My favorite scientist of all time is gone. I dedicated my first book to him. He taught me the importance of “asking good questions” as a scientist. And he told me a lotta funny stories.
YOU GOTTA SMILE. Bob Paine was the best. He made everything to do with the oceans fun and interesting. I dedicated my first book, “Don’t Be Such A Scientist,” to him. He and the title were a perfect match.
Let me start with a story. I think the greatest joy I ever brought to the heart of Bob Paine was in the summer of 1978 when I was working as his field assistant on Tatoosh Island, had to take a dump out in the field, and told him I didn’t have any toilet paper so I used a few pages from Wilson and Bossert’s “Primer on Population Biology.”
Oh my goodness did he love that. I was headed to Harvard that fall to start my PhD in the same department as the co-authors (in fact would end up being teaching fellow for both in my first year) and he just couldn’t get over it — daring me to tell them about how I had defiled their landmark book.
I spent a lot of evenings that summer sitting around the campfire next to the lighthouse on Tatoosh listening to Bob tell stories about his travels, science, fishing and bird watching, and seeking his advice as I drove him crazy with questions. That was really all I knew to do in his presence. His intellect was so great and I was such an utter peon that all I could ever think to do was ask him yet another question, though he was also a good listener (a key trait of a good storyteller), equally interested in talking about General Douglas MacArthur (my grandfather was his Chief-of-Staff for part of World War II), my upbringing in Kansas, and what it was like to live in a fraternity (he was a Harvard undergrad and never knew the experience).
Bob Paine was the greatest. I kept in touch with him constantly over the years — sending him letters from distant ports of call in my field work, then reconnecting with him a decade ago when we had a massive screening of “Flock of Dodos” in the huge 1,000 seat auditorium on the University of Washington campus. He helped organize that event and my mother (the star of the movie who is now 92) sat next to him during the screening which was just plain wonderful. I told her yesterday that he passed away. She remembers vividly chatting with him that evening.
Just last fall I traded emails with Bob and he wrote this great bit that I’m sure he wouldn’t mind my sharing with everyone. He played a huge part in my life — quite possibly the most important part as I ended up doing my PhD with one of his students, Ken Sebens at Harvard.
This bit made me very happy that I had developed something he was finding useful. And look at how, in his early 80’s, he was still deep in thought on how ocean ecosystems work. I will miss his voice for the rest of eternity.
I’ve found that your ABT approach to be very useful in organizing my thoughts on a new writing project about which I know very little. There’s lots written about networks [about which I’m naive], food webs are a network, Pisaster is a node in some of them, and there are now 6-7 experiments tweaking Pisaster, and Pisaster plays the network game differently. ABT will help me organize my thoughts and possibly avoid being tarred and feathered. But possibly this is just more procrastinating.
Trust me on this, I used to be a scientist. I spent years studying Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. What is happening this year is shocking. Based on what we witnessed in Jamaica in the 1980’s, it’s going to have lasting effects.
Years ago I gave a slide show to a group of second graders in Los Angeles where I showed my favorite photos from my years of studying marine biology on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. A week later the teacher sent me the drawings the kids did after my talk. One little girl very earnestly thanked me for telling them about “The Great Berry Reef.”
Now the northern third of the Great Berry Reef, where I spent a year living on Lizard Island, is just plain rotting to death. There’s no better way to express it. Look at the photos in this Guardian article focusing on the work of some of my old friends.
The next time you run into a climate denier, ask them to account for this. It’s been fun laughing at their stupidity until now, but this changes things. At least for me it does. It’s very bad.
What was well documented for the demise of coral reefs in Jamaica is probably relevant to what is now happening to the Great Barrier Reef.
I spent the summer of 1980 at Discovery Bay Marine Lab on the north shore of Jamaica. In August the island was devastated by Hurricane Allen, the largest hurricane of the century up until then. Along with my life long close friends, marine biologists Jeremy Jackson, Nancy Knowlton, and Mark Patterson, we hid out in the Blue Mountains and listened to trees crash down all night as Hurricane Allen passed over our heads. At sunrise we looked down and in the distance saw 25 foot waves crashing on the reef — a bit of a contrast to normal conditions as none of us could remember anything bigger than about waist high waves hitting the reef.
The next day we went diving and saw complete devastation. In a single day all the beautiful coral formations that had gone by such nicknames as “The Haystacks” and “The Emerald City” had vanished. Left behind, down to about 50 foot depth, was little more than scoured bottom — no corals, almost no fish.
The reefs became overgrown by algae. I returned 12 years later with my graduate students when I was a professor at University of New Hampshire. The place was still an unsightly mess as very little coral had returned and everything was overgrown by seaweed. To this day, 36 years later, it still bares no resemblance of the underwater splendor that it used to be. Coral reefs take a long time to recover.
In 2007, as I was shooting my mockumentary, “Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy,” science fiction author Michael Crichton told me, “No one can predict the future.” He had become a huge climate skeptic and this was one of his favorite things to say. And it’s true. But …
We can now predict some very bad things for the northern third of the Great Barrier Reef. It’s going to look bad for a long time to come. The Guardian article, like everything else I’ve been reading, is horrifying. I remember the reefs around Lizard Island so vividly. Today’s photos, from that same area, bare no resemblance to anything I ever saw. They really are kind of beyond the imagination.
Take it from me, it’s really, really bad.
“They don’t have a plan” is not a valid criticism. If you think it is, you’re an over-thinker, and I’d like you to meet two people whose success you’re probably baffled by.
YOU DON’T NEED A DETAILED PLAN TO SUCCEED. Do you understand that? If you don’t, you may be over-educated, and destined for frustration this fall.
Okay, my relaxed morning was ruined today by a phone call with my Story Circles co-producer Jayde Lovell in which she got me angry, starting with remembering my Jack Black Ocean Symphony PSA, then remembering the Occupy Wall Street movement, then connecting the dots to the present Presidential campaign.
It starts with the overly-analytical, largely humorless people who manage to bore everyone so painfully that after a while nobody wants to listen to them moan about the demise of nature. In 2003 I tried to explain to them how this works — that mass communication needs to begin with a voice that people want to listen to.
In that spirit I wrote and directed “The Ocean Symphony,” a Public Service Announcement (PSA) starring Jack Black and 20 comic actors creating a bad symphony for the oceans. It was the pre-Youtube days so we hired a distributor who sent the PSA out to 1,000 TV stations. They then used Nielsen tracking to record the airing of it for the next 18 months. It was aired by over 350 stations for free (as a public service).
We got lucky (something that does actually happen to people when they try things). The same week they sent out the PSA was also the week that Jack Black’s movie “School for Rock” debuted at #1 at the box office so there was lots of awareness of him. The distributor sent us big fat monthly reports which multiplied the airings by the individual costs of air time in each market had we paid for it. By the end of the 18 months the reports showed that the PSA scored over $10 million in free air time. It also played on the giant SONY video screen in Times Square, once an hour for two months.
Guess what all that success resulted in for my next ideas for humorous PSAs. Bupkis.
Nothing but a bunch of overly-analytical conservation people who launch stillborn campaigns yet think every piece of media attention MUST have a detailed action plan attached to it to have any value. Such people are the masterminds of endless failed campaigns. This was much of the message of my first book, Don’t Be Such a Scientist; Talking Substances in an Age of Style.
Yes, it is important to have at least some plan, but the idea of picking apart a good front end product because the back end is not yet completely nailed down is a recipe for cautious, uninspired failure.
As I explained in that book, the principle is AROUSE and FULFILL. If you don’t arouse, there will be no fulfillment. And more importantly, yes, it is possible to arouse without a detailed plan to fulfill. It happens all the time. But it will never happen if you are one of the brainiacs who prides themselves on critiquing projects before they can get off the ground because you think there’s not a good enough action plan.
So, along these same lines I found myself in September, 2011 in Portland, Oregon as the keynote speaker at a meeting on business sustainability where a group went out to dinner. Everyone was talking about the Occupy Wall Street movement that had erupted and was only three days old. The entire group of smartypantses at the table were condescending about the whole effort, saying the Occupy people were wasting everyone’s time because “They have no plan.”
I listened for a bit, and then I ruined the whole evening by taking on the entire table, trying to explain to them and all of their over-educated sensibilities that lots of mass movements erupt with little more than passion which can eventually be harnessed and turned into action. They thought I was stupid. I thought they were stupid. And even the next week I heard my media hero Chris Matthews echo the same sentiment on his MSNBC show “Hardball.” He said the same thing — that he didn’t get it with the Occupy Wall Street movement — they have no plan — how are they going to stop rich people from getting rich — they are clueless.
And by the way, imagine if the action plan in September, 2011 had included, “We plan in 2016 to have Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders run for President espousing our basic principles.” How much ridicule do you think that would have drawn.
This has become a trademark of the overly analytical, overly planning, overly controlling, overly educated types who may very well get their asses handed to them this fall by Donald Trump as they laugh at his lack of specifics in his political agenda so far. You can find their type running wild all over the Huffington Post and tons of political blogs that have been 100% wrong on Trump for almost a year now. They are smug, self-assured, and absolutely certain that if you don’t know EXACTLY what your plan is, there is zero chance you will ever succeed.
These are the people who kill innovation, destroy good ideas, and feel entitled because they are so heavily educated. And they are now totally flummoxed by the success of two candidates who essentially do not “have a plan” other than “we’ll get it done.”
Guess what the Occupy Wall Street movement produced … Bernie Sanders. Plus a single word narrative — “Occupy” — one word that speaks their entire philosophy. His political agenda is not much more specific than “eat the rich.” It’s easy to pick what he has to say apart with “how’s he going to pay for it all?” Same for Trump and his stupid wall, and stupid muslim ban, and stupid nuclear plans, and stupid stupidity. But guess who has all the energy and momentum.
Everyone is trying to blame the popularity of these two candidates on the anger and frustration voters feel towards “the establishment.” At the core of much of that rage is the frustration of listening to the know-it-alls who think they can see what doesn’t work. And in fact that has been the overall pattern for the past year — the know-it-alls saying over and over again there’s no way Trump and Bernie can succeed — the numbers are against them.
Well, Trump has now officially kicked their asses and Bernie is still in the fight. This election is about more than just anger. It’s a referendum on the know-it-all negators who spend their lives squelching people’s plans because they aren’t “thought out” enough. People are tired of being told their ideas can’t work. A lot of people are ready to either make America great again or eat the rich. They don’t quite know how, but they really don’t care. Their enthusiasm is blind, and sometimes that’s all that’s needed.
Wow, how much would it suck to be “The Love Doctor” Paul Zak this week after John Oliver made him the laughing stock on his popular HBO show on Sunday night. Zak has ridden to fame with his book about oxytocin being “the moral molecule” and his TED Talk where he claims that hugs unleash the joys of oxytocin. Oliver and highly acclaimed science writer Ed Yong end up being a sort of tag team of humiliation — Oliver with the big, broad, simple message that Zak is a clown, then Yong last fall in The Atlantic with a powerful, detailed disassembly of Zak’s oxytocin story. Ouch. I think the Love Doctor gonna need some hugs.
THE HUG-LY TRUTH. If you haven’t seen this brilliant synthesis from John Oliver this past Sunday night, it’s worth watching the whole 20 minutes. Or, if you want to skip right to the razzing of Zak, go to 10 minutes in where he begins the public shaming of “The Love Doctor.”
Busted. This past Sunday evening John Oliver delivered a wonderful and simple essay on the problem of “false positives” (saying you see a pattern when in fact it’s either not there or you don’t have enough data to say it is) that increasingly plagues the world of science — especially biomedical science.
The false positive problem was given a blast of major attention in 2005 by Jon Ioannidis, a professor at Stanford University Medical School who boldly stated that, “Most biomedical papers published are false.” The medical community recoiled at this, tested it themselves, found out he was right, then it was translated brilliantly for the public by one of my all-time favorite journalists David H. Freedman in The Atlantic in a 2011 foundation-shaking article titled, “Lies, Damn Lies and Medical Science.”
If you are interested in this topic in general, you really have to read Freedman’s article. It made my jaw drop when I first read it on the way to speak at an epidemiology conference in 2011 where I asked the experts if what he said was true and they reluctantly nodded yes.
So John Oliver’s segment is really just the even-more-popular version of Freedman’s article. Oliver digs in deep with one specific example which is the excitement in recent years over “the moral molecule” oxytocin and the most enthusiastic promoter of this story, The Love Doctor, Paul Zak. What’s great is that before you question whether Oliver has his facts right, all you have to do is look to award-winning science writer Ed Yong who gave the detailed take down of Zak last fall in The Atlantic. Together they make it kinda painful to think about being The Love Doctor this week.
And of course I like this because the overall message of my book last fall, “Houston, We Have A Narrative,” was that scientists are humans and have this Achilles Heel of (similar to all humans) desperately wanting to tell big, fun, exciting, and CERTAIN stories. Paul Zak clearly fell victim to this. Here’s the basic story points of his downward journey into the clutches of John Oliver.
THE RESEARCH – In 2011 Zak was the third of five authors on a paper in Nature titled, “Oxytocin increases trust in humans.” I guess this is where he thought, “Wowser, I’m in Nature, what we’re saying must be right, I’m taking it all the way to the stars!”
THE TED TALK – Also 2011 (maybe a little soon on the heels of the research publication?) Zak found himself on the TED stage telling people about the joys of oxytocin — how hugs release it and cause good things in your body — even though a cloud of doubt was beginning to enshroud the molecule’s reputation.
THE BOOK – In 2012 Zak published, “The Moral Molecule: The Source of Love and Prosperity” and hit the road with more TEDx talks and appearances on everything from The Dr. Phil Show to Good Morning America.
THE SCOURGE -That same year science journalist Ed Yong began training his skeptical eye on Zak and his oxytocin party. His article in Slate that summer said it all with the subtitle, “Why the hype about oxytocin is dumb and dangerous.” He quoted an analysis of the work Zak’s oxytocin campaign was based upon which said, “some conclusions are too enthusiastic.”
OXYTOCIN, CORTISOL AND STORYTELLING – By 2014 he was entering into my area of interest, weaving big yarns about the role of oxytocin and cortisol in “The Power of Storytelling.”
MY IRRITATION – I began getting irritated last year at what I was hearing about Zak giving talks on the role of oxytocin and storytelling. I found it irritating because I had found my own interesting angle on neurophysiology and brain science in 2012 when I first spoke with Uri Hasson of Princeton University about his work establishing the field of “Neurocinematics.” I cite his work in both of my last two books. Unlike the boldness of Zak and his “Neuroeconomics” label, Hasson seemed very cautious about his neurocinematics term and constantly warned me that the science was very, very limited, in part because Functional MRI is such a crude tool. Every time I tried to get him to commit to a simple, bold statement he seem to answer with words of caution and warning that the science is very preliminary. No such concerns seemed to have ever bothered Zak.
KABOOM – Cut to this past Sunday where John Oliver uses the dubiousness of Zak’s work to cast general aspersions at TED Talks as a whole, ending up with The TODD Talks as a parody. The highlight of his parody is a scientist asking a volunteer to rub butts with him to unleash oxytocin.
You wanna know what’s at the core of Zak’s popularity — the same thing that works for religion and confidence men — certainty. In January I raved about Kathryn Schultz’s great article in The New Yorker on the popularity of true crime shows. What I loved most about her article was the phrase near the end about “our yearning for certainty.”
That’s the human weakness that The Love Doctor is guilty of exploiting. People are desperate to understand what drives our behavior — so much that they are vulnerable to anyone in a white lab coat or handsome enough to be believable who is willing to explain how it all works WITH CERTAINTY.
If you look at this Youtube video by Dr. Paul Zak all you hear is certainty. There’s no words of qualification, limitations of confidence or tenuousness in the narration. It’s all as certain as the sun will rise every morning. Which is fine, until Ed Yong puts in the detective work, like a good private eye, and reveals that none of it is that certain. End of story for now.
I was a graduate student at Harvard in the years when legendary evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin were at war with the founder of the new field of sociobiology, E.O. Wilson. At the core of sociobiology was a lot of wonderfully fun stories about how so much of our behavior today is the result of things that natural selection “selected for” back in the early days of hominids.
But Gould and Lewontin came at them with the accusation of “Just So Stories” referring to Rudyard Kipling’s bedtime tales for children such as “How the Camel Got His Hump” where the story would give a silly explanation for the origins of animal anatomy (the camel was punished with a hump for being lazy). They tore up much of sociobiology and left clouds of doubt over the field that persist today, serving as a monument to this weakness we all have for “good stories.”
Steve Gould would love what John Oliver did on Sunday night. Sociobiology was underpinned by the basic assumption that pretty much everything about us today is there because “it was selected for.” What Gould taught us so well (I was a teaching assistant for him twice) was that a great deal of pattern that exists in nature today is due to random, chance factors rather than the result of some orderly selective process.
The main thing with The Love Doctor is that there may eventually be fascinating stories to tell about the role of oxytocin in our bodies some day, but for now, as both Oliver and Yong pointed out, the jury is still out. So while the jury is still out, the doctor ought to be a little more restrained on the storytelling and not be giving TED Talks full of tall tales.
MAKE AMERICA ARCHPLOT AGAIN. To speak in pure archplot structure you almost have to engage in fiction — it’s just too hard if you’re constrained by the truth. Trump laughs at the truth, and is a master of archplot.
Donald Trump is a master of narrative. In “Houston, We Have A Narrative,” I offer up a very simple, albeit crude, definition of the word narrative as, “The series of events that occur in the search for a solution to a problem.” By this definition, Trump lives and breathes narrative.
Trump is legendary as a “dealmaker.” What does that term mean? It is a person who sits down at the table, quickly figures out the problem that needs to be solved, then solves it with the deal. It’s what he does all day long and is how he approaches the world, endlessly.
When you start to listen to him from the perspective of narrative dynamics (again, narrative, not storytelling) you see how much he embodies the core principles. Here is my list of the top 5 narrative traits I see in him.
This is the antidote to boredom. Boring people get stuck on one topic and fail to move forward or “advance the narrative.” Avoiding this problem is built into the ABT structure. It’s what happens with the word “therefore” — the word of consequence. If somebody describes a problem, then keeps going, talking on and on about just the problem, eventually someone will blurt out, “THEREFORE … ? Therefore what are you going to do about it?” That is advancing the narrative.
I’ve heard a number of eggheaded political pundits over the past few months trying to diminish Trump’s communication skills by saying, “he just rambles all over the place in his speeches.” Well, yes, to some extent, but what they are failing to perceive is the tight ABT structure (And, But, Therefore) on the fine scale which holds the interest of listeners. And actually, he does have a clear overarching narrative which is the following …
Trump has a single message of “Make America Great Again.” You may think it’s ludicrous, but if you do you’re just identifying yourself as someone who doesn’t get how the public thinks. They don’t want to hear complex, subtle messages. One of the main critiques of Hillary has been that she’s too caught up in “nuance.” To Trump, “nuance” is like a cockroach, meant to be stepped on.
At the top of McKee’s Triangle (see Chapter 12 of the new book) is Archplot which I’ll talk about in detail in a bit. One of the key characteristics is the “singular narrative” — meaning for example that in epic stories, there is still the one character, from Luke Skywalker to Dorothy to Spartacus, who provides the singular overarching narrative structure.
Trump has accomplished singularity from the very start of his campaign with his simple slogan. That slogan wasn’t something his pollsters figured out halfway through. It was him, him, him from the start. Don’t you see it? The guy has deep narrative intuition. He opens his mouth, what comes out is narratively structured. This is why he has scored TV ratings for the debates like no one has ever seen. There has never been a candidate with this deep of a connection to narrative structure.
The one piece pointing this out at the most superficial level to date that I’ve seen was a writer at Vox who noted the recurrent problem/solution structure of Trump’s speeches. But all that writer did was make a note of it. He didn’t attempt to quantifying it or pinpoint how the dynamic works or why it’s important.
In my new book I offer up what I have labeled as The Dobzhansky Template. For Trump, he would use it to say, “Nothing in America makes sense except in the light of greatness.”
The more specific term for him for this would probably be, “exceptionalism,” but he’s gone with “great.” This is his one, singular, unifying term which becomes incredibly powerful. I could easily see the masses at his rallies just shouting, “Great! Great! Great! Great!”
That one word conveys his entire message and agenda. He truly gets this stuff.
As Robert McKee tells about in his landmark 1997 book, “Story,” there is a consistent structure to the great stories that persist over the ages reaching all the way back 4000 years to the epic story of Gilgamesh. This structure he terms “archplot” and identifies it’s key characteristics. These traits include the singular narrative (making American great again), an active hero (Trump is seen as a fighter), linear time sequence (he rarely jumps back into history), complete causality (everything in his world is simple and makes sense), and closed ending (everything’s going to have a happy ending).
Trump opens his mouth, what flows out is pure archplot. The simpler version of archplot is the ABT (And, But, Therefore) structure. Over and over again, you can hear it in everything Trump says. “We love the Mexicans AND we want the good ones to be part of our society, BUT there are too many illegals, THEREFORE we have to build a wall.”
It is how he views the world — simple problem, simple solution — custom made for the ABT.
This is where he goes off into the land of fiction. Everyone knows “the wall” with Mexico is not realistic. It is fiction. But it is simple and thus powerful.
One extension of the ABT is the simple Narrative Index I have devised. He scores a 29 which is higher than any politician I’ve analyzed, and his score is double that of Hillary (14) which I promise you will be a major factor this fall.
He knows this rule sooooo well. He uses it to his advantage on offense — naming names in his attacks on opponents, and even further by coming up with SPECIFIC nicknames for Lyin’ Ted, Little Marco, and Crooked Hillary. Those names are incredibly specific.
But then he also uses the reverse of this rule in his statements on policy, at least right now, holding off on specifics and thus weakening what he’s saying, leaving less to attack. This week on Meet the Press he was vague, waffling, and two-sided on everything from minimum wage to tax cuts. He knows better than to get pinned to specifics this early.
Not sure how many times I can keep repeating this. People who are thought of as “entertaining” over the long term achieve that label for one main reason — they succeed with narrative. If they fail with narrative, no matter how outlandish they are, they will ultimately bore then annoy the public. That’s because they do the same repetitive schtick, meaning they fail to “advance the narrative.”
No one major is calling Trump annoying or boring (aside from those who hate him for his politics) in terms of his communication style. More importantly, no television network is calling him annoying or boring. They continue to give him endless free coverage. Why not, he generates huge ratings.
This past week the media critic Jim Rutenburg at the NY Times talked about the shoddy job the media, including NY Times, has done in covering Donald Trump. He said, “… this season has been truly spectacular in it’s failings.” He added, “The mistakes piled up the bad predictions, the overplaying of every slight development of the horse race to the point of whiplash, the lighthearted treatment of what turned out to be the most serious candidacy of the Republican field. The lessons learned did not.”
The analysis of Trump’s communication skills have been pathetically bad. Just as Ruttenburg says — the media have laughed at Trump and done silly, substance-lacking “analysis” such as talking repeatedly about the level of grade school he communicates at or his tendency to use “we” and “us” more than other politicians.
Stupid media analysis. That’s what it’s been. Incredibly lame and stupid.
I have warned since last summer that this guy knows media better than ANY politician in history. As Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio was quoted in USA Today on Sunday, “Trump is the most manipulative person in the world.” Amen, brotha.
The New York Times should be ashamed of themselves for the shallow, lame job they have done in analyzing Trump.
Sheesh.
Three things. 1) I’m not a fan of climate skeptics, ever, 2) there is no “jugular” for anti-science movements when it comes to communication — the zinger logic works both ways, 3) “Climate Hustle” (and Marc Morano) scored it’s highest pinnacle of media exposure Monday night in being mentioned on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Way to go, Jimmy.
NOT CLEVER, NOT HELPING. This is the current “Moviemaker” plot for “Climate Hustle” from IMDB Pro (you have to subscribe to get access to it). It’s the Hollywood scorecard for a movie. This is up to May 1, the day before “Climate Hustle” scored it’s highest profile media hit as the subject of a 7 minute rant on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on ABC. Next week’s rank will be higher.
On Monday night ABC comic host Jimmy Kimmel delivered a 7 minute comic rant about Sarah Palin and “Climate Hustle,” the new “documentary” from climate skeptic Marc Morano. While some people inside the bubble of the climate community thought it was “devastating,” I would suggest it was more of a major coup for Morano to receive such high profile attention. And for free.
Everyone talks about how much free “earned” media exposure Donald Trump receives. This is the same thing. The Trump exposure is mostly about what a fool he is, yet has been a major key to his success. The content of what is said is irrelevant, it’s that they are talking about him at all. Same thing for Morano.
How well is “Climate Hustle” doing in Hollywood terms? Here’s a list of current rankings of a variety of recent documentary feature films according to the Moviemeter score calculated by the industry website IMDB Pro. It includes all the Oscar-nominated documentaries for this year. It’s already scoring on the same level with one of them, “Winter on Fire.” I’m sure if you check next week it will have jumped ahead of lots of these films, in part thanks to scoring a mention from Jimmy Kimmel.
I’m so tired of people in the climate community bubble celebrating non-victories. Much of the “look how dumb climate skeptics are” humor relies on logic that can just as easily be tossed back at the science community. Kimmel says he’s going to deny the existence of yogurt saying, “I’ve seen the containers, I just don’t believe there’s anything in them.”
Well, sorry, but you find the same logic throughout the science world. I’m dealing right now with methods of teaching that common sense tells you they work, but running up against scientists who say they are not going to believe it works until they see data to show it. Same thing.
On a broader scale, this is the same way that the climate skeptics learned “doubt casting” from Rachael Carson and her attacks on pesticide use. Andy Revkin gave a nice review of this in 2012. Both sides are using the same basic logic when it comes to humor.
Academics and scientists have a tendency to think there is a way to “slit the jugular” of their opponents simply by out-arguing them. It was one of the most annoying comments I heard about my movie “Flock of Dodos,” in 2006, coming from some of the top academic evolutionists — that they found the movie disappointing in that they had hoped it would have “gone for the jugular” more. As if there was some way to make a movie about academic discourse that could somehow with a single zinger or dramatic moment bring about the collapse of the entire opposition. There ain’t.
Yes, “Blackfish” did do an amazing job of crippling Sea World, but they had stories of death to use for ammunition. That’s different. When a comedian like Jimmy Kimmel ridicules an anti-science movement it’s not in the same league.
So as funny as Jimmy Kimmel may be, and as admirable as it is for him to take on social issues seriously at times, he is not the person who can actually damage the climate skeptic crowd. He has no real gravitas, and more importantly, all he did was create an equally silly scene of humble scientists using profanity.
To date I have still seen only one truly brilliant piece of climate comedy, which was the prank the Australian group “The Hamster Wheel” pulled on climate skeptic Lord Monckton. I just now watched it again. If only anyone in this country had the cojones to create that sort of comic material. So brilliant. So utterly, utterly brave and brilliant. If someone went after the climate movement with that level of coldheartedness it might actually be possible to slit their jugular. But it ain’t gonna happen in America.
From “Climate Hustle” on the right to “The Congressman” on the left, the fact is, you gotta tell a good story and pull of high production value if you want your movie to change the world.
CEREBRAL BROWN OUT. I felt the synapses in my brain momentarily go dim as the Grizzly Mama, former-governor of Alaska Sarah Palin walked within ten feet of me and I took this snapshot. On the far right is Marc Morano, writer-director of “Climate Hustle.” This was after the premiere two weeks ago of “Climate Hustle” in Washington DC at the Rayburn building.
Last night Marc Morano’s film “Climate Hustle” screened in nearly 400 theaters across the country while on MSNBC’s “Hardball” Chris Matthews very generously gave prime time exposure to the new movie “The Congressman” starring Treat Williams. Both films have high political aspirations, but neither is very good in terms of basic filmmaking.
I wrote a review of “Climate Hustle” last week on Andy Revkin’s NY Times blog Dot Earth in which I said my heart is with Morano as a fellow filmmaker, but I found the film weak on both story and visuals (not to mention most of climate skepticism is bunk starting with the fundamentally dishonest portrayal of “global cooling” in the 70’s as a major story — it wasn’t).
For “The Congressman,” while Rotten Tomatoes has it teetering on the edge of a rotten tomato overall with a score of 60%, the Hollywood Reporter is more direct in their assessment. They concede that the film “means well,” but they also say, “… the film is rather overstuffed, with Mrazek injecting too many themes and subplots into the mix. And to say that some of those elements don’t quite work dramatically is an understatement …”
Filmmaking is incredibly difficult. Anyone charging out to make a “documentary” simply by interviewing everyone they can find who has something to say about a subject really needs to be aware of this. No one talks about the cost of boring an audience of like-minded thinkers.
Nothing worse than ending up with a group who previously might have cared about your issue, but after viewing your painfully dull film end up saying to themselves they never want to hear anything further. Which happens all the time.
Nice guys (with good intentions) finish last, a lot, when it comes to making movies. Sad, but true.
Nothing like a challenging 14 hour day. Things started at 8:30 in the morning and finished after dinner at 10:30. In between was one fascinating discussion after another with the brightest group of scientists I’ve been around in a long time. It was the perfect place for the message of striving for excellence by reaching for the ABT.
SRO. Nothing better than Standing Room Only where just about every seat is taken by someone with a PhD in science. I took this photo as Alex, my host, was introducing me at the start of my talk. Amazing group. And best of all, they laughed in all the right places.
I was expecting a challenging day at Genentech, but it kind of exceeded expectations. I guess it’s what you get in the corporate world — no laggards.
The place is huge — about 50 buildings split into north and south campuses right on the San Francisco Bay. It was one meeting after another with folks working on drug development, structural biologists, neurophysiologists — on and on. Lots and lots of science that was beyond me, but all of which could benefit from narrative structure.
The most interesting story I heard all day was from a woman who had worked a couple years ago at Theranos. Wow, what a mess. I had no clue about that scandal. Among many things it’s kind of an indictment of the bullshit nature of so many TED Talks.
If you don’t know the bizarre story of Theranos and it’s weird “visionary” leader Elizabeth Holmes, here’s a video from just a few days ago that tells the whole strange scandal of their massive valuation over a product they don’t appear to be able to deliver.
The toughest part of the day was a neurophysiologist who had read my book and grilled me for a half hour, unconvinced that teaching narrative would move the needle in the right direction. He was concerned that teaching scientists to be “better storytellers” would just make them more adept at publishing false positives. But that’s not what I’m advocating.
The book is not about “storytelling for scientists.” That’s what people who do a shallow job of not reading it think it’s about. But if you really dig into it you will see it is about “narrative knowledge for scientists” with the belief that the better you understand narrative, the more you will be aware of the blind spots towards positive narratives that come with being human and lead to telling big stories that are wrong (i.e. Theranos). He understood this and I think by the end I had allayed his fears at least a bit, but a tough discussion for sure.
It was after that session that I asked my host, “Don’t you have one dummy I could meet with just to get a break?” The answer was no. Awesome place.
UPDATE TODAY: A good OpEd in the NY Times on the Theranos mess which Silicon Valley had enough good sense to avoid.
I don’t mean any disrespect, I’m just talking narrative structure here. The Gettysburg Address is a structural masterpiece. Tyson’s exercise, while having a nice point to it, is narratively muddled. Although Neil Degrasse Tyson is a fun media icon, it’s worthwhile to point out he does not have deep narrative intuition — not like novelist Michael Crichton nor Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman. And did he really mean to say, “comprised of”?
LINCOLN KNEW NARRATIVE (TYSON NOT SO MUCH). Lincoln had a Narrative Index of around 21. Neil Degrasse Tyson is more in the range of 11 (the three speeches I’ve found score 9, 11, 14). It shows when he attempts to emulate Lincoln.
For three years now I’ve been holding up the Gettysburg Address as a model of the ABT structure. I examined it in detail in my book last year. I’m willing to argue with anyone who wants to disagree that the number one reason the speech retains it’s power and has stood the test of time is it’s narrative structure.
Nobody has really pointed to this attribute of the Gettysburg Address so far, or if they have they’ve done it in a overly-complicated way. Ken Burns did an entire NOVA episode about the Gettysburg Address, but narrative structure wasn’t even on his radar screen. You kind of need to have some feel for ABT structure to really see it.
The speech is simple and has a solid ABT form. The first paragraph is exposition. The second paragraph begins by stating the problem (“Now we are engaged in a great civil war”). The third paragraph has more than one “therefore” but is essentially “it is for us the living” to make sure that “these dead shall not have died in vain.”
This narrative structure, more than anything else, accounts for it’s enduring power. Joseph Campbell would be the first to agree with this. It’s about story, dude.
Which means that anyone wanting to put themselves in the same company of Lincoln and his great speech really ought to attempt an equally clean and powerful ABT structure.
Astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson, who is a great promoter of science and lots of fun, attempts exactly this with a new video. He delivers his own speech of the same length as the Gettysburg Address. He has a very nice point to it — that Lincoln also created the National Academy of Sciences which is today very important. But the way he presents his argument is muddled.
His first paragraph is an ABT, sort of, using “yet” instead of “but.” But the “therefore” is disconnected in terms of logic — opening with war, then suddenly jumping to science.
From there he slumps solidly into “and, and, and” mode stating a series of facts about science. The net result of his speech conforms to the section in my book I titled, “And, And, And, not that there’s anything wrong with it.”
There’s not anything informationally wrong about Tyson’s speech, it’s just that narratively it’s a jumbled mess. The over-arching ABT structure is lacking because the “problem” is not clearly laid out.
With the Gettysburg Address Lincoln laid out the problem clearly in the second paragraph — that we are torn apart by war. The whole paragraph elaborated on the problem, leading to the build that was paid off in their third paragraph with the clear admonishment (the “therefore”) that “these dead shall not have died in vain.”
There is a “therefore” in Tyson’s last paragraph, but it’s not all that compelling. Basically he says “the time has come” rather than, “we must,” as Lincoln did.
Therefore … I’m sorry to be rude, but there is a science to great communication. A major part of it is narrative structure. Without it, it’s hard to ascend to the greatest heights.
Here’s the text of what Neil says in his short video. Again, there’s nothing wrong with this, it could just be more powerful with some attention to narrative structure, as I do in the next section.
One and a half centuries ago, civil war divided these united states of America, yet in it’s wake we would anneal it as one nation indivisible. During the bloody year of his Gettysburg address President Lincoln charted the NAS comprised of 50 distinguished American researchers whose task was then, as now, to advice Congress and the executive branch of all the ways the frontiers of science could contribute to the health, wealth and security of it’s residents.
As a young nation, just four score and seven years old, we had plucked the engineering fruits of the industrial revolution that transformed Europe, but Americans had yet to embrace the meaning of science to society. Now with more than 2000 members the National Academy encompasses dozens of fields undreamt of at the time of Lincoln’s charter. Quantum physics discovered in the 1920’s now drives nearly one third of the world’s wealth, forming the basis for our computer revolution and the creation, storage and retrieval of information. And as we continue to warm our planet, climatology may be our only hope to save us from ourselves. During the centennial of it’s charter, President Kennedy addressed the Academy, noting the range and depth of scientific achievement in this room constitutes the seabed of our nation’s future.
In this, the 21st century, innovations in science and technology form the primary engines of economic growth. While most remember Honest Abe for war and peace, for slavery and freedom, the time has come to remember him for setting our nation on a course of scientifically enlightened governance, without which we all may perish from this earth.
Hate to be a school marm, but this is for the benefit of everyone interested in seeing the power of the ABT approach. Here’s a rewrite of his first section, and the start of the second. I’m not attempting any flowery prose, just laying out the fact of the “argument” that ought to be made. The object is to keep the exposition singular and clean — meaning no narrative twists. The story begins with the second paragraph.
America is a great and mighty nation with a complex history. Certain aspects of it’s founding were misguided and resulted in a tragic civil war. Abraham Lincoln presided over those most painful years. He was a visionary who played a fundamental role in righting those societal offenses.
But there is something more to what Lincoln gave us during his truncated presidency — something that plays an enormous role in our society today. He created the National Academy of Sciences. (details on what this has meant)
Therefore today …
And here is the actual Gettysburg Address — one paragraph of exposition, one paragraph of contradiction, one paragraph of consequence. A veritable masterpiece, though not perfect as Abe was clearly conflicted in the third paragraph — torn between his feeling of impotence of a mere speech (“the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here …”) versus the enormity of what the deceased had done.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.