just can't see the crowd at campaign headquartersshouting, “More than 60 percent! More than 60 percent!” Sounds like somethingfrom a Kurt Vonnegut novel

No, in fact groups connect with simple things from the heart—“A newtomorrow,” “We've only just begun,” “Yes we can.” You just don't see a lot offacts and figures in mass slogans, unless they've been crafted by eggheads

By now you may be thinking, “What's this guy got against intellectuals? He's

calling them brainiacs and eggheads.” Well, I spent six wonderful years atHarvard University completing my doctorate, and I'll take the intellectuals anyday But still, it would be nice if they could just take a little bit of the edge offtheir more extreme characteristics It's like asking football players not to weartheir cleats in the house You're not asking them not to be football players, only

But what's not so obvious is the value of sometimes not thinking things through.

Spontaneity and intuition reside down in those lower organs They are theopposite end of the spectrum from cerebral actions And while they bring withthem a high degree of risk (from not being well thought through, obviously),they also offer the potential for something else, something magical, somethingthat is often too elusive even to capture in words And because they are sopotentially effective, they are the focus of the rest of this chapter

I learned about the power of spontaneity the hard way—by getting yelled at inthat acting class I eventually got to see it up close and personal as I began torealize I was a lousy actor And the reason for my being a lousy actor was that Iwas too cerebral I thought too much

Let me tell you specifically how I would get to see it Night after night wewould do acting exercises in which one person pretends to be at home and theother person comes home On the edge of the stage was a fake wall with a doorthat the person coming home would enter So, for example, I would be the guy athome, maybe working on balancing my checkbook, and my “wife” would come

in after a long day of work We would get into an argument over something, andthen, right in the middle of the scene, I would accidentally do something thatwasn't in the plan—like, let's say, knock over the vase of flowers on the table.The contents would spill all over the floor I would look down And then, beingthe highly cerebral former academic, I would start thinking

I would think, “Wow, I just knocked over the flowers, that wasn't supposed tohappen, we're supposed to be arguing over the wrecked car, how would this

clumsy act I just did fit into my character's tendency to—“and then, blaaaaah, the teacher lady is up and screaming in my face: “Stop thinking! Do something!

do that?” and he would reply, “I don't know!” and she would scream with joy,

because that was a spontaneous moment in which you could feel the magic.

And that's what I was so bad with I would just think too much The fact is, if

she let me go long enough, I would eventually look at the vase and say to my

“wife,” “Your bad driving upsets me so much I end up doing things likeknocking over vases of flowers.” And the audience would snore I would haveprovided a well-thought-out and reasonable response to the spilled flowers; itjust would have lacked that spark of energy that the other, more spontaneousperformance provided

That's the deal with spontaneity It gives a wonderful energy that audienceslove And, by the way, it has become the core and backbone of a major shift inthe entertainment world over the past decade

The Shift to Unscripted Entertainment

I finished that acting class in 1996 I never had any intention of becoming anactor (I did it to improve my directing skills), but all the other kids in classheaded off to pursue acting careers

By early 1999, though, they began showing up on my doorstep, depressed InHollywood, the month of February is generally known as “pilot season.” That'swhen the networks cast the pilots they will shoot—whether half-hour sitcoms orhour-long dramas For actors it's a frantic time in which they may have four or

five auditions a day, causing them to drive wildly back and forth betweenHollywood and Burbank But suddenly in 1999 the number of auditions droppedsignificantly, and my aspiring actor friends felt the pinch.

They would come to my apartment in Beachwood Canyon, right beneath theHollywood sign, for lunch We would sit on my front porch, and I wouldcommiserate with them “There are hardly any parts this year,” they would say

So where do you think all these acting roles went? Were they lost tooutsourcing? Shipped overseas? Displaced by computer-generated actors? Nope

They were lost to a new trend—reality shows, which are part of a largercategory known as “unscripted entertainment.” A whole wave of these shows hit

the scene around the turn of the century, including Survivor, Big Brother, and all

the other crazy shows you now know But as quickly as my friends gotdepressed, they also heard a rumor that brought some relief—that it was only afad—that within a couple of years reality shows would run their course, losepopularity, and never be heard of again

Well it's a decade later, and guess what? That rumor was way off themark Reality shows are as strong as ever, while sitcoms are officially a dyingtrend Reality shows sounded the death knell for the sitcom; then another force,YouTube, came along and drove the spike deeper Michael Hirschorn

encapsulated this in an article in the Atlantic in November 2006 titled “Thank

You, YouTube: DIY Video Is Making Merely Professional Television SeemStodgy, Slow, and Hopelessly Last Century.”

What do reality television and YouTube have that scripted sitcoms don't?Very simple—spontaneity Or at least the feeling of spontaneity Even thoughmost reality shows do in fact have a very tight narrative structure, there is stillsomething at the small scale, from one moment to the next, that feelsuncontrolled, as if it has the potential to go anywhere

Sitcoms, on the other hand, are controlled down to the very last detail If avase filled with flowers falls over, it's almost certainly because it was writteninto the script Each show is broken into clearly delineated acts, with story arcsthat follow standard patterns The net result is an extremely predictable and

of comfort (we always knew Sam and Diane on Cheers would resolve their fight

by the end of the episode), but eventually the predictability also leads to a loss ofenergy The audience slowly absorbs all the major plotlines and standardsetup/punch line jokes until the whole genre loses its impact

Spontaneity is fun, plain and simple Just take a look at the annual AcademyAwards ceremony—the Oscars What does the public most crave every year? It'snot the opening monologue, the dreary montages, the lame jokes frompresenters, or the tedious musical numbers What the audience desperately and

eagerly prays for is the one spontaneous moment that will live forever Whether

it's Jack Palance dropping to the floor to do one-handed push-ups, RobertoBenigni hopping up on his chair as he calls to the stage, or Sally Field's “Youlike me, you really like me!”—that's what everyone lives for It's the spark ofmagic that comes with spontaneity

It's the same thing you can routinely see and hear at the Democratic andRepublican National Conventions The television commentators complain, overand over again, about the tightly scripted and controlled nature of the events.Every single moment, every speech, every presentation seems to be so tightlychoreographed, down to the last detail After a while, you get the feeling that thecommentators are just hoping that someone, anyone, will trip on their way to thepodium, interjecting at least one unpredictable, spontaneous moment

So what is it about spontaneity that is so powerful? It's the element of danger,the idea of performing without a net These dynamics reach down into the lowerorgans—down to the gut with a twinge of fear

And that brings excitement It also brings an organic element that has a feeling

of truthfulness to it That was what the Meisner acting class was about—makingthe performance seem real It's also what improv acting is about: trying to createthose electric, totally authentic moments, even at the expense of a lot oframbling, unfocused, less precise moments Here's how this relates to scientists.

Over the past decade the science community has begun to develop at leastsome awareness that scientists communicate poorly and need help Two major

efforts to address this are the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program and the book A

Scientist's Guide to Talking with the Media: Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists Both are important projects, but both have their limitations

in that they focus primarily on the first half of communication—substance—butdon't yet reach much into the second—style To explain this further, let me begin

There are countless famous stories of great scientists who did a great job ofthe first part—doing the research—but then totally fell down on the second part.For starters, there's Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics He is the true icon of

Mendel was a humble Austrian monk of the mid-to late nineteenth century.While Charles Darwin was basking in the glow of the celebrity he had gained by

communicating directly to the public with his best-selling Origin of Species,

Mendel was toiling away in the Austrian Alps discovering the very genetics thatwould have given Darwin the mechanism of inheritance he needed to make histheory of evolution complete But Mendel lacked the sort of self-promotionalstreak that is essential for scientific success in the United States today He was ashrinking violet when it came to presenting his foundational work and insteadpublished it in obscure journals, leaving this earth with little fanfare His mostimportant paper was cited only a handful of times over the next thirty-five years

It wasn't until several decades later that a number of major evolutionistsrediscovered Mendel's experiments and said to themselves, “Holy smokes, thisguy worked it all out long ago.” The rediscovery of Mendel led to what is known

as the “modern synthesis,” in which Darwin's ideas on evolution were broughttogether with Mendel's knowledge of genetics to create a robust theory of howevolution works Had Mendel been a bit more of a communicator, the modernsynthesis might have happened a few decades earlier and science would haveadvanced more rapidly

A similar thing happened with Alexander Fleming, who in 1929 discoveredpenicillin but published his findings in a paper that drew little attention Instead

of going out on the road and communicating his discovery effectively, he left italone and nothing happened for more than a decade When Ernst Chain finallydiscovered his work in 1940 and heard that Fleming was coming to visit, hecommented, “Good God, I thought he was dead.”

Had Fleming's work been widely disseminated in 1929, it could have led tothe development and application of penicillin a decade earlier, saving countlesslives Such are the costs of failed communication

Effective communication is an essential part of science, for at least tworeasons First, if nobody hears about your work, you might as well have neverdone it And second, especially in today's world, if you don't communicate yourresearch effectively, there are many people around who will communicate it for

The Objective/Subjective Divide

But if communication is so important, why don't scientists put more effort intoit?

In my experience, it's because of the objective/subjective divide in science.The doing of science is the objective part It's what scientists are mostcomfortable with A scientist can sit in his or her laboratory all day long, talking

to the microscopes and centrifuges, and they will never talk back I have heardscientist friends of mine over the years rave about how much they enjoy fieldand laboratory research for exactly this reason—it's all so rational, so logical, soobjective, and alas, so nonhuman—a chance to get out in the field, away frompeople No politics, no bureaucracy, no administrative duties, just purerationality

In fact, in 1999 I did a video titled Talking Science: The Elusive Art of the

Science Talk, in which I interviewed a variety of University of Southern

California faculty members in the sciences, communication, theater, and cinema.One physicist told me about the whole syndrome in no uncertain terms He said

it But it wasn't an option—it was a requirement So over the years he hasreluctantly taken part in the communication of his science, but to this day hesays it's the worst part of his career And I can assure you he is not alone

I think my moment of truth on this topic came in my first year as a professor,when I attended a big scientific meeting in San Francisco, scored a poolsidehotel suite, and organized a party in my room for the second night of themeeting I invited about fifty scientist friends from the meeting, but when partytime rolled around, about five showed up All the rest either had eveningsessions they wanted to attend or were getting ready for their own talks I sat in

my room that evening, staring out at the pool

Scientists are wonderful people, but as a group they tend to be a littleawkward when they get together Going to the annual American GeophysicalUnion meeting just isn't quite the same as attending the Sundance Film Festival

How can scientists overcome this? My theory is that they need to reach downinto the lower organs I begin by exploring the phenomenon of spontaneity

During my years in Hollywood I had several encounters with improv acting

For starters, I took classes at a couple of the improv programs that are scatteredacross Hollywood In particular, I went through several levels of training atSecond City, the program that gave rise to John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, GildaRadner, and many other great comics.

But more important, early on I became a fan of the legendary GroundlingsImprov Comedy Theater, located on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood TheGroundlings is one of the other prime training programs for the major comic

actors that emerge on Saturday Night Live It has its own suite of superstar

alumni, including Will Ferrell, Chris Kattan, Phil Hartman, Paul Reubens, JonLovitz, Kevin Nealon, Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig, and many more

After attending The Groundlings' Friday night shows for years, I finally brokethe ice in 2002 by contacting one of the veteran performers, Jeremy Rowley, tosee if he might be interested in helping out with my Shifting Baselines OceanMedia Project I wanted to make a comic television commercial that talked aboutlowered standards for ocean quality by drawing comparisons to the idea oflowered standards for the arts For one of the examples I wanted to have a scene

of bad dancing Jeremy had performed an incredibly funny scene in the Fridaynight show in which he ended up coming out totally naked holding a birthdayparty hat over his private parts and dancing to a frantic song from the GipsyKings The scene produced screaming laughter from the audience—truly one ofthe funniest performances I've ever witnessed

Jeremy helped me with the bad dancing scene, and then we put together astand-up comedy contest for Shifting Baselines We then cowrote and directed

Rotten Jellyfish Awards, featuring Jennifer Coolidge (Stifler's mom in American Pie) and Daniele Gaither (of MADtv), followed by a series of comic short films

the negating aspects of scientists.) But it also draws on spontaneity and thehugely likeable qualities that come with it The object of improv is to work notfrom the head but from the gut To listen very closely and to not wait for yourbrain to process what you're hearing, but instead to be guided by your instincts.

Basically, to trust your instincts To have enough faith in yourself that you don't

feel the need to slow things down and think them through, but rather to simplyact—impulsively, immediately, spontaneously It's back to that kid kicking thevase

Improv actors are like explorers—they open up doors and go inside They do

an improv scene in which someone comes out with something silly andnonsensical, and, instead of the other actors frowning and “negating” it bysaying something like “That could never happen,” they boldly move forwardinto uncharted waters

For example, let's say the actors are pretending to be looking at a llama One

of them says, “Wow, look, it has seven legs.” Instead of negating it by saying,

“What? A llama could never have seven legs,” another actor takes things in apositive, affirming direction by saying something like “Yeah, I wonder whathappened to his eighth.” And maybe the next one says, “Yes, llamas alwaysconform to the rule of fours—this one must be a rebel.” And onward towardincreasing silliness, without a doubt, but also occasionally someone might nail apiece of logic If there had been, for instance, a recent news story about a fast-food establishment having contaminated meat, one of the actors might say, inreference to the missing llama limb, “So that's what was in that fast-food meat.”

It doesn't all have to be baseless silliness, but it does all have to be affirmativebecause that helps the idea and the story get larger, and inevitably funnier

In contrast, the scientist hears the “seven legs” statement and immediatelysays, “No, that's not possible,” and the whole fun exercise crashes to a halt Yes,this enters into the realm of accuracy, which is part of the scientist's job, butwe'll get into that later, in chapter 3 For now, just know that the spark ofspontaneity comes from not being careful, and it can be hugely powerful, as I got

to see in my work with students

No Joke: Improv Comedy for Scientists

In the same way that science splits into two parts—the objective (doing it) and

(the substance of what is communicated) and the subjective part of communication (the style) Knowing that scientists are drawn to the objective

side of science, I think we can easily predict that they are also drawn to theobjective side of communicating And this tends to be much of the focus inworkshops that train scientists to communicate better

The Union of Concerned Scientists' book A Scientist's Guide to Talking with

the Media asks, in the title of the fourth chapter, “Do you hear what you're

saying?” It doesn't ask, “Do you hear how you're saying it?” It sticks with the

what.

That's the difference: what = substance; how = style Most teachers of sciencecommunication are still at square one, working primarily on the substance Andthe idea of asking scientists to take lessons in comedy sounds rather absurd Butwe've been experimenting with it at Scripps Institution of Oceanography withthe graduate students and learning some fascinating things

Every summer for the past few years I have taught the second half of thecommunication week in Scripps' orientation course for new graduate students.For the first two days of the week, the course brings in major print journalists

from the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times to talk about

communicating science from their perspective They tell about how to do a goodjob when you are being interviewed about your research or science-relatedissues

making workshop where the students make their own sixty-second video But acouple of years ago I decided to do a little experiment

In the second half we focus on electronic media, including an intensive video- Some of the instructors at The Groundlings, including Jeremy Rowley,occasionally run corporate training workshops in which they teach improvexercises to CEOs They get them to work on lightening up and looking at theircommunication dynamics from a different perspective So I managed to talkJeremy into coming down to Scripps for a morning to do the same exercises with

He ended up running two hours of improv games, which started out mostlysilly, fun, and of questionable purpose—things like standing in a circle andtaking turns saying the letters of the alphabet by having the person to your rightlook deep in your eyes and say his letter—“J”—then you turn to the person onyour left, look deep in her eyes, and say, “K,” and so on Really just anicebreaker game

But, as time went on, the games began to get more complex, and Jeremyended each game with a detailed explanation of how it related to the students andtheir highly cerebral world

The best game of all, and the one that brought the whole purpose home, wascalled the “add-on story game.” Five students stood before the class Jeremychose one randomly She began by making up a story—“Today my car brokedown, so I had to take it to the shop.” He interrupted her and randomly pointed

to another student, who had to pick up where she left off The next student said,

“The mechanic looked under the hood, opened the carburetor, and found a deadbird in it.” And then another student was chosen to pick up from there and keepthe story going

And this was where we got to see the true mind of the scientist at work Some

of the students kept their minds open, listened closely, followed the story Whencalled on, they instantly took their best shot at making up something thatconnected with what was said and kept the story going, even if their contributionsounded silly, like, “The bird woke up and flew out of the shop!”

But others—the more cerebral ones, the thinkers ah, they were the oneswho from the very start of the exercise went to work, thinking, “This is a storyabout a bird in a car motor I'm eventually going to be called on at random Idon't want to embarrass myself, so I'd better have something prepared for when Iget called on.” Preparation, preparation, preparation—thinking, thinking,thinking When they were finally called on, they would say something like “Thebird had its wing stuck in the carburetor and couldn't get loose,” even though theprevious student (to whom they failed to listen) had just said the bird flew away

The net result was very clear as the smiles vanished from everyone's faces andsome of the students would say, “Oh, boo! No, that doesn't make any sense.”

Jeremy would then stop the exercise and explain what had just happened Hewould point out that the purpose of improv is, first, to listen very closely and,second, to trust yourself—to know that even if your mind is blank at themoment, you'll figure out something, even if it's as pointless as kicking the vase

as the young student had done And, finally, to do all that you can to make yourpartner—the person who came before you—look as good as possible Suddenlytaking the story back to having the bird stuck under the hood makes the previousperson look bad, as if he had been wrong in telling about the bird flying away

You can see how this relates to being interviewed In the one form of sciencecommunication training, you are told to arm yourself with a stack of sound bites,metaphors, analogies, and message points Then, regardless of what the

interviewer is asking, you are to push your own agenda and get your message

out

This orientation leaves the scientist thinking, “Me, me, me—I need to makemyself look good.” Which seems logical But consider this—what if there isactually something unique to be gained by taking the opposite approach—bythinking, “Him, him, him—I need to make the interviewer look good”? Yes, it'scounterintuitive And so are a lot of things when it comes to communication,since it's not always entirely rational Sometimes you need to be a little lessdirect and literal minded (the subject of the next chapter)

With the improv approach, you try to make the interviewer look good There

is an upside and a potential downside The upside is that you will have betterchemistry in the interview, be more relaxed, a more enjoyable person Thedownside is that you might not manage to “get in” everything you wanted to say

or make certain everything is completely accurate

Which is better? It's a question of substance or style The former is better ifyou're in a setting where everyone is likely to hear and care about everything youhave to say But, if you're in a highly superficial medium like television, which

is meant not for the academic audience but for the general public, and where

in the viewer saying, “I really liked that person who talked about global warming

—she seemed really comfortable, knowledgeable, and I didn't understandwhat she had to say, but just the fact that she seemed worried about globalwarming makes me think it's a serious issue.”

That's in contrast to the scientist who spends the entire interview correctingthe interviewer (i.e., negating), forcing the issues by giving answers that havenothing to do with the questions asked, and who seems to be pushing a story thatthe interviewer isn't asking for—something that happens every day on newsshows

For improv in general, the basic idea is saying, “Yes, and ” to everythingthat comes up

That principle was repeated night after night, and it became very important to

me years later What it means is that, in the early stages, the actor ends up verymuch “in” his or her head, having just freshly memorized the lines But withrepeated rehearsal, the material gets committed at a deeper and deeper level—as