On science blogs this week: #SciO11 Keynote

From #SciO11

Until last night, I knew Robert Krulwich only from his masterly explanatory power on PBS. But what he talked about last night at the ScienceOnline2011 keynote was his labor of aural love, Radiolab, which he puts together with his brilliant collaborator, Jad Abumrad.

Listening regularly to this astounding approach to science writing--Krulwich played several excerpts for us--is now on my ToDo list and should be on yours too. I'm not sure they have much to teach, though, because a lot of what they do so well seems to me to arise from the way they think aurally.

They explain science by telling stories, which all science writers are constantly admonished to do. But their narrative approach goes way beyond the anecdotal lede. They put on mini-plays and mine mini oral history from both scientists and just plain folks. They address the audience directly. They address each other directly in a science-minded version of Car Talk. They play with sound in ways that have no parallels in writing text. And they almost always use humor. Their instincts appear entirely original, and a lot of what they do is not really transferrable to the text I seem to be bound to.

A central Radiolab approach is to aim for an audience a lot of us have given up on--people who are not only not interested in science, but who actively fear it. Krulwich and Abumrad are, in contast to most of us, not preaching to the converted. That means, as Krulwich explained it, not only avoiding jargon, but avoiding technical language altogether--and not even mentioning the word "science."

One message I took away is that reaching for an audience so fearful of science that even the word itself triggers flight requires not just different content, but also different form, novel form that reaches the ear and eye (and brain) in ways that text just doesn't.

Not that we can't all work harder on simplifying. And science writing could certainly use more humor. One of the Saturday sessions here at #SciO11 is about just that. The humor session is one of those that will be livestreamed and archived. So if you're not here, check it out remotely to see what humor might offer for your science writing life. Find the program and link to the livestreaming here.