Welcome everybody my name is Dan Fagin I'm the director of the science health
and environmental reporting program here
at the Carter Institute of journalism at
NYU and this is I think our eighth year
of inside acts it's the answer to
questions always hosted by the great Lee
Haute's distinguished writer in
residence here at the Carter Institute
and science writer for The Wall Street
Journal we've got four amazing speakers
this semester one of whom is actually
two of whom are here Ben Lily's in the
back he's coming later Jenny Hughes is
here too she was here in the fall and of
course Randy Olson today Randy is a
person who work I have watched for a few
years now and read for a few years now
he's always funny and provocative and
insightful and he's argumentative in the
best sense of the word he he likes to
pick fights if if there's a point to be
made and I think there's a lot to be
said for that as a as a tool for
effective science journalism I'll leave
it to lead a formally introduce Randy
said I'll just say personally Randy
thank you very much for coming for
coming all the way across the country to
join us thank you and with that I will
turn it over to Lee for the formal
introductions and Lee will also tell us
about the other dates which I forget of
various folks who are coming this fall
so take it away Lee thank you okay thank
you very much folks who are coming this
spring welcome to inside-out loops for
those of you who have been here before
thanks for coming back for those who
have not joined us before this is our
spring chapter of our living anthology
great science journalism our shirt wiki
if you like and what we do is we bring
in the best of our craft for an evenings
Inquisition pleasant and probably one we
hope and it's one that we undertake with
your cooperation this is not a lecture
this is ideally a conversation and as we
get rolling if you have questions or
interesting digressions I urge you to
give way to those impulses but please
make sure that you get the microphone
from Dan first so that we can capture
your thoughts and expose you on the web
later
so inside out in the weeks ahead we're
going to return to the first principles
our first principles the elements of
narrative that's the construction kit
for science journalism so as Dan was
suggesting this spring we're going to
look at the science story as performance
art with story Collider founder Ben
Lilly who was sitting there in the back
on April 1st we will visit on May 8th
with perhaps the world's most prolific
and also most irreverent block science
blogger ed young who's coming from
England to join us and then next week on
March 11th we are going to be immersed
in immerses as the newest form of online
long-form narrative journalism is known
we'll be joined by Wall Street Journal
medical writer Amy
dr. Marcus and producer editor Sarah
slobin who together were the
collaborators on a Wall Street Journal
the immersive project called trials
which tracked six years of drug
development through the lens of a family
with a child afflicted by a rare disease
and it's the latest in a series of
immerses that the journal the New York
Times and others are adopting as a
fairly routine way now of long-form
Meredith so that'll be next week on the
11th but tonight we begin with film with
pictures with scientists transformation
into a science storyteller in his
efforts to use narrative to bridge gaps
of understanding so Randy Olson is our
guest and we do thank him for coming so
far to join us now Randy as some of you
may know is a Harvard trained biologist
and a filmmaker he directed a series of
movies on science issues of the sizzle a
global warming comedy most recently he's
written a book aimed at science
communicators science communications
called don't be such a scientist talking
substance in an age of style and he also
regularly conducts workshops related to
the broad topic of communication and
environmentalism but it's fair to say
that his films draw both on his science
background but also on his very broad
sense of humor and that we'll see some
clips of these as we go along this
evening but each one of them address is
a major science issue decline of the
world's oceans controversy around the
teaching of evolution and attacks on
global warming now I think I'd like to
start our conversation this evening by
by kind of asking you a question that
has been puzzling me now you began as a
marine biologist you're doing academic
research having a very good time scuba
diving going to Antarctica very much a
tenured University based researcher at
the University of New Hampshire right
yes
yeah yet in 1994 and this is well into
your career as an academic you take a
hard right turn or a left turn if you
prefer and you turn yourself into a film
maker you resigned your tenured position
it's a very unusual move I mean what
happened
I lost my mind maybe maybe
for starters you know I look at the
overall pattern of it and storytelling
is kind of unifying theme and so I think
nowadays I was drawn into science more
out of my interest in storytelling than
necessarily my interest in science
itself and people ask me this all the
time nowadays you know wasn't that a
weird transition going all the way from
being a scientist to film film school in
particularly 94 I resigned and went to
film school at USC he went through the
whole Graduate production program and
today the more I go in this journey the
more I see the similarities and I see
them as very similar processes science
is a process of going out into the world
observing things bringing that
information back into a laboratory
putting it together into a story that
you tell the public filmmaking is about
going out into the world shooting some
film coming back in an editing suite
putting together in a story that you
share with an audience
I see the similarities far more than I
see the differences and this has become
one of the big things in the science
world nowadays is talking about the two
cultures 50 years ago there was an essay
written by CP snow calling the two
cultures and I don't get it I think that
that's a very unproductive track to
pursue I don't understand why there
aren't people focusing more on the
similarities and more on almost the
evolutionary phylogenetic past of these
two groups of human beings because
they're not that dissimilar one evolved
from the other and I used to give a talk
two or three years ago called
proof that scientists evolved from
humans and scientists some scientist got
really mad at me one guy wrote me I'm
horrible email about it you're so
insulting so I quit that title but but
that's the basic point is that you know
they're not that different and I to the
point where I think that people should
start questioning this term science
communication I think it's sending a bad
signal to a whole new generation as
though the communication of science is
somehow fundamentally different this is
good but I still want the answer to my
question why did you make that
transition that's a real life change the
number one read there's probably 25
factors if I'm down like a guaranteed
salary for X number
yes health benefits which of course is a
science communicator
you know science journal is very hard to
come by tenure my god nobody can tell
you what to do so I want to know what
happened that there's probably 25
factors but if I had to pick the single
most important one it's one word starts
with fu uh-huh ends with n fun yeah
that's the bottom line
he wondered where we were going
no it's a fact it's a fact I was 38
years old and it was just about to get
tenure and these are horrible things to
say I'm sure but you know I would look
down the hallway there and see these old
professors doddering along and thinking
is that really my future and it was too
confining for me but also with with
almost every profession there is this
almost the same way that businesses get
built you know there's an early startup
process that's fun and exciting and then
businesses have to mature and then all
the management people come in and turn
it into a professional thing and there
are certain types of people that really
are drawn to that startup phase and they
have a hard time when it gets to that
kind of plateau phase and I think there
was a dynamic of that with me which is I
thoroughly enjoyed being a graduate
student had a blast as a postdoc kind of
fun the first few years of professor and
then all the administrative stuff
started to rain down and you know there
I was okay so there you were I
understand them see usually in this
conversation you know you would tell me
about your childhood experiences
producing a newspaper in your basement
or how you but no you really came to
this cold which is kind of interesting I
think so when you had this epiphany when
you look down that road of endless
faculty meetings and appointments and
the office hours with students and
things and you and you blanched you
flinched
why did you turn to film and you know
just to warn everybody some of these
stories have got some bitterness to them
because it's been a long pathway of 20
years of Dean 25 years of pounding away
at this direction I've gone in the
beginning
one of the most formative experiences
for me was in October 1985 I got to go
to Antarctica for months and I spent a
month diving under the ice every single
day this was long before there was a
Discovery Channel long before our
society had bombarded everybody with any
cool image that comes along back when
their there were these virgin mines and
people with these retinas that hadn't
seen all these things and I got to I
took these photos under the ice that
were incredible photos and we'd take
like two minute long exposures where you
set the camera on a tripod and it's the
clearest water on earth visibility been
measured over a quarter of a mile
there's nothing in the water and then
you'd swim around in front of the camera
with a flash and you'd fire it off at
different places and you get these
little vignettes these just surreal
photos and when I came back from that
trip I was living in Australia at the
time as a postdoc the first talk that I
ever gave was one night I just threw
these slides together and I just told
stories to about a hundred people in
this kind of bird-watching Club and my
wife at the time was there that night
and I blew everybody to pieces the
stories it was so fresh my energy
enthusiasm and everything and driving
home that night she just said I don't
know what you did there but you know
people walk down in shock and then I
began giving that talk over and over
again and by 1988 I was a professor at
the University of New Hampshire and
Discovery Channel come along and my
undergraduates year each year we're
getting more numb and less impressed and
coming up and saying you know dude I saw
that stuff on Discovery Channel already
you know and I've seen those images and
started losing its impact so I began to
get the feeling you know if I just sit
here and give these same talks year
after year I will find myself 20 years
from now showing the same old Antarctica
slides telling the same old stories and
all it takes is a few bad audiences you
know they're just lifeless that took
it's like stand-up comedy and it starts
the storytelling sucks the life out of
you so I began to experiment with the
idea of what about film as a medium to
capture this sort of energy and began
experimenting I made a first little
video that was a called lobsters that
was horrible but it won an award the New
England Film Festival that was enough
reinforcement for me the next year to to
give it so can I tell one little
anecdote here hope so you know I just
love this memory so they used to be
New England film video festival and they
had it at the Museum Fine Arts in Boston
and they first year they gave me that
award for lobsters even though it was
horrible and then the next year I made
the barnacle video which will show you
yeah exactly
and so they gave me another word that
next year and there that night it was
like packed 400 people in this kind of
auditorium thing that went up like that
and they're all starving filmmakers I
didn't really quite realize what I was
talking to for an audience and I told
everybody you know I said I just want to
thank this this festival for the award
that you gave me last year because with
that award I was able to raise the funds
for this next film from my mother and
when I said that this tidal wave of
laughter he came blasting at me and I
mean you know talk about the core
audience for that and I didn't even
think was that funny I just said off the
top my head and they all came up to your
reception oh my god just like me the old
person I don't get to fund my films my
parents so yeah that is a pretty basic
model for documentary filming it really
is more so today than ever before so on
that note should we well yeah I'd like
to eat because we're gonna talk for a
second sure if he like so you you you
did this you made the jump in whatever
but you've in our conversations you've
made it clear that you know in some ways
you had no idea what you were doing
totally and the barnacle film which
we're about to look at for someone who
is so strongly espousing the importance
of narrative this particular effort
stands out for its lack of okay just to
add to what you're saying there which is
that you know if there's one thing you
can take away from this evening a
discussion it is that I am a human
experiment a transplant experiment in a
brain that it was taken from the non
narrative world and transplanted into
the narrative world so the science world
I am increasingly coming the opinion is
vastly non narrative and I was trained
in this non narrative tradition and I
did not understand the structure of
stories I thought this it was a bunch of
phony crap the idea that you actually
could structure stories I had a
skepticism towards it and it basically
took me fifteen years after leaving
science to finally crack the nut that's
where these five clips that will
probably take
look at give you kind of this this arc
of transition but this was the very
first one right and I warn you it is a
little x-rated
okay that's right but please maybe wave
your magic wand and make it happen okay
so this is just a couple of snippets
from it it's a three minute music video
this is probably 45 seconds of it two
different parts of it so that is it if
we can play Barnacle music video let's
actually talk about yeah yeah structure
because here's what happened you'll get
this thing that's okay so what happened
was I made this silly film called
lobsters that when the award that was
pretty bad and I got inspired I started
writing all these songs about sea
creatures and I wrote this jazz song
about the sex life of barnacles because
barnacles have the longest penis
relative to body size of any animal and
you'll don't think there's footage in
this thing there isn't a music video I
didn't put in this clip but one of my
friends was working on them and had
video clips of them mating so I wrote
this jazz song and we got this jazz
singer in Kansas City to perform it and
we shot a music video of her performing
it and cut in all the clips and it was
wildly fun and entertaining I began
showing to all my friends and everybody
got a big smile and said that's awesome
but what is it and well it's a music
video well okay but why is she singing
to these things what's going on and
there was no structure to it and this is
the beginning of my journey of
understanding the way stories are put
together and what finally happened was
this got this production guy with a
studio one day looked at it and he said
you know all you really need to do is
like why don't you just shoot bookends
and make this into some guy's dream that
he dreams this during a boring lecture
and this is what's in his head is this
woman singing the barnacles and then we
come back at the end and within about an
hour we got a couple graduate students
shot this intro scene you'll see when it
begins and as soon as I glued those
narrative bookends onto this video clip
it was a story and never again was
anybody lost never again did I hear this
what is it thing everybody got from then
on went a whole bunch of awards and it's
still popular in invertebrate zoology
class today it's on YouTube I think has
150,000 views or something this is the
music video for an invertebrate
zoologist it is that's if there had to
be a function I didn't conceive it that
way but then as soon as I produced it
they all said wow we could use this in
classes and so it's yeah it's kind of
over the ages become
in that regard but the key point was
that my scientist mind did not think in
terms of trying to make an error I was
just intrigued in the thing for its own
sake okay
so you got this advice to sort of
bookend it and how did that change it in
terms of audience reaction or whatever
as I say no one no one ever again said
what is it you know and and so we could
talk about just the the need for a
narrative thread and this quote that I
want to bring up at some point but are
we still you know we're still rebooting
okay yeah okay let me let me just take
this little side so well um this quote
that I've gotten very keen on lately
there's a famous geneticist theodosius
dobzhansky and there's this famous quote
attributed him where he said nothing in
biology makes sense except in the light
of evolution you see it in lots of
introductory textbooks and I remember
from my intro ecology and evolution
textbook long ago and so in my movie
flock of Dodos I actually brought that
up and modified it for apply to that but
just a couple months ago I came across
the longer version of that quote from
1964 in a paper and it's incredibly
profound I really think it's maybe one
of the most profound communication
things in all of science because what he
says is the same basic thing nothing in
biology makes sense except in the light
of evolution but he goes on to say
without that light all you have is a
pile of sundry facts some of which may
be interesting or curious but ultimately
meaningless and therein lies the key
dynamic which is what happened with this
barnacle video I had this thing that was
curious and interesting that everybody
found you know intriguing but it was
ultimately meaningless because it had no
narrative structure to it it was just
out there dangling in the breeze and it
was by giving it that little story
structure and instantly got meaning and
put out the fires and then I've repeated
that experience all the way up until
flock of Dodos where that's exactly what
happened we shot this documentary for
two months we had a whole bunch of facts
that were interesting and curious but
ultimately meaningless until we finally
cracked them out of finding a story that
was about and there we are with barnacle
sex music video well we're getting there
ami was this funded by your mother
the barnacle video of course of course
yes
how much did it cost you know what back
then it cost $5,000 and you know that
was back in the beginning of video
production and I went the whole it was
very expensive yeah did you pay her back
with she give you a good interest rate
yes I she was the star of my movie flock
of Dodos that was the payback eventually
a lot of people have gotten their start
that way exactly narrative now what does
that mean to you as a filmmaker Oh funny
you should ask
it's now become the be-all and end-all
as I have had this transformative
experience and with the barnacle
starting with the barnacles but going
for many many years until finally
getting to the point of with the movie
flock of Dodos when we get to that
climate will yes and it's it's really
you know stories are made up kind of
two-part science in art and art is the
intuitive side of it and this there is a
science to storytelling there is all
this narrative structure there is
basically plotting and all these sorts
of things and in the science world I'm
finding in science communication there's
still very little grasping of basically
the science of story structure in
Hollywood it's really well refined to
the point of almost being a science and
it's used because it's so powerful to
analyze stories and then you know with
the screenplays and screenwriting and ya
know so in that regard I mean you you
attribute trait to Trey Parker one of
the creators of South Park you're you're
it's a big influence on you in terms of
how you structure stuff you want to
explicate that a little bit yeah that's
been the revelation of the past two and
a half years so here's what happened was
I wrote a book called don't be such a
scientist in 2009 five years ago or I
brought together everything I'd learned
on this journey synthesized it into one
book and the books become very popular
it's sold over 25,000 copies I get
brought in now a lot of science
institutions to work with them and as
soon as it started getting out to the
science crowd then they began inviting
me to come do workshops and they said
what do you want to do a workshop on and
in that book I really identified the
problems of science communication
there's a tendency to be overly cerebral
overly literal minded poor storytellers
and even unlikable at times but I didn't
really give up the give the solutions I
didn't have them at that point I said I
think that the answers lie in
storytelling I think that's the
direction everybody needs to go I just
can't tell you how to get there yet and
so they invited me started doing
workshops and so I put together this
workshop and the interesting point there
is that I wanted two other instructors
and instead of going for two other
academics two professors like I could
have gotten a professor of
communications and of theater from USC
but they would all be in the cerebral
side of communication well I've kind of
got that covered what I wanted were
people from the more visceral side who
are actually out there doing stories day
in and day out so I teamed up with two
actors Brian Palermo and Dorie Barton
and the three of us made this team and
we set to work doing these workshops we
began with the Natural Resources Defense
Council the National Park Service and
Fish and Wildlife Service and over the
past three and a half years now we've
been building this kind of collective
knowledge and we wrote a book last year
titled connection because that's what
happened was that we really did connect
and we've learned so much from each
other they've learned all the science
communications stuff from me I learned
narrative structure from Dorie and then
I learned a lot about improv from Brian
he's a improv actor with The Groundlings
improv comedy theatre and at the core of
all of that are these two key elements
now that we've identified four story
training basically which is narrative
and improv narrative is the cerebral
side improv the visceral side it gets
you down into making stories more human
and alive and connected and that's what
we're now engaged in trying to
communicate to the science world in in
training but now much earlier than that
though I've heard you say that you know
when you first came to this I think as
many science journalists come to this
issue yeah well what we really need to
do is just if we give people the facts
we write a story that arranges the facts
in a good logical sequence well we've
done our work because the course will
information is all people really need to
see things clearly but you had a you
said an experience with like a an act
teacher very early on that kind of
turned your head around about this a
little bit I wonder what so so the my
book don't be such scientists it opens
with a paragraph of almost pure
profanity from that acting teacher and
this was my first year in Hollywood I
had edited into film school in the first
summer I had nothing on the schedule and
a friend of mine who was a pretty major
screenwriter I went to him for advice
and he said I want to put you into this
two-year Meisner acting program and I
gotta warn you this teacher is a beast
she has laser eyes she could read your
soul don't ever argue with her she'll
tear you to pieces in front of everybody
I was given all these warnings and the
first night in this class I was 38 years
old in this class with all these 22 year
olds all the young hotties in Santa
Monica wanting breaking the one to get
on nine oh two one oh and shows like
that and so the first night she gets me
up in front of the class with this young
woman and we start this exercise and
then in the middle of it she stops us
we're making a mess out of it and I
turned to her and you know I guess just
with my body language everything about
me was saying you're full of crap
basically and she began to sense that
and she was trying to offer up this
critique and one of her fundamental
rules was no one was ever allowed to ask
questions you could not question
anything you had to only listen and
absorb everything and then finally she
just exploded at me because she read all
this body language on me and she started
screaming all this profanity and saying
I know your type you're an academic
you're an intellectual and you don't
listen to anything you're caught up in
your head you're all cerebral and I I've
broken your type before I could do it
but I'm getting too old and angry and
bitter and I want you out of this
classroom in the next five minutes or
I'm calling the police and having you
arrested for trespassing and I'm
literally standing there this is my
Hollywood dream all just going up in
flames in an instant wondering what I'd
done to enrage this woman and then I
basically kind of had to slink out of
the classroom and go out there and wait
until the class was over and to talk to
her and I got to tell you it's 20 years
later and two months ago I gave a talk
to a thousand scientists at this big
science meeting in Austin and I'm just
about ready to start channeling her
voice at these scientists because she
did know what she was talking about
which is that here's the bad news for
all of you that are getting
Emily trained it does do exactly what
she says it gets you up in your head
your ears shut down you lose the ability
to listen you get so focused on yourself
so self certain of everything you say
and do you can no longer take this input
in and this is what you get with the
vast majority of academics out there
lecturing the world you know and by the
way they're hired to be lecturers not
listeners and listening turns out to be
a very difficult property that's
absolutely central to communication and
one of the well-known ways to be get
better at listening is through improv
training that's why I partner with an
improv instructor and slowly learning
that from that and the further you go on
this journey and looking at the stuff
the more you begin to realize oh my god
that's at the core of all this stuff
these people are not listening and I
gave this talk to a thousand scientists
two months ago and I swear half of them
didn't hear a word that I said they just
they hear key words and then that lights
a fire in them oh I know what that's
about I know what that's about and then
they began lecturing me later at the
reception so it's you know it's very
strange but it's at the core of these
science communication problems it's it's
at the core of almost a cultural divide
between the heavily educated and the
broader audience out there and I don't
think people have really explored this
enough and you know I don't know there's
been a lot of people that have done the
journey I've done gone all the way down
the line to tenure and then transplant I
think that's true and it's part of what
of course makes you an extraordinary
fellow and from our perspective of
course we're not Sciences here but many
of us most of us although I should say
that at least the graduate students here
are in the science writing program have
to have a science degree have to be had
to be trained so they are though
journalists so we understand that
academics don't communicate well um and
from your standpoint because you've now
been on both sides what is it that
you've now learned as a as a journalist
as a filmmaker about cracking that shell
about getting that academic to sort of
open up and actually start talking about
what they do to actually start
communicating to the journal I will tell
you this I mean this sounds like the
circle of abuse basically I am now I'm
now part of the circle of abuse because
I'd like to think you could get there
through honey
but I only got there through this
horrible woman screaming her lungs out
of me that night and I swear to god it
was a traumatic experience for me I went
home that night sat on the phone for
hours all my friends saying what have I
done I've given up my entire career come
out here and I guess I'm not meant to be
an actor ba ba ba but slowly it took me
20 years to slowly absorb what she's
talking about and I now talk to these
science people they don't hear a goddamn
word I say and a lot of these things I'm
really stunned by it and to further
compound at the National Academy of
Science has said about now for the last
two years running something called the
science of science communication
conference which i think is just further
pushing in the cerebral direction at a
time when you need to go the other way
towards the more visceral direction
these are cultural divide elements it's
really easy for academics to get
together and do more academic izing it's
really hard to cross that divide into
place like though the one thing that I
wrote about in my book that I think was
tremendous was the first time they ran
it a year and a half ago they had their
featured keynote speaker was Daniel
Kahneman who's a Nobel laureate for his
book Thinking Fast and Slow and he gave
this hour-long talk and at the end of
the talk he said to them all of your
science and information and evidence
with the climate stuff in particular is
not going to amount to anything unless
you can go to the public with a voice
that has two key qualities that is
trusted and liked and until you get that
voice nobody cares what you've got for
data and I don't think that connected
with anybody I think they focused on all
the other things so the science side of
it this cerebral side of communication
they're doing a tremendous job with all
these guys they've got now at least two
major centers for climate communication
at Yale and George Mason University and
they turn out all these polling studies
and mountains of data and that's great
they're getting an a-plus on their
cerebral side there's just still nothing
going on on the more visceral side I
don't see anybody out there in Hollywood
setting up major
well they're working on things like the
National Academy of Science does have
their science energy an exchange program
but that's not really a focused thing to
try and problem-solve in terms of
communication so speaking of
problem-solving
Plus yeah I can hear the Markel's
distance like the early days of the
space program
the Rockets always started to leave the
launchpad but never quite made it we
have liftoff past the gantry tower and
we have audio now I appreciate your
patience and wearing that away no that's
so we saw that we saw the device you cut
the sexy now go to youtube but you saw
the opening book and the guy for I sleep
in a classroom that was the little scene
that we shot and then he wakes up at the
end of the music video and is smiling
and that's all it took was the beginning
and the ending what basically what had
happened was I made a second act with
the music video it was only second act
it didn't have a first act that set it
up didn't have a third act that gave it
its meaning and therein what you get
with the narrative so your your first
feature yes let's talk about that a
little bit flock of Dodos the evolution
intelligent design circus can you
certainly because I can tell after this
you know the score say C's and then
whatever the world we're knocking at
your door
to the contrary her violin and all his
venture capitalist friends were throwing
money at you I will tell you one
embittering experience which is that
after I won these awards for that video
and for a couple other videos I went to
the Sea Grant people at the University
of New Hampshire and had an idea for
another one about three women scientists
working the deep-sea submersible Alvin
and a woman there said if we want to
fund a film we're gonna hire
professional filmmakers you're a
scientist go back to your laboratory and
do science and that was the moment where
I said I'm done that's really you want
to know the breaking off point you know
I my little dream of being a tenured
professor and making popular broad films
ended in an instant which is and I got
several more signals from the science
world which is we don't see any need for
you to do this so it's been this
completely solo journey and by the way
in 20 years now no science organization
have ever supported no foundations
anybody supported anything that I did
there's the bottom line for innovation
if you come up with an individual idea
you're not going to get any of these
mainstream people to ever get behind it
they'll talk a big story about
innovation but in the end they'll try
and bring you back into the fold and
towards that end actually make one
little mention if I had to point to the
single most inspiring filmmaker I ever
listened to it was a guy from right here
and my use Spike Lee he came and spoke
in 1990 at UNH when I was a professor
and he'd just come out with do the right
thing and spoke to a thousand students
and he was so filled full of fire and
rage with the battles he was waging with
Hollywood then his his efforts to try
and tell the stories of the
african-american community in the voice
of an African American and he just told
everybody he said they're a bunch of
morons out there and no matter what you
do they're gonna try and take your
stories and pull them back and it'll all
be wrapped in all this positivity oh we
love you this is great now let's just
move it back into what we normally do
here and I think that helped me a lot
that that one evening of listening him
to realize if you want to do this
independent voice thing you're gonna
face a thousand battles like he has and
I you know I admire the hell out of the
guy first so no it is interesting I mean
what your story about the secret people
I mean when going and preparing for this
I was very struck in looking at reviews
of some of your films that you know
fairly consistently like the reviews and
variety very mainstream very kind of
industry oriented very pop if you like
were uniformly favorable I'm very sort
of intrigued me what you were doing
thought your jokes were funny kind of
got the idea whereas the reviews in in
publications like nature that's the only
review of over a hundred published
reviews of my films only one has ever
been a rotten review and where did it
happen in that bastion of film criticism
nature magazine from the science world
it's true yeah that says it all right
they seem that a defended by your tone
yeah so you were were insufficiently
sober sober minded um reverential
reverential that's a better word I
wonder you know for those of us who are
trying to get at the story of science
trying to make
had come to life and you know if the
scientist wants to get the word out
about which he or where he is doing they
of course publish a peer-reviewed paper
in nature back there with the methods
and the conclusions and the analysis but
if you want to make it come to life they
often get very irritated because they
accuse the writer or the reporter of
trivializing important things I mean
it's not a reaction that you commonly
get even believe some of the screenings
we've had a sizzle i screen it sizzle is
I'm sorry we're jumping around oh I'm
sorry so sizzle is the mockumentary made
about global warming that has a really
bad attitude to it mock mock you mean
mockumentary yes exactly and you know
undergraduates love it they understand
irreverence but the science world is
characterized by a tendency towards
reverential behavior and you see most of
the documentaries that scientists are
really comfortable with are portraying
scientists as these flawless heroes
which doesn't even make sense but it's
very reverential to the science and so
for a scientists go and make this
irreverent thing as well as flock of
Dodos as well you know also pointed the
camera on the scientist and said look at
some of the mistakes that these folks
make and you know I did one screening of
sizzle to two hundred fifty scientists
there was not a laugh in the house and
then a panel discussion afterwards with
three scientists in the first guy said I
think this thing is disgraceful
it should never been made we should
never shown it here at this meeting just
a year and a half ago at Florida State
we did the same thing that a climate
scientist in the panel there he started
thing off the same way you know five
years later and then I just said go you
know let's hear it bring bring it on
let's hear your critique why does this
make you so angry what's your problem
that you see no room for any sort of
humor or lightness on the subjects and
and why is there no room for humor but
assume for the sake of discussion that
your jokes are funny well there is that
as well which is that's a good challenge
you know if stand-up is always a risk
you know and truly at the beginning of
my book I talked about that crazy acting
teacher who once I got beyond all the
rage taught me so much and the
fundamental principle that she said over
and over again was when it comes to
acting trying to connect with an entire
audience you have four organs in your
body that are important your head your
heart you got in the sex organs the
object is to move the material down out
of your head into your heart with
emotion
got with humor sometimes all the way
down the sex organs with sex appeal and
therein lies the challenge is that the
science world is enormous li cerebral
and the result of that is a very
wonderful clinical language they have
developed that they use in the journals
where there's no place for humor and
emotion and I remember as a scientist
getting manuscripts where people try and
sneak a joke in there or try and get
emotional about some vanishing resource
and there is no place for that in the
clinical language of science but the
problem is there needs to be a second
part to life which is going on in
mingling with the general society where
humor and emotion are fundamental
elements to humanize these things and so
that's part of what comes out is that a
lot of these people are stuck in that
clinical world of science and they see
no place for humor and they see climate
change you know as a serious issue it is
serious science but you've got to accept
the world in which you live in which is
the society that isn't as reverential so
let's back up to a slightly different
issue for a second and in hopes that we
can look at another trip so Dodos
looking at the teaching of evolutionary
theory in at a time when the Kansas
school board had been taken over with a
majority of members who were supporting
the teaching of intelligent design now
this is a documentary but it's also a
kind of why dare I say Olin esque romp
of sorts tell us please came Olin asked
okay good enough a romp in terms of the
style yeah it's yeah you could see from
the outset from all the way back to the
barnacle videos all this stuff I have
fought for and demanded the right to
include humor and everything that I do
because to reach a broad audience you
need to be more humanized in humor and
emotion are these central elements and
if you start removing them you lose that
the science world has got to understand
if you want to reach the bigger broader
audience you've got to create this voice
again Mike Kahneman said it's got to be
trusted and liked what do people like
they like human voices they don't like
robot voices so it's a fundamental part
of you know it's not a frivolous thing
that I'd throw in just because I can't
control myself it's really fundamental
for broad communication and it resulted
in dodo
I was wondering about that in terms of
why I put it in there why you're you
know your ability to control yourself
you know it's about valid question um
but you know it was fundamental in terms
of Dodos premiering here at Tribeca and
right when Showtime for two years I was
just going to mention Audrey broadly
entertaining and so yeah when the whole
thing blew up in Kansas the the
narrative of the film is literally my
mother was sending these articles she's
lives in Kansas City and her next-door
neighbor was this big lawyer for
intelligent design that was getting all
in the newspapers and eventually I
brought a film crew back there we filmed
for two weeks and this is this was the
fundamental experience for me in
cracking this narrative experience I've
been told about it in film school over
and over again I didn't get it and only
eight years after film school did we
finally put this thing together and for
two months it didn't tell a story it was
an and and an and here's evolution and
here's telogen i and here's Kansas Anza
Kansas School Board it didn't add up to
a story it just like the barnacle Vidya
thing and then finally one night it all
came to me I needed to tell a simple
story and it would be the story of a guy
who sets out on a journey to defend a
damsel in distress from the dragon who
lives next door to her and when he
confronts the dragon the dragon turns
out to be a harmless little teddy bear
and then he comes to realize that the
real threat is the evil empire in the
Pacific Northwest
and that simple story is the
underpinning of the whole movie flock of
Dodos and as soon as I recut it into
that structure and showed it to my crew
of eight or nine guys for the first time
ever they enjoyed it and when we
finished and I flipped the lights on
when the guy said you just told us a
story and that was the moment where the
skies parted lightning came down and
made me into the salad I'm setting this
premiered at the try its premiered at
the Tribeca Film Fest yes it showed on
Showtime for two years and this Sounion
magazine actually picked this for their
list of the ten science movies we loved
from the 2000s so if we're lucky we
could see a clip cool can we see flock
of Dodos
this is just a photos and this is Muffy
mousse who lives in Kansas just around
the corner from this man who some people
think is a dodo because of what he
believes in
I think people have to stand up and say
you know you're idiot but if he's such a
dodo then why are these evolution is so
angry is it possible that they
themselves are an entire octave donor
they're so sure about our evolutionary
past then how is it 150 years after
Darwin wrote the Origin of Species we
have this I don't believe that we
actually descended from apes I do not
believe that in any way shape or form we
just a bit for me I didn't believe that
till I met my uncle add more back hair
than I have facial hair today less than
half of Americans believe in evolution
and many are becoming followers of other
explanations such as intelligent design
intelligent design design intelligent
design intelligent design intelligent
design the new intelligent design in the
spring of 2006 evolutionary ecologist
and filmmaker Randy Olson will try to
figure out who really is the flock of
Dodos
and this is one short clip from that IV
pattern looking back through the fossils
different anything from the historical
record of George Washington being our
president do it because there are people
actually alive that saw George
Washington being the president nobody
was actually alive that saw a lung fish
crawl out in the water she stumped you
exactly how do you argue with that
I guess that's why the film ends there
but okay so so this was part of your
learning curve just to pull us back onto
our track here so what did you what did
you get out of this one so it was an
apprentice filmmaker yeah he's an
apprentice science ideologue
communicator issue-driven I guess that's
what I'm paying to go back to that
dobzhansky quote I realized that before
that moment of revelation about the
narrative structure what I had was a
pile of sundry facts some of which were
interesting and curious but ultimately
ultimately meaningless and that's what
happened for two months we had this pile
of sundry facts that was driving
everybody crazy and they could feel this
material so interesting and it's so
curious there's got to be a movie here
but it wasn't working and then finally I
found that simple little story and like
that's the magic of story that's the
magic of narrative you know you see in
an instant it all comes clear to
everybody and from then on we've had
several hundred screenings of this movie
every single time it's fun you know it's
it's a journey it takes you on a journey
through all this stuff has very clear
structure to it and as soon as I kind of
came up with that simple little idea
then I started remember all this stuff
from screening oh my god that's right
you're supposed to have a first plot
point that's about 23 page pages in your
screenplay and knew how to build it from
that point on but the high seas actually
taught you this stuff in films oh yeah
but you just weren't listening of course
yeah oh no it's much deeper than that
there so you mentioned the Trey Parker
thing right and so a little over two
years ago
Comedy Central made a documentary on the
making of South Park in the middle of
there Trey Parker told about what he
calls his rule of replacing he said when
I get a first draft of the script I go
back into the script then
and I have this rule where I try and
replace the word and with either but or
therefore every time I can replace it
handle butter therefore the storytelling
gets more interesting I heard that in an
instance that oh my god that's the
simplest rule and I'm a big fan of
simplicity and that's the simplest rule
for getting you into narrative structure
I've ever heard and I said about the
last two years we're searching and
trying to get to the bottom of it and
just a month ago made another
breakthrough which is there was this
famous screenwriting instructor named
Frank Danielle who founded the
screenwriting program at Columbia
University in the 80s before USC hired
him away and I took his class the year
before he passed away when I was in film
school unfortunately I was so busy going
to parties in Hollywood that
honest-to-goodness I was hung over for
most of his classes and I got very
little out of it and just a few weeks
ago I dug up my notes and it's like
three pages of notes it's all I had from
his entire semester but everybody raved
about this guy and those three pages are
incredible notes but I wish I had more
and so this one friend of mine found
this speech that he gave in 1986 24
pages long and in there is this
paragraph that's that shows me this is
where Trey Parker got this from and in
this these two paragraphs he says here's
the deal when you write a first draft of
a screenplay you always begin in the non
narrative world because you say and then
and then and then and then that's not a
story that's a whole collection of
sundry facts that are curious and
interesting to make it meaningful you
then have to go back in and start
replacing the and ends with buts and
therefore that starts to get you into
the storytelling mode and then he says
at the end of that quote he says you
know the way the journal the diaries are
written is in that non narrative mode
you record all the stuff this is what
scientists do they record their lab
notebook is there's no narrative
structure to it and then they you know
use that as the template for the talks
that they're going to give they don't
really understand the journey that you
have to undergo in molding that non
narrative material into the structure
that starts to make a digestible so that
is kind of at the core of all this stuff
for me now and that's just in the last
few months that I'm kind of hitting
these realizations of where it all came
from and why I'm finally getting there
and that's what our book was about last
year connection the am button therefore
so where did you get the money for Dodos
how did you fund that so a challenge for
a duck it really is I funded the first
one
footage out of my own pocket and
unfortunately there was a scientist who
had been a part of my previous project
shifting baselines ocean media project
and he had a family foundation and he
stepped in and with some other people
they bankrolled the whole thing and the
finances were horrible they lost you
know plenty of money you can't make any
money back on documentary features for
the most part it's it's a train wreck
and 2006 the year we're at Tribeca was
the beginning of the collapse of the
whole film distribution market it was
the first year that people realized
you're not gonna get any money back on
home sales of DVDs that formerly was
quote the cash cow for distribution so
they took a big hit and wrote it off but
they were believers in the cause thank
goodness and they're tremendous people
and then yeah I've taken it round to all
these universities and it's so much fun
because what it this whole model kind of
emerge from there which is I go to
university they pull together three or
four their people from communications
from science from journalism and they
have a panel discussion and it's really
fun because it's this aroused and
fulfilled principal I talked about the
beginning my book that's all you really
want to do with an audience arouse their
interest and then fulfill them with the
information so we partner that way in
the film doesn't have a lot of
information it's it's a eighty four
minute light romp that really kind of
confuses you and a lot of stuff but
stimulates lots of questions then you
bring out the four sometimes relatively
dry experts and their heroes to the
audience the audience you know they hate
me at that point you get showed us a
film it didn't really make this thing
crystal clear and here come the heroes
out to answer all the questions for the
audience and it's really fun you know I
still do that with both movies so you
know if I'm listening to you
and I've watched this you know on
classic Nova episode well okay there you
go
it's a kind of artfully conceived
tutorial the idea is that you will come
away from that you know entertained
uplifted whatever but also with a
collection of of what appeared to be
facts about a be given topic but it
really it sounds like your approach is
more the kind of prime an audience
emotionally for a discussion later yeah
absolutely Nova has a very constrained
template they have a very clear
demographic they know who writes their
checks who their donors are and they
play to that audience and when we took
dodos to to try back a whole bunch of
people from Nova kept emailing calling
me saying we want an advance copy whence
and I said no I don't like you what you
guys
I liked it in the 80s they were the
cutting edge back then but they had
become dinosaurs by you know ten seven
eight years ago and they got very angry
over all that because they ended up
doing their own thing a two-hour pretty
damn dull documentary about the the
Dover trial that's a part of what Dodos
about and they just that that's not
their objective to reach the the broader
demographic the the lest erudite
demographic of America so I'm not a fan
of what they do but that's a different
audience and template that they they
know what they're doing with that and so
different modes but yeah I try to make
films that I hope that the
undergraduates will enjoy and it's
really fun you know taking a feeling
like that to a university and
particularly the first two or three
years with Dodos we had screenings of
nine hundred people at University of
Washington and six hundred at Stony
Brook and most lots of classes required
the students to come and the students
have come up to me afterward and said I
was forced to come to this thing but I
actually really enjoyed it so that's
very gratifying okay so you'll forgive
me but 400 here 600 here 900 there I
mean you could get all of those people
together at once I mean in one of the
triplexes down the street there on Third
Avenue so this is a very kind of but
it's work but it aired on aired on
Showtime right years and that was really
fun because I got all these emails from
these religious people and my email
address was not in the movie and it met
these people broke down my name and
searched it on the internet and found an
email address for me and it was
wonderful and it's so many of them just
wanted a scientist to have a dialogue
with to talk about evolution and gotta
say the worst experiences that happened
with both of these two movies came not
from the climate skeptics of the anti
evolution people came from scientists
angry nasty meme vicious scientists
writing me hate emails who can't control
their anger and these things at times so
that was an eye-opener as well we have a
question here
is that working on no sorry evening sure
yes it's a good question yeah the
question who's your target audience and
nobody you know nobody's literally
literally yeah right I make all these
things from my own taste my own interest
and then I start to gather feedback a
little bit like that let it modify me
but the starting point is just following
my sensibility I think this is funny I
think this is interesting I'm going to
pursue this and as a result you know I'm
dead broke financially I am NOT a
wealthy guy that's the price that you
pay if you decide to go that truly
independent route you know none of these
big giant National Science Foundation
all these big organizations put out tons
of money the Pew foundation the Packard
Foundation the sloan Foundation the
Gordon Moore Foundation they all use my
book now in their workshops but none of
them have ever been willing to support
the things that I do so the way we did
find some funding was the ocean
conservation project I did 10 years ago
it was really successful I did a series
of public service announcements and
short comic films there and there was a
group of five or six businessmen who
were donors to the Scripps Institution
of our fee and they had a bad attitude
they really disliked the communications
they saw from the conservation world and
I came along with my bad attitude and we
seemed to mesh they were all kind of
guys they were all had gotten wealthy
from starting up different companies
like pet smart and a couple other you
know coms at that time and they were
into the spirit of it and what was so
cool with those guys was the first
meeting I ever had with them they said
know what's your business plan and I
said there's not going to be a business
plan I'm never gonna tell you what I'm
doing down the road I'm making the stuff
as I go along I've been trained at
improv and I know the power spontaneity
and I'm gonna follow these ideas I get
these impulses and for three years these
guys would write checks every six months
of ten to twenty or thirty thousand
dollars put it in finance this thing
made all these little films and then in
about the third year I remember meeting
with them and I put together this whole
you know game plan the business plan for
the next two or three years and I
started presenting one of the guys cut
me off and said you know we wouldn't
want to hear that you've got us to
buy-in with the idea that you would
never have a business plan what are you
doing now you're abandoning your
principles and
I said all right that's canceled let's
let's go do it and so yeah you know it's
all a gamble like that it's been a long
painful road at times but it's it's this
you know it spreads the variation way
out I've got these incredibly wonderful
experience and then these incredibly
rotten expedite I want to yes hold you
to his questions yeah okay fine we
accept your a you're alone rugged Road
off satisfying your own sensibilities
but you have chosen to do that in a
medium which the point of which is
communication yes and so once you have
you know indulged and engage your rogue
and engaging Sensibility there you're
gonna show it to somebody yeah
there's a circuit that you work okay let
me more specific way on that after flock
of Dodos came out got all you know the
great thing about a Film Festival is
that they give you all this media
attention we had a press screening there
were 30 journalists they watch the thing
we did a press conference afterwards an
hour and a half of wonderful questions
one of the most enjoyable experience my
life and then out of all that media all
these universities began contacting me
saying would you come here and show the
film and so I naively did five
screenings for free to these places just
for travel except the fifth one was to
my alma mater Harvard University where
they sold 250 tickets at 10 bucks a
ticket made two and a half thousand
dollars and wouldn't even pay my travel
and at that point I welcomed so wait a
second I'm getting screwed by these
universities and Harvard's the worst and
so then I began probing and seeing you
know what can I charge and basically
$1,000 $3,000 $5,000 and that is the
model that's emerged now is that I now
earn my keep through doing these these
workshops and these university visits
and speaking and that sort of stuff and
it's nice it's a it's a hell of a lot of
hustling work things like that
but at the same time about three years
ago the American Cinematheque in
Hollywood did a panel where they had me
come in and talk to 200 these
documentary filmmakers as my model
basically of what they all need to
figure out which is as I said in 2006
the distribution model collapsed and
documentary filmmaking has turned in the
same thing as musicians they realize 10
or 15 years ago your media is worthless
nobody wants to pay for your media as
soon as it gets out there everyone but
he wants to file share it but they will
pay you a fortune for live of
other than coming here to do this and
again I want to thank you thank you for
doing this for love that and that's true
I want to thank you for kindness for lie
I'm here for you people tonight because
we had $3,000 we would gladly give it to
another person we would spend it on it
so that's the model basically that he's
emerged and I now try and tell these
documentary filmmakers no matter what
your film is on if is a documentary if
it's about skateboarding and you don't
even know how to skateboard you are
gonna become an expert on that and you
can now go out and be on talk shows and
this stuff if you market yourself like
that of people it's bizarre what we're
doing and this society I can't believe
the amount of money people pay for live
engagement they do and the Ted TED Talks
thing I think is just cranking up even
further so everybody wants it's indeed
it's a Renaissance of the Chautauqua
circuit I mean via the internet and the
Academical so what's your what you tell
you oh okay sure yeah
exactly so it's a little hard to see on
uh so you've talked a bit about how you
see the role of the scientist or the
ideal role of a scientist in
communication and and where they may be
fall short where do you see the science
journalist is the if the scientist
becomes a great at these narratives am i
out of a job I mean where do you see a
science journalist fitting into this
role know it's about partnerships and
actually take one quick aside before I
say that which is you know so who do I
think that is doing good stuff I think
what Stony Brook has done creating their
Alan Alda Center for science
communication is tremendous it's that's
such huge signal to this science
community which is we must form these
partnerships between the cerebral and
the visceral Alan Alda does not have a
PhD in biochemistry he's an actor he
brings in the same thing that I've been
doing for 15 20 years with The
Groundlings his partner with the artist
like that people talk a big story about
partnering with artists and yes but
partnering with science journalist and
so for science journalists it's the same
sort of thing you know I guess the the
biggest thing I would say about science
journalists is that I was just telling
these guys here my number one hero in
science journalism is David H Friedman
and he writes for the Atlantic
he had a tremendous article about three
or four years ago called lies damn lies
in medical science and it's about the
proliferation of false positives in the
medical science world it's used in tons
of courses now because it's such a good
investigative piece formulating the
problem being critical it's critical
journalism then he had another great one
last year that is about the I don't know
what you called the super health food
world or what it's basically about the
followers of Michael Pollan and the idea
of this campaign against processed foods
vilifying processed foods and there's
nothing to show that they are inherently
evil and yet these people are buying
into these is the subject matter that's
attractive to you his working is his
work his his his ability to and he got
the hell beaten out of him for that
article and and he came out to LA when
he was writing and I took him to lunch
at one of these places I think he's
tremendous guy and then as it came out
on the Atlantic a whole bunch of
magazines mother jones all of them
turned on him and just everybody
attacked it you know do you have the
courage to go against the grain and
follow your internal voice in these
things investigate the stuff or are you
gonna sit there and try and figure out
what sells and write what the people
want so that's that's where science
journalism comes in is the good
old-fashioned Woodward and Bernstein
approach there's still a desperate need
for them and there's so few people like
that that are fair-minded and yet the
cool thing is when you finally write an
essay that's about fair-mindedness sort
of you find that there's a whole bunch
of them that are fans out there I did
that last year Andy revin from the New
York Times was on a panel for the movie
Gasland which is about fracking and I
feel is a vastly misrepresentative
dishonest piece of work that was
nominated for an Oscar and they had it
at the Hamptons Film Festival and they
had this panel with Alec Baldwin as the
moderator and Josh Fox the filmmaker and
Andy Rifkin and they begin in the
videotape this panel and Andy begins by
saying you know this is a well made film
but it's far more complicated than this
this issue of fracking has you have to
look at it through the prism of all
these different facets including
large-scale things like global warming
and some of these people desperately
need a money they're selling their land
for blah blah and the audience starts
shouting at him saying you're boring ass
you're boring us is just a horrible
thing so I wrote a blog post called
beware of this Josh Fox and fracking
beware this the simplest storyteller and
these things are not simple
but that's what the narrative process
leads you to is there's a huge market
out there for simple storytelling and
Michael Moore and those guys have all
pursued that I didn't tell a simple
story the flock of Dodos we didn't get
the a triple distribution as a result of
that so that's what the writing enables
you to do and it's not as expensive a
medium as filmmaking so there's more
chance to actually get into the
complexities and the truth through
writing I think then there is through
films so let's talk about the complexity
for a minute in 2008 you did a feature
film that kind of looked at global
warming issues global warming denialists
global warming consensus called sizzle
the global warming comedy and that I
guess premiered here on East at Woods
Hole Film Festival yes now this is maybe
more in your scientific backyard as a
marine biologist perhaps more
knowledgeable as a scientist if you can
remember back that far on ocean issues
in such a certification whatever they're
linked to co2 in the eyes and levels of
co2 in the atmosphere
sure tell us how this film came about
because it's certainly not coming
straight out of Dodos well illusionary
well interestingly after I finished
blocking notice and did these University
screenings people began saying to me
can't you make a Dodos movie for global
warming because Al Gore's movie come out
and wasn't any fun and professors were
trying to show it on college campuses
and the students were it's boring you
know it's not a real entertaining film
film first and foremost as an
entertainment medium by the way you know
is created for entertainment the vast
majority of Americans go to see films to
be entertained and that's the constraint
of the medium if you're trying to use it
as an informational meeting you're
really fighting this huge gradient so
people kept saying can't you make a
Dodos film and I kept saying my mother
doesn't live next to a climate skeptic
you know she
she did live next to this intelligent
design lawyer and then finally I
wouldn't saw this amazing movie called
Borat and I walked out of there on fire
like I got this idea and my idea was
what if we went interviewed a bunch of
the major climate scientists and climate
sceptics and did this set up the like
bore out a reality type thing where I
would have one of my cameramen would be
a stand-up comic and he would play the
role of a climate skeptic and in the
middle of my serious interview with this
serious scientist he would suddenly cut
in and start arguing with a scientist
saying you know I think this is a bunch
of crap what you guys are doing you're
just telling this big story to raise
funding so you can support your research
careers and that's what we did we put
together a first experiment with it
where we had a poor graduate student
musi unsuspectingly come in and we did
the whole thing with all the actors and
pumped him basically and he didn't know
what was going on and the fascinating
thing I learned in that experiment is
that when you're interviewing somebody
under all these lights they're in tunnel
vision mode and you can dance around you
know naked people in the room and they
won't even notice that they're so
focused on themselves because that's
what we did with this guy and so then we
said about doing that well we didn't
have negative people but it was the same
basic effect you know we did a lot of
bad acting and he didn't suspect a thing
and I quizzed him on the way out that
day on the parking lot and I said you
know sorry about my cameraman arguing he
said no no what I'm worried about is my
third question you asked me was my
answer good for you and it was just an
experiment we're done so then we went
ahead and did this whole movie made up a
premise which was that I was trying to
make this global warming movie and the
only people I get to fund it was these
two flaky producers in Hollywood and we
have a scene where we sit down and go
through a list of people to interview
and I have all these prominent
scientists and number one in their list
is Tom Cruise and I say he's not a
scientist and they say yeah but he's a
Scientologist and most people don't know
the difference and that's kind of the
opening premise and then it turns into a
journey where we go off while they try
and find a celebrity host for my movie
we interview not only six climate
scientists but also four of the major
climate sceptics to this day including
Marc Morano who you'll see in this clip
and he is the mouth of the climate
skeptic movement today and
watch this clip can we see the this is
the trailer for yes
yes we're gonna talk about global
warming right you good what does it take
to make a good documentary about global
warming we really really want to make
this film and we feel very very
passionate about global warming and
we're very very upset about it yeah we
just don't know why
I don't know why scientists don't like
the movie so narrative structure that
you're so big on yeah and but therefore
I mean how has that worked out there
that looked very rough-hewn very
improvisational very if I may say
unscripted oh yeah yeah yeah exactly for
the for the past almost figured on
taking your own advice
in terms of the structure and stuff like
that it was a hybrid so for the past 15
years I've worked with The Groundlings
improv comedy theater in Hollywood I
love improv and I love that style and so
those the the two producers are both
from The Groundlings and we made it up
as we went along so we had a basic
narrative structure of journey and that
sort of stuff and then we most of the
scenes I would show up with it all
scripted out and they would read it we
throw in the trashcan and then they
would act out the basic thing in their
own translation of it and that's what I
love doing is watching actors take your
corny dialogue and absorb it and you
know put it back out with their spin on
it so yeah I was huge amount of fun I'll
tell you the nicest thing they've been
it's a lot of nice things said about the
film you know it one of the nicest
things is it got invited to five
environmental film festivals and
rejected by all five once they saw it
that I'm very proud of it you know
doesn't present the dogma that they
wanted they wanted the Al Gore movie
they thought this is another movie about
we're you know we've got this thing
licked and we're all working together to
save the planet what I present in the
thing is a mess by the end of it it's
like what the hell you know all the
scientists are saying it's a crisis and
the public doesn't even care but the
probably the nicest thing and I hope
Robby Kenner doesn't mind my saying this
but Robby Kenner is a filmmaker who made
the documentary feature Food Inc that
was nominate for an Oscar a few years
ago he's now making a feature on climate
skeptics and about a year and a half ago
or so his assistant asked for a copy of
sizzle we didn't know why we know who he
was or anything like that and then he
called me up one day and he said you
know I've watched about 15 of these
documentaries on global warming they're
all the same thing they're the same and
passion narrative they're the same
glacier footage they're the same
smokestacks all this stuff and then all
of a sudden this insane
yours is out here in left field and he
said that's the only one I remember and
he loved it and so I started giving him
advice and the number one guy I'd guided
him to go to is Marc Morano who is the
mouth of the climate skeptic movement he
worked for Rush Limbaugh then he was
when I interviewed him he was a
spokesman for James sent off the big
senator against climate stuff then he
went off on his own created climate
Depot he was also one of the first
journalists in the Swift Boat better and
thing so he's from the far far right but
he's got a sense of humor and he and I
kind of hit it off and so I told Robbie
you know you want a really and it's it's
an entertainment medium you want an
entertaining character go interview
Morano about a month ago we took a look
at the rough cut of Robbie's film and
guess what that when it ended he had
about 15 or so young folks there that
we're all kind of pro-environmental and
one guy said I know I should feel guilty
about this but the guy I most want to
hang out when your film is Marc Morano
so it's you know this stuff is tough
it's about having this persona this
voice that is liked and trusted in and
humanized and doesn't come across now
you've just when we have a question here
but I have to kind of linger with this
for a second so by selection by
presenting you know the most likable
warm intuitive funny person I'd most
like to have a beer with yes as the
leading what many would consider the
leading sort of denialist who is you
know using the tactics of the tobacco
industry and everything else to undercut
the science of global warming for what
to make to score policy points this is
not a service to anybody in fact you're
doing a disservice to everybody it's
make you uncomfortable not in the least
the I suppose I should say why not well
flock of Dodos the very first frame of
flock of Dodos is this expression my
older brother's a lawyer gave me res
ipsa loquitur stands for it speaks for
itself the thing speaks for itself and
that was the philosophy we brought from
walk into pocket Dodos which was we
didn't need to put them into some evil
context just let them speak for
themselves like that woman on her farm
talking about you know I can't trust
fossils because nobody was there to see
them
most people with any common sense can
immediately discredit this person that
that's that's cockamamie and it's the
same thing in sizzle the
guys they're fun they're entertaining
but they're cockamamie and they don't
add up and the six guys I eventually did
this graphic and they're where I show
you all six of them had a completely
different reason why global warming
wasn't happening in their explanation of
all these sorts of things so they're not
a cohesive movement and they're not
credible so it's one thing if I gave
them a credible format and if I
presented them in a context about you
know listen these guys think about their
argument but I don't and I just you know
I show how goofy they are and in fact I
cut off a couple of them and just you
know the same thing is like with the
lady with you know all I could say was
okeydoke
but the general audience gets that the
general audience doesn't have the
cerebral power to analyze the facts
they've got the intuitive visceral power
to just see dummies and get an instinct
yes yes I thought it was interesting
that you mentioned Alan Alda because I
about a month ago I was listening to
science Friday and they brought up this
idea called the flame challenge which
was telling taking these scientists from
all different disciplines to videotape
audition for 11 year olds fifth graders
basically explaining fundamental
scientific questions like what is color
what is a flame and the minute a
scientist goes the flame is when the
combustion of kids are like they're done
they're in their heart judges and so
coming from the science world going into
writing I kind of I think I agree with
you in that there's a little bit I think
there's more resistance on the science
and to resort to narrative than it is
for artists to come to science and
explore and make it I don't know
translatable so I was wondering two
things but I guess the main thing was
what kind of pressure what do you think
it's going to take for scientists to
bridge this gap to people is it going to
be the pressure of society that's
demanding the you know say and give us a
better explanation this isn't
and the other was I guess we can go with
that so just that first question you
know so there's change happening it's
happening glacially one of my friends
who's very high up in one of the major
science organizations fond of saying
we're gonna win this communication
battle one retirement at a time and
that's really kind of what it is it is a
generation gap to some extent and you
know it's a lot of old farts in fact one
very cool thing just a few weeks ago
there's a group of graduate students at
the University of Washington that
reached out to me and they were trying
to get the faculty there to pay for some
training and communications training and
the faculty just said now that's not a
priority here so they organized
themselves and did a Kickstarter type of
thing on the internet and then I blogged
about and said this is the way to go
you know you that's the story in
graduates this is gonna be speaking bad
to you guys but um you know one thing I
learned in my science is that okay good
one thing that we all came to realize
when I did my PhD in biology was that
your your faculty members are they're
supposed to be your advisors they're so
busy with their own lives and things
like that the the most valuable source
of information knowledge is your fellow
graduate students and you've formed this
peer group and you share that knowledge
and that's why I was encouraging those
folks you know how cool their took it in
their own hands and they're raising the
money to go and do that so it's
happening slowly but surely and the
workshops that we do are getting more
popular and I'm and I'm really booked
solid now for the next few months with
this so it's happening slowly but surely
um one other thing I just want to make
sure I toss this in there you know I
mentioned the Alan Alda Center I think
that that's that's a huge signal
partnering with an actor like that
partnering with the visceral with the
artists that sort of stuff but also I
think tonight actually at the New York
Film Forum they're screening this movie
called particle fever that's about to
come out of documentary that is about
the big particle collider and I'll tell
you what's amazing about that movie I
haven't seen it yet but Walter Murch
edited and he came and spoke to us in
film school at USC he was the very
coolest best guy that ever spoke to us
he edited he won the Oscar for editing
Apocalypse Now and his book is
tremendous I think it's called in the
blink of an eye about editing but he was
so smart so sophisticated and I could go
on I tell you things that he told us
that night but if he's added in that
movie I guarantee it's gonna be a really
good movie in the
review of it says it's excellent you
know science journalists today our
multi-platform people nobody writes
simply for print nobody writes simply
for broadcast nobody writes simply for
the web everything is intermingled so I
wonder and as part of that videos
increasingly like a humdrum everyday
tool so I wonder you know what your
advice is for a journalist a science
journalist who wants to supplement a
story with video I mean how is it most
effectively deployed from your
standpoint
my advice is story story story and
that's my journey is that it's so
difficult and elusive to really get down
story principles and you really only get
good at it when you've got it move down
to the visceral the instinctive area and
that can take if you're not raised in
that that world you know for example I
started college at the University of
Kansas and I was in a fraternity house
and we had these guys that we used to
call natural-born storytellers and these
guys from all these farms out in western
Kansas they could they could silence a
bar telling a story twenty-five people
all crowding around listening to them
tell these amazing stories still the
best storytellers I've ever known and
yet last year Malcolm Gladwell had this
essay in The New Yorker that was kind of
an update on his book about Liars where
he kind of pulled out this arbitrary
number 10,000 hours that's how much time
you need basically moved from the
cerebral down to the the visceral and
then in this updated essay he said you
know what there probably is no such
thing as natural born much of anything
any of these people that excel at these
things when you start digging in there
you find out they've done the ten
thousand hours they've moved it down
then I think back to those farm boys and
by the time they were 18 showing up in
college they had grown up in these farms
where they had nothing to do but sit out
the field and tell stories to each other
day in and day out that doesn't happen
as much in today's urban environment as
it did back then but that's how they
became natural-born storytellers I don't
think there was much of a gene I think
that it really was 10,000 hours as
Gladwell talks about so we're all not
becoming natural-born short attention
spans no no I've got a camera there's
got a video yeah we have a question
then there's a question after me yeah
good so it's about this sort of okey
dokey idea you know the the thing speaks
for itself in my experience the thing
often doesn't speak for itself
that that I find the things that are
obvious to me may not be obvious at all
you know and the where I think the
evidence lies if I don't spell it out is
not at all necessarily true to the
people who read my work and so I wonder
you know did you ever feel the desire or
even the responsibility to say okay
here's what he says and here's what he
says and here by the way explicitly is
where the weight of the evidence you
know you you seem to really assume that
you know that is not your thing and I
wonder why I wonder why not mirror those
two styles you know mirror there mara
the narrative with the empirical you
know and and therefore wind up with
something that has the power of story
but also has the power of approaching
reality so um so I I do that a little
bit you know and as I said in sizzle
there's eventually a place right I
pulled together a graphic that shows you
that these six different skeptics they
don't there's no cohesion there they're
making the stuff up as they go so it
isn't a very well thought out mass
movement but one of the key things that
they drilled into us in that two-year
Meisner acting program was the dangers
of rising above and that as soon as you
do anything that starts to lift you up
to talking down to your opponents to
your audience that instantly it doesn't
matter what facts you're presenting
people are gonna sympathize with the
other person we did these exercises in
class where I was the husband she was
the wife she stole money from me version
one I would be calling her name's and
everybody would start sympathizing with
her even though she stole the money
version two I would come down to a lower
level and ask questions plaintiff
questions why would you do this we've
worked so hard on this relationship it
really
Hertz maybe you've done this and you
feeling the whole sympathy audience
shifts then to that person this
perspective is so important and this is
the problem of information when you
reach the broad audience is that when
you start bombarding them with
information there's an inherent
arrogance to all this knowledge that
people do resent so my feeling is that
and again we may be talking about very
different audiences because films are
meant for the bigger broader audience
than written media but I felt like
that's there's so much to be cautious of
and again when I entered into this
evolution issue I couldn't believe the
things I was hearing about these
academic scientists trying to debate
these these in creationists intelligent
designers and losing over and over again
and they they couldn't understand I was
up on the stage I presented all the
facts on how evolution works and the
audience ended up hating me and they
love this idiot telling all these funny
stories that's the way it works you've
got to understand human nature and by
the way next week I'm doing an event at
the University of Missouri with Bill Nye
the Science Guy and I'll be talking to
him about the debate he did about a
month ago and you know it's the dynamic
is eternal so yeah I have a question
yeah so by kind of poking fun or
questioning the scientific machine
you're opening up space for a dialogue
right you're you're not telling anyone
which way to think you want them to come
away from your films with questions how
do you envision that dialogue taking
place and who's having it you know again
I about a year ago we screened sizzle I
think at Villanova and somebody asked me
that sort of thing you know what was
your educational curriculum or plan that
you envisioned with this movie and yeah
my answer is nothing on that level for
the most part I've done this as and I
said I've said this several times I did
it as an artist and all my friends like
to really kill me all of the artists who
do you think you are but I've done these
things really as artistic expression you
know the Barnicle video was not made
with any carefully researched
demographic mind nor was sizzle that was
$100,000 I took right on my pocket made
that thing had a hell of a lot of fun
doing it we enjoyed it and then we just
crossed our fingers hope they did we
would get somewhere and ended up
premiering at the out fest gay and
lesbian
festival which was wonderful and and
it's found its way to an audience so if
you build it they will come if you make
media that really you know is good
basically if you tell good stories it'll
find its way to an audience so I'm more
concerned about getting too constrained
from the outset and then lots of people
have over the years put this to work
sizzle has found lots of good audiences
because people know now I had this
horrible article last follow-up three
years ago and II Rivkin a nun daughter
was having a discussion with me and I
said global warming is the most boring
topic that humanity has ever confronted
it's boho whoring and he put that in the
title of his blog post and then this guy
from dere Spiegel last summer contacted
me and they were all headed to Poland
for the Warsaw latest cop meeting and
they were all so bored by this topic and
the guy said could we do an interview
with you as to why do you think it's the
most boring topic the humanities ever
confronted and so they published that
thing right around Christmastime that
ABC News picked it up and reprinted it
and basically that was kind of headlined
this is the most boring topic ever and
tons of people agree with that now it's
really difficult you know communicating
climate stuff everybody agrees with that
and so why aren't there these major
projects going on to try and crack the
nut of narrative trying to figure out
how these things work and there haven't
been so any thanks how did you get these
scientists these climate scientists to
actually agree to appear in your film
did you have yeah did you have them
assign the release first before you have
the cameraman interrupted very good
question
how do you handle the release issue next
question I mean I don't know what does
with Boris but what do you do I'll tell
you my conscience took care of the
release process which was there's
nothing in the movie that was horrible
you know and unfortunately and what did
happen was that and by the way what
Sacha Baron Cohen does is horrible I've
known some people worked on the crews of
his films you know I knew a guy was a
sound man that was that that thing at
the gun show and in Texas and their
instructions were Sasha is gonna rile
these rednecks up and then he's getting
in the car and driving off you guys got
to stay there and film it while they
beat you up
and we didn't do anything close to that
so no and into the contrary my crew was
kind of constantly trying to egg me on
and saying you know you need to use some
profanity you need to start insulting
these guys and I said I can't do that
with the internet and email and
everything like that today's soon as I
interviewed one scientist they would get
on a blog and discredit me and Selena
I'll be over with
as a result and further compounding it
was my black cameraman who's supposed to
be the guide that was kind of come at
him with all the attitude and foul
language is the nicest guy in the world
and as soon as you walked in the room
the scientists bonded with him and one
of the cool things that is in the film
towards the end of it is this scene that
where the funny the sound guy in our
editing stuff and we come to this real
estate he starts instructing me that if
you look at this interview footage and
look at the way the scientist talks to
you me and my articulate science voice
versus to this black guy talking from
the hood and swear to God
real life every scientist talked in two
different voices to me they projected
this knowledgeable erudite voice to him
they projected a much broader friendlier
voice I mean it's a function you need to
understand as the interviewer you're
bringing two at a personality that is
gonna evoke a certain response from a
type of personality out of your subject
and that's kind of bizarre to begin with
so the bottom line was that I just
carried my own set of ethics with this
thing which was I didn't want to
humiliate any of these sort of people
there there have been a few people that
you know you can only do so much there's
a few people that are angry that we're
in my films but everybody else all the
scientists that are their closest
friends say don't worry about it you
know that's they're just getting a
little paranoid the science world has
got to push the boundaries on these
things if you really do genuinely it's
this principle of aroused and fulfilled
that's the beginning of my first book
that's what it comes down to if you want
to connect with an audience it has to
begin by arousing them somehow well I
don't want to do that I want to upset
anybody I'm just gonna present a whole
bunch of information great you're gonna
be boring you've got to get out there
and in the arousal can be horrible
insulting things but it can also just be
really well framed provocative
interesting questions that go against
people's beliefs doesn't involve
anything outlandish but if you don't
absorb that core principle of arouse and
fulfill then you're just going to
produce more of this dreck
and so that's to answer that question
you know there were no release forms and
we didn't by the way we never released
the movie
and I never you know people write to us
all the time how do we buy dvd why isn't
it on itunes blah blah we did all that
with with flock of Dodos and that was on
all those things on Netflix but why are
you I'm for a tad eccentric yeah no
exactly
yeah well it's it's an indulgence on my
part I don't really want the movie to be
screened without me there to moderate
the discussion we had that happen at
University of Washington they love flock
of Dodos they did the giant screen with
nine hundred people all the faculty
there loved it and then when they heard
about sizzle we want to see that so a
group of faculty members prob about 20
of them I sent him a rough cut and what
came back was horrible and I wasn't
there to defend it and they chopped it
to pieces and said this is garbage and
several other experiences like that made
me realize I don't want to really go
through that so it needs really ideally
me there to moderate the discussion
afterwards to explain because here's
another really important dynamic that
I've discovered which was I had this
message that scientists are bad at
communication and I put that message
into film going all the way back to the
barnacle video that opening scene of the
guy falling asleep to a boring lecture
that was kind of the start of me getting
the message out through film and then
it's at the core of flock of Dodos and
then it's at the core of sizzle and for
the most part all these science bloggers
you know sniped about Dodos and then
just all-out assault on sizzle and only
when I put the message into the literary
form into the literate form in the book
form with with don't be such a scientist
did it all change overnight they got
great reviews and science in nature
everybody's liked it since then but
that's the bottom line is academics have
a hard time communicating through this
less informational cerebral medium of
film they need their information written
mmm question here so you mentioned a
number of times with sizzle and flock of
Dodos as well that scientists have taken
issue with the films and I'm wondering
what are their criticisms exactly do
they have any qualms with how you
present hit certain facts um the first
thing I'll say you know is that I've
come to realize I am a storyteller and
as a story tell you're drawn to conflict
because at the core of all good stories
is the source of tension or conflict so
as a result it's a relatively small
group of these scientists I make these
generalities you know all the scientists
hate it really I talk about thousand
points of light all these different
people you know
universities that bring me in and they
all love the movie and we have great
experiences that so it's a small
minority of them but in terms of the
number one criticism is exactly what you
leveled there which is you're you're
aiding and abetting the enemy you're
giving them a forum through this thing
through the sizzle you know these are
people that nobody would ever hear from
if not for being in your movie which I
don't know it's a complicated issue I
don't think it's true cuz my movies so
rinky-dink but it was the issue that
came up a month ago with the the debate
that Bill Nye did with Ken Ham and Jerry
Coyne who's Roy prominent evolutionist
at University of Chicago had an article
in The New Republic with four reasons
why he should not do that debate I know
bill from other experiences I sent him
an email and said you know why don't you
use this as the ultimate teachable
moment
jeanny Scott the head of the Senate
National Center for Science education
for more than a decade is told all the
evolutionists do not debate these people
it's apples and oranges this is not any
sort of a fight it's it's nonsense and
they've done a great job you know that
by the way the evolution world has done
a so much better job of confronting
their anti science movement than the
climate world has they've had true
leadership particularly in the form of
her but there was Bill Nye going against
it and then Jerry Coyne saying why are
you doing this then I wrote to him and
said you know why don't you suddenly
cancel a week before the big debate and
hold a press conference and say you know
what
nobody should debate these people let's
just not do this anymore what I got back
was his whole strategy no I'm gonna
carve this guy up I've got a whole
strategy how I'm gonna do it so and he I
don't know it's a complicated thing
because really in doing that debate his
star meter rating on the IMDB Pro star
meter shot way up and he is a pro
science voice and to some extent the
whole science world if they're smart
should just get behind Bill Nye and do
everything they can to make him the
highest most profile voice for science
providing he you know works with the pro
science agenda which of course he always
will so complicated yeah right there so
going back to what you learned in film
school in acting school and the the way
that you learned that talking down to
someone will immediately lose you your
audience sympathy and given that one of
your core messages is it
- sir bad at communicating which often
entails coming across as talking down to
people don't you think you're sitting
scientists up to fail and your films and
does that trouble you wait setting them
up to fail how to lose audience sympathy
in the way the way that I edit them by
interviewing by by the way that you
include them in so the most fascinating
element in all of flaca dodos the thing
that was most talked about in all the
reviews was this poker game that we
pulled together with eight evolutionary
biologists and when I was a graduate
student at Harvard there was a poker
game among all these evolutionists and a
bunch of those guys were still around
that area so I came up with this idea of
let's get everybody together to play
poker for a night as a device to do sort
of like eight interviews all at once and
then every so often we'll stop and we'll
discuss and you know this issue of
intelligent design that's what we did we
played for six hours we shot for four
hours people drank some wine and beer
but nobody would really you know
plastered or anything like that but what
came out in the poker game was this
consistent voice of arrogance and
condescension including myself you know
I come off on camera as arrogant
condescending as well as we all stopped
and talked about this issue and then
eventually two of the guys got into a
spat with each other and that became
comical and that served as the emotional
climax of the whole movie when you look
at these ears these you know two
scientists can't even agree on these
things and so it painted this really
unflattering portrait of scientists that
I feel is an accurate portrait these are
things the science world needs to be
sensitized towards and think about them
it's not as simple as just pontificating
to the nation and expecting them to
listen everything you say these
communication dynamics are very
different that regard so yes I cut it
that way and it's in there and that's
what a lot of there was a group of the
Smithsonian to cancel the screening that
we initially had set up there a bunch of
the evolutionists some of them knew me
from graduate school rose up and said we
don't want this film here and that's
happened a few other places like that
even more so with sizzle because they
want these flattering portraits and you
know this could go off on a whole
separate story about Joseph's Campbell
Joseph Campbell's the hero's journey and
what if you look at this app that we
developed last year for our book Connect
dori Barton breaks down the hero's
journey into the nine elements of log
lie maker and element number 2 is the
flawed protagonist that is what the
general public wants to learn about we
want to hear about flawed protagonists
we want to learn their lesson that they
learn in orbit in order to overcome
their challenges in life we don't want
to hear about the flawless protagonists
but an awful lot of scientists at the
very core level they want all their
stories to be told about their flawless
scientists their automatons and robots
and so that's it an intuitive level they
kind of don't get it so do you think
then we as science journalists are too
reverential to too much the cheerleader
too much in awe of the fact that's
that's a great question you know and
that's a very complex question and and
you know it's kind of unfair because
what I've done is that I have a
different chemistry with scientists
because of my science background when
the book came out I got invited to CDC
to spend a day there was one of the most
enjoyable days of my life they brought
me in there the communications people
and had me meet with several groups of
scientists and at these large science
institutions you get this giant cultural
divide you've got these heavily cerebral
scientists and then these visceral
communicators and it's like oil and
water a lot of places and it gets really
ugly at a lot of places and so because
of my PhD they bring me in and literally
I tell people you know I get that day at
CDC it's like they would have a hundred
scientists in room they'd open the door
up give me a chair and a whip and a gun
and shove me in there and slam the door
shut say here see if you could tame them
because we can't and it's really it gets
vicious like that so that's where I have
a different voice in perspective in this
regard but that said you know what you
just ask there there's just a very
delicate chemistry but I'll tell you at
the core of that it's very much like
directing actors it's very much like
riding a horse and it's very much about
experience and when you become
experienced and competent
the subject can sense it you know when a
horse gets a guy on board the horse the
horse can tell immediately you know if
the guy is competent he can kick the
horse and the horse responds to that the
right way and does the wrong sort of
kick at the wrong moment the horse
throws in because that's the wrong sort
of thing same thing with with directing
actors really great directors know when
they can shout at an actor and when they
have to whisper to an actor and then
there's other people that just try and
take the blanket approach it will always
be you this happened in film school this
was like you've got to always be
delicate with actors you know that's it
and they don't respond to that you know
they want confidence that social
journalists be delicate with science
I'm trying to I think that they should
try and develop a rapport to the point
where they can feel the confidence to be
able to direct them basically and I
think the good scientists can pick up on
that you know if they feel that you've
done your homework then they don't mind
you challenging them it's when you come
in you know the blank slate or whatever
yes right there thank you hi you say
that you do this as an artist without an
audience in mind but at the same time it
seems like you have this thing against
scientists being bad communicators so
you want to communicate to a broader
audience so you make these
non-traditional films to get people
aroused but then you're not releasing
them so how do you how do you reconcile
that and what is your not policing the
use of them
I think the policing is through the
follow-through you know that I wrote a
book that eventually really laid out the
agenda very clearly and in the book I
think I explained some of those details
for the people who were confused by the
film's you know this is what's going on
there
so it's almost like an instruction
manual to some extent but I you know no
one would ever support me to put
together a curriculum and all that sort
of stuff to go with these sorts of
things so I just kind of fire them out
there but I think the important thing is
that I've been on this consistent
journey and a consistent voice and it's
not like I've been erratic and wandered
all over the place I've kind of hit
these notes consistently and I on my
blog for four years now I consistently
rave about when I see a film that really
is doing it right when I see a
collaboration come together that's
really managing to get that full into
both ends of the spectrum because again
with the arouse and fulfill you bring in
the artist to do the arousal and get
everybody charged up and then you bring
in the scientist for the fulfillment
part it's these partnerships but the
difficulty of that part is that I've got
a great partnership with these two
actors but that's because I'm bilingual
I've spent 20 years of my life going to
film school going to acting class
learning everything to do with Hollywood
I know about the agents managers
producers all that their lifestyle
consists of and so Dorie and Brian and I
can go hang out and I speak the same
language with them in the acting world
that's been a hell of a lot of
investment that makes it challenging but
that's what there's a need for is more
bilingual people in
communication stuff people that really
have put in the time in both directions
where they really have learned the two
languages where they can talk as appear
to to the people in either discipline I
think in the back yes you thank you very
much by the way these are great
questions this is fun
so in terms of the whole being bilingual
thing so we as science journalists are
more translators trying to take the
scientists with potentially these big
egos and arrogance but ultimately all
the necessary information that we need
to tell the narrative story so could you
maybe offer like one or two concrete
piece of advice for us the storytellers
who I mean I mean I have a bachelor's in
neuroscience but I don't have a PhD so
oftentimes you know we can do the
research and we can do our homework but
they still might not trust us and we
can't send them to improv school so how
do we get them to tell us the stories
when it's all in their head I think the
first thing I would tell you again point
back to Daniel Kahneman come to them
with a voice that they will trust and
like and trust and likeability it's it's
the starting point is these two
qualitative elements and then you start
you know trying to figure out what are
they going to trust in like that's where
the improv comes into play if you look
in our book connection each of us have a
single sentence at the beginning that
summarizes what our entire message is
about and Bryan's section on improv is
you've got to make it relatable and
relatability that's the starting point
of how you open up these channels of
communication and you put the focus on
the other person and you research that
person you figure out what can you
relate to them with and you try and open
things up by talking about something
from their life you know the person
plays golf or if they like to travel to
France you begin by doing that homework
and opening up those channels so that's
the number one thing is conveying the
projecting that you've gone to the
trouble to that you're ready to listen
and that you're not there with your own
fixed agenda already that you're just
cherry-picking things that they're going
to say that's gonna fit into your preset
narrative that kind of stuff
listening is kind of the be all and end
all this stuff that's why I've been
drawn to the improv work and really
there's three different things that I've
been through between the Meisner
training the improv and this other thing
called process communication model which
is
five years I've gotten interested in I'd
talk about in my blog about a year ago
but it's a it's a technique in the
business world training people to open
up channels communication and I've come
to realize all three of those things
what they have at their core is a single
dynamic which is taking the focus off
yourself and putting it on the other
person and the academic world does not
train you in that they train you
everything focus on yourself make sure
you present a good image make sure you
got your facts straight about it's so
hard to do this thing of taking the
focus off yourself and focus on the
other person but as soon as you start to
do that you start to move down out of
your heart you your start to perk up you
start to hear things and you know my
latest little idea du jour is what I
listen to last night which is a friend
from South Africa talking about the
years he spent in committee meetings
with Nelson Mandela and everything that
he described about Mandela why he was
such a brilliant politician and
communicator is everything straight out
of improv as far as I can tell this is a
hypothesis I now want to pursue but
that's at the core of improv teaches you
how to listen and that's that's the
toughest thing well you know every
conversation every interview is of
course an improvisation yes and I
appreciate your improvisational skills I
didn't see it so and when we also what
we also get to show just this clip here
shifting baselines because it I was
worried about time funny yeah so I I am
a print web text journalist and say
again you're what I'm a print web text
tax journalist not not a multimedia
person and a few months ago I watched a
couple of films on CNN films blackfish
and Pandora's promise I think about
nuclear energy and I was absolutely
blown away like in tears for both of
those both of those documentaries and I
was thinking very cynically I guess like
wow film and documentary has a way to
move people in a way that maybe maybe
print and tax just can't and I wonder
you know we've had a lot of in the last
year or two there's been a ton of new
digital print outlets for science right
and science journalism so why it sounds
like from what you've said that there
isn't there aren't very many funding
opportunities and it sounds like a
really tough road you know for somebody
like and like any of us in this room to
jump into science documentaries so why
if it's so powerful and medium which I
think it is why why aren't there the
funding opportunities I mean it sounds
like you wouldn't recommend maybe most
of us to do film because oh I would
recommend you do exactly what I did
which is you know when I began making
films
I made a five-minute humorous piece to
see if it could work I did not try and
jump into the whole feature documentary
I my training as a scientist taught me
to do pilot experiments before you jump
in a big thing test the waters and so
that's the cool thing today in the video
age is that with your cell phone you can
make the cell phone videos and send them
off to contests you can find out if
you've got an aptitude through that
medium you can find your voice that way
and even if you don't win awards right
off the bat you can start it going going
after it that way and those two films
that you mentioned blackfish is really
fascinating because there's not a ton of
narrative of that thing but talk about
arouse and fulfill you know their
subject matter is just so massively
arousing and it's so cleanly told I love
that film and I watched it because there
isn't the bleeding-heart
perspective they don't need to the res
ipsa loquitur that the things speak for
themselves each of those little stories
they tell about these poor trainers
being killed and all the stuff the facts
are so powerful in that movie that I
think is truly great documentary
filmmaking as opposed to polemics and
I'm you know not a film I actually
haven't seen I saw some part of
Pandora's promise but I just followed
the debate around that and that's a more
complicated film but any app you know
really clean documentary filmmaking
light but like that is really wonderful
Michael Moore clearly took it off in a
whole different world in it and I don't
understand why this documentary film
world didn't 20 years ago come to an
agreement in newspapers you have two
categories you have news and then you
have op-ed sections right where you get
to opinion eight but in documentary it
seems to be blurred together and you've
got the Michael Moore films going up
against something like blackfish and I
guess their answer is well everything's
subjective yeah I know
it's the same with the news you know in
the newspaper there's a clear dividing
line drawn there I don't know why film
festivals don't make that sort of
distinction between the two because some
of these things you know whatever yes
yeah you might like to join us next week
because of course the whole idea of the
immersive which more and more places are
doing the out of this the journal the
New York Times is to incorporate video
in a variety of ways interviews but also
is kind of mini documentaries into the
flow of a traditional text long-form
narrative and it's clearly at least from
readership numbers that I've seen from
the hits and clicks and eyeballs it's a
compelling marriage we have another
question in the back there yes yes you
yeah we have a mic down there
thank you that so I understand is with
lack of dozin sizzle there's still a
large group of undecideds in this in
this fight what do you do with
intractable cases like the people that
believe that the Sun revolves around the
earth or the people that believe that
vaccines cause autism like how do you
reach those people I think you do your
best to come at them with a voice that
is trusted and liked and I mean here's
what we know is that at the time of the
Civil War this was the most Christian
nation on earth it's still vastly
Christian nation the polls that have
been done since 1982 by the Gallup
Organization on the three groups the
kind of hardcore creationists and the
creationist that are willing to accept
that evolutionist has a mechanism of
science mechanism and then the atheists
those percentages the atheist have risen
from about 10 to 15% or something like
that but the other two groups have
stayed in the 40s there's been very
little change and even since the Scopes
trial in 1920s the needles not moving
much at all so why bang your head
against the wall on a lot of this sort
of stuff but that said again what I you
know humor is this universal language
and it was really fun when the movie
aired on Showtime for a couple years
because I said I got all these emails
from you know people some of them were
deeply religious and they were thinking
in question
and they because they were reached
because it was a friendly and likeable
voice and and I got that all the time I
got people intelligent designers that
screaming's would come up to me and say
thank you for making a movie where I
could sit next to the evolutionists and
not having them spend the whole movie
pointing me you see how stupid you are
so you know there was a fair-mindedness
to all that and I think that's because I
grew up in Kansas and I was raised with
the idea of you just don't talk about
religion and politics at the dinner
table you know you try and maintain
civil discourse in the way you you do
that is by not getting into these things
that you know are instantly divisive so
I think that I believe in communication
endlessly you know instead of conflict
and like the Center for dispute
resolution that's one of their first
tenants is before you get all the
lawyers communicate the hell out of the
issue with the two sides see if you can
get them to open up channels of
communication but a lot of people that
there's this bad cycle with people who
are bad at communication don't believe
in it they won't support it this is what
you see in the science world is that
tons density people and unfortunately a
lot of them gravitate up to the highest
levels of administration in the science
world they're bad communicators and
they've tried it in their past it didn't
work for them so they don't think it
works for anybody and they won't support
it and that's one of the blocks to it so
yeah yeah let's yeah so shifting
baselines yes please explain so these
were when I got out of film school I
made this disastrous feature where I
didn't know what I was doing called
Rhino's didn't tell a story it was
episodic was an and a damn thing
my entire film world spun down the
gutter and then this wonderful marine
biologist Jeremy Jackson that I've known
for over 30 years my hero in the world
of coral reef ecology became a senior
professor at Scripps Institute of
Oceanography tracked me down and said
the world's oceans are dying can we do
anything with your filmmaking skills to
try and reach these messages to a bigger
broader audience and he told me about
this term that was coined by this
wonderful scientist named daniel pauly
who was one of the world's top fisheries
biologists and he coined this term in 95
called shifting baselines and what it
refers to is the bass lines a reference
point from our past and if we start
forgetting these reference points
allowing them to shift around then how
can you do conservation if you go out
into nature and you didn't even know
what was there a hundred years ago how
can you restore a habitat and try and
get things back it's a super important
concept but what Jeremy started saying
to me was don't you think this applies
to everything in our lives you know if
you start losing these perspectives you
just you you gradually incremental II
let your whole life get degraded at the
point in 2002 there were zero mentions
this in the internet when I searched on
Google other than one little newsletter
that mentioned it I wrote an op-ed that
was in the LA Times November that year
today there there's hundreds of pages
and essays all written about shifting
baselines so it we played a part in
promoting this thing and my strategy was
let's try and develop a trusted and like
voice behind this thing that's got
plenty of science and plenty of human
elements in terms of humor and even
emotion so these are four little clips
of some of the little humorous films and
this was the beginning my partnership
with The Groundlings so first one's a
PSA we did that with Jack Black Henry
Winkler and a whole bunch of comic
actors the bad ocean symphony the second
one is the tiny fish PSA with deputy s
Jones from Reno 911 if you know that
show the third one is wonderful it's
with Melissa McCarthy who's become a
superstar now and she plays a senator in
this coral hearing for the Senate and
the third the fourth one I think is with
my buddy Mitch is the waiter
the bald guy and who was also in sizzle
and
let's finish on this that's great
precision we expect this from a symphony
especially in the hands of an absolute
genius
like this
I ordered the catch of the day that is
the catch of the day what is it it's
Chesapeake Bay cannonball jellyfish
jellyfish I didn't realize you could eat
jellyfish what's that like it's
disgusting
well I ordered the catch of the day so
that's what we caught today that's what
we caught yesterday that's all we ever
catch anymore there are no fish left all
we have left is disgusting yay so it all
worked out and those are all still
online as part of a website for the
shifting based shifting basis which has
been a long-running environmental ocean
based project that you are both the
founder and director of yes and so I
want to thank you for your
improvisational skills your good
footwork your patience the technical
difficulties and your great answers to
some really fine questions thank you for
all the great questions really fine
thank you
