Blog | Science Needs Story

#200) 2023 is the Tipping Point Year for the ABT Framework
#199) Al Gore’s “Wrong Problem” 16 Years Later: Wants vs Needs
#198) Crowdsourcing Our Knowledge of “HOW TO TEACH THE ABT”
#197) Two Examples of how the ABT is for EVERYBODY
#196) The 4 ABT Long Haulers: Palermo, Howell, Padilla, Knowlton
#195) 25 AND UP: 2 Years, 25 Rounds, 750 Graduates, time for the next phase of the ABT Agenda!
#194) Dr. Michael Osterholm, guest today on The Joe Rogan Experience Podcast: A Quick Guide to the Discussion
#193) Elegant vs Clumsy: Why Climate Communication Fails
#192) Narrative Analysis of “Seaspiracy” Ocean Documentary: A Guide to Our Podcast Episode
#191) The ABT Framework Course Turns One Year Old…
#191) The New Yorker Needs a Dobzhansky Checker
#190) VIEWING ADVICE for the NARRATIVE BLITZ: It’s not a Symposium, it’s a FILM
#189) The ABT Framework Course to Complete Round 11
#188) THE DOBZHANSKY DANCE: Somebody smart is writing speeches for Biden
#187) Three HBO Veterans appear in the ABT Framework Course: View their Sessions
#186) The Banality of Evil: Stephen Miller has Lousy Narrative Intuition
#185) BIDEN: The Amorphous Narrative vs the SINGULAR Narrative
#184) Business Meets Science: What Scientists Writing Proposals Can Learn from the Business World
#183) Go with the Flo: A Great Discussion of Improv Acting with Two Major Improv Veterans
#182) Climate “Contrarian” Marc Morano, 13 years later: Winning?
#181) WORKING CIRCLES: How Story Circles Graduates Can Keep in Shape
#180) ABT FRAMEWORK COURSE, ROUND TWO: The Course So Nice, We’re Running It Twice!
#179) It’s Time for The ABT Framework “Course”
#178) Play Along at Home: Our Story Circles Demo Session
#177) What the Democratic Party Lost with Al Franken: Narrative Intuition
#176) MICHAEL CRICHTON: The Lost Opportunity
#175) Fighting Obfuscation: Communicating About Science Communication, but with Poor Narrative Structure
#174) Nicholas Cage and “Robert McKee” explore the AAA versus ABT divide
#173) BUILDING A BETTER ABT: A 14 Minute “ABT Build Session” from my San Diego Keynote
#172) Fall 2019 Story Circles Schedule
#171) 4 COMEDIANS: THE Most Interesting/Important Discussion of Communication I’ve Ever Heard
#170) Climate Communication Imbalance: The term that’s needed is “Narrative Equivalence” (not “false equivlance”)
#169) Neil Degrasse Tyson Demonstrates that Science Actually Can’t Solve All the Problems of the World
#168) Three Sequential ABT’s for a One Minute Presentation
#167) Our Story Circles Conference Call with National Park Service
#166) Defining “Story” versus “Narrative”
#165) Science Doesn’t Need “A Story”: It needs an understanding of narrative
#164) Beto’s Problem: No narrative depth (get a new speech writer)
#163) The Story Circles Core Principle: “Stop thinking and DO THE WORK!”
#162) John Oliver on Shaming: He Cites, “Agreement, Contradiction, Consequence” (= ABT)
#161) Trump Went Off-Script at CPAC and (Predictably) Scored a Narrative Index of 36
#160) AOC Does Something Democrats Aren’t Good At: “Advancing the Narrative”
#159) This is how the CONVERSATIONAL ABT works and why it’s important
#158) Trump’s Embattled Rose Garden Speech vs Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (His Narrative Match)
#157) 3 Gradients in Narrative Training: One Size Does Not Fit All
#156) STORY CIRCLES: We’ve Come A Long Way, Baby
#155) “Trump’s But”: Still in fine form
#154) Story Circles Testimonial: “I began to see narrative structure everywhere …”
#153) Our challenging “Shaping the Narrative of Invasive Insect Species” work session in Vancouver at the Entomological Society of America Meeting
#152) Story Circles Celebrates 50 Circles!
#151) Not Even DHY: Is this really “science education”?
#150) Story Circles is NOT Competitive (it’s Complementary)
#149) TEMPERAMENT: Democrat Senators had the One Word, but Missed the Narrative Boat
#148) POLITICS: “The THEREFORE Test” for Campaign Slogans
#147) Had I Coached the Democratic Senators Yesterday …
#146) Desperate Times Call for Desperate Narrative Structure, on the Front Page of the NY Times
#145) Trump Still Knows Narrative: 5 Recommendations to Democrats
#144) “Buried Pearls”: 43 years later, why is OBFUSCATION still the central problem of science communication?
#143) My Fall Schedule
#142) Pulitzer Prize Winner Siddhartha Mukherjee Gives Another ABT Tour De Force
#141) Top 5 Benefits from Story Circles Narrative Training
#140) The MJ Hegar Political Video: Democrats Like Non-Narrative Structure
#139) Power of the Singular Narrative: Ornithologist Filardi Pays the Price
#138) AUDIO: A Great Discussion of Story Circles Narrative Training with Government Agencies
#137) Bernie Sanders Makes Clear Why the Democrats are Doomed
#136) Complexity Kills: How to Over-Complicate the Teaching of Story
#135) The Colorado National Park Service Story Circles Video
#134) A Glimpse into Story Circles
#133) A Major Milestone: The Completion of 6 Story Circles at the National Park Service is the Start of “Narrative Culture”
#132) Michelle Wolf’s Narrative Index was a Stunning 47
#131) Our California Climate Adaptation Podcast Special with UCLA: “A Freight Train of Pain” is Coming
#130) The ABT/Narrative Fingerprint of the United States
#129) President Trump Shows How the Narrative Index Works
#128) How the Kids in Florida are like The March for Science
#127) THE NARRATIVE METRICS GAME: How Will Trump’s State of the Union Score?
#126) The Dangerous Depth of Trump’s Narrative Strength
#125) Oprah Gives an ABT Tour De Force
#124) 2018: Year of the Story Circle
#123) A Case Study of Poor Science Communication: R. Alexander Pyron’s Cuckoo Washington Post Extinction Editorial
#122) Tough News for Science Education: Communication Training for Grad Students not the Same as for Research Scientists
#121) Democrats: When will they ever learn (to MESSAGE)
Protected: #121) Tom Steyer And Narrative
#120) Do One Day Storytelling Workshops Work? No
#119) “Teaching for Intellect” Vs. “Training for Intuition”
#118) Eminem Shows Why Climate Communication Is So Limp
#117) How Story Circles Narrative Training Works: Details from a Graduate
#116) Bill Maher’s Writers Know Narrative
#115) PODCAST: The Future is Intellectual, the Past is Experiential/Emotive
114) ABT CLINCHER: 1 Billion “Call Me Maybe” Fans Can’t Be Wrong
#113) Hollywood vs. Journalism: A Reply to Dan Fagin and “hyper-reductionism”
#112) Berkeley: Another Great USDA Demo Day
#111) Trump Continues to Know Narrative: He relishes being laughed at
#110) Banning Trump from Twitter: Valarie Plame Advances a Great Narrative
#109) Good Stories are Rare
#108) President Trump Demonstrates Storytelling Rule #1: The power of specifics, and the power of non-specifics
#107) STORY CIRCLES NARRATIVE TRAINING: Ready for Universities
#106) “Inconvenient Truth” Sequel: We needed Empire Strikes Back, but we got Clone Wars.
#105) Professionals at Work: Narrative analysis of the HBO Real Sports Segment on the Great Barrier Reef
#104) “Dunkirk”: Introducing “The Get to the Point Rule”
103) Democrats, Messaging and Monty Python
#102) Winner of “The Moth” Storytelling Competition Gives Textbook Demonstration of the ABT Dynamic
#101) How Twitter fuels our increasingly mediocre narrative-driven world
#100) The Atlantic demonstrates the ABT
#99) The Great Barrier Reef: If only “most people” were thoughtful
#98) Want to communicate effectively? Hire a comic writer (not a professor)
#97) Bill Maher Got the “Arouse & Fulfill” Elements Backwards
#96) John Kerry Doesn’t Listen So Good
#95) Trump: Climate Hero of All Time?
#94) BREAKING: World Bank Leader Demoted Over ABT Politics
#93) SCALING UP: National Park Service Launches 6 Story Circles in Colorado
#92) Dave Chappelle Shows How Narrative Works
#91) The Earth Optimism Summit: Demonstrating the Power of Narrative (unlike the Marches)
#90) The “No Leadership In Science” March
#89) Melania Trump Scores a Narrative Zero
#88) Michael Crichton’s 1999 Prescient, Unheeded Advice to the Science World
#87) THEREFORE… Earth Optimism
#86) The Oscars Fiasco Shows You What a Story Is (and is not)
#85) Come Watch Us Make TROUBLE at South By Southwest March 9 and 14 in Austin!
#84) The Ikea Version of the ABT
#83) Is this Really How to Communicate Science “Effectively”?
#82) Podcast Triple Play
#81) JAMES CARVILLE: The Embodiment of Narrative Intuition
#80) Trump Inauguration Speech: My Narrative Analysis
#79) Let’s Listen to the First Paragraph of Trump’s Inauguration Speech
#78) PLOS “Narrativity” Paper: Don’t be such a scientist
#77) National Park Service Uses ABT for a new Climate Change Strategy Report
#76) Not a Laughing Matter: Twitter is Non-narrative
#75) 2017: The Year of the ABT
#74) Fact vs. Story: The Narrative World of Today
#73) The ABT Analysis of Mike Mann’s Washington Post Climate Editorial: Where’s the THEREFORE?
#72) “Lalaland” is a Wonderful ABT Tour de Force!
#71) The Rotten Communication Skills of the Coral Reef Community
#70) MILESTONE: Story Circle #15, Demo Day #12
#69) Bob Dylan uses the ABT
#68) Ten Innocent Questions, Ten Obnoxious Answers from an ABT Fanatic
#67) Trump, Mars Attacks and the ABT
#66) Film School, Simplicity and Narrative Intuition
#65) The Dangers of “The Singular Narrative” Versus “The Single Narrative”
#64) The Narrative Index: Looks like Trump Wrote his Own Rotten Al Smith Speech
#63) CLIMATE CHANGE COMMUNICATION: Our Changing Climate is NOT the “Ordinary World”
#62) NY Times: Hacked Emails Reveal Hillary’s Narratively-Challenged Campaign Staff
#61) Lester Holt’s Marginal Performance as Moderator is Revealed by his Narrative Index Score of 17
#60) “Null Narratives”: Trump and the Murder Rate
#59) PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE 1: Five Narrative Criteria to Watch For
#58) Aaron Sorkin’s “But, Except, Then” (BET) triad: It’s the DHY for the Narratively Intense World of TV
#57) JOIN US: I’m Doing a Reddit AMA on the ABT, Next Thursday, Sept 8, 10:00 – 1:00 PDT
#56) NARRATIVE SELECTION: The New York Times Likes “Big Buts”
#55) Will Trump’s Narrative Index Rebound?
#54) Daniel Slotnik: You owe Thom Steinbeck an apology for your obituary of him in the NY Times
#53) John Oliver and EPIC 2014
#52) The Story Circles Fall Tour
#51) Warning: Story Circles is not for the Instant Gratification Crowd
#50) Has Apple lost the “Simplicity” mantra of Steve Jobs?
# 49) Democrats are the Worst Communicators Ever
#48) Channeling the Spirit of Bob Paine
# 47) Story Analysis Exercise: This is How Excellent Storytelling Works
# 46) Josh Fox: “Scattershot” Means You Are Harming the Planet With Your Boring Movies
#44) STORY CIRCLES Goes Wide
#43) Bob Paine: The Best Storytelling Scientist I’ve Ever Known
#42) A Global Tragedy: The “Great Berry Reef” is Rotting
#41) The Power of Blind Enthusiasm: What Highly Educated People Don’t Understand
#40) Oxytocin: John Oliver & Ed Yong versus “The Love Doctor” Paul Zak
#39) Trump Knows Narrative
#38) Jimmy Kimmel helps “Climate Hustle”
#37) Good Intentions Count for Little In Filmmaking
#36) Genentech: The Cutting Edge
#35) Neil Degrasse Tyson Versus Abe Lincoln: Nope
# 34) ABT on Front Page of NY Times, Again
# 33) ABT on the Front Page of the NY Times
# 32) The “Secret” the TED Folks Don’t Know: The ABT (of course)
# 31) Bill Mckibben has Narrative Intuition
# 30) Chris Palmer’s “Top 5 Environmental Movies”
# 29) Michael Crichton had deep “narrative intuition” (duh)
# 28) The ABT is everywhere, except for classrooms
# 27) ADVENTURES IN ABT-LAND: Story Circles Demo Day in Ft. Collins
# 26) Republican Debates Go To Trump
# 25) THE NARRATIVE INDEX 3: Trump Knows Narrative
# 24) THE NARRATIVE INDEX 2: The Baseline
#23) THE NARRATIVE INDEX 1: A New Communications Tool
#22) Hillary is Too Much of a Scientist
#21) “Our yearning for certainty”: The Narrative Dynamic of True Crime TV
#20) Hillary Does Not Have A Narrative
#19) It’s the Problems, Dummy
#18) Trump Language Analysis: Analysts Bringing AAA’s to an ABT Fight
#17) Yet another ABT Speech: MLK’s “I Have A Dream”
#16) FOR STUDENTS OF THE ABT: The delicate power of the ABT words
#15) Fun with Climate in Paris?
#14) “The Big Short” is an Excellent Educational Film
#13) Great Article in the New Yorker on the B.S. Nature of Polling
#12) Fallout 4: A Victim of DHY
#11) Story Circles Goes Operational at USDA/ARS
#10) SHRINKING THE RIVER OF STORY
#9) Operation ABT: The War on Boredom
#8) The Nature Review
#7) The IPCC Needs the ABT Framework (#ABTFramework)
#6) The Union of Concerned Scientist’s Review of “Houston”
#5) The ABT Walk of Life
#4) #ABTframework: The new home base for ABT learning
#3) Acquiring Narrative Intuition Painlessly: The ABT Dice
#2) My “Business of Story” Podcast
#1) “Science Needs Story” Begins!