It’s nearly two weeks since I bought a new iPhone 6S, but they still can’t activate it because of the tangle of Apple ID’s and passwords they had me create. I think they’ve lost track of what Steve Jobs preached. Complex is the default nature of most systems. As Jobs always said, simplicity is hard work — which is especially true in communication.
WHERE HAVE YOU GONE, STEVE JOBS? OUR NATION TURNS ITS OVERLY COMPLICATED EYES TO YOU.
iPhone INCOMPETENCE
I really can’t believe how stupid my experience has been over the past two weeks with the iPhone 6S. I bought a new one. They tried to set it up at the Apple Store, but after spending 1.5 hours trying to upload the contents of my iPhone 5 to the iCloud to back it up, the upload failed because of their poor wireless service (wouldn’t you think the store would have good wireless service?).
I succeeded from home, but then began encountering a tangle of several Apple IDs they let me put into the system (or actually I think created for me — I’ve never created a me.com or iCloud.com email address) somewhere over the past few years.
At one point the guy on the phone started asking me a series of those annoying privacy questions. They were questions I have NEVER, EVER answered in my life — including “Where did your parents meet?” They met on a ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The guy wouldn’t tell me the answer but said the answer he had was a one-word city. How could that be?
He asked several other questions I have never, ever heard, yet said they had answers for them.
What a mess. They ended up having to file some paperwork that will take another 3 to 5 days to clear. All just to activate the phone, which the guy couldn’t do for me because … “It’s just not that simple,” he said, verbatim.
The whole process left me feeling like their security backup systems have gotten so complicated their employees can’t really completely understand them. Which felt like it’s been a long time since Steve Jobs and his obsession with simplicity has left the building.
STORY CIRCLES IS SIMPLE
I guess I’m thinking a lot about simplicity these days because it’s at the core of our Story Circles Narrative Training. The entire program is built around the one simple narrative template of the ABT. It’s working great, and is a thing of beauty to watch how powerful it all is because of one main attribute — simplicity.
But it hasn’t come easy. The ABT is the result of a 25 year journey. Simplicity takes time. We all know this, though I think some of this thinking has been lost at Apple.
The violent crime rate is low, the economy is strong, ISIS is in decline, and Obama has pulled off miracles, but the Democrats are utterly incompetent at communicating any of this. Trump is running as “The Law and Order President” when there’s nothing close to a crime wave. It’s really sad.
LOOK AT THE NUMBERS. From the Urban Crime Reporting Program. The per capita murder rate in 1960 was 0.00005. In 2014 it was 0.00004, meaning it is lower today than even 1960. But you would never know this from listening to Trump. The Democrats appear determined to not get in the way of his distortions.
GOTHAM CITY?
The best quote I heard last night in the commentary on Trump’s nomination speech was political consultant Mike Murphy who said in reference to Trump’s fear-mongering speech, “Who knew we were living in Gotham City with marauding gangs.”
Seriously. Look at the numbers for violent crime. Everyone knows the murder rate is nearly half today of what it was in the early 1990’s, and it’s even lower than in the idyllic early 1960’s.
Trump is billing himself as “The Law and Order President.” It’s so completely wrong. But what is far more wrong is the utter and complete ineptitude of the Democrats to refute this.
It’s straight out of McKee’s Triangle. Trump is telling a big “archplot” fear-based story that is just not true. The Democrats are stuck with the real world “miniplot” story of “There is no crime wave.” It is a tough challenge, but not impossible.
The solution is to tell a powerful archplot story of Trump’s reasons for lying, but do it in an interesting, compelling way that’s something more than just whining about him being a liar.
TRUMP KNOWS NARRATIVE
It’s so sad watching all this. He is a master of narrative as well as performance. The convention had a clear, singular, recurring theme of “Make America Great Again,” for which the word “Great” was easily switched out with “Safe” and “First” and anything else inspiring.
What do the Democrats have planned for their theme? If the past year is any guide, they will change their slogan mid-convention.
The liberal pundits did their best to label the Republican convention as a disorganized mess. But no, it wasn’t. It had energy, spontaneity and everyone spoke constantly of aspirations.
I dread hearing the assessments of the DNC next week. It will be smooth, professional, flawless and … it’s gonna be boring. I guarantee you the most common critique will be “too scripted.” That’s been a problem with previous conventions. This one seems inevitable for that label.
It’s a mess. How can this moron be running as the Law and Order President when there isn’t any sort of a crime wave? And how can the Democrats be so inept as to let him get away with it?
Filmmaker Michael Moore already predicted Trump will win. To quote Han Solo, “I got a bad feeling about this.”
I want to share a great moment I had on Saturday at the wonderful memorial event held at University of Washington for the late, great grandaddy of marine ecology, Robert T. Paine.
As I’ve made clear in both the dedication of my first book and in a blogpost, Bob meant a lot to me. It was 40 years ago this summer that I first met him and he became my undergraduate advisor. We stayed buddies over the years, trading lots of emails in recent years. As Peter Kareiva conveyed so nicely last week on Andy Revkin’s NY Times blog, Bob embodied the very best of everything in ocean science.
At the memorial Bob’s daughters brought lots of his possessions — from books to t-shirts to marine ecology equipment — for everyone to take home whatever they fancied. I’ve never seen that done before, but it was very cool — a chance for people to keep with them some of his enduring spirit — especially his books in which he had written his name.
I was milling around catching up with folks when a friend walked up with a copy of my recent book. It was the copy I had sent Bob last fall and written my heartfelt words of thanks on the opening title page. She gave it to me, innocently assuming I’d want it back. I stood there holding the book, starting to fight back an unanticipated wave of emotion, thinking, “No. I don’t want this back. Ever. I gave it to him. Why would I want it back? It almost feels like rejection.”
It was disorienting. I wasn’t sure what to do. I wanted to throw it in the trash. Something — anything — get it away — this was spiritually wrong.
But then … I swear, within less than a minute I looked across the room and said to the group, “Oh my goodness, is that Chuck Birkeland?”
He was my invertebrate natural history professor that same summer I met Bob Paine and one of the many incredibly cool, fun and smart marine ecology faculty I got to know in the U.W. Zoology Department. The last time I had seen him was 35 years ago in Palau. In fact, below is a photo of us headed out for a dive on that trip, plus he and I both worked on the crown-of-thorns starfish problem.
He had come from Hawaii for the event. I walked over to him, he immediately smiled, said he had enjoyed my recent work on science communication, BUT THEN … he said, “Of course, I haven’t had a chance to get your most recent book.”
Bingo. Amazing. THAT was what was meant to happen with the copy of my book inscribed to Bob Paine. And it did, as you can see in the photo I insisted we take (above).
I left the event with the biggest smile on my face in a long, long time. Incredible how some things like that work out.
Bob, your copy of my book has ended up on just the right book shelf.
HEADED OUT FOR A DIVE in Palau, 1981. Lanna Chang on the left, Chuck Birkeland in blue shirt on the right, seated next to me.
This woman has deep narrative intuition and a pretty funny story to tell. It’s not a perfect story, but she does a great and hilarious job with what she has. Let’s listen to it then break it down for structure.
I DON’T DO WELL WITH “EXTRA”. Jessica LaShawn needs her own show.
DELIVERING THE LITTLE PURPLE MAN IN SECRECY
I love this story so much. One of my best friends and favorite people in the world is the singer/actor/dancer Carol Hatchett who was one of The Harlettes (Bette Midler’s backup singers) for many years and a frequent backup singer for Prince. I got to know her twenty years ago when she starred in my USC musical comedy film, “You Ruined My Career,” which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in 1996. I’ve heard lots of stories from her about Prince over the years just like this one. She and everyone she worked with loved him, just as this woman does, but he did have his particular ways.
So it’s a hilarious story, not just because it’s really funny, and not just because she’s really funny, but most importantly, because this woman is a great storyteller with deep “narrative intuition” — the key element we work to establish with Story Circles Narrative Training.
To analytically show you how good she is, I break down her story into individual elements and explain their dynamics. I’m using a mixture of templates here — ABT, the Logline Maker, and The Story Cycle.
STORY ANALYSIS USING THE ABT AND OTHER TEMPLATES
This little exercise is a chance to see how excellent storytelling is equal parts science and art. The science part is the template structure that we can spot. The art half is her ability to know which specific details to include.
One of the key things to note is how little superfluous information is delivered, yet at the same time everything in her story is clear. This is the sort of optimization process a person with great narrative intuition is able to achieve. Great storytelling is about knowing which key details to keep in, and which can be cut out. The set of criteria for the selection of material is too great and complex to do it analytically — you just have to have the intuition for it.
Central to everything is the ABT dynamic at multiple levels. Sometimes she used the actual And, But, Therefore words. Other times you can feel their presence and I’ve added them in parentheses. Keep in mind that “so” is the word that is usually used in speaking instead of the clunky “therefore.”
Also, keep in mind how crucial and essential the “end of the first act” is to effective storytelling. There is no more important element to narrative structure. If you delay it too long, you bore everyone. If it happens too early, people get lost. Knowing where the first act should end may be the single most important element in making a story work. She pulls it off flawlessly.
LINE BY LINE STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS
OPENING ABT – She automatically catches your attention with her first sentence. The reason for this is that it is narratively structured with the ABT.
She begins by saying, “Hey, y’all, I’m so sad, I just heard about Prince and I love Prince, lord knows I do … (BUT) uh, not as much most of y’all, I haven’t even seen “Purple Rain” all the way through, so (THEREFORE) I just wanted to get on here real quick and tell y’all a story about the time Prince fired me …”
JUSTIFICATION – As she continues, she explains why she’s telling this story, “ … because some of y’all need to laugh and you need to hear something great to know what kind of man Prince was.”
ESTABLISHING SETTING – The next sentence begins the story by establishing the setting through place and time, “I was blessed to actually work with Prince when I was out in L.A.” This is similar to the “Once upon a time” cue that signals we’re headed into story mode.
EXPOSITION – She’s laying down the details with next bit, “I was working the Grammy Awards — I worked the Grammy Awards like three or four years.” This starts to give us the context in which the story occurs.
FORESHADOWING (with an ABT) – “And I got assigned to Prince — (AND) now, how they even assigned me to Prince, I don’t know, BUT y’all know Prince is a little difficult, and (THEREFORE) he was a little difficult.” By warning us he’s a little difficult we can already begin to feel a little bit of anticipation of things to come — we start thinking, “uh oh, she’s working with a prima donna”.
DESCRIPTION OF CHARACTER (an ABT) – She describes the main character, “I got to work with him AND he’s so tiny and cute — I’m about five seven, like two hundred pounds, so I’m not like a super-little lady, BUT Prince is like right here to me and (THEREFORE) he was so cute.”
END OF THE FIRST ACT – “So nobody knew that Prince was performing at the Grammy Awards and so it was my job to keep it a secret about Prince, so I go in there and see Prince and he cool as heck, and he’s laid back, and he’s like I gotta find a way to get to the stage, and I was like, oh, I don’t really know how to get you to the stage, we could like walk through here and get to the stage, and (BUT) he’s like “No one is supposed to know I’m here!” And I’m like … okay — y’all know I don’t do well with “extra” — I don’t do well with extra.”
WHY THIS IS THE END OF THE FIRST ACT – You can feel she was in her “Ordinary World,” just doing her normal job, escorting the celebrity to the stage. But her Ordinary World gets overturned and she enters the “Special World” (in a big way) when Prince tells her something she’s never heard before — that the celebrity needs to keep his presence a secret, even back stage.
ACCENTUATION OF THE END OF THE FIRST ACT – To add a little drama to this important point of structure she says, “So that’s when I knew that this was a set up and this was a chance for me to really get closer to God.”
COMIC PREDICAMENT – We now have a classic comic predicament established. We have two characters who have conflicting goals. One just wants to do her (hopefully routine) job as simply as possible, the other wants do extraordinary things (to maintain secrecy about his presence). That’s a recipe for an entire comedy movie — like the 1981 version of “Arthur” with Dudley Moore (not the remake which flopped) where his butler is basically Jessica and he is Prince — same situation.
THE SECOND ACT BEGINS – She now starts her journey of addressing the problem she has posed (trying to get Prince to the stage in secrecy). She says, “Again, Prince is difficult — most of y’all know that — so I figure out a way to navigate Prince and try to sneak him through, BUT he sees this little roller car, and he’s like “Hey, get me on this roller cart.” Okay, you know those little rollable hanger-like closets, but on wheels — its like a closet on wheels. He gets his little tiny butt on this little roller cart, and he hides behind a sheet on the roller cart, and he wants me to push him.”
THE STAKES GET RAISED – She has set up her journey which seems reasonably simple, but now she’s going to make it more dramatic as she says, “Now I cannot see where I’m going on this little roller cart in front of it, and we are trying to navigate through traffic and we are on set for the Grammy Awards. And I don’t really know where I’m going. It’s just little old me pushing this big old heavy metal roller cart with Prince on it.
FURTHER RAISING THE STAKES – Here she makes it clear how difficult the job is. “You cannot drop Prince. You cannot hit Prince. And you can’t say “Hey, help me,” because Prince is on here. It’s up to me to keep it a secret because Prince is on this little ugly cart. So Prince has got an attitude because I’m bumping into stuff. Then I get an attitude because you get an attitude with me. You can’t come for me — I don’t care if you are Prince — I love you Prince — I already done got cussed out by Stevie Wonder cause I kept saying I’m sorry — and you come over and you got an attitude with me because I can’t push you on this little roller cart, sir.
FIRST CULMINATION – The story has been built way up to the point now where something has to give. And it does as everything unravels and plunges her into her “darkest hour.”
DARKEST HOUR – This is where our hero, Jessica, plunges into disaster. She says, “So Prince gets mad and he tells me that I’m FIRED! He told me to get the hell out, and away. And I was like, you little old man — you — I swear … And let me tell you what he did — he flung his hat — you know how Prince flung his hat — and he got on the little roller cart and he stuck his little six and a half shoe out, and he starts scooting, through the sheet on the little roller cart, and he just left me there, looking stupid and dumb, and I couldn’t get back in the dressing room.
PLANT AND PAYOFF – She gets a final accentuation here by doing what is called “plant and payoff.” This refers to when something in a story is “planted” early on as it is mentioned and may be lightly funny but doesn’t seem that necessary to the story, yet it will have impact later if it is “paid off.” A while back she had planted her past experience with Stevie Wonder. Now she pays it off by saying, “And I was hungry and I ain’t have nowhere to go, and they were like okay we gotta re-assign you to somebody else, and then Stevie Wonder was like, “She probably sorry.”
END OF STORY AT TWO THIRDS POINT – That ends up being the last bit of narrative and the end of her story. We’re only about about two thirds of the way through the video, but the storytelling now pretty much ends. Her next line is, “So, that’s what happened to me and that’s what happened when I worked with Prince.” “So” is the same word of consequence as “therefore” which means she’s at the “T” in her over-arching ABT and this is all we’re going to get for storytelling.
From here she conveys the general idea that he did make it to the stage, but her comments are no longer tightly feeding the narrative (problem/solution dynamic) as she hits on summary notes about “I learned a lesson” and her friends texting her and “So that’s what happened to Prince,” and some silliness about how he was “the founder of kick push.”
In fact, you can feel how she has exited from the narrative world. The narrative part of her brain is no longer active. She’s now just tossing out statements of summary and random thoughts. It feels totally different.
It’s too bad — we were ready for the story to get crazier at this point, but she sticks to the truth, which wasn’t quite as wild as earlier.
WHY THIS VIDEO DIDN’T GO VIRAL: NO THIRD ACT
Nobody knows exactly why some utterly stupid videos go viral and others don’t. Length is a fairly important variable but not absolute. Most viral videos are about two minutes or less, yet the KONY 2012 viral video has over 100 million views and is nearly a half hour long.
Demographics are essential with viral videos because of the teen demographic — they are the driving force behind almost all viral videos — if you’re not playing to the teens, you’re probably not going viral. That’s what drove the KONY 2012 video and made brainless entertainers like Pewdie Pie into Youtube mega-stars.
There’s nothing teen-appealing with this video, and at over 5 minutes it’s relatively long, but also it has a major structural problem in that it doesn’t have a third act. If you view Matthew Winkler’s amazing animated video about The Hero’s Journey you see that Jessica’s story ends with Stage 6 — The Darkest Hour. She got fired, was banished, and that was it — story over.
GIVING JESSICA’S STORY A REWRITE
What the story needed in narrative terms was for her to quickly regroup after he fires her, decide to get even with Prince for being humiliated by him, concoct some scheme to humiliate him, have it succeed in a wild and hilarious way, then in the final scene have him offer his apology to her so we can see he’s changed and become a better person. So what’s missing is actually the whole second half of the second act in addition to a third act.
The key point is the story abandoned us in the middle of the journey, which meant that no matter how tremendous her story skills might be — and lord knows she is brilliant and hilarious — unless she made stuff up, she just didn’t have the material she needed to bring the story home.
To put it in simple terms, imagine a sports highlight reel scene of a player shooting the winning basket where we see him pull off a wild move stealing the ball from his opponent, spinning to his left, jumping up, shooting the ball, following the ball in mid-air, then cutting to a commercial. That’s kind of what she does with the abrupt ending.
And this, once again, is why scientists have good reason to fear storytelling dynamics. There is often an irrepressible desire to fill in all that missing stuff in order to have a story that will go viral. When a scientist gathers all the data to tell half the story, there can be a temptation to over-reach for the last parts to make the story arc complete. It’s only human. Which is what makes it dangerous.
But at the same time, when it comes to scientists and storytelling, the most important thing is not to blindly shun the whole of “story,” but rather to confront your fears and gain an understanding of what causes the problems.
THE POWER OF STORYTELLING RESTS IN THE SPECIFICS
One final tidbit. She does a great job of demonstrating this absolutely fundamental rule of how the power of storytelling rests in the specifics. I repeat this endlessly in Story Circles. It’s the little details that are so powerful — namely her referring to his “little tiny butt” and his “little six and a half shoe.” So classic. She’s awesome.
It wasn’t the greatest story ever told, but it was a perfect front end of what could have been one for the ages. And now you see why Hollywood is such a fickle place. They want perfect stories, and they get them — either through the shaping of fact or the manufacturing of fiction.
Filmmaker Josh Fox is the embodiment of misguided environmental good intentions. His recent environmental “documentary” on HBO titled, “How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change” was labeled “conceptually scattered” by Variety, “scattershot” by the NY Times, and Village Voice called it an exercise in, “exasperating self-importance.” It is people like Josh Fox who give the entire field of “environmental filmmaking” an unwatchably bad reputation. He needs to quit.
Environmental filmmaking is hard enough without this guy further ruining the brand.
DEAR “UNEVEN” ENVIRONMENTAL FILMMAKER …
Please stop. I recorded Josh Fox’s recent HBO film (the lengthy title is above) and tried to watch it, but I honestly couldn’t make it through the opening self-loving credits of him dancing alone in his home. So I’ll just let Village Voice, Variety, and the NY Times provide the details with their reviews.
I disliked his first movie, “Gasland” enough. It featured his stooooopid “breathy voiceovers” (as the Village Voice review calls them) that automatically speak of distortion, dishonesty and exaggeration with every breathy word. This is not “documentary” filmmaking by any stretch of the word. It is biased, self-certain editorializing at a level beyond even Michael Moore. It’s the sort of polemics that chase away people who are on the fence about the severity of environmental concerns.
“Gasland” at least had enough storytelling to garner good reviews. But here’s the problem — both the Motion Picture Academy (it was nominated for an Oscar) and the majority of film critics are lefty do-gooders who are more than willing to give these sort of boring “documentaries” a positive review simply because the films carry their values and politics. The reviews are generally characterized by a “YOU NEED TO SEE THIS MOVIE” attitude.
The truth is, nobody needs to see any movie, ever, unless it is truly interesting, coherent and engaging. Not “scattershot.” It really doesn’t work to have “some good sequences” buried in a boring mess. The entire film needs to be watchable. The planet really does need tightly scripted, well told narratively structured filmic essays on these issues of the sort that even environmental opponents can concede are well made.
And what is it with these “critics” that they don’t grasp the fact that a film needs to both have the right message AND be watchable to actually advance their beloved causes?
There is no excuse for what Josh Fox does other than self-indulgence, laziness, distraction, and self-delusion. The goal of good filmmaking is “to tell a good story.” This is even more important when the credibility of an extremely important issue like environmentalism is at stake.
Supporters of environmentalism need to realize that Josh Fox is hurting, not helping. If you care about the planet, you should ask him to stop. What he’s doing is worse than Exxon. I know that sounds like an exaggeration, but it really is true.
As some great scholar once said (I think), “To err is human, to bore is unforgivable.”
It’s been a year since the conclusion of our four Story Circles prototypes. The program is now fully operational with Demo Days scheduled or completed with 5 government agencies (USDA, USFWS, USGS, NASA, NPS), 4 universities (Univ Maryland, Yale, Tufts, UCLA), Genentech and lots of others in negotiation. Here’s our new 2 minute video about Story Circles. For details visit: www.StoryCirclesTraining.com
STORY CIRCLES NARRATIVE TRAINING. As Mike Strauss, Director of the Office of Scientific Quality Review at USDA says, “Story Circles doesn’t teach writing, it teaches thinking.”
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.
A GIANT OF THE OCEAN WORLD HAS LEFT US
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).
My pathway to him was by volunteering for one of his graduate students, Tom Suchanek, who was also doing his field work on Bob’s beloved Tatoosh island off the northwest corner of Washington’s Olympic Penninsula. The Coast Guard gave Bob exclusive access to the island. The first year I helped on Tatoosh there were still Coast Guard families living on the island, but then the lighthouse was automated and everyone moved away. As anyone who ever worked there can tell you, it was an amazing place to visit — alive with marine life, sea birds, wild flowers and storms blowing in off the open Pacific coast.
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.
THE “GREAT BERRY REEF” IS ROTTING
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.
AS WENT JAMAICA, SO WILL PROBABLY GO AUSTRALIA
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.
AT LEAST SOME OF THIS PARTICULAR FUTURE CAN BE PREDICTED
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.
“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.
NO PLACE FOR HUMOR?
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.
OCCUPY SUCCESS STREET
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.”
BERNIE AND TRUMP ARE BLIND ENTHUSIASM COME TO LIFE
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.”
“I RECOMMEND EIGHT HUGS A DAY AND — OH, CRAP, HERE COMES JOHN OLIVER!”
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 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.
“OUR YEARNING FOR CERTAINTY” AND THE POWER OF STORYTELLING
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.
STEVE GOULD WOULD HI FIVE JOHN OLIVER
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.
