Science Needs Story

A Blog for the ABT Framework and Story Circles Narrative Training

Science Needs Story

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  • #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!

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