affiliated, the University of Cincinnati, and two or three others that are probably going to, but I shouldn’t talk about them until it’s official. How did the partnership come about, then? Why Dartmouth? As far as I know, from the work we’ve done here, people have come to our summer institute where we invite people from many universities. And the idea is for them to get a taste of our institute through three or four days and then decide if they want to go back to their university and start up a similar program. I think that’s the beginning of the relationship. There may have even been interest before that. Haven’t you been to Dartmouth before for Brains on Trail? Brains on Trial, and before that, Scientific American Frontiers. Maybe 20 years ago with Mike Gazzaniga, a neuroscientist. You were up here before for an episode of Scientific American Frontiers? Yes, I was interviewing a brain scientist called Michael Gazzaniga for a show called Brains on Trial. It showed for a couple of
weeks on public television and it’s on the web now. There are many people on the news that are very resistant to science for religious reasons, such as people that don’t believe in evolution. Do you think that more effective communication with science would help to bridge that gap a bit? Or do you think that the resistance is stemming from something other than lack of understanding? My guess is that good communication would help; the ability to communicate flexibly, not only in one way, would be helpful in getting around points of resistance that now seem insurmountable. And that’s what this training does. It makes you very flexible and able to speak about your science in many different ways and get it to still be the same science. It’s very helpful because it helps you be able to talk to many different audiences. References 1. Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. Alan Alda. Available at http://www.centerforcommunicatingscience.org/alanalda-2/ (29 October 2013). 2. Alan Alda’s Bio (2013). Available at http://www. alanalda.com/alan_alda_actor_bio.htm (29 October 2013).
Photo courtesy of Gavin Huang
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