Erik Tillman, Phd, Formerly of the Kim Lab & Currently A Fellow at Vida Ventures, LLC
The Great Communicators Podcast is a part of Gradcommx. Gradcommx, targeted at enhancing research communication, is the first offering of Gradx – a professional development project created for the graduate student population at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by the Office For Graduate Education.
MUSIC & SOUNDS
“All The Best Fakers” by Nick Jaina is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License (http://freemusicarchive.org) “Front Runner” by Blue Dot Sessions is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial License. (http://freemusicarchive.org)
Welcome to The Great Communicators Podcast presented by The MIT Office of Graduate Education, a professional development podcast expressly designed to bring lessons from the field to our graduate student researchers.
My name is Adam Greenfield and if you ask a lot of sports fans what draws them to their favorite sport, they’ll probably say it’s the action. But for some, myself included, it’s also a physical and verbal performance that draws them in.
In most sports, if you listen closely and pay attention, all of the athletes involved are all communicating in one form or another, whether it’s verbally or physically. They’re speaking to their teammates, explaining what actions they’re going to take, hopefully without the other team figuring it out first, and also expressing to the audience watching a desire to achieve something special.
Of course, while scientists aren’t competing on a literal field of play, they are, in a sense, conducting their own communicative performance in hopes of getting their own something special across to their audience.
In this episode, we’re going to get a glimpse into the sport of American football and when it’s all said and done, we’ll see that when it comes to communicating, we can learn a lot from something that’s more than just a game.
SAGE ROSENFELS My name is Sage Rosenfels. I am a retired NFL quarterback of 12 seasons. ADAM GREENFIELD
And even though Sage is retired from playing the game of football, his current life path still involves various aspects of communication and performance. SAGE ROSENFELS I dabble in different aspects of the media, whether it be calling football games, writing articles, doing radio shows, radio interviews, all that type of stuff. ADAM GREENFIELD
As I mentioned, in most sports the players are constantly communicating with each other, both physically and verbally. When it comes to football, you’ll see coaches on the sideline using hand signals or large signs relaying plays to the players on the field. Typically in the NFL, the quarterback, essentially the leader of the offense, has an electronic communication piece in his helmet that the coaches use to relay plays from the sideline or a coaches booth high up in the stands to the player out on the field. The quarterback then, in the huddle, relays the play to the rest of his teammates on the field just prior to running the play. Sometimes you’ll even see something on the quarterback’s wrist, like a wristband, that has the plays listed for reference. To get just a little taste of what these plays sound like and how a quarterback would call them out, I asked Sage if he could give an example or two. SAGE ROSENFELS Double right zebra right three jet zebra arches. ADAM GREENFIELD
And…. SAGE ROSENFELS Twins right motion scat right 525 F post swing. ADAM GREENFIELD As it turns out, these are the exact same plays. We dive deeper into the language aspect of communication in other episodes so we’ll keep it simple in this one but basically, in football, there are different types languages so it’s possible to say the same thing in different ways. Now, I don’t know about you but I was very curious to get the breakdown of the plays. SAGE ROSENFELS So generally in an NFL play you start with a formation, two players on the right and two players on the left or just start with three players on the right and one player the left. And then there’s what they call the “strength,” which is usually what the position of tight end signifies the strength of the formation.
[start fast forward sound effect at start of blue font, “what the position…”]
So on a play double right… double is sort of a different way of saying two…………
……….The running backs, they’re listening for the three jet and zebra arches. That’s really it. They’re not so worried about the formation as much. Offensive linemen are really just listening for three jet. That’s all they really care about, is the pass protection aspect of the plays. [use the following narration to be used over the blue, fast forwarded part]
ADAM GREENFIELD
You know, while this is a very cool and interesting breakdown of the play, perhaps I underestimated it’s depth. There really is a lot to that little group of words that is the play. But let’s get to the gist of what all of this means. So right… about… here. [end fast-forward effect, line this narration part right up until end of blue text]
SAGE ROSENFELS So everyone has their individual responsibilities and it sort of tells everyone what to do but generally almost all NFL and college offenses start with a formation, a possible motion, some sort of protection, and then the pass pattern. ADAM GREENFIELD That point is important to keep in mind because there will inevitably be moving, complex parts to your performance and talk. While most football players in a huddle are listening for their individual responsibility within the play call, the quarterback has to know every teammate’s responsibility. You, the quarterback of your own performance, will need to know each part of your performance and how they together create effective communication. SAGE ROSENFELS What’s amazing is how few people really understand all the things a quarterback needs to know to be successful.
ADAM GREENFIELD
And this doesn’t even include the fact that these NFL quarterbacks are performing in front of tens of thousands of people each week. Oh, and don’t forget the television audience, which could be in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. So there’s an onus on the athlete to perform a task, which is really the responsibility of any performer; to perform a task you have promised to an audience and in turn, communicate an idea or desire. In Sage’s case, it’s playing a fast-paced and demanding game. In your case, it could be showing how your research has lived up to the responsibility required of you as a scientist. Just like Sage, you need to be conscious of the audience’s expectations of you. I know, that sounds like a lot of pressure and we’d be remiss if we didn’t say it wouldn’t be nerve wracking to perform in front of large stadiums full of people. It’s unavoidable. It’s human. Most of us, me included, can’t really conceptualize how that feels when a stadium is full and everyone is watching you. Sage does, though, and filled us on what that was like for him and also that that nervous fear that may be unavoidable but in time can go away. SAGE ROSENFELS My first college game probably had over 50-55,000 fans. I definitely remember walking down- from the locker room, you had to sort of walk down a ramp to the field and really just looking up at all the people in the stands and the crowd and just being in awe. And I’m sure my mouth was open, my jaw was dropped. Over time you definitely get more and more used to it and you get so focused on what you’re doing, this crowd sort of becomes this thing that’s around you and it’s something you don’t really pay attention to.
ADAM GREENFIELD
But surely all those people yelling had to have some kind of effect, right? SAGE ROSENFELS
Believe me, we can’t hear you when you yell at us from the stands. We don’t hear any of it. We’re very focused on our job and plus, there’s usually 70-80,000 people. We’re not going to hear your complaint over their voices as well.
ADAM GREENFIELD Again, you, the scientist, won’t constantly have other scientists trying to tackle you so in a way, you really don’t have that sort of distraction to take you away from your fear of engagement with an audience during a talk.
However, perhaps there’s another way of looking at it. Maybe you, the scientist, have it ten times easier because without that distraction, you can focus on your talk and interaction with the people in front of you. Good old perspective. Along with focus, Sage brought up a subject other guests we’ve talked to in the series have raised, and it plays a significant role in the overall goal of strengthening communication: Practice. SAGE ROSENFELS Anytime you practice something hundreds and hundreds and thousands of times, you get so used to it that your body just sort of does it. It just sort of adjusts and you’ve trained your mind over the years to make certain throws or make certain reads. ADAM GREENFIELD
When it comes to the performance area of communication, the process of repetition plays a pretty big factor in your success as a speaker or performer.
In fact, it’s kind of amazing what happens to your perception of your surroundings once you’ve repeated the same action over and over, whether it’s during a game, during a talk, or while you’re reciting your talk over and over in your bathroom mirror. SAGE ROSENFELS I think you just get so focused on what you’re doing, you’re just not worried about what’s going on around you and you’re so focused on the game plan and what the coach wants you to do in that play, that you dive into that so much, you sort of forget about all the rest that’s going on. I believe if you really understand the game at a high level, again, the science of the game, the speed of the game will start to slow down. If you’re one of those players who, I guess, isn’t well-schooled in all the intricacies of football, I think the game can feel really, really fast and chaotic and there’s a lot going on but if you’ve really mastered, sort of, the X’s and O’s of the game, what everyone’s responsibility is, the defensive responsibilities, what’s going to happen, and you can anticipate, the game does slow down much more than people realize.
ADAM GREENFIELD
Alright, so maybe you’re not dodging tackles or giving talks to tens of thousands of people in an open-air stadium. But when it comes to performing and communicating in such a way that your audience leaves with more knowledge and satisfaction, I’d say this episode proves you can learn a lot from athletes.
The language you use will tell your peers and audience members what direction you intend to head in or what actions you plan on taking. Furthermore, it informs those around you or those paying attention of the results of your actions.
And that’s where practice comes into play. Consistently repeating your communication, whether it’s to peers or to a wall, will play a very big role in how well you are able to communicate in the big moment. As Sage mentioned, when you understand something at a high level, you’re able to anticipate potential stumbling blocks and adjust your communication performance.
Thanks for listening to The Great Communicators Podcast brought to you by The MIT Office of Graduate Education. My name is Adam Greenfield, and feel free to talk amongst yourselves.
This is episode is the full, unedited interview with Len Cabral. If you haven’t listened to the fully produced episode yet, we strongly encourage you to do so before listening to this one. They’re shorter in length and much more refined.
EPISODE CREDITS
Guest Starring Len Cabral, Professional Storyteller
Erik Tillman, Phd, Formerly of the Kim Lab & Currently A Fellow at Vida Ventures, LLC
The Great Communicators Podcast is a part of Gradcommx. Gradcommx, targeted at enhancing research communication, is the first offering of Gradx – a professional development project created for the graduate student population at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by the Office For Graduate Education.
MUSIC & SOUNDS
“Divider” by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under Attribution 4.0 International License (http://freemusicarchive.org)
Hello, Adam Greenfield here, host of The Great Communicators podcast series. What you’re about to hear is the full, unedited interview with one of the guests we spoke with. If you haven’t listened to the fully produced episode yet, I definitely encourage you to do so before listening to this one. They’re shorter in length and much more refined. You can find them all at gradx.mit.edu/podcasts.
The idea behind these longer, unedited conversation is to give you an opportunity to hear the entire talk, warts and all. This is not only a fun way to hear the full flow of the conversation but it also emphasizes the importance of the points made in the shorter, produced episodes, which again, can be found at gradx.mit.edu/podcasts.
Thanks for listening and enjoy the conversation.
Adam Greenfield: Ok, to start, an easy question. Name and what you would say your title or occupation is.
Len Cabral: Ok, my name is Len Cabral and I’m a professional storyteller.
A: And you’ve been doing that since the mid-70’s, yes?
L: Yes, since 1976.
A: So that was- you were in your mid-20’s around then?
L: Yes, I was. I was in my mid-20’s.
A: Was there anything that triggered the start of the storytelling path?
L: Well, I was working in a daycare center and I was in charge of 15 five year olds. That’ll make you a storyteller. But I was taking classes at a nearby college, Rhode Island College in early childhood development and children’s theater and creative drama, and I was always interested in theater. And I got involved with a children’s theater company, do a lot of reader’s theater. And I guess I was influenced by a lot of TV program I watched as a young boy, too.
A: Which programs?
L: Well, they were different variety shows. There was Red Skelton, there was Laugh In, then there were comedians I was excited about, like Jonathan Winters, there’s Lenny Bruce and Dick Gregory and later on it was Richard Pryor, Danny DeVito, like the physical comics. I guess it was a combination of a lot of actors and people in my own family. I came from a large family so there was a lot of banter going on in the family.
A: You mentioned Red Skelton and I remember- that name, I haven’t heard it in years, but as a kid my parents used to have these albums that were kind of like a- you would play them it was kind of like a call and response kind of thing. It was like you knew what you were supposed to say. I remember as a kid laughing so hard my stomach would hurt. And especially when I would listen or watch Red Skelton. My parents loved him and it was a great name.
L: Yeah, he would do all those different characters. Clem Kadiddlehopper and Gertrude.
A: Ah, man. Memories. I might have to call my mom after this and talk to her about that. So you came from a big family? How many siblings?
L: Well, I have three brothers but I have lots of cousins and uncles. So we’d get together for Sunday afternoon at grandma’s house and there’s just be a lot of banter, especially as we got older, we became closer with all my cousins and the banter with the uncles became part of the family fabric.
A: Are they also into storytelling as much as you are?
L: Uh, well, no. I’m the storyteller. But they were all storytellers and characters in one way or another.
A: Can you give me an example?
L: Actually, my father. My father was a good storyteller. He’d tell a story. But there are more things that happened on the job or when they were growing up, working as teenagers, and just experiences that they’ve had. And then when I was growing up it was “children are to be seen and not heard.” And so if we were quiet enough, we could hear all these stories that weren’t meant for us. There’d be banter and gossip about this neighbor and that neighbor and funny things would happen that they didn’t know we kids were listening on. Stuff like that.
A: Yeah, I used to steal my parents’ Truly Tasteless Jokes books and just kinda sneak away in the corner.
L: Oh yeah! And the Redd Foxx albums.
A: Yes! Those, too. So it seems like, then, your preferred audience, if you could choose one, would be the kids or the youth, I guess.
L: Well, most of my work is through schools so it’s K through 12 and so that’s most of my work. So yeah, most of my material is geared towards those in elementary and middle school and high school. Though, at festivals around the country, it’s mostly adults at these festivals. So we do have opportunities to share stories with adults but the majority of my work is in school settings.
A: Is there something to your work that lends itself better to school settings than others?
L: Well, I think the opportunity is there because there are more schools than venues for adult storytelling and since I focus on that more, I try to find the stories that are- that would be most helpful in a school setting for that age group, for different age groups. With the use of different types of stories, using repetition or participation, be they folk tales, fairy tales, or myths from around the world.
A: I just watched a video of you telling a story about a bear and a chipmunk-
L: Mm hmm.
A: -to kids, to a group of kids, and there’s that call and response going on and they were so into it. And there was a time where they would slowly, as kids do, sort of go off on their own tangent but you would be able to bring them back around and it was a fun interaction that you had. Is there an interaction you prefer with kids than you do with adults when it comes to storytelling?
L: Yeah, well, when telling to a young audience, I try to use a lot of participation and audience involvement because it’s important for the audience- for youngsters to be involved with the story, to participate. We have so many things where they’re just sitting back watching and not [need better audio here]. When they’re listening to a story and they’re being asked to participate, they have an effect on that story, they work with that story, it becomes part of them, and they feel part of the story. And so it allows us to reach higher ground with them and get them to a deeper engagement when they’re listening to participate.
A: I want to talk about, if adults require that, sort of, interaction with them as kids would.
L: Well, there are stories where we’re- where are adults are participating, maybe not as actively as a young audience would because they’re different stories. But I think all listening audiences participate in one way or another. For example, if I said- if I began a story and I said, “Once…,” the audience is going to know, “Oh, I’m probably going to say ‘once upon a time.” So they’re ahead of me with the story. I said, “Once there was…” or “Once long….” They’re going to know, “Oh, this is going to be ‘once long ago.” So they’re always a word or two ahead of the story and that’s when, sometimes, the story changes up and that’s where you have the “ah ha” moment.
Patrick Yurick: I was just going to say that, like, we were talking about this earlier but, one of my favorite conversations I had with Len was about, before I started teaching, he was talking about the lyricism of storytelling, something I never considered. I’ve studied poetry, I’ve studied music making. But I never linked in a narrative form that having tropes or ideas that you establish that the audience can return to…. You said it, like the way a chorus works. You have a chorus and everybody knows “Yesterday” from the Beatles, and then there’s new information and that’s where you forget all the lyrics because it’s the only time they say it, then you get confused but it’s okay because you’re coming back to the thing you’re familiar with.
L: Yeah.
P: And there’s this one story that Len tells that I remember from when I was a little kid, is Wiley and the Hairy Man, and my dad and I- my dad thinks it’s the funniest story because it has beagles in it and we had hunting dogs growing up. So it was like- I just have these memories of growing up as a little kid and he will, even if you say Wiley and the Hair Man, he’ll start chuckling. “Wiley and the HAIRY man!” My dad never really got into kids stuff and that was this really powerful thing that, still to this day, I have this connection because he remembered that refrain and it was just as important to him- well, maybe in a different way, I have no idea, but- as it was to me. So it was, like, interesting how in the other speakers we’ve talked to, in the interviewees for this course and the podcast, we haven’t really talked about techniques that can be used to keep the audience-
L: Engaged.
P: -engaged-
L: Mm hmm.
P: -while you’re also being mindful of introducing new information. How are you looping back to this other thing?
L: That is part of the repetition where, as you mentioned in a chorus, when that chorus comes back in a song, everybody joins in. And the same thing with the story, where people are listening to a story and here comes that refrain that’s familiar to them and they can grab onto that and they’re ready to go to the next journey of that story. So it’s sort of like a safe ground, a safe spot where the familiarity of the story sort of carries you on to the next part of the story.
P: I have a question, to follow that up. In kids stuff you tend to create almost a catchphrase, you’re like bashing them over the head with it. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. Just more like, “No, this is definitely the more familiar part,” like “Wiley and the HAIRY man,” you make sure they know. Is it different for adults?
L: Um…
P: And, like, how is it different?
L: No, it’s- well, you don’t need to- a lot of times that repetition is used with young audiences so that you can hold their attention span. With adults you don’t need that repetition as much because they’re adults and hopefully they have an attention span. But with young children you want to be able to keep them engaged with something familiar to them and also have them verbally participate which helps them stay with the story. With adults, sometimes it’s a set-up so that you can do a story within a story where the story kind of comes back and folds in on itself, which creates the “ah ha” moment. It’s when they go, “Ooohhh, okay.” Because something happened at the beginning of the story all of a sudden comes back at the end of that story and kind of ties it together but it’s a surprise. It was just almost like a throwaway line at the beginning of the story and toward the end of the story you see where that throwaway line was really a strong part of the story.
P: So does that mean it’s, like- you had me read that book by Christopher Booker so I- Len lent me a book called “The Seven Basic Plots” or he told me to read it when I was starting to write. And it’s 1000 pages and it’s some guy’s dissertation about how all stories in the world are the seven same stories and he proved this by trying to catalog as many stories as humanly possible.
A: Wow.
P: And I read half of it. When it got to the tragedy and comedy chapters I had a harder time with that. One of the things I was connecting to what you just said was like, so you set up a conflict, right? Like that conflict in the beginning leads us to understand where the solution will be? But it almost is, like, we know where the solution will be but it’s almost impossible to get there and the interest in the story is how-
L: Where that journey takes you.
P: Yeah.
L: And sometimes, I guess that setup or that conflict which appears to be a conflict in the beginning isn’t really a conflict, it’s the beginning of a resolution to something else that transpires in the story where the twist comes in, where some stories, like I mentioned, fold in on themselves and it causes the audience- I guess a way to say that would be, like, a hot spot, especially working with youth, say, their attention span is maybe three minutes because it’s geared to commercials on television, how they set people up. And so every three minutes there’s some hot spot, something in the story that makes kids go, “Ohhh.” And then goes on for another three minutes, then something else happens where they go, “Oh.” And it perks their interest. It’s almost like a way to- “Ok, I’ve gassed up. I can listen for another three minutes. Ooh, I gassed up again. I can listen for another three minutes.” It lengthens their attention span and you get these children whose attention span might be seven minutes but because you tell a story in such an engaging way that they can stay with that story for fifteen to twenty minutes because you’ve interspersed hot spots every two or three minutes in the story where it perks their interest. Either it perks their interest or they go, “Ah ha ha ha!” or “Ahhhhh.” And that “ah” or “ha ha ha” or “oooh,” that means they’ve gassed up. That’s like a gas station where they’ve gassed up and they can listen for another two or three minutes because they just got rewarded for listening for three minutes. “I listened for three minutes and something funny happened. I’m going to listen for another three minutes and- ooh, something mysterious happened.” And so it’s sort of a reward for being engaged for two or three minutes at a time.
A: It’s like a Pavlovian response kind of a thing. I want to sort of bring it back in the lane. I could talk about storytelling all day. I’m a writer as well but at the same time, while I enjoy this, I kind of want to bring it back towards this project. So how do we then, since we’re talking about how we engage kids with this storytelling, if we can figure this out in this discussion, how do we do that with scientists? Can you use these methods you that you use with kids to engage a scientific audience?
L: I believe you can. I believe storytelling is such a powerful tool that with the right setup, you can engage anybody. With storytelling you can engage people with words, but you can also- there’s movement, there’s sound, there’s facial expressions, there’s body language used in storytelling. So it’s a powerful tool that I think can be used in every field. In any field.
P: We covered- we watched that animation earlier, too, where one of the techniques in the course we’re advocating the students to do, this idea of narrative and using narrative to introduce your work as opposed to just being, “This is the research I did and this is how long it took.” Tony- one of Tony’s things is he’s advocating you to frame your solution to a problem in a narrative that the audience can relate to so that when they get to your solution they’re, “Oh, that’s a really good idea.” As opposed to just starting- telling them to research. Which we think is important because we did all the work but this is what we had to pay attention to. But when you’re trying to solve, like, say, public transit, and your thing, your proposed solution, is to frame that into a story is a good idea. Is there any, like, techniques other than the one that you saw in that animation that you would think of?
L: Well, there was this- I guess this is part of a story- I heard this story years ago. About- there was a professor who always had a story about anything. A student would say something to him and he’d say, “Oh, I got a story about that.” One of the students said, “Professor, how many stories do you know? Every time someone asks you about- a question about something, you say you have a story about that.” And the professor said, “Well, I have a story about that.” And he told this story about this young man who was sent off for military training. And he learned how to shoot the crossbow, the longbow, throw the javelin, and he really became an expert at the bow and arrow. And he finished his training and as he was returning home, and he’s riding through the country on his horse, when he stopped so his horse could get some water. And he looked around and he saw, on the side of a barn, fifty bullseyes, targets, with an arrow dead center in each one of them. He was amazed by this work and he wanted to find out who’s the marksman in this town. And he saw a young boy and he said, “Hey, whose work is this? Who’s the marksman in this town?” And the boy said, “Oh, that’s Sam, the town fool.” “Fool?! You serious? Look! He’s a marksman. Look at all these bullseyes.” And the boy said, “Oh, Sam, first he makes the hole, then he draws a circle around it.” So that’s how you solve a lot of these problems with reaching out to people.
A: That is going to be my philosophy for the rest of my life. So anytime I make a mistake I’m going to draw a circle around it and go, “Bullseye.”
L: Circle around it, dead center, bullseye.
A: Nailed it just exactly how I wanted to do it.
L: So that may be way to find some of the solutions to that-
P: Yeah, so you’re looking at it differently. Like, so, and I don’t mean to dissect it but, you have your protagonist that’s looking at the problem trying to solve it through traditional means, and then he becomes impressed by the guy who actually solves the problems-
L: Mm hmm, yes.
P: -and I think scientists are often in the position of being the town fool, right, in that story in the way that they have a new of looking at something. But if they told people they’re going to put a hole in something and draw circles around it-
L: Right, yeah.
P: -people are going to be, like, “You’re an idiot.”
L: And also, in many cultures, we have the trickster, where the trickster would also do something unconventional but come up with the right answer just by luck or on a whim.
A: Not to go off on a tangent, which is apparently gonna be easy in this one but, every culture has that… that Loki, right? I mean, every-
L: Yes.
A: -they’ve all got an antagonist, right? Alright. I want to bring it to the performance aspect of things. I do a lot of poetry reciting and lately I’ve been working on the memorization of it without holding a book or whatever in front of me while I recite. But I don’t know what to do with my hands. Do I put them in my pocket? Do I hold them behind my back? And I’ve noticed when you do your storytelling, your hands are actually telling sort of a side story along with this. Is it a conscious thing or is that something you’re aware of or is that something you picked up over time?
L: Well, I’ve always used my hands when I speak. But when I’m in a performance or when I’m developing a story, at times I will use my hands to maybe make that story a little clearer or use my hands so maybe I don’t have to use so many words. I was talking earlier this morning about working with schools, working with diverse audiences. You don’t know the depth of your audience’s vocabulary when you’re working with children. So for example if I said, “So the witch flew through the window and sat down by her cauldron.” Now, some children may know what a cauldron is. But even children born in this country may not because it’s such an old word. They may not have heard that word, cauldron. So if I use the word cauldron and at the same time move my hands to show a bowl or half a bowl, a container, so a student who didn’t know that word cauldron wouldn’t be lost because they’ll go, “Oh, a cauldron must be some sort of container, a bowl, a pot or something like that.” Just by moving my hands that way. Now, keeping in mind that a little movement goes a long way. And too much movement would be distracting and I could see that would be distracting with too much movement with poetry, also. But I use my hands- there are certain kinds of stories where I use my hands to show something. Other times I’m just reaching out to the audience with it, with my hands. You know, I don’t have them in my pocket, I don’t have them folded across my chest. My hands are- my arms are open. So I look at storytelling as I’m spreading my arms out and pulling everybody close. You know, like, traditional theater has that fourth wall where you separate the audience from the stage. With storytelling, it’s almost like pulling that audience onto the stage. It’s open, and so my hands are open. I try to use encouragement when I’m- especially when I’m asking people to participate, I’m waving them on. Luring them into the story, using my hands to lure them in.
P: You also do this thing where you- so you just described making a visual-
L: Yes.
P: -and then you also described gestures that make you human to them and, like, more inviting in.
L: Mm hmm.
P: And then there’s this other one I noticed you do where you make noises that amplify something in the story.
L: Yes.
P: So I saw you, like, tap your arm….
L: Mm hmm.
P: But you do it- how do you choose which story- which things to make audible with sound effects?
L: Well, I guess it comes with practice and rehearsing that story. When I’m in my studio working on a new story, I’m pacing, I’m using different voices, I use different techniques to help me to capture that story in my mind. So I might sing that story. Or I might do the whole story in mime. It’s what I call physicalizing the story. So when I’m telling the story, and let’s say a bell rings or a door slams, and I lose my train of thought because I got distracted, I can check out where I am physically and I’ll know what story I’m telling, I’ll know where I am in the story. I can look at photographs of people taking pictures of me telling stories over the years and I can say, “Well, I was telling such and such story.” It’s because, I guess, how I learned the story is physically as well as verbally. And so I can check myself if I’m speaking too fast, if I need to slow the story down. So the movement is- for me, the movement is a big part of the story because it connects me to the story and it also helps me if I lose- if I get distracted by, like I said, a slamming door or a bell ringing. When you’re working in schools, you may have the fire alarm going off, you get the intercom coming on, and so there’s a lot of chances where you could lose your train of thought. But because I always learn the story physically, I can always bring the story back to myself.
P: So basically I need to act out the test in order to start memorizing the text book.
A: A lot of the people listening don’t have that training. Do you have any techniques that, for a story that may not have that physical- or may not lend itself well to that physical aspect of storytelling- do you have any techniques that can sort of help them stay focused and get back on track?
L: Well, one thing I suggest is reading aloud. A lot of people don’t read aloud. I love to read aloud. I love to hear people read aloud. But reading aloud, finding a story that you want to be able to share, but reading that story aloud helps you find the rhythm of the story and your pacing and how it works with you. And so by reading aloud for me, if I hear things, I remember things better than if I read them. So by reading aloud, my voice leaves me and comes back to me and I can lock it in. And so I’m a strong proponent about reading aloud. When I worked in the daycare center, I would read aloud to the children until I get tired of those books and they get tired of me reading, and then I started telling them stories. But I think reading aloud helps one find your voice, find the rhythm of your voice and the rhythm of that particular story, and it also allows you to play with that story, as reading aloud realizing, you know, this doesn’t have to be said in that story because when things are being read you might need more words. But when things are being spoken, because you can use your facial expressions and your body movement, that you wouldn’t need as many words as you would if you were just reading from text, from a text. And I think, you know, just as a poet, practicing that- finding the rhythm of a poem, that you write and not all poems are read the same way, just as not all stories are told in the same pace. It’s finding a correct pace for that story.
A: And it’s hard. There’s one that I’ve been- one of mine that I wrote that I really wanted to memorize that I’ve been practicing and I noticed that when I read it in my head, it comes off at a certain pace. But when I read it out loud, it’s almost like there’s more feeling an emotion to it. And there’s some words where I kind of just elongate them out a little bit just to give it that emphasis.
L: Yeah, sure.
A: So you learn and you hear it and you’re like, “Oh, I gotta do that next time.”
L: I look for the rhythm in each word. Sometimes you elongate a word and you get a different response from an audience. And then reading aloud also- pacing that’s taking a beat between a verse, giving the audience a chance to catch up to that story or that phrase that you just used. I’ve come across some powerful phrases in folklore and some that I just love to hear- let the audience really hear them. One I was thinking this morning, I was driving up here, I was in traffic and I was reciting a story that I know, and there’s this line in the story where this person is sent into the forest and before long she found she lost her way. And it had the word “found” and “lost” in the same sentence. “She found she lost her way.” Or another line was, “By making herself invisible, she disappeared.” And you want to sort of take a beat there, let the audience go, “Wow.” It’s like, in some tales it’s “Yeah, that person turned up dead.” Think about that. “Turned up dead.” Ok…. But taking a beat there, you could read that and just read right over it but if you verbalize it and you realize, wow, the play on words is like a Carl Sandberg play on words, to take that beat, that time with it. So I think it’s very important to sort of read aloud and to hear your voice and that’ll tell you- you know, find the rhythm of the story.
A: Are there posts in stories that you tell that sort of help you remember which direction to go with the story? So for example, when I recite poetry, or even in poetry in general, there are some words that, they don’t rhyme, but they sort of allow you to help you take that step forward, propel you forward. And there’s a wordplay with that. Can you do that with folk storytelling and things like that?
L: Yeah, you mean wordplay, for example-
A: It’s like you know how you’re trying to memorize the names of the planets and there’s that “My Very….” Oh, I can’t remember. My Very Educated Mother whatever it is. You know, Mars, Venus, Earth. Is there something like that you can do with storytelling? A lot of these people don’t have that experience or practice doing it and I don’t think they’re going to spend too much time taking classes on storytelling.
L: Mm hmm. I know what you mean about trying to memorize the planets and stuff. But I don’t know- I guess people could discover certain ways to help memorize their story, a story, if they’re having trouble memorizing it or keeping things in order, the sequence. But I think it just comes with practice, trying to find that rhythm. There’s certain things that I do that I may use in different stories, a combination of different words that I would use in different stories, just as a way of showing time in a story. But I’m not sure if that answers your question there.
A: It does. It’s just a matter of practicing and repetition and just saying it loud and kind of hearing it along with trying to think of what you’re saying.
L: Right, yeah. Because like I mentioned, when I use words and it leaves me and comes back to me, it kind of locks it in and I got a pretty decent memory and so I can kind of recall things. A lot of these things fall back in- fall back into place when I’m telling a story. Once in a while I’ll have stories that maybe begin in the same way and so I’ll intend to tell one story but it begins in such a way that it could be this other story that I tell also and so I’ll have to catch myself. And sometimes I don’t.
A: How do you recover? If you’re on the spot, is there a graceful way of recovering?
L: Oh, yeah. There’s graceful ways. The wonderful thing about telling a story is you’re the only one who knows what you’re going to say next? So whatever you say is right. If there’s a part of a story where you forgot to mention something in the beginning of the story but as you go on you remember that, you have to decide, is that part that I forgot necessary in the story? If it’s not, ok, forget about it. If it is, that’s where the creativeness comes in. How can I weave this part that I forgot to interject at the beginning of this story, how can I weave it into the story so that it’s seamless? Or you could say, “What they didn’t know was…” and then add that part into it. Or you could just figure out a way, here’s a space where I can slip that part into the story. Then you might realize, you know, the story worked better with me interjecting that part of the story- instead of the beginning of the story, it worked better at the end or in the middle where I put it in out of necessity.
A: I’m curious, if when practicing and you make a mistake, do you sort of roll with it to see if you can keep creative or do back and recite it the right way?
L: Well, it all depends. If I’m working on a new story, I’ll go back because the first time, I want to get the story down smoothly, the way I’ve intended to do it. And then after I get that down, then I could change it up a bit. The other thing is, with stories, you know, when you mentioned people who were beginning storytelling is it’s better to have a tight three minute story than a loose seven minute story. So maybe you might have a story and the first time you tell that story it’s five minutes. But you’ve worked on it, it’s an eight minute story, but you were nervous and when you first told it, you whipped right through it and it became five minutes. And you go, “Oh my gosh,” but you know it was an eight minute story. But it’s better to have a story that’s five minutes that’s really solid, and then you can start to embellish that story and make that story an eight, a ten, a twelve minute story instead of having a story that just goes on and there’s not enough to carry it and your audience loses interest in it. I always say it’s better for a story to be short and build it from there, make it a powder-packed five minute story, and then once you got that under your belt, then you can start embellishing it here, embellish it there, change it here, and before you know it, you have a very interesting or engaging twelve minute story or fifteen minute story. But not to try to start it with a twelve minute story is sorta weak.
A: Is there anything you learned in your years of storytelling that you kinda wish you knew before?
L: Well, I’m always learning things about stories. Stories that I’ve been telling for quite a number of years, they’re different to me now. I start to understand them differently and I see where I can use them to maybe address some of the environmental issues or some social issues. Or as before, I just took them as a story. But now I realize, you know, just by tweaking this story, I can address bullying or by tweaking this story- or it’s always there. Because, I mean, people have always told folk tales- people have told stories since the beginning of time. Before people could talk they drew pictures on walls. So all our great ancestors told stories and people still tell stories and still tell folk tales. Which means folk tales must be important because these stories have been told for eons, so they must be important and we’re just telling them to a new audience. So we have to find ways to engage that audience because these stories are carrying messages in them. And so we can probably deal with issues and find solutions to a lot of the problems that we have in today’s world through folklore and folk tales. If they’re told right and we’re patient with them, we can figure out, this is the type of story that needs to be told at this particular time because if storytelling and stories weren’t powerful and needed, people wouldn’t be telling stories. But people have always told stories.
P: I also feel, like, that- I was in Sevilla in Spain and I went into this cathedral and it was the most beautiful place I’ve ever went into and it had all these- at one point they realized they weren’t getting enough parishioners in. So they knocked out a ceiling so that more light would come in because the light was preventing people from getting in. But then they were like, “That’s kind of ugly,” so these brothers, these four generations of brothers, created these- so 9am on Sunday mornings, when church happens, the sun would shine in through this skylight and they build all these sculptures of angels reaching into heaven so when you were being blinded by the sun it looked like there was all these people climbing into the sky. And the guy who was giving the tour- at this point the reason why all this art took generations [indecipherable] and what you have to remember is people didn’t read and write back then. So the pictures and the way you could visualize the stories in the bible was half of the attraction to getting people to come in. And it kinda blew my mind because we take for granted, the last 100 years we’ve basically solved literacy issues. Most people can read or write. But 100 years ago, that wasn’t true. In fact, 200 years ago, probably people mostly heard news through stories.
L: Mm hmm, yeah.
P: And we didn’t have technology 200 years ago, or electricity. So it’s interesting to me that scientists wouldn’t study and see storytelling as a way of communication because it’s way more engrained in us to hear stories that way than it is for us to read it.
L: Yeah. Right. We got the gruyiots (?), we go the court jesters, the raconteurs, we got, you know- was it Socrates that thought if people started reading, only the elite would read and people wouldn’t share knowledge.
P: Like Homer and the Odyssey and all that was oral and people are often like, why didn’t they write down more things, and I’m like, well that wasn’t how they passed on information.
L: That’s right. Population wasn’t reading.
P: They never thought it would be important to have it written down.
A: Native Americans. They were very oral, more than written.
L: Yeah, sure. Well, many cultures were, and many cultures still are, oral and not so much written language. And people collected stories, thank god. People collected stories and shared them. But they were handed down long before they were written.
A: It’s your favorite character in Vikings, Patrick. Athelstan.
P: Yeah! Well, and like, I mean, I just- part of me thinks about, a lot, like how much do we- we don’t understand why stories are so important. Like, I think it’s hard to quantify.
L: Mm hmm.
P: In Christopher Booker’s doctoral thesis dissertation, The Seven Basic Plots, kinda proved that it’s hard to synthesize why stories are important. We do know- I think every scientist almost- I would defy somebody to not tell me a story that they resonate with. In popular fiction and music or in art and it probably informs a lot why they practice the work they do because it reflects a lot. And it’s interesting because I wonder how hard it is sometimes, and I study the meta-cognitive aspect of storytelling, and it is really hard to, like, write an original story. Why is that? Why is it so hard?
L: (laughs) I wish I knew!
A: Patrick, you only got through half of that book. Maybe your answer’s in the second half of that book.
P: What?
A: Well, I mean, there’s seven story types, right? So maybe that’s why it’s so hard, is because it all boils down to those seven.
P: Yeah, I don’t know. Like…. I do know that over the years I’ve been able to recognize good stories, really good writing. I was just watching Fargo, Season 1 again, and what the creator did on that show is phenomenal and I have the pitch document and how he outlined it and got it green lit for production and it’s a beautiful four page document. Even without the show. It’s just a beautiful four page- because the characters jump off the page. I mean, is it hard? Do you find it hard?
L: I find it hard. You know, I read a lot to get ideas for stories. I also have started many stories, which are on my desk and halfway through them and trying to figure out an ending for a story. Sometimes I’ll come up with what I think is a pretty good beginning of a story but then I kind of run out of steam with it. Because I think to write you need to write. You need to have time to be in one place to write and with my schedule, I’m sort of helter skelter and I don’t- and you need to be disciplined. Probably more disciplined than I am. But I think it takes time and space to really follow through with the ideas. And my problem is, sometimes I’ll have ideas but I don’t have the time because I gotta drive here and I gotta perform here. And then when I have the time, I don’t have the ideas or the creativity. So trying to create that creative energy with open space is a chore in itself. But I’m always looking for that time to have and hoping that I’ll be creative during that time.
P: Adam, did we want to do anything, like- is there any way we can get a story onto the podcast?
A: Yeah, I was about to ask-
P: And I’m probably putting him on the spot right now.
A: Well, I was going to ask at the end, maybe one of the last things we could do is see if there’s a three or five minute story that’s relevant to-
P: [indecipherable]… or can we pull one off the audio from something else you’ve done or….
L: Yeah, um….Well, let’s see if….
P: I mean, you already did a couple good stories just anecdotally but….
L: Adam, you’re a poet? You write poetry?
A: Yes.
L: I write some poems, too.
A: Oh, do you? Do you have any published?
L: No, I don’t have any poems published, no.
A: Poetry is a hard thing to get people to read. I don’t know- what’s crazy is that the poetry is read but it’s read by other poets and it’s hard to get it out there to the masses.
L: I know there’s been a lot of spoken word events and trying to get people to come out to listen to poetry but a lot of those that come out to listen to poetry are poets themselves.
A: It’s hard to just get the random, layperson to be like, “Hey, let’s go check out poetry. It’s a Tuesday night!” Nobody does that. It’s not the ‘60s anymore.
L: Yeah, it’s sad. Well, I could tell you this story here. It’s tale from these two boys in Kenya. They were walking to school one morning and they had their backpacks on, they were walking to school, talking stuff, “Hey, what’re you gonna do tonight?” “Oh, I’m gonna play some basketball tonight. How ‘bout you?” “Oh, I got a new camera. I’m gonna make a film.” “Oh, yeah, we’re gonna get together to listen to music.” “Yeah, yeah.” And as they’re walking, one boy looks and goes, “Uh oh, look. Look over there.” And he looks across a field and there was a cheetah. Now, you know cheetahs, they run like the wind, right? Nothing faster than a cheetah. They were like, “What’re we gonna do? What’re we gonna do?” That cheetah was looking at breakfast. Those two boys said, “Oh man, what’re we gonna do? What’re we gonna do?” One boy’s friend sat down on the ground, kicked off his shoes, reached into his backpack, and took out a brand new pair of Nikes, started putting his Nikes on. His friend said, “What’re you putting your Nikes on for? You can’t run faster than that cheetah.” The boy said, “I don’t have to run faster than that cheetah. I just have to run faster than you.” Woo! And off he went. Oh, I hope you don’t have friends like that. You got friends like that, Adam?
A: I had a friend like that.
L: (laughs) I’m glad you said “had.” That’s good.
P: That was how we dealt with- we were talking about in San Diego, they have different critters in the wilderness than they do in New England. All I had to worry about when I was a kid was bears and deer and deer weren’t really a problem, it was just the bears. And they weren’t really that much of a problem, as long as you had a friend that was slower than you and I was always the friend that was slower. That’s how I made friends. That’s why I moved to California.
L: But they got mountain lions out there.
A: I live near a canyon and there are stories every week about people walking their small dog at dusk and these coyotes will just come out of the canyon and snatch the dog and run away. Like, it’s insane! It’s scary that I live, like, seven blocks away from this. And they hang out there all night. That’s where they live.
L: Just waiting for dinner.
A: That’s it. Well, you know, everybody’s gotta eat, I guess. Even if it’s a Chihuahua or whatever it may be.
P: They got the scary ones, though. They got like spiders and snakes. Those are the ones- the mountain lions don’t scare me so much because they don’t usually go around people. It’s very rare that they go around people. But the snakes and the spiders, man, they’ll sneak up on you.
A: You can scare away a mountain lion. The idea is just get big and loud. When I go hiking out in the mountains I’ll pick up a handful of rocks and just kinda hold on to them as I’m walking because that’s how you- you get big, loud, and kinda- the rule is that if you think the mountain lion hasn’t seen you first, you’re wrong. So you want to make sure that you’re just ready for that. But with snakes and spiders….
P: Especially, with the kids- my school was in the desert. So the baby rattlesnakes, the ones you had to be afraid of, because they didn’t know- like their venom is growing so they have a lot more if it and it’s a lot more potent and they don’t know when not to use it yet. The big ones aren’t going to come anywhere near people. The baby ones are, like, crazy. I’ve never seen spiders that are as scary as the ones I’ve seen in California. Big black ones. And they had this one, the brown recluse-
A: I’ve been bitten by one before.
P: Really?
A: Yeah, when I was back in Maryland.
P: Is that the one that can cause your skin to disintegrate?
A: I don’t think so, no. So when I was living back in Maryland I was bit by a brown recluse right on my wrist. Right here. And I didn’t know what it was. I thought it was just alike a regular bug bite but later on that night when I was out with friends we noticed that there was a streak of something that was moving up my arm and it stopped, like, right about here. My friends were, like, “We have to go to a hospital immediately.” Because that was poison traveling towards my heart because that’s the quickest route, right that way. So I had to get a shot and it was one of the worst experiences of my life. But yeah, so I’m familiar with that spider. I never saw it the results of it I’m quite familiar with….. Patrick, I don’t have any more questions, unless you do.
P: Um, I don’t think I do either. I was going to ask you about ethics, though, because earlier we were talking about- you mentioned about the environment in different ways and I don’t think you talked about it too much in this podcast but how you choose the characters- you talked about how when you go to a school you go into the library. So we’re doing an episode on ethics and I’m really interested in ethics of communication, like how you choose the pieces of the narrative that you’re introducing and, like, how that plays a role. Like when- how do you choose what things to put into a story that give a sense of the world you’re trying to convey, but when does some of that- I don’t want to call it political correctness- more like those conscious elements….
L: Yeah. Well, for example, there’s a folk tale that comes from West Africa called “Anonzie and Common Sense.” And it’s about how Anonzie went out and he collected all the common sense from everybody in the world and he had it all for himself. So what I will do as I’m telling that story, I’d say, “I want to tell you a story about common sense. I’m going to give you an example of what good common sense is.” And I’d say, “You should always wear your seatbelt, right?” And the kids go, yeah. “And always look both ways before you cross the street-“ Yes. I say, “Ok, who can give me another example of common sense?” Kids will raise their hands and they’ll say, “Don’t go for a ride with a stranger.” And I say, ok. Another kid will say, “Don’t smoke.” I say, alright. And “Don’t pick on somebody. Don’t be a bully.” And I say, oh, that’s a good one, that’s a good one. And they’ll be throwing these things at me. And then I’ll finish up and I’ll say, “Ooh, ooh, ooh. I’ve got one, I’ve got one. My cousin told me about this and she’s a doctor. She said, ‘If you can’t remember the last time you washed your hands, it’s time to wash your hands.” And the teachers go, “Ooh!” and the kids go, “Ooh!” and it’s so true. And so I say it that way and I also say, “It’s true, my cousin is a doctor.” But I want to say, “My cousin, she’s a doctor” so first of all, there’s someone of color whose cousin is a doctor and she is a woman. For those little girls in the room and boys in the room who look like me can go, “Oh, she’s a doctor.” And the powerful thing about if you can’t remember the last time you washed your hands, it’s times to wash your hands, is simple. And so it’s stories like that that I’ll, maybe as a segway between stories, I would tell- I would ask a question about- something about- maybe I’ll say, “You know, when I was little, my mom said to me- I came home one day from school and I was feeling kind of blue about something and she said to me, ‘Sticks and stones will break your bones but words will never hurt you.’” And kids will say, “Oh, I’ve heard that before.” And I’ll say, “Let’s say it out loud together.” And so we get 200 kids saying sticks and stones will break your bones but words will never hurt you. And I’ll say, “That’s what my mom said to me and I felt pretty good that day when she told me that. But then I got older, like you boys and girls, and I started realizing that my mom was right. Sticks and stones will break your bones, no doubt about that. But you know what?” And they’ll say, “What?” “Bones heal and bruises, they go away after five minutes. But hurtful words go right in there and they hurt for a lot longer than a broken bone or a bruise. And that’s why our parents and grandparents say, ‘Uh uh. Don’t tease people. Don’t make fun of somebody because you don’t know their struggles. You don’t know what they’re….’” And then I’ll go on and tell the story. When they see that, “Ooh, it hurts.” Sticks and stones but words really hurt, and the kids really understand that because a lot of the kids I’m telling the stories to, they got hurt because somebody called them fat, somebody called them stupid, somebody called them slow. Somebody said, you can’t play, you can’t sing, you can’t dance, and hurt their feelings and that goes right in there. So just to have an adult verbalize that, that kids would realize, yeah, I shouldn’t call little Joey shorty or something like that. And I say yeah, because you don’t want to hurt somebody like that because so many adults are walking around because they got hurt on the inside. And then the kids go, “Oh,” and it’s just something that they’ve heard before, they’ve heard that expression, stick and stones, but here’s a new twist on it. And so that way I can make a little difference in their lives, especially the kids who’s getting picked on, and hopefully, the kid who’s doing the picking on.
P: I think what’s interesting about what you’re saying, that comes back to an ethical implication for communicators, is, and you can tell me if I’m right or not, but what I’m getting is that no matter what the details about how you’re constructing a message to an audience is going to say volumes about your view of the world-
L: Yeah.
P: -whether or not you want to think about it or not.
L: Mm hmm.
P: Like, if you say scientist and you have, say, a white, male scientist on the slide deck, that says something about what you believe about science. Even if you’re like, “Whoa, that’s not important.” Well, it also says something that you think it’s not important.
L: Yeah, right. Right. And once again it’s what audience are you in front of and what are you trying to- what are you trying to convey? I take storytelling very seriously and when I’m invited to a school, I have the opportunity to do a professional job of storytelling but I also have the opportunity to share where I am coming from and I’m not telling kids to do one thing or the other but just be kind. I want everybody to be kind. There’s nothing wrong with that. Be kind. Interview your grandparents. Put away your little computer game and listen to your mother talk or your dad or ask questions of your aunts and listen to stories and tell stories and encourage them to be more connected with their environment, with their elders in their family. And I tell them, your grandparents aren’t always going to be here. Now is the time to ask them questions, especially since now kids have all these- you know, they can interview somebody very easily. I mean, instead of carrying along a big video camera on your shoulder, they can interview their grandmother with their phone. I mean, it’s easy. So have them do that. Encourage them to pay attention to their elders. Another thing I stress with them of lately is how when they’re young, if they have their grandparents tell them stories and they remember the stories, when they get older and their grandparents get older and the grandparents start forgetting their names or losing their memory a little bit, they could help by telling their grandparents some of the stories they remember. And maybe their grandparents would say, “Oh, I remember that story. You know what else happened that day?” And I try to stress to the young children that they have a stake in the health and the elders around them because they can say, “Grandpa, remember you took me here and there?” and grandpa will say, “Oh yeah, that day was great,” and help them regain that memory. And this way it empowers children to think, hey, I can do something about grandpa’s health, I can do something about grandma’s forgetfulness. And I give them some responsibility.
A: There’s a podcast by NPR called “Storycorp” where it’s very much that, where these kids or grandkids will say, “Hey Grandpa, tell me about that story from 1963 that you told me about when I was a kid about when you went down the street and picked up the Christmas tree” or whatever it is, you know, and they would sit there in this booth- and now there’s this actual app or website that people can download to use.
P: Yeah, the guy that created it created an app so that people could contribute to a whole database of stories that are being collected all over the world. It’s really cool.
A: It’s a great idea. Now, I have a quick question, then. Do you, right or wrong, do you think that your background or your appearance has an effect or can create a preconceived notion with an audience?
L: Yes, I think so. I think stereotypes abound, especially in communities that aren’t diverse where the only time a child sees a person of color is on TV, maybe being arrested or something else. So if they haven’t been exposed to diversity and their in a community that isn’t exposed to diversity and their parents aren’t into taking them somewhere so they can get a wider look at the world, they’re going to form stereotypes because of the news, the media, the books in their schools, in their settings. So when I go into a school, I might be the first time a person of color has been in that school or addressing these children. Hopefully I’m not but in some cases I am. And so I know my words are going to stay with these kids and my appearance is going to stay with them, my actions are going to stay with them. So I think it’s important- someone said- a woman told me that when she was young, whenever she was going somewhere, “Hey Dad, I’m going to California,” her father would say, “I don’t think anybody from our family’s been there before,” which meant be a good example, you know. You’re representing us. And so I feel in some ways I’m representing.
A: I was just going to say, if that adds an extra pressure or focus for the communicator or storyteller if they have to sort of, I don’t want to say overcome it….
L: Well, no, it’s not any pressure. I don’t feel pressure. I always put my best foot forward no matter where I am because I wouldn’t want to embarrass my parents or myself. I keep my parents and family in mind when I’m out and about.
P: I was just going to say, you know my parents and I was raised to have a diverse set of influences when I was growing up, which I found out was uncommon. I mean, as a kid I was like, in the white-ist part of New Hampshire. I was like, “Doesn’t everybody have old people from all over the world hang out at their house?” and they’re like, “No.” And when I was in high school, see, kids didn’t start doing race jokes until middle school and high school and I’d get really upset because they were talking about cousins from the Cayman Islands or they were talking about friends of mine. We had gay uncles and we had African American and Indian and Japanese and all these people. And I used to get really angry and I’d get mad and I’d leave the room. And then I started to become more friends with people in those situations and I always used to ask people, how many- they would say stuff about black people- and I would say, how many black people have you met in your life? And they’d say, four. And I’d say, you’re judging a whole race of people on four people you’ve met. And they never thought of it that way and I was like, alright, I think we’re making some headway here. I think that this is something because what you’re saying resonates with me a lot. Like, you do almost have to be conscious of what you’re communicating and how you appear and what you’re saying because things are actually- they could be- and I know because one of my fellow art teachers told it to me. I was like, well when are they going to master art? I was teaching art at a high school. She looked at me and it diffused my entire pedagogy. She goes, this might be the last art class they ever take in their entire lives. And actually, in all probability, their high school art class will be the last art class they ever take because it’s no longer enforced after, even, fifth grade. And all of a sudden I realized my job wasn’t to give them mastery of art. My job was to make them love art. That’s a different responsibility. Anyway. I’m good.
A: Yeah, I think we tackled a lot.
L: We did a long interview. That was an awesome interview. Hopefully we got some for the ethics podcast.
A: I could probably try to fit some in there, absolutely. Ok, I’m going to stop the broadcast. Len, again, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this.
L: No problem. It was a pleasure meeting you and hopefully we’ll do it again sometime.
When it comes to effective communication, it’s not just about the content. According to Len, using physical movement to tell a story and engage your audience is a pretty important skill and tool to employ.
EPISODE CREDITS
Guest Starring Len Cabral, Professional Storyteller
Erik Tillman, Phd, Formerly of the Kim Lab & Currently A Fellow at Vida Ventures, LLC
The Great Communicators Podcast is a part of Gradcommx. Gradcommx, targeted at enhancing research communication, is the first offering of Gradx – a professional development project created for the graduate student population at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by the Office For Graduate Education.
MUSIC & SOUNDS
“All The Best Fakers” by Nick Jaina is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License (http://freemusicarchive.org) “A Burst of Light” by Blue Dot Sessions is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://freemusicarchive.org) “Caprese” by Blue Dot Sessions is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial License. (http://freemusicarchive.org) “Deliberate Thought” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Welcome to The Great Communicators Podcast presented by The MIT Office of Graduate Education, a professional development podcast expressly designed to bring lessons from the field to our graduate student researchers.
My name is Adam Greenfield and one of my passions is poetry, both reading and writing. I’ve also been lucky enough to have a collection of poetry published. And through this passion I frequently find myself at poetry readings, reciting some of my writing to audiences both big and small. To say I don’t get butterflies in my stomach each time would be a lie.
But over the years, as I’ve tried to better my performance and storytelling skills, I’m verbally practicing out loud to my cat and otherwise empty apartment. Part of that practice also involves physical movement. And what I’ve found is along with my communicating skills improving, there are less and less butterflies each time.
Now, when it comes to communication, especially to a live audience, even the greatest communicators started off a bundle of nerves. But if you ask each one, I bet they’d tell you with practice and an engaging communicative performance, including just the slightest physical movement, it gets easier and easier each time, even if in small increments.
Our guest in this episode is no stranger to using his body in front of an audience to enhance concepts and ideas within a talk or story. He’s not doing somersaults or jumping jacks but….
LEN CABRAL A little movement goes a long way. ADAM GREENFIELD That’s Len Cabral…
LEN CABRAL …and I’m a professional storyteller. ADAM GREENFIELD Len’s been telling stories and folktales since 1976 to many different kinds of audiences. So where did he get his start?
LEN CABRAL Well, I was working in a daycare center and I was in charge of 15 five year olds. That’ll make you a storyteller. ADAM GREENFIELD I watched a few videos of Len telling stories and I noticed a trend no matter the age of the audience; Len’s physical movements, especially with his hands, were a major component of his communication skills. LEN CABRAL Well, I’ve always used my hands when I speak. But when I’m in a performance or when I’m developing a story, at times I will use my hands to maybe make that story a little clearer or use my hands so maybe I don’t have to use so many words.
ADAM GREENFIELD When talking about a complex subject or to an audience with a limited background, I can actually see where this could come in handy, no pun intended. Ok, maybe a little bit. Len gave an example of how useful it can be. LEN CABRAL You don’t know the depth of your audience’s vocabulary when you’re working with children. So for example if I said, “So the witch flew through the window and sat down by her cauldron.” Now, some children may know what a cauldron is. But even children born in this country may not because it’s such an old word. They may not have heard that word, cauldron. So if I use the word cauldron and at the same time move my hands to show a bowl or half a bowl, a container, so a student who didn’t know that word cauldron wouldn’t be lost because they’ll go, “Oh, a cauldron must be some sort of container, a bowl, a pot or something like that.” Just by moving my hands that way. ADAM GREENFIELD Implementing physical involvement into the story is a really great way of engaging your audience, too. You’re not just helping them understand what you’re saying but you’re also asking them to be a part of the story you’re telling. LEN CABRAL So I look at storytelling as I’m spreading my arms out and pulling everybody close. You know, like, traditional theater has that fourth wall where you separate the audience from the stage. With storytelling, it’s almost like pulling that audience onto the stage. It’s open, and so my hands are open. I try to use encouragement when I’m- especially when I’m asking people to participate, I’m waving them on. Luring them into the story, using my hands to lure them in. ADAM GREENFIELD Well, now I’ve got a warm and fuzzy feeling inside but there’s still a part of me that feels nervous. I don’t have the performance training or decades of experience to know when in the story these sort of physical techniques come in handy. LEN CABRAL Well, I guess it comes with practice and rehearsing that story. When I’m in my studio working on a new story, I’m pacing, I’m using different voices, I use different techniques to help me to capture that story in my mind. So I might sing that story. Or I might do the whole story in mime. It’s what I call physicalizing the story. So when I’m telling the story, and let’s say a bell rings or a door slams, and I lose my train of thought because I got distracted, I can check out where I am physically and I’ll know what story I’m telling, I’ll know where I am in the story. I can look at photographs of people taken of me telling stories over the years and I can say, “Well, I was telling such and such story.” It’s because, I guess, how I learned the story is physically as well as verbally. And so I can check myself if I’m speaking too fast, if I need to slow the story down. So the movement is- for me, the movement is a big part of the story because it connects me to the story. ADAM GREENFIELD Len really embraces reading out loud, too. LEN CABRAL A lot of people don’t read aloud. I love to read aloud. I love to hear people read aloud. But reading aloud, finding a story that you want to be able to share, but reading that story aloud helps you find the rhythm of the story and your pacing and how it works with you. And so by reading aloud for me, if I hear things, I remember things better than if I read them. So by reading aloud, my voice leaves me and comes back to me and I can lock it in. And so I’m a strong proponent about reading aloud….But I think reading aloud helps one find your voice, find the rhythm of your voice and the rhythm of that particular story, and it also allows you to play with that story, as reading aloud realizing, you know, this doesn’t have to be said in that story because when things are being read you might need more words. But when things are being spoken, because you can use your facial expressions and your body movement, that you don’t need as many words as you would if you were just reading from text, from a text.
ADAM GREENFIELD Of course, you’re not expected to be perfect when you talk. At least not right away. So if and when you stumble during a talk or performance, perhaps this tale will help you get through it gracefully. LEN CABRAL There was a professor who always had a story about anything. A student would say something to him and he’d say, “Oh, I got a story about that.” One of the students said, “Professor, how many stories do you know? Every time someone asks you about- a question about something, you say you have a story about that.” And the professor said, “Well, I have a story about that.” And he told this story about this young man who was sent off for military training. And he learned how to shoot the crossbow, the longbow, throw the javelin, and he really became an expert at the bow and arrow. And he finished his training and as he was returning home, and he’s riding through the country on his horse, when he stopped so his horse could get some water. And he looked around and he saw, on the side of a barn, fifty bullseyes, targets, with an arrow dead center in each one of them. He was amazed by this work and he wanted to find out who’s the marksman in this town. And he saw a young boy and he said, “Hey, whose work is this? Who’s the marksman in this town?” And the boy said, “Oh, that’s Sam, the town fool.” “Fool?! You serious? Look! He’s a marksman. Look at all these bullseyes.” And the boy said, “Oh, Sam, first he makes the hole, then he draws a circle around it.” ADAM GREENFIELD When it comes to effective communication, it’s not just about the content. According to Len, using physical movement to tell a story and engage your audience is a pretty important skill and tool to employ. It can really help break down the barriers to an understanding that perhaps the words being used couldn’t.
And the best way to perfect that skill is to constantly practice, and not just in your head. Practice out loud, even if you’re doing the dishes or taking shower or stuck in traffic. Anytime you can practice in order to better your communication skills is a good time to practice.
Thanks for listening to The Great Communicators Podcast brought to you by The MIT Office of Graduate Education. My name is Adam Greenfield, and feel free to talk amongst yourselves.
Erik Tillman, Phd, Formerly of the Kim Lab & Currently A Fellow at Vida Ventures, LLC
The Great Communicators Podcast is a part of Gradcommx. Gradcommx, targeted at enhancing research communication, is the first offering of Gradx – a professional development project created for the graduate student population at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by the Office For Graduate Education.
MUSIC & SOUNDS
“All The Best Fakers” by Nick Jaina is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License (http://freemusicarchive.org) “Abracadabra” by Silent Partner; No license required (https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/music) “Deliberate Thought” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Welcome to The Great Communicators Podcast presented by The MIT Office of Graduate Education, a professional development podcast expressly designed to bring lessons from the field to our graduate student researchers.
My name is Adam Greenfield and in this special episode, we’re going to get a different perspective on the things we’ve heard so far.
We asked a few MIT grad students to listen to the interviews we conducted with these great speakers, then provide feedback on what they heard.
In this episode….
GRAD STUDENT: Morgan
My name is Morgan Voss and I am a graduate student in the Masters of Engineering program at MIT and the EECS Department. ADAM GREENFIELD And when it comes to communicating, Morgan’s aware of her struggles. GRAD STUDENT: MORGAN I’m working as a TA and I have to interact with about 23 different students and I have to structure essentially the same program recitation but know how to direct it effectively for each different group of students and sometimes it’s a struggle to see some students who aren’t as interested in what I’m talking about or who aren’t quite on the same page and how do I address that and how do I make sure that my overall message is still being applied. ADAM GREENFIELD Fortunately, Morgan has participated in leadership programs and through them has been able to take away very useful pieces of knowledge for future use. GRAD STUDENT: MORGAN And just through repeated practice and exposure to that type of experiences I’ve gotten increasingly more comfortable having an audience that maybe doesn’t quite understand me or isn’t quite on the same page or maybe not as interested. And I’ve learned to not be afraid of those instances but use those effectively to make sure I do a better job. ADAM GREENFIELD When it comes to the podcast, one of the takeaways for Morgan was what Ed Boyden was talking, the constructive failure… GRAD STUDENT: MORGAN … the falling forward.
ED BOYDEN
I often ask people to think about aiming for a constructive failure. It is probably going to fail, but you will know what you need to do next. I think from that comes wisdom.
GRAD STUDENT: MORGAN
I think that in- as a graduate student and as you’re pursuing extra studies and research that you feel that need to come up with the best idea and to have the most innovative project and to really just do something amazing. And oftentimes what you’re doing maybe isn’t so important and impactful and you also will fail along the way. And for me it’s my first time pursuing research in this manner and to have- it’s a different perspective verses just learning because you are venturing into something new and taking those small steps and realizing that you may need to redirect your path a little and you may need to completely change the direction you’re going in. I think that it’s important to realize that those failures are going to happen and it’s a part of the process. An important part. ADAM GREENFIELD There’s also the somewhat frightening but useful and necessary peer review aspect that Brunie Felding raised.
BRUNIE FELDING
That’s something that you start in your mind with your team and then you write it up and it’s your baby from start to finish. And then it gets peer reviewed, you know, with and by people who are in your field and you get feedback.
GRAD STUDENT: MORGAN I think sometimes, especially when I’m writing up things that I put a lot of time and thought into them, and I’m maybe a little protective of my work and so I at the same time I don’t want them to see it and think negatively of me. I also am maybe a little less receptive to people critiquing something that I spent so much time working on. But usually that extra perspective allows you to step outside of your head and start to realize what it looks like to your audience, which is often the point of creating some sort of communication piece. How do you effectively address an issue with someone else and how do you effectively convey that? And so it doesn’t matter if I know what I’m thinking about really well and I understand everything and it suits my needs. That’s not the point of a communication piece. *ADAM GREENFIELD As for Sage Rosenfels, the retired football player, Morgan thought his message was…. GRAD STUDENT: MORGAN ….a little daunting that he was, like, if you screw up you screw up and you fail and that’s it, you can’t really do anything. ADAM GREENFIELD But… GRAD STUDENT: MORGAN … But I think his point was that you have to just keep- you gotta get up and keep going.
SAGE ROSENFELS
People may remember that mistake or they may remember the rest of your performance as being spectacular.
GRAD STUDENT: MORGAN
And I think that’s important in life and especially important in communication because if you- sometimes even if you get a skill that you’re comfortable with communication-wise, sometimes it doesn’t work with certain audiences and you have to learn to adapt and if you don’t then you’re not an effective communicator and you’ve cut off a whole section of your audience that will not receive your message. ADAM GREENFIELD In the end, it seems the idea behind the podcast topics on process and failure were not lost on Morgan. GRAD STUDENT: MORGAN I think it’s just a continual progress towards feeling comfortable with failure. Everyone fails and I feel, even despite that, there’s still pressure to always succeed, to always be perfect, and that’s impossible. And instead, if you accept that failure is going to happen you can learn from it and make it an effective experience for you. And I think that’s important. I also appreciated the notion of starting with an end point and working backwards. That’s something that I’ve heard elsewhere and thought about. I haven’t quite used it but I think that that’s an important notion or way to handle a big task and sometimes as a grad student writing a thesis, those can be a really big monumental task and you have to learn to work backwards and break it down and make it into manageable pieces.
ADAM GREENFIELD
Thanks for listening to The Great Communicators Podcast brought to you by The MIT Office of Graduate Education. My name is Adam Greenfield, and feel free to talk amongst yourselves.
This is episode is the full, unedited interview with Dr. Brunie Felding. If you haven’t listened to the fully produced episode yet, we strongly encourage you to do so before listening to this one. They’re shorter in length and much more refined.
EPISODE CREDITS
Guest Starring Dr. Brunie Felding – Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine at Scripps Research
Erik Tillman, Phd, Formerly of the Kim Lab & Currently A Fellow at Vida Ventures, LLC
The Great Communicators Podcast is a part of Gradcommx. Gradcommx, targeted at enhancing research communication, is the first offering of Gradx – a professional development project created for the graduate student population at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by the Office For Graduate Education.
Hello, Adam Greenfield here, host of The Great Communicators podcast series. What you’re about to hear is the full, unedited interview with one of the guests we spoke with. If you haven’t listened to the fully produced episode yet, I definitely encourage you to do so before listening to this one. They’re shorter in length and much more refined. You can find them all at gradx.mit.edu/podcasts.
The idea behind these longer, unedited conversation is to give you an opportunity to hear the entire talk, warts and all. This is not only a fun way to hear the full flow of the conversation but it also emphasizes the importance of the points made in the shorter, produced episodes, which again, can be found at gradx.mit.edu/podcasts.
Thanks for listening and enjoy the conversation.
Adam Greenfield: Ok, so we’ll go ahead and get started. We’ll get some easy questions out of the way. First, can you give us your name and occupation?
Brunie Felding: My name is Brunie Felding and I’m an associate professor at the Scripps Research Institute. I’m a principal investigator in cancer research projects.
A: Do you go by doctor?
B: No.
A: No Dr. Felding?
B: No, you can call me Brunie.
A: Brunie? Ok, alright. I ask because when I go create the script for the show, I want to find out- I want to make sure people’s titles are correct. So I want to know if I should call you Brunie-
B: You can call me Brunie.
A: Ok.
B: I don’t know if you noticed but I have a sign at my door that says Dr. Brunie.
A: I didn’t see that.
B: I mean, I was given that once in a advocacy. You know, I was teaching- like, once a year I teach here in a project called Project Lead with people who are breast cancer survivors who want to become advocates like me. And they get a crash course, so to speak, on science because their backgrounds are very diverse. So I teach there for a week, heavy duty, you know, crash course stuff. And they gave me this nametag that says Dr. Brunie.
A: You wear that with pride, I bet.
B: Yeah! I put it on my door.
A: I don’t blame you. It’s a good title to have. My mom says there’s two kinds of kids: one that grows up to be a lawyer and one that grows up to need a lawyer. My brother’s a lawyer so she got that half and then she’s like, “If only he’ll be a doctor….” Nope. I’m going to be a writer and artist. I want to struggle. But anyway. Are there any areas of science and research communication that you feel needs some work?
B: Absolutely. I guess any type of research communication is always a process. It’s not a stagnant and fully developed faculty or trade. And that’s, I think, is the beauty in it also, is that it evolves- the different types of communications evolve with the need that we see in them and the needs that are being brought to our attention through the type of audiences that we’re addressing through types of communication that we have. And also through subjects, I would say, that we’re discussion. Because the subjects in science, they change with the technical approaches that we have to address scientific questions. That, in turn, opens new avenues for new ways of a addressing a question. Actually, new ways of finding a question. And that way, then you need to find a good way to communicate your findings to your questions, your understanding of the process and maybe the peer discussion that you have and maybe even overreaching the peer boundaries with, let’s say, now you want to discuss research findings with the public that has diverse background of any sort, possibly, so you constantly have to work on communication and trying to find ways which leads to an understanding on both sides.
A: That understanding on both sides is important. Very important. So you talked a little bit about gender gap in science with kids, I read in that article in San Diego Magazine.
B: Hang for a second.
A: Yeah, sure.
B: That question was imposed on me.
A: Oh, was it?
B: Yeah. The triggers for many of those questions were imposed on me. I would not have brought them up, you know, as my own order of preference.
A: I see. Are you willing to talk about that gender gap a little bit? Because I want- I guess my question is kind of leaning towards, is there a communication issue with kids and science and communicating with them how important science is.
B: What does communication with kids have to do with gender gap?
A: Well, there’s a- there seems to be more males than females-
B: In science you mean?
A: In science, yes. I’m just curious if there’s a reason for that and maybe part of it is because science isn’t communicated all that well when they’re kids to get them excited about science and want to pursue that as a career. So I’m just curious if maybe communication is the cause of that or poor communication or lack thereof.
B: You know, that’s an interesting question. If I go back to my own history, like how I got excited about science is, in my case, well, you know, it didn’t have anything to do with- I think it was a very personal issue and I think with everybody’s and individual’s choice or inclination as to what they get excited about, it’s probably a mixture of both. You know, how- in which way they have been primed to respond to triggers of excitement but also internal. I think in science, you must have internal drive. That is something I have learned over the years and it’s something that’s become so clear to me in so many aspects and regards every single time I talk to someone. If I meet a new graduate student- so for example, in February and March I will interview a new graduate student that have sought admission to our school of science and technology. And it’s very interesting what’s the driving motivations are, what they put down as to why they chose this direction, why they want to pursue it so relentlessly. There that thing and then as an interviewer like me, as a mentor, you have to kind of see through the brag sheet of- type of boilerplate that someone puts down and do they really mean it, right? So it comes back to your question of if you’re talking about kids or young individuals, right, how do they get primed? I think they get primed by exposure to subjects that would trigger their excitement. So for instance, if kids are allowed to, with nowadays media and access to just about any type of information, you can choose what you’re reading, you can choose what you’re listening to, you can choose what you’re watching. But if there’s a certain precedence, let’s say in your family, for instance, if the family watches TV and they watch nature shows, documentaries, something that would spark your interest in nature and science, physics, mathematics, chemistry, something, then that individual might respond to something like that, might find excitement. And also, of course, will find excitement in something that their role models seem to get excited about. So in my case, I didn’t, for instance, and I think I was a pretty blank page, so I didn’t grow up in a family that, you know, where everybody was a scientist or people didn’t have a history in this or that. But my parents had an innate curiosity and we would venture out into weekend excursions into nature nearly every single weekend, whether rain or shine or whatever. And so the exposure to nature, questions that came up in hikes, and stuff about, you know, how do things work and whatnot, was something that excited me. And then at school I was naturally drawn to biology, chemistry, and in a sense I think that was something that became then my internal drive, right, overlaid with my internal kind of motivation make-up. So I think people are different in many ways. Again, I’m seeing this from a very subjective standpoint and I’m trying to see how a kid in high school would respond to something like that and it’s probably a spectrum of how people would respond to triggers that spark their curiosity and which way they translate that into action, into decision making of, you know, do they want to pursue this as a professional career in the end and stuff like that. And if you want I can go back to my own example later on, if you like. [13:26]
A: Let’s circle back around, if we need to. I’m kind of curious if- I’m trying to think of how to word this question. You brought up getting kids out there in nature like you did and hopefully that would be a good trigger to raise questions and to kind of push them to pursue that knowledge and gain that information. Do you think today that’s harder because of maybe technology getting in the way, maybe people with their phones, they don’t look up and around. Do you think it’s harder nowadays than when you were a kid?
B: It was definitely different then. I mean, in a comical way it’s very different today because people walk around with their cell phones and don’t look up to the point where they hit a lamp post, right? It’s like, whoopsie! Suddenly a reality impact hits and then, “Oh,” and maybe then they have to go to the hospital and get stitches or something. Then they see people running around in white gowns and asking them questions about their health status, you know. Do you have insurance? Stuff like that. Suddenly they get into a whole new world, which is called reality. Now, the other part is reality, too, but it can be virtual. You can think you’re in it, poof, your batter goes dead, you’re out of it. So to what degree do you involve yourself with something? And I can’t really say how it must feel today as opposed to back in the day when I had exposure to nature or whatever triggered me. But I can tell you one thing, which is, so I like to work with young people. I have graduate students but they are, of course, pretty advanced in their development already. But I also have the privilege of something working with high school students or people who are in their beginning stages of college education, they come in here as interns, for example, over the summer. I always love to have some interns. And last year I had- I mean, last summer I had three and I tell you, they are exposed to a completely different type of triggering and information gain but the one thing which I noticed in all three of them that I had, and one was, like, a recurring student, she keeps coming back because she seems to like it and she’s also local so she can do it, the one thing that I notice in all three of them was they weren’t any different than me back then, even though they learn all kinds of things through Google, god knows what, but their questions that they had for me and- their perception of what information will I draw on to make a decision for my life, you know, for my career move or in whichever way, were exactly the same. So I felt really good, you know, connecting with them because I could connect with them. I didn’t feel like I was from a different planet, they didn’t understand me, I didn’t understand them. Quite the contrary. I was very, very happy about that, that we connected so directly and, even though I know they- and I learned from them, too, right? Because I checked in which they draw information, I taught them some ways as to how to use the resources that they have to draw the information that they needed for certain questions that I asked them to address. In a sense, coming back to your original question, which is, how does someone get primed to pursuing what they ultimately do, possibly for a living but also for life fulfillment in a way, if you will, then the questions that they had were exactly the same and the desires to find something meaningful to do were exactly the same. So I was very happy about that.
A: That’s interesting because there’s- usually over the course of time there’s that disconnect between generations and to have something like science tie it together, that’s good. I don’t meet many younger generations than me that I can connect with anymore because I don’t have much in common. My experience is, I remember a rotary phone, you know?
B: Oh yeah, I do, too.
A: But if you say, hey, do you remember rotary phone? They’re like, what’s a rotary phone? Yeah, remember the thing if you do this? And they don’t know what you’re talking about. [18:10]
B: But that’s ok. They might find it cool to get some stuff like a retro thing in their house down the road.
A: Exactly. I’d be like, well, I had it first before you did. I want to talk a little bit about writing, just one quick question about that. You’ve written books and patent requests for things that are highly technical and research specific. And that requires a specific type of audience, to have that background. Is there a certain writing style needed for writing patent requests?
B: Yeah, the patent requests, from the spectrum that you just mentioned, is very different. I have to say, with that, I had a lot of help. What I do is if I would like to throw out the idea that I would seek the opportunity to kind of file on a patent for something, I write what we call a disclosure and the disclosure is more- something like a scientific paper. It’s kind of my style where I present what I have, I make a case for the novelty of what I found in light of the literature that’s out there, the prior art, if you will. So- and I don’t necessarily look at it from that level because, you know, I’m not a lawyer and so for that type of writing you need a lawyer involved, of course. So you write up your disclosure, you make your scientific point, then you meet with a lawyer who will then translate this whole thing into a patent application. Very different from when you write a paper or when you write a grant application. That’s something that you start in your mind with your team and then you write it up and it’s your baby from start to finish. And then it gets peer reviewed, you know, with and by people who are in your field and you get feedback. You polish it or you make your stance for what you don’t want to change. Then you throw it out into the peer community, which is basically the group of people who will understand what you write, if you write it in those terms. In a grant application, you really, really work it hard to make everybody understand what you want to do and how valuable it is to want to do a certain thing. So to me the most valuable- I shouldn’t say valuable. The most important documents that I write are scientific papers and grants and they are like, start to finish, in house type of my own stuff with a team, of course, generating the data.
A: It’s interesting that a lawyer has to translate that into- is it patent language, then? Legalese?
B: Yes. It is not necessarily total legalese at that time because it still has the points that you wrote down in your disclosure but it now becomes broken down into bits and pieces that the patent literature attorneys are looking at. So the development of a patent is like a disclosure than a patent application. Then it gets reviewed by, really, patent lawyers. Their primary look is to whether or not what you propose is [indecipherable] and then all kinds of things happen that I haven’t fully wrapped my head around, right? But it becomes really a piece of document of its own nature and then hopefully it will translate into something that can be valuable for somebody else who wants to license it and take it to a clinic, for example.
A: That’s cool. I like how that- it’s like a language has been repurposed to their own language.
B: Yes.
A: That’s kind of cool. So a couple questions as far as ethics are concerned, and feel free to say, “I don’t want to answer this one” because I know we talked a little about this before. Do you feel that the science community is communicating well enough to audiences without a scientific background?
B: It depends on what type of media you are referring to. If you ask in general if the science community is doing a good enough job to inform the general public about what they do, that is a question I cannot fully answer, not because I don’t want to, but because I haven’t really studied what is out there. If you look, for example, at media that are being distributed to the general public, for example, Scientific American or something like that, it’s fantastic. If you look at documentaries on the Discovery Channel, if you look at documentaries on national public television, it’s fantastic material. And people have put, obviously, a lot of emphasis and heart into trying to communicate things to the general public. You have Alan Alda who received a prize recently for being an advocate. You know, he’s an actor. He’s a brilliant actor and he was- I think, this whole thing was trigged by him, I don’t know in which context he ended up being in the cause for the Institute for the Methodology and Distribution of Methodological Knowledge, and so he became an advocate, really, for the translation of scientific information to the general public and that, I thought, was brilliant to take on that mission. And he found it was very important and, obviously, in some of his roles back in the day when he was starring in MASH, for example. He was a medical doctor and he had to inform the audience as to what was going on, what was the problem with the patient. And so I think that probably must’ve been on his mind a lot. So how do we, as bench scientists, for example, or as individual principal investigators or as groups of investigators on a team communicate to the general public sometimes? I think, maybe, not well enough but we’re looking for opportunities and I take opportunities here within my in-house need and I- at the Scripps Research Institute, I think we put a lot of emphasis in trying to reach out as an outreach activity. Because the general public usually does not come to you and ask, “What is it that you do?” They may not even know we exist. If you go out into a study section- so for example, I serve a lot on NIH, National Institutes of Health, study sections where grants are being reviewed, stuff like that, where the scientists come together and review other people’s applications. We do this to each other as a- it’s a non-profit- it’s a service to the community, really, and you give it your best shot. You honest to god give it your best shot to review from the best of your knowledge in the field. When you go out and you expose yourself to the community, everybody knows the Scripps Research Institute. If you go out to a local community even here in San Diego and you start to talk about the Scripps Research Institute, they say, “Oh, it’s either Scripps Health or it’s the Scripps Institute of Oceanography,” they’ve heard about. Very few people have sometimes heard about us and what we do as general scientists. So one thing that was kind of interesting was when I connected- or when we connected with Erin Chambers Smith, the editor of the San Diego Magazine, we invited her and she came and she was, first of all, surprised to learn of our existence and who we were. And suddenly, while we were talking to her, she noticed, oh, she does have a connection with us because one of her kids took a drug and survived because of a drug that was developed here at Scripps. So very few people know, not necessarily that we’re developing drugs, but we are setting the stage for other development of drugs that then go to a clinic. So this was a drug that a newborn, in her case, I think, her daughter or so had taken it and wouldn’t have survived without taking it. So suddenly she knew where this thing came from and that was an eye-opening experience to her, that there’s people out there out of big pharma who are setting the stage for development of new medicine, for example. This is how it starts, right? It starts here with someone discovering something, then writing maybe a disclosure, then writing a patent, then some company, some drug pharma company gets excited in the possibility of licensing this patent because they may see an opportunity for profit in it and then they take and they develop it to clinical application. So in our case here, I think, we have the need and the desire to talk to the general public. Sometimes the way in which we find ways in communicating it may not be sufficient, I think. I think it would great to have more interaction between the general community and us and I think for the most part, we have to do the outreach because the community is apparently oblivious sometimes. So we have to be proactive. [28:02]
A: Do you think reaching out to actors, for example like Alan Alda that isn’t a scientist would be useful?
B: Yes, absolutely. I would say some people who has a public persona, anybody with a public persona, I think would be super important to come because that person could be a medium for us, for example, to express ourselves and connect with the community. It could be- because the community would know the public persona person. The public persona person would get to know us, we would be talking to each other. So then, through that interaction, a dialogue would start. I would love to do that.
A: That would be a good idea. I think there’s a corporate word for it, where you learn all different kinds of jobs within the company even though you only do that one job.
B: Yes.
A: You know them all and it makes your job easier.
B: Mm hmm.
A: So I feel like more scientists and even just the scientific community should be reaching out to other people, as well.
B: Yes.
A: Now, I want to, along those lines and we talked briefly about this earlier, unfortunately science can be kind of political. We’ve got people out there who are kind of saying things that aren’t actually accurate. They’re doing it for a personal agenda, so to speak. So I want to talk a little bit- I know doctors in the hospital sense have a Hippocratic Oath.
B: Yes.
A: Do scientists have that and if not, do you think that would be useful in keeping that- sort of the moral and ethical and factual scientific research out there and available?
B: You know, that’s a very interesting point that you bring up, Adam. My immediate inclination to this question is we don’t need it, we have it. We don’t need a Hippocratic Oath. From all I know of my many years in basic science, and I’m talking about basic science in the academia, which is non-profit science, academic science, I have not met one person where I felt like this person wasn’t fully devoted to finding, if you want to boil it down to, the truth. I mean, the truth is something that is- I don’t know if it exists or not. But you want to find a meaning in something. You want to understand something. That’s your innate curiosity. That’s your drive. You’re not out there to find something that you’re purposefully looking for. You’re purposefully looking for an answer but you’re not purposefully looking for a particular answer that will advance you as a person that would, you know, cross your ethic or where you might run into ethics problems because now you mixing your personal agenda, for example, of getting rich or getting out of a certain situation that you find difficult or something, that’s not the person you find in academia. I have not found one. I have not found one. So I think it is- we have education, we have formal education on ethics, and we can come back to that if you like, but I have to say that there’s a certain kind of person that is drawn to academic science and I watch out for that when I interview the graduate students. I get the vibes as to where they’re coming from. I get the vibes as to where the boiler- the brag sheet boilerplate type of stuff. I get the vibe of who this person is, you know, in terms of what are they driven by. At that point, they’re very young. They’re not driven by, I don’t know, profit or something. Of course everybody in the end has to think about, will I be able to make a living with what I do? And academic science traditionally has been a very difficult choice in that regard because it doesn’t provide you a lot- with a lot of personal wealth opportunities. It provides you with something else. And if people see that- and we can come back to what that is- but if people see that then they’re so drawn to it that they throw away the idea of, gosh, will I be able to make a living on it? And that might even be a healthy concept but that’s the drive. [32:50]
A: So how do you get the- how do you make sure the up and coming scientists are sticking with that, “I want this scientific answer” and not so much personal gain? I’m trying to figure out what can be done to ensure that they’re sticking with science driven work instead of emotion driven or money driven work. So how do we effectively communicate that to the grad students so they can factually communicate to society?
B: Yeah. There’s different levels in which you do that and that’s a very, very, very important task and the task lies primarily with a mentor, I think, with a mentor and with an educational program that they’re kind of being reared in, that they’re being exposed to. As a mentor, I think you have your ethical standards that you have developed over time, that you have subscribed to. Really, that’s who you are. You try to convey to your students the values that are dear to you at all levels and the ethics part is a very important one in that regard. You don’t go in and look at- well, you find if there’s an inclination in a person not to pursue the finding of information as it presents itself to you, through the glasses that you look at it, through the types of assays that you throw at it, through the readouts that you get. If you find that raw values that come out of a primary analysis like that are not being used in that way, then that’s a really, really big red flag. And how do you respond to that? You talk to that person and then you observe that person very closely. And I will not say you start now to judge but it- I found that it’s also a very important part of the job that I have as a mentor is to find if a person really wants to go in the direction that they’re seeking to go into. If I find, and I have had several examples, not because of ethical issues but of other issues I wasn’t aware of in the person itself or themselves weren’t aware of, but when I find that a person doesn’t really want to go in the direction that they have chosen to formally pursue, then I take them heart very, very sternly. I mean, not that I impose myself on them but I ask and there was one person in my group, for example, that I called in and I asked her in that case if she really knew what she wanted to do with her life after being a post-doctorate fellow and it turned out for the first time I thought I was connecting with that person really deeply and she broke down and said, I don’t really know. So I said, I want you to take a week off and walk on the beach or do something where you don’t necessarily do a lot of activity but just connect with yourself and find out what you want to do and then come back to me. And I also asked her whether or not she was stable enough to do that, to be on her own during that week, and she said yes, and I believe she was. For a while I thought she might not but she was. And after that week she came back and her face looked different and she found something and she came back to me and she said that she had really reflected on this and she felt like the career she moves that she had made so far were brilliant moves and she went from Ivy League school to Ivy League school, right? She now went to Scripps from Ivy League school and Scripps is a very prestigious place for a graduate program, as well. So she was kind of set up in this very Ivy League-oriented type of career movement. And then I asked her, what do you really want to do? And she comes to me and says, I would like to become a college teacher and not the Noble Laureate scientist. And I said, congratulations, I think you found yourself, possibly. I think you find yourself. Go do it! And I threw her out after that because she wasn’t wanting to do the post-doc. But I threw her out in a loving way, right, because I wanted her to pursue what she wanted to pursue. Later on I did a little Google search on her and she’s now a college teacher up in Oregon somewhere so she did she what she wanted to do and I hope she’s happy.
A: That’s good. So she found her moral compass, I guess. Or her ethical direction?
B: She found her own direction.
A: Her own direction, yeah.
B: And not necessarily what her Ivy League career and maybe her parents or god knows how was expecting of her. And I had to give her the kick in the butt really hard to go kind of connect with herself so…. But that’s what I’m saying, back to this ethics question that you had. If you find, and I didn’t have that- I have one example where it was a little different and that person’s no longer here. But if you find that somebody is kind of struggling with that issue, because it can be a struggle- because what comes out, let’s say, the temptation- I give you just one example, right, but it boils down to this very ethical question- what comes out of the temptation of manipulating a dataset, for example, in your favor, whatever inclination you may have. You are now manipulating something that nature apparently threw the set of analysis that you threw at it did not tell you. If you have that inclination, maybe it’s better to do something else because if you want to stay in academic science, you have to have the absolute desire to live with what you see, to try to find what you can see in the natural result, which may be negative result in your opinion at the time, right, because you had expected something else. So now you have different options. You go ahead and falsify it in your way, and that is not- if somebody wants to do that, it’s not a person who needs to pursue this career. They can pursue something else which makes them happier and maybe is better for society. It could be but not for academic science. It doesn’t belong.
A: I actually want to kind of take that and sort of run with that a little bit, if you don’t mind. I’m kinda curious about- when you said data manipulation, if you’re a scientist out there and you’re trying to get research funding-
B: Yes.
A: -how tempting is it to sort of say, look where I’m going and just sort of- I’ll use pie charts and graphs, for example. Those are easily manipulated to get a point across, a specific point across. You’re only showing a specific dataset that shows only what you want people to know. How tempting is it to do that to get funding?
B: You know, this is a very important point these days because to get funding these days has become very hard. So the possible temptation level could rise when you do that. There’s a couple of issues that you address. First of all, you have a page limit so you could not possibly put everything in. So you would not necessarily overload your peer review group with a bunch of negative data that you’ve had. You sit there and you sort out with yourself, what would I like to do if I had this pot of money available to me, what would I like to do with that pot of money based on what I know to generate valuable information for the betterment of human health, for example, in the particular field you’re studying, in my case, cancer research. What can I do with that pot of money to help a cancer patient in the field I’m studying. It’s not that I’m sitting here thinking- of course I’m thinking, how can I possibly survive- but the drive, as to how can I possible survive, comes out of starting from the top down, right? And that’s- I think that should be really your- at least that’s the way I address it. So resources are limited and finite, and your own time is limited and finite. What can- how can I best invest my own time, my own life drive, and possibly, hopefully some money that I get to execute a certain program. How can I best apply that to reach a goal, to make somebody who’s now lying in bed and has no chance of a cure, to having a better life, maybe a longer life, maybe even a cure? What can I do? And I think that’s what needs to drive you. Not necessarily, how can this pie chart best present it or something. You present your preliminary data in a sense that it makes sense that you can pursue- I mean, unless you are somebody who is, like, super well known in the field, you can throw out a new concept without necessarily showing the individual data for that because people will grant you that you can do it because you’ve done it before, right? So the majority of the mere mortals have to show preliminary data. So you have to then walk a fine line between, ok, what is my dream goal, I want to help this this person in the bed who’s dying. What is it that I have that I can do and what is it that I can do to get from what I can currently do to get to help the person who’s dying. And that often involves something that is super fulfilling, I would say. It is a challenge- I think the challenge- it depends- let’s say you have this initial temptation type of scenario going, right? So then I think my recommendation, or my personal approach, is to start from the top down. How can I help this person who is dying? And I have had scenarios- and many people have had that scenario- where they look at somebody who is in that situation and you go, like, whoops, this is what I’m here for, right? This is my goal in life, really, to help, and not as a physician but as a basic researcher that you are. So then you go from what can I do right now, right here from reaching this goal and you walk this line and in the middle you see, I cannot do this alone, I have to reach out and I have to build collaborative efforts. Then you try to find which collaborative efforts do I need. What are the procedures that I need to get from where I am to where I want to be? What is the expertise that I don’t personally have, the stack of technical approaches that I don’t have- and I have a really good example for that right now that I’m pursuing- and then I reach out, right? And I feel like this is why I’m so happy in this environment because I find most of what I need right across the street, right around within my own microenvironment. And that’s the beauty of a free academic research institute like we are. Really, that’s what I value so much here, because you have diversity, you have a lot of diversity. You find yourself, ok, I’m a cancer researcher, I have this and this and that going, I need genomix, I need proteomix, I need structural biology, I need chemistry, I have the best people in the world right around me to address those issues. I reach out to them. I’ve never had somebody close the door on me, not here. So that’s what I love and this is where I see the opportunity when the challenge comes, when I want to write a grant, and I don’t have everything to answer the question- I mean, back in the day, possibly people were sitting in their offices and philosophizing about their- the question that they were addressing. And maybe that was the best they could do sometimes because they didn’t have email, they didn’t have all these social media going on. But they could walk across the street if they had another scientist sitting there or they even traveled by train, by boat, by whatever to reach out to find other people in the world to help.
A: That must’ve been interesting, to say, I need to talk to this person, he’s in another state, it’s going to take me two days by carriage. That- and now, just get on the phone… totally different. But it’s good that- it almost sounds like your moral compass can be driven by that funding you’re trying to get. It’ll keep you in check- it almost, in a way, now that I think about it, seems like there’s sort of a dual dance going on, where it’ll- that funding will keep your moral compass in check but you need to make sure your own moral compass is already in check going into trying to get funding.
B: Yes. Oh, that’s an absolute must. You go in with your moral compass totally intact.
A: You have to.
B: You have to because there will be challenges in every which way coming at you, you know? And that is something- and this is why I was saying when you asked me about students and you probe them, you probe them really hard, because this is, not necessarily that you want to become- that you want to have every student you mentor to become an academic scientist because that’s not the reality and maybe in the future that may not be the opportunity but to set them up with your current set of values. Like if- you know, we had this at the last commencement ceremony, Dr. Schulz actually said that in- the mentoring group of people is like a family to you and I have perceived it always like that. They are kind of like your academic parents in a way and they hold you by the standards, they show you the values, they try to live the values, and guide you into the finding the values for yourself. And then, of course, there’s reality as to, do you really want to subject yourself to this? Because like you said in the beginning, there’s all kinds of things and that is basically- doesn’t necessarily apply only for academic sense but in any situation in life, I think. When you have your moral compass and your moral compass tells you a certain thing and you’re very clear on that. Then, of course, to reach a certain goal in your job or in your life, you encounter obstacles all the time, all the time. And so here’s this moral compass that goes with you and that helps you to find ways. Like I said, you look at this person in the hospital bed, you now find ways in which you connect with your peers, you collaborate this or that, instead of modifying your pie chart and saying, I want this amount of money and then I go to town with whatever. So, you know, I think you brought it up really clearly, Adam. I think the moral compass is a- yeah, it’s a guide, it’s a compass. You must have it- you must be able to read it clearly and then you basically find ways to address the questions that are being thrown at you to find ways to survive, to help the patient in the hospital bed, if you can. You try as hard as you can and you don’t violate your moral compass.
A: Yeah, moral compass. It’s gone out the window these days, it seems. Anyway. I want to talk- you brought up obstacles so I want to ask a couple more questions about process and failure, if you have time…. Ok. Have there ever been any sort of harrowing experiences in your life or even your career that taught you a lesson on how to communicate your research and work to audiences without losing them? [49:40]
B: In many different ways and also at many different levels. And I don’t want to write the levels against each other but one example is your peer group, right? You give a talk, you get answers back, you get people writing you, you get students reaching out to you who want to work in your group, and that is very gratifying and you engage in a conversation. And sometimes you engage in a discussion when everybody has the same opinion, obviously, and that is challenging and kind of enlightening and enriching in its own way because it pushes you to consider different viewpoints, right? You expose yourself when you communicate, you bring out information and you bring it out in your way. We all have perceptions. One person may look at a tree and say it’s green and another person may look at it and say it’s blue and it could be a cultural thing. And there’s nothing wrong with blue or green. You just have to realize that what you throw out is your personal viewpoint, in a sense- in the context of your scientific findings, in this case. But to then have somebody else to look at it in a different way and throw a question at you, it enriches you and sometimes it enhances- it kind of reinforces what you were already thinking. Or it throws you off balance for a moment and you think, whoopsie, what do I need to consider here to address this question that this person had. And may I give you one example?
A: Absolutely.
B: And this is at a different “ level,” if you will, and I come back to this level because it is something that has tremendously enriched me. And this is why I’m looking at the person in the hospital bed because, you know, I’m not a physician, I’m a PhD and I shouldn’t- I’m not obliged to ask how is this person in the hospital bed is doing. But that’s my mission. And so the level that I was referring to is the level of, in my case, advocacy involvement. So one time I had my first grant from the California Breast Cancer Research Foundation. I was very proud of it. I had my molecular mechanism all- I wouldn’t say all figured out, but I had it all going and I was thinking at the scientific level I have really made a discovery here. So I go to this conference where I was invited to give my results and I stand there and I give my little talk, and a person walks up to me later on and she’s a breast cancer survivor, obviously, right, because this type of conference included the scientists and the stake holders, meaning the patients and patient-related people. You know, healthcare givers and persons like that. So this person walks up to me and she has a head scarf on and I look at her and I think, whoopsie, she’s in chemotherapy, or has just come out of it or something. She doesn’t look good, she doesn’t have any hair, she doesn’t feel good, and she walks up to me and says, “You know, Brunie, what you just told us is very interesting but what does it do for me?” And suddenly I saw her and I saw the clock. I saw the clock, tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock and I thought, what can I tell this woman because her clock is not looking at infinity or possibly years. It may be looking at I don’t know what. I don’t know what the status of her health was but she could be looking at months. And I don’t know what I told her but I totally broke down completely. It was an experience that I will never forget and I flew home that night crying because I thought, what have I done now? I won this grant, I have this molecular mechanism, I was proud, standing up for it, telling everybody, and then she walks up to me and says, “what can you do for me,” and I realize I could probably not do anything on her timescale. So then I realized, whoopsie, what is my purpose in life here? You know, going back to the top down approach and it became very difficult and it has become very difficult recently for me here because a couple of people that were dear to me died of cancer recently, including one of my grad students.
A: Sorry to hear that.
B: 28 years old, in my lab, gets diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer and I learned so much from that person because I mentored him all the way up to the point where he then died. Other people, and I mean it shouldn’t be my- I don’t know why I’m saying shouldn’t be. Can it be my purpose in life to help someone like that? Can it be my purpose in life to help this woman with a headscarf? In the end, I think it must because that’s really what drives me. And I think it’s also what drives me nuts because I see my limitations but then you stretch as hard as you can to reach your goal so I am stretching a lot and I’m stretching in a sense of trying to connect with collaborators to ramp up a program to really do something.
A: So that one experience you communicated almost enough for this one individual and because you couldn’t communicate more, it kind of drove you to do more.
B: Yes. She changed my life.
A: How long ago was this, if you don’t mind me asking?
B: Oh, I don’t’ know exactly but I would say 15 years, something like that, in that neighborhood. Or even longer.
A: And the science is different now since then, I would think. So if she asked now, would it have been- would have maybe been closer to an answer for her?
B: She came back to me, I mean not she as a person, but she came back to me in different people who reached out. So she keeps coming back to me. I don’t know what her personal history is, if she survived this or not, but having people come back to me and looking at- and I’m not going through this life turning my head away. I’m looking and I’m seeing them and sometimes they reach out and sometimes I reach out when I see them, you know. It becomes kind of a bi-directional type of opportunity. So yeah, and- yes, I think these days, with nowadays technology, for instance- and also, my grown experience and my realization as to what the goals are and that made a huge change, I tell you that. I mean, I cannot- I just told you it was a life change experience and that’s really what it was. So that made me think away from my- because I was so, you know, in my molecular mechanism and it could’ve- I don’t know if it could’ve determined my career going from there, like, being in that type of research all the time. And maybe it’s a danger also because you expose yourself to trying something new and it exposes yourself to reaching out a little bit beyond your own, you know, this particular expertise but then again, you have to bring in the collaborative efforts. And I think the value that we now- that I see in myself, for example, and I ask myself- actually I don’t ask myself but I was kind of asking myself or was asked by a colleague recently, who also found it very, very difficult to get finding, and he said, “Brunie, what do you think? My expertise lies in this, this, this, and that,” and I don’t think I was completely honest with him but I- my inclination was, man, think about something new. Not necessarily don’t forget what you know but look at other ways of using the information that you have and it’s a very valuable skillset and information set that you have to generate new information, it’s really groundbreaking, not so incremental and pedestrian. And I tell you one other kind of thought changing experience that I had, and it’s also a communication issue, really, which I very much value and it sort of goes along with getting a grant, if you will, at least in my case. I had this opportunity to meet this woman who then, in many phases, would turn back to me and kind of set up my moral compass and my goals but also, when I received my first NIH grant, like a RO1, which is the more sizable grant, I had little smaller grants before, but when I first received my first RO1, the NIH and the National Cancer Institute had a habit, I don’t’ know if they still have it, of bringing together the new grantees. And our program director had us all sit there in a room and a couple of people from the NIH were telling us- were giving us moral compass information, which I really liked, but what they also told us- and that is something, again, you know, you sometimes have this experience that you don’t forget, they kind of set you up to think in a new way- so what this person said to me, or to us as a group, was, ok, here’s this one paper, if I were asking you to read this paper, every one of you would come back telling me something different about this paper in the end. And naturally so because you all look at it through the glasses of your experience, through the glasses of your desire, where you want to go. So you look at it from your viewpoint and so therefore- but he put it out in a very positive way. He said, “It’s your secret weapon. It’s your secret and unique weapon.” And this is why I was telling my colleague- I don’t know if he got my drift or not but- it’s your secret weapon that you can be proud of what you know and understand but you use it in a contemporary way. Don’t get stuck in your old ways and make what you have and how you can see certain things a value that you can then communicate to other people and then they throw back stuff at you, and then you realize, ooh, I haven’t thought about that and then it becomes interesting and fun.
A: So it’s evolving.
B: Yeah. Always.
A: Ok. So how much does communicating your work and research play a role in your success as a scientist?
B: It’s an absolute must. Without communication, it’s even a logistical thing. If you just sit there and think and never tell anybody about your thoughts, you could probably do that only if you’re independently wealthy. You know, if you find pleasure in that. But if you- your success lies in trying to enrich your field, trying to survive as a person, trying to survive as a group leader to have funds, for instance, for your team to build, maintain a team, and to do the work that you like to do. The communication is an absolute must and it has to be effective and it has to be really good. That is something also that you learn with time, that I learned with time, and it is also, you know- communication is one thing, and then the way in which you communicate, then you are- funding agencies, for example, empowers on you formats in which you can communicate, and you have to learn to do that effectively within the guidelines given. And so yeah, communication is, next to actually doing the work, the most important, I think.
A: Do you think that it’s- there are other professions where it’s like that? Outside of news broadcasting or things like that, is communicate, at least in science compared to another field, do you think- do other fields have that level of importance with communication than science does? Might be difficult to answer because you’re not in those fields.
B: Well, I’m thinking and I will give you an immediate thought that came to my mind is this. So I think communication is a very important aspect in just about any profession, I would think. Even if you are, in an extreme case scenario, you are an astronaut out in a space station by yourself, right? If you lose connection with ground control, you start to wonder. You know, you go to the Major Tom type of scenario. Where are they? Where am I? What is my purpose up here? Can I communicate my findings back to them in some way? You want to communicate. That’s- because what you might find- as an individual, you might find it fulfilling to answer your question up there but if you can’t communicate them with ground control, part of your mission is not fulfilled, right? So how about other comparable professions, let’s say? In the first example that came to my mind was medicine, medical care, health care, and I think there is a really, really big gap to fill and the gap to fill is the communication with the patient. I don’t know if you have had a chance to talk to Eric Topol or to read his books. Go and look up this book. It’s called “The Patient Will Now See You.” It’s an interesting one, it’s an interesting one.
A: It comes from a different angle, doesn’t it?
B: It’s a very different angle and he takes it to the extreme but look at that just for enlightenment or provocation or whatever. What I see is, of course in a hospital, what I see- so for example, and you, I can see it from both the “outsider colleague” standpoint when collaborate with medical people and I can see it from the patient standpoint and I’m looking at totally different levels of communication- and so now the patient has become more independent and you see that in Eric Topol’s book, “The Patient Will Now See You,” because the patient can now go to Google and look up things that the medical doctor may not tell them, may not have the time to tell them.
A: Well, that’s another communication issue, though, because I can go to Google, say I’ve got a little spot on my arm, I go to Google and it’ll either tell me it’s a zit or I’m going to die. It’s so hard. The internet can’t communicate succinctly enough, sometimes, it seems, especially when it comes to medical stuff. And then you go to a doctor and you just hope they give you the information you need. So it’s- I’m afraid of going to Google and internetting medical stuff.
B: Yeah, you should not be afraid but you have to look at your limitations and your decisions based on what you see, right? And I think you as a person that is so strongly aware of communication and what it means will not really have a problem with that because you can filter. You can read the information, you can say, ok, now I have read that, it could be this, it could be that. It has enlightened you to a degree, right? So you have advanced your knowledge and the possible scenario. Can you make a decision or not now? Do you need to go have the thing cut out? Probably not. So you may want to go see your dermatologist and say, hey, do I need to have this thing cut out or not? The dermatologist has various ways of looking at that. Then you look at- and I really want to motivate to read up on Eric Topol’s- not only that book but other books and his overall drive- because he’s trying to do that, he’s trying to empower and not necessarily by making everybody sit there and read day and night and become the medical expert on their own condition but to empower every one of us, basically with devices that can help us find that out. So for example, there are now devices that are being in the development which you can take your own little skin sample, you can run your whole genome sequencing in the thing. Boom!
A: At home?
B: That’s the goal.
A: That’s the goal.
B: Yeah, even if you’re out there in your space station, you see your spot suddenly, you know you will have osteoporosis because you don’t have gravity stuff like that so you work on that, right? But Eric Topol takes it to the extreme and the extreme is the “The Patient Will See You Now” scenario, right? So one has to be careful because- but it is- it’s an exercise to read up on his viewpoints and his books and whatnot. An exercise of trying to see what the age of information technology can provide us with and how to deal with it to help us live a better life, not to become totally neurotic, which you can easily, if you read up on all these stuff that could happen to you, you may not want to get out of the house in the morning.
A: That’s what I was getting at. Because if I keep reading, I’m gonna put tape on the windows, I’m not going to go anywhere, there’s germs everywhere.
B: This is bad.
A: Yeah. The outside is scary. What- can you spell his last name?
B: Topol. T-O-P-O-L, Eric.
A: Ok, I’m going to look up this book.
B: Check him out.
A: Yeah, because I’ve been wanting to take control of my medical knowledge, because I have my own issues, my own medical issues, and I do research online and then I go to a doctor and I’m- they tell me something else and I’m like, I need to get better control of this. I need to understand it so I can-
B: You want to understand it and then based on that you may not be able to be on a doctor but then you can seek out the help you need in a more efficient way, maybe.
A: I guess my concern, then, is getting research from the internet and kind of running with the wrong information and that’s the danger. [1:09:52]
B: That is true and if you follow a little bit about the Topol mission, I just frame it like this now, right? Because it’s kind of a desire to empower people more, to use the information technology that’s existing these days and being developed for them, for us, for every one of us, to use that in a more efficient way but also cut down on costs, for example. Eric gave a talk sometime ago to a mixed audience here. Are you a local here?
A: For the last eight or nine years.
B: Yeah. If he ever gives a talk again, go, and listen to it. And he has- he’s super provocative. At this I feel provoked a lot, you know, and to my benefit. Really, to my benefit because sometimes I walk out of talks that he gives with key insights that drive me to the next step. And at some point in time, not now, but we can talk about a program that I’m planning to run and how I arrive at the checkpoints as to where is it that I wanted to run, what is that I was looking for, what is it that I was seeing, from what I was seeing where- did I find a new direction to run? Yes, I found a new direction to run. How did I then identify the goal that I have and how do I run to reach that goal. And Eric- going to one of Eric’s talks was a very provocative checkpoint to me, you know, where I suddenly realized, oh, thank you, Eric, this is where I have to run. And I’m going to actually see him- actually, I was supposed to see him today but he couldn’t because he was traveling. But I’m going to see him next week. I’m going to throw out my plan- throw out to him my plan. And- because he is a visionary, in a sense, and not only a visionary but somebody who implements stuff.
A: Is he from here?
B: He has been living here for a while.
A: Oh, he lives here?
B: Yeah, he lives here. I mean, he is part of Scripps.
A: Oh, really? He’s part of Scripps. Ok. I thought he was just a scientist in the area. I didn’t know he actually-
B: No, he’s here. And he was actually in the Cleveland Clinic. He’s a cardiologist by training and wherever he has gone he has really left his footprints in various kind of groundbreaking new ways. And communication is a super important issue in his strategy.
A: It got you to- in answered your questions and in a way, isn’t that what communication is? It’s answering questions an audience may have or filling them with information that they want or need.
B: But here’s a point that I would like to get across, too. It’s not necessarily- answering questions, yes, it’s a good thing. But being provoked to think in a different way is another very important point you take away from a communication and that’s what- Eric didn’t give me any answers, he gave me a new question that I realize- he didn’t spell out a question- but I realize, whoop, there’s a question right here. That’s where we need to make a difference because he has all this information, and there’s a void. There is definitely a void after that. So how to process all this to help people.
A: Right. We spoke with a professor who- he is a cultural anthropologist and he did journalism before this. We talked a lot about being engaged with your audience and how to do that, and he talked about shock value, and how sometimes if you do it right, and don’t do it too often, it’ll get your audience back with you.
B: Give me an example.
A: So he would be talking and he can see sometimes in the audience people fidgeting, people coughing or see the blue glow of the phone on their face, you know?
B: Yes.
A: And in a way to get them back, he would sometimes say, “You know what’s really interesting?” and people would go, oh, he’s going to say something interesting now. So there’s ways of- but he also told kind of a racy story that I won’t relay and I can’t include in this series- but it was very interesting because it got attention. And so I’m curious if that provocation should be used more often by communicators. How do you provoke them in a way that is positive, you know, as opposed to turning them away? But it sounds like Eric Topol knows what he’s doing.
B: Let me just put it this way. Eric Topol does what Eric Topol does. And how you perceive it as the audience is your thing. You know, people resonate in different ways. See how I resonated to this woman who was coming to ask me with her head scarf on? I could’ve completely closed up and thought, you know, this is not my field, or something like that. It depends who you are, how it resonates with you. I really, really believe very strongly that most things are determined by individual- responses by individual choices. I cannot emphasize that enough. Even at a grand scale, you have- for instance, you are looking for something, and I come back to this communication thing, how you spark someone’s interest. But let’s say there is a really big problem that you need to solve and you need to solve it within a short period of time. I have experienced- and I think many of us- but I have become a complete- completely convinced that it is key to find the right individuals to help you or to achieve your goal, you know, if you have your goal set. It’s not necessarily saying, oh, this individual, I don’t like them because they couldn’t help me or something. It’s not that. It’s that you just have to find somebody that is willing and capable. And willing and capable are two different things and in the case of making a true difference, the person has to be willing, otherwise it doesn’t work. I mean, you can ask somebody for a fact check, for example. You ask somebody for their advice on, let’s see, “I see this change here in this molecule. Will that translate into a certain reactivity of the molecule in the context of its functioning cell?” You go and you ask and expert on that and they give you the advice or an opinion based on their knowledge, and that’s valuable. If you are in a situation where it is critical that you must hae the right knowledge and possibly some support from this person, then you go and you ask and maybe get the valuable information but then you find this individual who behind that says, “You know, I see your point and I see your need here and I will help you to implement this. I will give you a key reagent” or “Come back to me and tell me what you found and I will help you to make sense of what you’ve seen.” Those are critical issues. And your audience that you have- I don’t know, you have, maybe 20 people, 200 people, you have a large audience- and you are trying to get a point across. So you have various- of course, now you can draw on several strategic means to engage your audience and today you see this bleu glare of the screen, right, but back in the day, and still, you could look at someone and can see whether or not you have engaged that person. You can see it in their eyes. Are they kind of spaced or something, or are they with you? You can kind of see that. And even in a 200 person audience you can look at individual people, and that’s what I do. For example, you cannot see the person in the last row but you can look at individual people. And that is one way of engaging, too. You don’t just go, like, “I’m out here somewhere.” You look at individual people. You look them in the eye and you make eye contact. That’s already an engagement right there and then they feel like, “Oh, somebody’s looking at me.”
A: “I better pay attention.”
B: That, you know, was your own thought but was also the intention and you have it. And then I have done this. In a very stupid way once in a small audience- can I give you that example?
A: Absolutely.
B: I did it in a completely stupid way but to me it was a great learning experience and it was filtered back to me by a junior colleague who as in the audience. I had a small audience, let’s say, 20 people or something like that. And I knew most of them and many of them were colleagues, right? Some of them I had worked with very closely. And I gave my little spiel there and this was years back, right? And one of my colleagues and friends has this glazed look. I see it, you know? And I make this cardinal mistake of addressing him. I did not address him by just looking at him. I called out his name, right, because I felt like this was a group of friends and I called out his name and I said, “David, are you still with me?” And he said, “Brunie, tell me something new.” There. I had it right back, right? It flew in my face. It was like I lost him because he thought it wasn’t new enough, what I was telling him. This was a level of trust that we had with each other but it hit me hard, it hit me hard. And after that I didn’t make that mistake anymore by addressing someone directly like in a school setting where you would point out a pupil and say, “Pay attention, Roger,” or something like that in a reprimanding way. It was a stupid. It was super stupid. And I set myself up for the- hahaha.
A: Don’t address the audience.
B: Don’t address the audience! And you better tell them something new. You tell them something new, is one of the key issues, right? I mean, and so then you don’t lose their attention so much and the way to communicate, you have to try and work hard on that.
A: We spoke with another MIT professor and she relayed her own story where she was giving at talk in front of 5000 people, the American Physical Society, I think it was. And she was giving this talk on kinetics, or it was chemistry based, and- but the audience thought she was there to talk about something else.
B: Oh!
A: So she went, she gave this talk, and by the time she was done, almost half of the crowd had left before she had finished. So she was like, “Ok, I need to know who my audience is. Make sure that I’m telling them something new, that they’re there to hear something I want to say. They’re there to hear what I’m talking about and I need to tell them something they don’t know.” And that engages them. So when you brought that up, it just reminded me of that, where she had the same thing. She didn’t address the audience directly but telling them something new is important.
B: But, you know, also two key things that I’m hearing from what you just told me. She was in a scenario where, obviously, there was a big meeting and there were 2000, 5000 people, something like that. If you lose half of them, you still have 2500 people, right? I mean, that’s a big success right here. Because you cannot possibly expect- that’s one thing, the expectation- you cannot possibly expect that, you go to- you give a talk at a meeting, especially if it’s a meeting that has multiple choices of talks going on simultaneously- you just live with the fact that a good portion of your audience drifted out because they find that the other talk they really wanted to hear was probably what they should be hearing right now and so you just let them go because they have another agenda in life and that’s not your thing, right? You go for your thing and you engage the 2500 that are there. But then there was another key thing that you told me. She told them something that they did not expect she would be telling them. How come? Was the title different?
A: It could’ve been. Maybe they might’ve misunderstood the, sort of, description of the talk that was out there. Another communication issue? So yeah, I don’t know. I don’t exactly what they were expecting.
B: The thing is also, you know, if you do that, if you give a talk, and I’m sure you have your own experiences in many different ways, the one thing I think you have to free yourself of is also to try and enlighten everybody in the room because they may not be there for the enlightenment at that given point in time or day or whatnot and they may looking for something else and that’s entirely their thing. Your thing is your thing and you communicate it the best you can. And if you enlighten- you know, I don’t know how many within your audience- then you have achieved a huge amount of success of yourself.
A: I moderate panels at conventions.
B: Yeah?
A: And there have times where people get up, you know, and I’m always been tempted to be like, “Don’t leave. We’re giving away free TVs.”
B: Don’t ever do that. It’s like my thing just telling David-
A: They’re going to turn around and sit down and at the end say, “Well, you’re not giving away free TVs so why am I here?”
B: Or go knock yourself out on your free TV.
A: Right, exactly. Saturday night I was up in Los Angeles- well, near Los Angeles. I do poetry readings and I was doing a poetry reading in front of maybe 20 people. And I could tell they were getting fidgety because it was sort of towards the end of the night. So I got up there and I’m not much of a performer but I was like, all the things I’m doing here I have to engage my audience, I learned this. So I got up there and I was just very physically open and sort of very- used my hands, used my feet, I was walking, body movement. And they were engaged and I could see when I got off stage they were looking at me as opposed to looking around, checking their phone. So yeah, you have to really engage that audience and try to come up with ways to keep them in front of you, so to speak.
B: Yeah, and everybody has their own style in a sense, right? And it depends on what you talk about. But usually, if you have a choice- and for the most part you have a choice of what you’re talking about. For instance, in poetry reading, you chose what you were reading and so you chose something that you felt passionate about and you let out your passion on stage. You read it with emphasis and you read it with your body language and everything. And people who resonated to that, they resonated, and you had pretty much everybody engaged so yeah. And there could be people who are taking on a completely different wavelength entirely at that moment in time so you can’t get any resonance and that’s fine.
A: Yeah. Be passionate about what you’re doing.
B: Be yourself. Yeah. And passion comes out naturally so yeah, be yourself.
A: Ok, final question. I know we’ve been here a little while. I’ve enjoyed this. Thank you for talking with me. What advice do you have for MIT grad students in regards to research communication and professional growth?
B: I would say learn to communicate effectively. Realize that communication is a very important aspect of research, of science, of discovery. It really is. And if you feel for a while you have to sit and be by yourself and mull over a certain data set or thought or concept that starts to develop a new mind and you need that time for yourself and with yourself only, do it. Give yourself that time and space. But then reach out and communicate. Expose your new ideas to feedback and be open to whatever feedback comes back and then use the feedback that you can understand and that you think can bring you forward in your research question, in your career advancement, in your personal growth. After you have made the choices of filtering the feedback, run that again by other people to see how your filtering is going and in the meantime, always work on your inner compass. Check it back, check to see if you have a clear idea as to where your inner compass is morally, ethically, with respect to others. And I think ethics includes, to a large degree, respect for yourself and respect for others and respect for information that’s out there that other people have generated in the past based on the best of their knowledge and at this point in time you just trust that they did this ethically. And enjoy the experience, enjoy the personal growth, and try to realize where you grow and own it. Own that growth. Do enjoy it. Be proud. And this is an important point. There is actually never anything stopping you in your entire career that you also watch out for people whom you can trust and seek advice from. And with that I mean not only the research community in terms of expertise for a certain scientific question but also for making choices. If you are in a crossroads situation where you have to make a choice, either this way, that way, and your moral compass or whatever, your knowledge at the time, doesn’t tell you clearly which way to go, it is very, very important to have and be able to rely on certain people whom you can ask for advice. I have such people here at Scripps and it doesn’t take long sometimes to get that advice. I had a very, very important support once in a situation that was very difficult for me to make a decision and I had, I would say, that conversation with that person whom I deeply trust, I must say, whom I really, deeply trust. I had maybe ten minutes of a conversation with that person, I would say five minutes where I laid out my problem. And here is the communication part. You have to be- when you go into a conversation like that, try to be very clear as to what you want to ask or at least that the person has a chance to read you and find what you need. Then I had another five minutes where that person gave me the advice that I needed. And that is the beauty of, and the importance also, of trying to find people whom you can trust and who can give you advice that’s so poignant that it helps you immediately. So that person gave me five minutes worth of advice and then offered to check back on me after I had implemented, or at least partly implemented. And it was super important to me to have that. So I partly implemented, did my check back with that person, that person gave me that okay, I went, boom, I’ve never regretted what I did. So, I mean, don’t feel you’re out there by yourself but check very carefully for people within your physical environment, really, if you can, or even later on, maybe it would be a distant environment, but your mentors, your academic family is a strong-knit group, usually, and you will find individuals there that you can come back with career questions or any kind of questions in your life and they are willing to help you to the best of their knowledge. I think that’s very important.
A: Alright. Great. I appreciate it. Thank you very much.
All of this feedback leads somewhere, to a better understanding of your own work and how you communicate it to others. And if you haven’t figured it out by now, Brunie doesn’t take this topic lightly.
EPISODE CREDITS
Guest Starring Dr. Brunie Felding – Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine at Scripps Research
Erik Tillman, Phd, Formerly of the Kim Lab & Currently A Fellow at Vida Ventures, LLC
The Great Communicators Podcast is a part of Gradcommx. Gradcommx, targeted at enhancing research communication, is the first offering of Gradx – a professional development project created for the graduate student population at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by the Office For Graduate Education.
MUSIC & SOUNDS
“All The Best Fakers” by Nick Jaina is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License (http://freemusicarchive.org) “Vittoro” by Blue Dot Sessions is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial License “The Summit” by Blue Dot Sessions is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial License “Deliberate Thought” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
ADAM GREENFIELD Welcome to The Great Communicators Podcast presented by The MIT Office of Graduate Education, a professional development podcast expressly designed to bring lessons from the field to our graduate student researchers.
My name is Adam Greenfield and there’s an old proverb that says, “It takes a village to raise a child.” No, this episode isn’t about child rearing. At least not in a literal sense. But it is about the process of creating effective communication through the use of community and peer review.
As you’re about to find out, it goes beyond just the reasoning for effective communication. Going through that process enriches not just you as a scientist and researcher but also the entire field you’re in.
Our guest in this episode, through her own trials and tribulations, has come to find that a support group of peers for evaluation and critique, no matter how honest things get, can really be a boost to personal and professional success. BRUNIE FELDING That’s the goal. ADAM GREENFIELD And that’s Brunie Felding, an associate professor at Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California and the type of work she does will hopefully one day change the face of medicine and science. BRUNIE FELDING I’m a principal investigator in cancer research projects. ADAM GREENFIELD I met Professor Felding- BRUNIE FELDING You can call me Brunie. ADAM GREENFIELD You got it. I met Brunie at her office in the building that housed the Department of Molecular & Experimental Medicine, less than one mile east of the Torrey Pines Golf Course overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The building itself is a bit unassuming, and after my interview with Brunie, I could tell it was almost preferred. Now, I say this for a reason, and to Brunie, it’s a very important one. As you’re about to hear, Brunie takes great stock in having a scientific family close by. It’s a nurturing environment that benefits everyone. Having this family around and a part of your growth and failure in not just communication but your development as a whole is almost crucial. BRUNIE FELDING There is actually never anything stopping you in your entire career that you also watch out for people whom you can trust and seek advice from. And with that I mean not only the research community in terms of expertise for a certain scientific question but also for making choices. If you are in a crossroads situation where you have to make a choice, either this way, that way, and your moral inner compass or whatever, your knowledge at the time, doesn’t tell you clearly which way to go, it is very, very important to have and be able to rely on certain people whom you can ask for advice. I have such people here at Scripps and it doesn’t take long sometimes to get that advice…. So, I mean, don’t feel you’re out there by yourself but check very carefully for people within your physical environment, really, if you can, or even later on, maybe it would be a distant environment, but your mentors, your academic family is a strong-knit group, usually, and you will find individuals there that you can come back with career questions or any kind of questions in your life and they are willing to help you to the best of their knowledge. I think that’s very important. ADAM GREENFIELD Brunie has been a part of many patent requests, grant applications, and publishing research. Through all of that, she worked with her scientific family to shore up the details in order to present it and communicate it in a way that the intended audience would understand. The patent requests only contained language that was yours up until a certain point, at which a patent lawyer got involved and translated for you so the legal audience could understand. BRUNIE FELDING What I do is if I would like to throw out the idea that I would seek the opportunity to kind of file for a patent on something, I write what we call a disclosure and the disclosure is more- something like a scientific paper. It’s kind of my style where I present what I have, I make a case for the novelty of what I found in light of the literature that’s out there, the prior art, if you will. So- and I don’t necessarily look at it from that level because, you know, I’m not a lawyer and so for that type of writing you need a lawyer involved, of course. So you write up your disclosure, you make your scientific point, then you meet with a lawyer who will then translate this whole thing into a patent application. Very different from when you write a paper or when you write a grant application. ADAM GREENFIELD When it came to the grant applications, though, it seemed there was somewhat of a special affinity for those. BRUNIE FELDING That’s something that you start in your mind with your team and then you write it up and it’s your baby from start to finish. And then it gets peer reviewed, you know, with and by people who are in your field and you get feedback. You polish it or you make your stance for what you don’t want to change. Then you throw it out into the peer community, which is basically the group of people who will understand what you write, if you write it in those terms. In a grant application, you really, really work it hard to make everybody understand what you want to do and how valuable it is to want to do a certain thing. The most important documents that I write are scientific papers and grants and they are like, start to finish, in house type of my own stuff with a team, of course, generating the data. ADAM GREENFIELD To Brunie, communication in science is a pretty big deal. Because of this, there may be times where you feel overwhelmed with an idea or even an entire career and just aren’t sure what the next step should be. You could ask someone but communicating a jumble of words and ideas may not get you the answer you need. This is where personal reflection is a very useful tool to take advantage of. BRUNIE FELDING Realize that communication is a very important aspect of research, of science, of discovery. It really is. And if you feel for a while you have to sit and be by yourself and mull over a certain data set or thought or concept that starts to develop a new mind and you need that time for yourself and with yourself only, do it. Give yourself that time and space. But then reach out and communicate. Expose your new ideas to feedback and be open to whatever feedback comes back and then use the feedback that you can understand and that you think can bring you forward in your research question, in your career advancement, in your personal growth. ADAM GREENFIELD All of this feedback leads somewhere, to a better understanding of your own work and how you communicate it to others. And if you haven’t figured it out by now, Brunie doesn’t take this topic lightly. BRUNIE FELDING Your success lies in trying to enrich your field, trying to survive as a person, trying to survive as a group leader to have funds, for instance, for your team to build, maintain a team, and to do the work that you like to do. The communication is an absolute must and it has to be effective and it has to be really good. That is something also that you learn with time, that I learned with time, and it is also, you know- communication is one thing, and then the way in which you communicate, then you are- funding agencies, for example, impose on you formats in which you can communicate, and you have to learn to do that effectively within the guidelines given. And so yeah, communication is, next to actually doing the work, the most important, I think.
ADAM GREENFIELD
The peer review process is surely a familiar process for many of you. But as Brunie pointed out, even just having that community of like-minded individuals around you will be a boon to your career as a researcher and scientist.
Of course, that feedback and growth in your communication also has a much bigger effect on just you as an individual. The entire field benefits. And when that happens, even more opportunities open up for you. It’s a big old circle of progress just because your lines of communication and review were opened up to your peers and community.
Thanks for listening to The Great Communicators Podcast brought to you by The MIT Office of Graduate Education. My name is Adam Greenfield, and feel free to talk amongst yourselves.
This is episode is the full, unedited interview with Sage Rosenfels. If you haven’t listened to the fully produced episode yet, we strongly encourage you to do so before listening to this one. They’re shorter in length and much more refined.
EPISODE CREDITS
Guest Starring Sage Rosenfels, Former American Football Quarterback
Erik Tillman, Phd, Formerly of the Kim Lab & Currently A Fellow at Vida Ventures, LLC
The Great Communicators Podcast is a part of Gradcommx. Gradcommx, targeted at enhancing research communication, is the first offering of Gradx – a professional development project created for the graduate student population at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by the Office For Graduate Education.
MUSIC & SOUNDS
“Divider” by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under Attribution 4.0 International License (http://freemusicarchive.org)
Hello, Adam Greenfield here, host of The Great Communicators podcast series. What you’re about to hear is the full, unedited interview with one of the guests we spoke with. If you haven’t listened to the fully produced episode yet, I definitely encourage you to do so before listening to this one. They’re shorter in length and much more refined. You can find them all at gradx.mit.edu/podcasts.
The idea behind these longer, unedited conversation is to give you an opportunity to hear the entire talk, warts and all. This is not only a fun way to hear the full flow of the conversation but it also emphasizes the importance of the points made in the shorter, produced episodes, which again, can be found at gradx.mit.edu/podcasts.
Thanks for listening and enjoy the conversation.
Adam Greenfield: To start, then. Can you give me- or can you tell me your name and occupation?
Sage Rosenfels: My name is Sage Rosenfels. I am a retired NFL quarterback of 12 seasons, I live in Omaha, Nebraska, I am a father of three kids, so that’s one of my occupations, I guess, and I dabble in different aspects of the media, whether it be calling football games, writing articles, doing radio shows, radio interviews, all that type of stuff. So I also invest the money that I made while playing football and pay attention to all those businesses or real estate deals that are ongoing.
A: And probably pretty frightening. I mean, we hear those stories of athletes retired in any sport and all of a sudden a few years later they’re bankrupt.
S: Yeah, there is a crazy stat that’s something like, 80% of NFL players after two years removed from the NFL, I think, are either divorced, bankrupt, or something like that. And not surprising, the divorce rate’s just high in general amongst young people with a lot of money. I always say that giving young people a lot of money is not really a good stepping stone to maturity and as well- a lot of NFL players, different than maybe baseball or basketball, the majority of players, one, don’t make that much money, a lot of them are making four or five or six hundred thousand, not ten and twenty million that you sort of see amongst the premiere players. And the majority of the players only play for maybe two or three in the NFL. The average career is just over three years. So you’ve got a lot of players who make, say, a million or a million and a half dollars, and then obviously taxes and all sorts of things come out of there, and money gets to be gone fairly quickly. So it’s not a surprising stat that guys sorta do go broke fairly quickly.
A: And all it really takes in one injury to cut all that income off.
S: Yes, it’s true. The hard part about the NFL, say different than baseball, is that you- the injury aspect of the game, whether it be head injuries or knee injuries, can really shorten a career or end a career almost immediately. So you never really know, when you’re playing, when you’re gonna be done playing. It can be very nerve-wracking, sort of are living on the edge when you’re playing. But the only way to be successful and play at a high level is to play on the edge. It is very obvious when somebody isn’t, I guess, going full-go. That’s actually the best way to get injured, is to play I guess sort of passively or- to not get injured is the best way to get injured, is the best way for me to say it.
A: Ok. And I hear players- like, Terrell Suggs, for example, was playing this season with a torn bicep and just this morning Elvis Dumervil stated that he has a torn Achilles that he’s been playing through- a 60% torn Achilles. And the entire time was playing concerned that it was going to completely tear or pop or whatever it may be. That’s gotta be a frightening thing to have to deal with, I guess.
S: It is and there’s a lot of- every player by the end of the season has different injuries of some sort. It’s just such a physical and brutal game. Anytime you get grown men who are, say, a minimum 190 pounds to 350 pounds, who are trained to run as fast and be as strong as possible, you create a lot of force and the body isn’t, no matter what you do training-wise and weights and no matter what you do, it’s not set up to take that type of punishment and that kind of contact and force. So injuries are a major part of the game and it’s one of the main reasons why players don’t play very long.
A: You have a degree in Marketing from Iowa State?
S: I do, yes. Marketing at the Iowa State Business School.
A: So what did that teach you about communicating, not just your profession, but other ideas to people who may not have the same background?
S: Well, when I was trying to pick a major there was nothing that I truly wanted to do. I wasn’t one of those kids who when I was 16 or 17 just knew I wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer or own my own business, an entrepreneur. I thought I would probably be in the business world. I always have liked ideas, sort of the creative side. I guess I feel like I’m a little more creative rather than analytical. So I decided to go to Marketing, rather than, say, Finance or Accounting. Those did not interest me, looking at numbers all day. So I’ve always taken that view of business, sort of the big world view or how products would be marketed, what would be a good product or a good app or a good website or one of those types of things. So when I do invest in real estate or other projects, that is definitely not my specialty and I have to lean on close friends and people that I really trust. That’s their specialty.
A: So on the field, as a player, you’re dealing with communicating pretty much the entire game. You get the communication from the sideline, which is the play, and then you have to communicate that with your teammates. We’ll leave audibles and the pump fakes out of the equation for now. Can you give me an example play and what that would sound like if we were in the huddle?
S: Sure. Well, in the NFL, for one, I like to say there’s multiple languages, probably just like for a computer programmer there’s different languages and just the- English or Chinese or French or Spanish, there’s different ways to say the same thing. Well, in football there’s different ways to say the same thing. So in what they call a West Coast Offense type of offense, which is west coast language, you’d say something like, “double right zebra right three jet zebra arches,” and that would be the play. In a different type of system, one that Norv Turner, an NFL longtime offensive coach, he would say “twins right motion scat right 525 F post swing.” These are the exact same plays in two completely different languages.
A: So is there- let me see if I can figure out a way to word my question understandably.
S: Should I break down what that means?
A: I guess that’s kind of my question. That sounds complex but do these pieces have a general meaning behind them?
S: Absolutely. So generally in an NFL play you start with a formation, two players on the right and two players on the left or just start with three players on the right and one player the left. And then there’s what they call the “strength,” which is usually what the position of tight end signifies the strength of the formation. So on a play double right… double is sort of a different way of saying two, so it’s a two by two formation, right being the tight ends on the right hand side. And when I say zebra right, well, zebra is this position in the West Coast Offense where he is in what they call the slot or sort of the midway point between the outside receiver and the offensive lineman. He is the zebra player in the west coast offense. So I say double right zebra right, so I sent him in that formation to the right from the left hand side, so now he’s over on the right hand side in what we call a trips formation. So now he’s in a trips formation and we’re going to run a trips play. The next thing I said was three jet. That is a type of protection, so that is telling the offensive line, the running backs, the quarterbacks, the tight ends, really everybody, how the offensive line is going to block that play, who are they responsible for, if the Sam linebacker blitzes or the Will linebacker blitzes, who is going to block who so everyone is on the same page. And then the last thing I said was zebra arches. Zebra arches is the name of a pass pattern and that really tells all the other receivers and running backs what to do. As a quarterback, you obviously have to understand all of it. The running backs, they’re listening for the three jet and zebra arches. That’s really it. They’re not so worried about the formation as much. Offensive linemen are really just listening for three jet. That’s all they really care about, is the pass protection aspect of the plays. So everyone has their individual responsibilities and it sort of tells everyone what to do but generally almost all NFL and college offenses start with a formation, a possible motion, some sort of protection, and then the pass pattern.
A: Interesting. So how do you disguise that? If these are general concepts that even the defense might know, how do you disguise that so the defense doesn’t know what you’re going to do?
S: Yeah, so, you run the exact same formation and motion and you can really run hundreds and hundreds of plays out of that same play and formation. And that’s- teams use a lot of different formations. They’ll bunch guys together; they’ll start in an empty formation, which is just the quarterback in the backfield and motions guys around; sometimes you have three receivers on this side, sometimes you have two, and you can even put four on a side. There’s a lot of different variations and combinations you can come up with, which then attack the different possibilities you’re going to see on defense. I’ve always felt that people that are, say, engineers- and I’m sure at MIT- people would enjoy the aspect of what I always call the physics of football or the science of football. There’s definitely reasons why defensive players are positioned inside a wide receiver, outside a wide receiver, who they’re trying to funnel that player to, and those types of things. It really is a numbers game when you really break it down.
A: So you went from being a player on the field, studying playbooks in a classroom with all these complex and terminology and what seems like even a choreography to each play. And now you’re in a broadcast booth where you’ve become a communicator of all these elaborate schemes to the common audience. So how do you ensure that you’re explaining these complexities in a way that they can understand and not lose them with all this jargon?
S: Well, I don’t bring up all that jargon within the play. I do feel like, sort of, the common football fan who watches a lot of NFL or watched a lot of college football, does start to understand when somebody says a “two by two formation” or a “three by one” formation. You know, if I’m doing a replay and I say, “They’re in a three by one trips formation here,” I think most fans at this point that watch enough football do understand what that means. “Oh look, so there’s three receivers on this side and one on the other side. That trips, that makes a lot of sense.” But you do have to be careful with giving too much of sort of that type of information that’s not commonly known. You do have to talk about safeties being deep or safeties being up close to the line of scrimmage to tackle. You know, those types of things. You do have to simplify the game down but I think there is definitely a way of doing that. And it’s always a learning experience. I’m sure sometimes when I’ve called games I’ve been too complex and think sometimes I probably don’t give the fan enough credit as well. So the really, really good ones, like Chris Collinsworth, they’re great storytellers. Teaching the science of the game is a small aspect of being a color commentator. A lot of it is a storyteller about how a play developed, about how a matchup occurred, or even sometimes an off-the-field type of story that gives sort of more credibility or background to a certain highlighted player.
A: I like Jon Gruden’s analysis. He can be a little intense sometimes, but I like his play-by-play analysis, or color commentating, I should say.
S: Yeah, so Jon Gruden, he’s one of those analysts- and this goes, uh, I think most people understands this- that a lot of times people love analysts and a lot of time people hate analysts. It’s just sort of the way it goes and everyone has their own style that they like more. He likes to talk the X’s and O’s of the game. He was obviously a coach for a long time in the NFL and that was really his specialty, was always talking the language of football. So I think sometimes he likes to occasionally sprinkle in one of those plays. “Oh, we got 200 jet X slant with space. He’s gonna come out, he’s gonna look at X, he’s not gonna like it, he’s gonna reset his feet over the ball, he’s not gonna like it. He’s gonna get to his 4th read to his halfback on the wide. Perfect play, first down, Houstan Texans.” And that’s what Jon Gruden likes to do, and I think some fans do like to see, wow, this is all that’s going on in this simply play that’s just a pass to the running back.
A: And it adds a depth the game. You’re watching these people running around running into each other and from the unfamiliar eye that may look like they’re just running into each other but there’s a depth and complexity to this game that needs to be explained.
S: It’s an extremely complex game. You really can’t be dumb to play it. You can’t be dumb, at least, from a football aspect, to play it. And the longer you play it the more knowledge you’re going to have. You have to realize, this is the player’s full time job, the coach’s full time job. I mean, we were talking off the air about Marc Trestman, who was one of my former coaches. He has his law degree from the University of Miami. He’s not a dumb guy. And he’s a long-time NFL offensive coordinator. These guys spend a lot of time in the summer, in the off-season, coming up with new concepts, coming up with new plays. I mean, you’re practicing so much. It’s not like you have other things to do. This is your full-time job. You spend probably somewhere between four and six hours in meetings every single day as an NFL player. There’s a lot of information and there’s a lot of teaching and coaching that goes on. It’s definitely not a simple game. My older sister asks me, how come you don’t run trick plays all the time and how come guys always just run into the pile and they don’t run around it. It seems simple on TV but it definitely is more complex than that.
A: I had no idea Trestman had a law degree. Even John Urschel, one of the smartest men in football, took some classes at MIT this summer, these mathematical classes. And it sort of kills that jock stereotype.
S: Believe me, football players do plenty of things to live up to that stereotype, as well. I have also learned that there’s a very big difference between being smart in, say, a normal classroom, in mathematics or science or something like that, and then being smart in a sport. There are people who are brilliant and they go to MIT and Harvard and those types of places but have a hard time understanding how football and basketball really works in a lot of ways. I think it’s a different kind of creative smarts that go into athletics than, say, go into a classroom.
A: You played football in front of audiences of all sizes. Do you remember your first time in front of a large, stadium-sized, NFL audience and do you remember what you were feeling at the time?
S: Well, um… college and NFL are very similar. I mean, once you reach that level. My first college game probably had over 50-55,000 fans. I definitely remember walking down- from the locker room, you had to sort of walk down a ramp to the field and really just looking up at all the people in the stands and the crowd and just being in awe. And I’m sure my mouth was open, my jaw was dropped, and I completely almost like left the group of quarterbacks I was walking down with. I was just completely in awe of the situation. Over time you definitely get more and more used to it and you get so focused on what you’re doing, this crowd sort of becomes this thing that’s around you and it’s something you don’t really pay attention to. Believe me, we can’t hear you when you yell at us from the stands. We don’t hear any of it. We’re very focused on our job and plus, there’s usually 70-80,000 people. We’re not going to hear your complaint over their voices as well.
A: So you’re not going to hear me screaming through the television, then, I take it?
S: Definitely not gonna hear that, either. You know, as I said, you get used to it over time and you’re so focused on your job. There’s a lot of adrenaline in football. There’s a lot of games, even if I didn’t play and I was the backup quarterback, when I was done I was exhausted. There is a big-time build up before the game, even the night before. The nerves, sort of the nervous energy. When you go into the game and then you play the game, there’s so much- any time there’s violence that goes on and there’s such a fine line and playing on the edge like that, there’s an energy that sort of pushes you through pain and through injury. Obviously, you build- you have the courage to go make a crazy, dangerous play because it’s just- the adrenaline rush is what the formers players do miss. It doesn’t matter how much money you have, what type of car or house you buy, or how much golf you play. You’re never going to get that type of adrenalize rush from when you’re playing football.
A: So how do you stay calm and focused in that moment?
S: Again, I think a lot of it is just based over time and practice. Anytime you practice something hundreds and hundreds and thousands of times, you get so used to it that your body just sort of does it. It just sort of adjusts and you’ve trained your mind over the years to make certain throws or make certain reads. I think you just get so focused on what you’re doing, you’re just not worried about what’s going on around you and you’re so focused on the game plan and what the coach wants you to do in that play, that you dive into that play, you sort of forget about all the rest that’s going on.
A: That sounds like a question I had, that “in the zone” question. I’m a podcast producer and a writer at the same time and sometimes when I write I get in this zone and the next thing I know-
S: Absolutely.
A: -I’ve written pages upon pages and the sun is down and it’s dark in my apartment. In sports, that phenomenon is like when the game slows down for the player. It’s as if there’s more time for the athlete to perform. So I guess that is just a result of practice and repetition, then?
S: It is. It’s practice, repetition. I believe if you really understand the game at a high level, again, the science of the game, the speed of the game will start to slow down. If you’re one of those players that, I guess, isn’t well-schooled in all the intricacies of football, I think the game can seem really fast and chaotic and there’s a lot going on but if you’ve really mastered, sort of, the X’s and O’s of the game, what everyone’s responsibility is, the defensive responsibilities, what’s going to happen, and you can anticipate, the game does slow down much more than people realize.
A: That’s just a result of being mentally prepared? I watched a broadcasting reel of yours online and in a video clip- I think you were on the NFL network- you said if you had to start on a pro level straight out of college, you would’ve been out of the game in a year, that there’s such a drastic difference between the two levels. So I guess that is just a matter of being mentally prepared or there’s a physical aspect to this, too, as well, right?
S: Well, it- there is both and over time you physically start to- I think during that NFL films or NFL Network show that I was on, we were talking about the jump from college to NFL. We were actually talking about Johnny Manziel, of all players, and how challenging that is. Yes, the NFL game is faster. They are superior athletes who are more mature, they’re older, they’re 25 or 27 rather than 19, they’re bigger, they’re faster, they’re stronger. They’re also smarter to play at that level. So it means they’re more instinctual in those types of things. But I do feel, again, you get better coaching at the pro level, you spend more time on it so you understand the X’s and O’s of the game, the science of the game more. You also just do get used to practicing more. You know, in college you don’t practice as much as you do in the pros. You don’t have spring and summer, or what we call OTAs, these mini camps. I mean, training camp is much longer in the NFL, about five or six weeks, than a college camp. So you just spend so much more time on that you sort of get used to one, the complexity, and two, the speed of the game.
A: Are there rules preventing teams from playing- practicing all year?
S: Yeah, in the NFL they have collectively bargained, the players and the NFL, to have a certain amount- the OTAs are called Offseason Training Activities and they’re really just practice. But those days you can only spend so much time at the facility, only so much time on the practice field, so much time in the mean room. They all have that collectively bargained. If that wasn’t the case, NFL teams and head coaches, when the season’s over January 2nd or whatever, they would have players in the next day and start practicing for next year. That’s just how they are. So the players negotiate how much time is really spent- I think it helps the player from a wear and tear on the body standpoint. It is hard to do anything at that high of a level the entire year so must of winter, say, February, March, April, a lot of that time is not spent practicing but more physical training. Lifting weights, running, getting in top physical condition for the upcoming season. And then obviously through those summer times you’re doing both. You’re training physically and practicing and then again the actual training camp, which is less weight lifting and running and more just practice.
A: I want to talk a little bit about process and failure for a little bit. I’ve been a fan of football since I was a kid and over the years heard enough coaches and players in interviews say that this and really most competitive sports require an ability to move on after failure. There’s like a 24 hour rule. You have 24 hours to grieve or to celebrate then it’s on to the next game or thing or whatever it may be. Not to imply that you are a failure because I think we all fail at some point in time. Are there any process you use to remain grounded after a failure in your profession?
S: Well, you are correct. Failure is very much a part of sports. Of all sports. I mean, Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player of all time in my opinion, he missed more shots than he made. So he failed more than he succeeded as far as shooting the basketball. In football, very early, whether it’s high school, football, or pro, coaches are always pushing “next play, next play, next play.” There’s really nothing you can do about whatever happened on the last play whether it was really good or really bad. Many times it’s bad when they’re bringing that up. “Hey, next play. Let’s move on. That was a mistake. Next play.” Because the clock is ticking. You don’t have time to sit there and mope and contemplate and worry about what happened. Obviously you have some time between games but not much. The week is so regimented that, yes, after a loss you maybe have 24 hours but the next day? Worrying about that game and feeling bad about that game or the play is not going to help you win the next one. So it’s all about how can we get better for the next game and learn from those mistakes. When you’re actually in a game or in a practice and, say, you have a bad play, again, that play is not going to have an effect in a positive way on the next play if you spend any time worrying about it. Bad play happened. What’s the next play and how can we maximize that play because that’s the great thing about football, is you can have a bad play and the next play or the next group of plays you can play perfect football and make up for that bad play. So it’s all about really playing each individual play as its own separate entity throughout the sixty minutes of a football game.
A: And when it comes to speaking in front of an audience and you make a mistake, it seems like that would be a little harder to recover because then at that point, your audience is sitting there with that one mistake and there isn’t- I mean, I guess there is another play. They can keep listening. But it seems like that’s the one difference, is that in sports there’s so much activity going on that, I guess, it doesn’t require a short attention span but in a way that could be kind of helpful. Whereas speaking in front of an audience, that maybe- is that the same, do you think?
S: I agree with you. When it’s something like, say, you’re speaking in front of 1000 people or you’re in a ballet or you’re in a play. If you fall down and have an incredibly embarrassing mistake, it’s hard to really make up from that. I think the difference is in football or, say, golf, another similar sport to football in a sense that there’s individual plays or individual shots and the last shot doesn’t necessarily need to affect the next shot. The hard part is when you’re speaking in front of a crowd or maybe doing some theater, if you make a really, really bad mistake, there’s not really much you can make up for that. So then just put on the best performance you can from then on out. People may remember that mistake or they may remember the rest of your performance as being spectacular. I think that’s the difference between that type of world and, say, athletics, as I said, sort of the next play doesn’t have to have any bearing on the previous play.
A: Now, you also teach kids about the game of football at the Sage Rosenfels Quarterback Passing Academy. So what do you tell the kids you teach about the process of preparing themselves for a game?
S: What I do is I train young kids who are just sort of learning football, from fundamentals of the game, you know, quarterbacks, wide receivers, that’s sort of my specialty, obviously. I’m not really coaching defense. We also talk about the X’s and O’s of the game and really teaching the science of football. What’s really fascinating about the sport of football different than, say, basketball, is that it’s such a uniquely positioned sport. When I say that, a college or pro football team has usually between 11 and 20, 25 coaches on the staff because each individual position is very unique and different from the rest. Wide receiver is very different than defensive line, quarterback is very different from an offensive line, as far as responsibilities work out, what they need to know, all these things. So it’s a very position specific sport. And so what’s amazing is how few people really understand all the things a quarterback needs to know to be successful. Even the dad that was a really good high school or college player that played DB that’s now coaching your son’s Pop Warner or middle school team probably doesn’t know that much about quarterbacks. That’s just the way it is. So what I try to do is give as much knowledge to what I feel is the most important position in football, the quarterback position, but as I’m teaching sort of these footwork and throwing fundamentals and these types of skills, I’m also talking about sort of the mental side of the position, being the communicator, being someone that has to do- try to things right all the time, sort of the ambassador of the team. So I try to give life lessons of the quarterback position, not just individual skill position work.
A: Do you have any examples of those life lessons?
S: Well, something just like what you’re talking about. There’s a, what we were talking about, making mistakes and coming back from those mistakes. If a kid has a bad throw during a drill it’s, “Hey, it’s a bad throw. Let’s do it right the next time. Let’s try to do it right the next time.” to, you know, as a quarterback on the team, you’re entire school is really looking at you set the tone of what they think the football team is all about. If the quarterback is a jerk, the student who doesn’t play football and maybe is just in the band or is a regular student, might think all the football players are jerks because the quarterback I feel is sort of the symbol or sets the tone for the entire football team. The Dallas Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett once used a phrase, ambassador. He said the quarterbacks are the ambassador of the football team, they have to hold themselves at a higher level, on the field and off the field, in the classroom, how you treat other students, how you treat other people, people will make judgments on your entire team based off what they feel about the quarterback.
A: Interesting. So can other personalities shine through? For example, well, I’m using the Ravens only because I’m most familiar with them. Ray Lewis was THE leader. It wasn’t Flacco, it wasn’t Kyle Boller, for sure. And I don’t say that to be disparaging, I’m sure he’s a great guy. It takes a lot of skill to throw the ball 70 yards on your knees… without any accuracy. As a quarterback, being that ambassador, does it feel weird to sort of give it up to another position player?
S: Well, I think a couple things. One, the quarterback position is- it’s hard to be timid and to be quiet and be sort of that quiet leader that just leads by example. I believe that the really good ones are always good communicators. You know, Peyton Manning loves to talk. Tom Brady likes to talk. Drew Brees likes to talk. Dan Marino loves to talk. It’s just sort of part of the position because you’re just non-stop communicating with everybody on the football team from the head coach and the coaching staff, even the general manager and the owner, the quarterback talks to them more than other players than the other players get to talk to the owner. But also, obviously, your teammates. When you’re in that huddle, when you’re calling a play, I’ve always believed you have to sell that play like it’s going to work. “I have the information, guys, and this play that I’m telling you? Twins right motion scat right 525 f post swing? It’s gonna work, it’s gonna get us the first down, it’s gonna help us win the football game.” You have to sell that. So I think over time you do learn how to be a bit of a salesman and be a bit of a vocal leader. I do feel it’s important for the quarterback to do that. Now, on certain teams like the Ravens, and they had a guy like Ray Lewis, and a lot of teams, defensive players, everyone can be a leader but rarely is it not the quarterback sort of taking charge of that situation. I think Ray Lewis was sort of exceptional in that- and the exception in that situation- where he really was the vocal leader of that football team. He really enjoyed giving those speeches and having that spotlight. It was something he, you know, was really into. And I played with a player named Junior Seau who was very, very similar. He really enjoyed those speeches and he played for so long in the NFL at such a high level that that respect was automatically given there. His speeches were very believable because he had been there and done it so many times. I always say respect is not given, it’s earned, so no matter what you say, if you don’t back it up with the way you practice and prepare and the way you handle yourself on and off the field, it really doesn’t matter what you say right before a football game if you haven’t earned the respect of your teammates and coaches and even your community.
A: Do you buy into that leader has to be a very loud, outspoken, vocal guy? I mean, they talk about Flacco being very calm and collected. Joe Cool, you know? In the huddle and in the locker room but he’s still a leader. And he gets criticized for this, too. Even his own teammates.
S: Yeah.
A: They criticize him for being TOO calm and collected. So I’m curious what you think about- if that makes a difference.
S: No, I- yeah, I don’t think the quarterback HAS to be the loud, vocal leader. I think it also helped that, with Joe Flacco early in his career, he had Ray Lewis and some other players, Terrell Suggs, who were very loud, vocal leaders. So he didn’t really have to have that role. I think more often than not, just because the way football is, people do look to the quarterback position for that vocal leadership. I don’t think you have to be loud, I don’t think you have to always be giving the speeches, I don’t think you have to have that role. But you have to be a good communicator and you have to be somebody that can, you know, caninspire the other players. I played with a player named Andre Johnson when I was playing for the Houston Texans and he just retired this season after a long NFL career. Fantastic wide receiver. And he barely said anything ever. I mean, in the weight room, in the locker room, on the game field he was very quiet. But he worked probably harder than everybody else on the football team. He was the best player on our football team. There was so much respect to the way that he did his business that he didn’t have to say very much. And when he did speak, believe me, those words had more effect on the players and coaches than anything that a quarterback that spoke every single day had to say.
A: Interesting. So I guess that silence sort of added a bit of credibility and stoicism to what he was saying when he did speak?
S: Well, it’s one of those things, “if you want to be heard, listen” type of scenario, right? Again, his credibility was based off his performance and his work ethic. He didn’t feel like he needed to be in that role to psych up his teammates. He felt like if you went on and did your business and everyone took care of their business, the team could be successful. But I think he also would say it does help to have some vocal leadership on a team or any sort of business, whether it’s a CEO or a business owner. You have to have somebody that’s communicating the information to everybody to keep everybody sort of on the same page and motivated.
A: It’s interesting to compare- just thinking about the comparisons with what a scientist does in order to present highly complex and detailed research to peers, or otherwise, and compare that with an athlete, or at least a football athlete, who has a little less than one week to prepare for a grueling physical and mental performance. Can you go through some the preparations and practices that players do in any given week between the day after a game and the day before the next game?
S: Sure. And again, this is one of those things that Norv Turner said to me one time. He was my quarterbacks- well, he was an offensive coordinator back in, I think, 2002 and 2003 in Miami- and he said, “The great thing about football is we get to take a final every Sunday for, basically, 16 weeks in a row. Most people don’t get to do that.” You work on a project, you work in a company, you never really see the results ever over the course of maybe years or you see them- or a project over the course of a few months or six months or something like that. You really do get to see your work come to fruition very, very quickly throughout a season. So, to take you through a week, a general week. Let’s say you play on Sunday and you’re not playing until the following Sunday. Monday, you come in, obviously you’re exhausted, you’re tired, you’re beat up. Win or lose, that doesn’t really matter, you come in, you get a light lift in. It’s important to work out after a game. Usually you have some sort of running or jogging type of exercise, as well. According to strength and conditioning coaches, that helps with recovery, helps you work- get the blood flowing throughout the body to help repair damaged tissue. And with that, then you also watch film. You watch the entire game. The head coach and the coordinators generally give speeches to the team and the respective sides of the ball about what happened in the ballgame, what we did well, what we did poorly. They go through each individual play. That’s a very slow process. They go through the game film with a fine-tooth comb of every player, every position, of what happened well and poorly in that ballgame. Tuesday is the collectively bargained day off for NFL players. A lot of players still do come in that day to, again, maybe get in another work out or get in the hot tub or start watching film on the upcoming opponent but there’s nothing scheduled as far as meetings or on that day, on that Tuesday. It’s also a day where players many times will go volunteer at a children’s hospital or something around the community. It’s definitely the day the community relations director grabs players and does things in the community. Wednesday is your big work day. Wednesdays and Thursdays are very similar. Wednesday you come in, let’s just say seven o’clock in the morning, grab a bite to eat, then you head to meeting from, say, around eight o’clock until, oh, about eleven o’clock. Many times three, three and a half hours, something like that. And you’re watching film of the future opponent, you’re breaking down all the plays- or I should say, installing all the plays that you’re going to run. Running plays, passing plays. “These are the protections that we like, these are the players on the other team that we’re concerned about. This Terrell Suggs pass-rushing defensive end, we’re worried about him so we’re gonna use these couple protections to help out, running backs this week are going to need to chip that player before you get out on your routes because he’s going to give us problems. He’s giving everyone problems so far this season.” You go through all this game plan stuff, go out in the field for a walk through, so you’re going to walk through some of these plays you’ve installed, come back in grab some lunch, then go out for a full two, two and a half our long practice in which you run a lot of these plays that you just installed that morning. Get through practice, come back in afterwards, obviously shower, those types of things. And you actually then go back in and watch practice. And then that’s pretty much your day. Usually you’re done at something like, say, five o’clock. Some players- I was one of those players- like to stay a little longer until a lot of times six o’clock, watch even more film on my own. Even start watching film and getting ready for Thursdays. So Thursday and Wednesday are very similar; they’re just different situations. Thursday, the plays you would install and run and practice, would be plays, say, on third down, which can get very complex in the NFL. Plays in the red zone, short yardage or goal line situations- everything in the NFL is about situations. Is it first down and ten on your own 20 or is it third down and six on the other team’s 40 yard line? Very different styles of plays and schemes that different offensive and defensive coordinators like to use in those types of situations. So that’s Thursday, very similar to Wednesday. Friday is also similar but it’s just shorter. After that practice you’re done. You actually don’t have- you do the morning meetings, then you go right out to practice at around, say, eleven o’clock or so, practice until one… it’s definitely lighter, fewer pads, if no pads at all, are worn on that practice. It’s supposed to be sort of the dress rehearsal. The ball shouldn’t hit the ground as quarterback. There should be high completion percentage rates. Obviously it’s not as physical, it’s not as dangerous in those types of practices. You’re really trying to practice perfectly, as I say, on that Friday. And then Saturday, you come in, you watch some more film and then you go out for a walk through, and you talk about the first plays you want to call in the game. After the whole week of practice, the coaches have found out, these are the plays you really, really like, they went well for us, the quarterback did well on these plays, running backs seemed to really read these plays really well. In the fifteen plays of the game, say the first quarter, these are the plays that we really, really do like. And then you might go over some unusual plays that maybe you don’t practice very often in that walk through. You’re literally just walking through these different plays. And let’s say it’s an away game. You go hop on a plane and fly to another place and have a few meetings that night at a hotel, wake up the next morning, and go play. If it’s a home game, it’s nice because you get to go home for half a day and hang out with your family before you usually go into a team hotel on Saturday night, staying over, waking up the next day, and obviously going to the stadium and getting ready for kickoff usually, say, around noon or one o’clock.
A: Wow. So the night before, if you’re at home, you still stay in a hotel?
S: Yes, absolutely. Usually, say, seven o’clock or so, there’s some sort of meetings. Again, offensive and defensive meetings, sort of last minute film watching. Sometimes a head coach will have the video directors make some sort of highlight film of maybe your last game and footage that they’ve taken within the team to make cool highlights to sort of get you excited for the next day. Then the head coach gives some sort of- probably some inspirational talk that night at the end of those meetings, say, at eight-thirty, nine o’clock. And then yeah, you stay in the hotel. They don’t really- most teams will even have a bed check at, say, ten o’clock or something to make sure everyone’s in their room. There’s a security guard usually on every floor. So there’s very small likelihood of anyone going out and trying to have a good time on a Saturday night.
A: Unlike Janikowski the night before the Super Bowl but we’ll leave that off the-
S: Well, different teams have different things that they stress and I believe the Oakland Raiders are one of those teams that probably doesn’t have, based off of their history- you know, Al Davis, the old owner, was a little more loose in what he felt was important for football players. He sort of liked the guys that were a little more wild and would go out the night before a game. It didn’t bother him so much. But most head coaches, most coaches in general, are control freaks. They really like to control the entire process. Football, one of the things about it, it’s very much- people relate it to the military for a lot of reasons because I think you have a lot of people- not only do you have sixty players on a team- you’ve got twenty coaches and you’ve training staff weight lifting staff and equipment managers and video managers- all these people. Over probably 100 people in a room, you have to have everyone very, very organized and on time and every minute throughout the week is really accounted for. It’s very, very regimented and very similar, I think, in some ways to the military.
A: You know, I heard a story recently. Ladarius Webb was talking on a podcast and he was telling the story about the first time he met Ed Reed. And it was the same year- John Harbaugh’s first year. Harbaugh came in and they were in a meeting, and I think Ed Reed may have been joking around or talking during a meeting, and Harbaugh was like, “You know, this is not a time for talking. Feel free to leave if you need to talk.” So Ed Reed just got up and walked out. And after that, Harbaugh was like, “Ok, I don’t think I can be too much of a militant with these guys.” And I think early on there was a bit of a rebellion between the veterans of the team who had been there for a while. They all kind of worked it out but you talking about coaches being very militant about things, it just reminded me of that story. I just thought it was kind of funny.
S: Yeah, well, every head coach has different philosophies and different ways they treat their players. You call one old school and you could call the other player friendly. Gary Kubiak was not a coach that believed in that military style. He sort of believed in treating everyone like men and, “Your job is to go out there and be a pro every day and act like a pro, practice, preparation, the whole thing. Just be a pro. That’s all I ask of you. I’m not asking more, I’m not asking less.” Other coaches like to have a lot of rules and be more strict and you have to wear this on the road, you have to wear a suit and tie, you have to be a certain way at all times. There’s multiple ways to do it. I don’t know if there’s one way that’s better than the other. Bill Belechick’s a very negative coach. he likes to coach from negativity and Bill Walsh, the great, old coach from the West Coast, the old coach of the San Francisco 49ers, he was very into that, sort of, California, feel-good, positivity, not yelling and screaming type of coaching. So, multiple ways to do it. I know Jimmy Johnson, the old Dallas Cowboys coach, used to say something like, “Every player’s treated differently because every player means something different to this football team.” So sometimes a player like Ed Reed, a first round ballot Hall of Famer, was given more leeway by some coaches than someone who’s just barely trying to make the football team.
A: I love Kubiak. What- the season he was the Offensive Coordinator for the Ravens was probably my favorite- one of my favorite seasons to watch. It was hard to watch him leave but I’m glad he got the opportunity that was kind of his dream job. Anyway. You mentioned Kubiak and I’m a huge fan.
S: Yeah, well, I played for Kubiak for three years in Houston. He’s probably my favorite coach I ever played for. He played in the NFL for a long time. He was John Elway’s backup for, I think, about 10 years with the Denver Broncos back in the 80s. And I think that really helped him understand what players go through and what they- the players like expectations. Like, what do you expect of me? What do I need to do to do my job? And I think that’s why he- why players like playing for him. He creates certain expectations. Ok, this is what I expect of my players and my coaches and after that you can sort of do what you want. I think- and also his style of coaching makes sense. His understand of what I call the science of the game makes a lot of sense, the way he communicates it. He’s not a yeller or a screamer but when he does raise his voice you know it’s very, very important to him. He’s not a guy who coaches through fear. He was a guy who coaches through working together and that’s probably why he was my favorite coach in my career.
A: I like that, I like that. Do you think that it’s- that coaches are better coaches if they were players at one point?
S: I believe so. I actually wrote an article recently. I haven’t sent it to- I write an article for TheScore.com every week and I haven’t sent it off to them yet. But I’m a big believer in particular quarterbacks- it really helps to have former quarterbacks be a coach. Obviously it’s the position I played and so I’m extremely biased in the sense that I think we know more about the sport than other positions but I feel like we do. We have to have a very good understanding of offensive line responsibilities, what receivers go through against the secondary players, what defenses are trying to do to offenses, their different styles. We’re constantly studying athletes. What does this athlete do well? Does he cover well? Is he more of a run stopper? What kind of routes can we beat him on? I feel like we, as quarterbacks, understand more about the all the aspects of the football team than the other positions. So I think yeah, former quarterbacks do make, usually, better coaches but not always. I mean, I don’t think Bill Belechick was- he wasn’t an NFL player and I think he’s the greatest coach of all time. So not necessarily but I do believe it definitely helps to have played the game and to go through what the players go through, mentally and physically.
A: And you can say the same about catchers in baseball. They’re considered the quarterback of the team, you know, when they’re playing because they have to call the pitches, they set the defense, and you see now that these catchers are managers now and they’re successful. Joe Girardi, for example.
S: Yeah, and Mike Scoscia. There’s been many documented stories about catchers being the best baseball managers. There’s a lot of baseball managers that were catchers. They have to understand- I mean, they do scouting reports on each individual hitter and what we should stay away from and what count we should throw what type of pitch on. That’s a very detailed- that’s very different than the center fielder that’s waiting out there for a ball to be hit to them.
A: And Curt Schilling, love him or hate him, was one of the most studious players I had ever read about He would sit there in game with an iPad or notebook and just skim every hitter he was about to face.
S: Yeah, information is very important. It is for football. It is for all sports. For golf, for baseball. The more information you have the better. But there was a common saying in football. I can’t remember exactly what it was. It was basically sometimes you would be frozen by too much information, that you would have so much running through your head, like, “Oh my god, they might do this splits” or “They might play this coverage” or “This is gonna-“ and all these negative things start popping up in your brain, if almost you have too much information sometimes. I always thought it was better to have too much information than not enough.
A: Alright. So last question and I’ll let you get on with your day. I’m sure you’re a busy guy. Do you have any tips or lessons or both as either a player or broadcaster about communication that you can share with grad students?
S: Well, I think not be scared of communicating. I think some people are concerned about not saying the right thing or possibly being wrong. You know, I have to go on the radio all the time and give my opinion about what’s going to happen in a football game and I’m sure I’m wrong all the time. I still can have an opinion about it based off the information I know and I understand. I can also change that opinion. That’s ok. You learn- you get new information, your opinion changes and I think that’s what a lot of times slows people down or intimidates people, is the possibility that they could be wrong and I think that’s- I think that should be let go and I think it’s important, if you feel strongly about what you have to say, people aren’t going to realize how important it is unless you communicate it strongly and sell it. Not in a fake way but in a genuine way that you really believe based off the information that you have acquired over the years or the project you’ve worked on, that you really feel strongly about the results that you’ve gotten.
A: That’s good advice. And being flexible, I think you mentioned that, being willing to change a mindset about something.
S: Oh, absolutely. Another reason Kubiak- Gary Kubiak, I liked so much was he also understood the NFL game was always changing. All sports- e verything is always changing. That’s one thing you can expect from game to game, year to year, in the NFL, was change. The only thing that always stayed the same was change, and always the ability to adapt, to learn more, change your opinion on how we’re going to win the next football game. Maybe it’s at halftime, you realize we can’t run the football, we thought that was going to be our way to victory today, it’s not going to happen, we’re going to have to throw it. So the ability to take in more information and possibly adapt to it.
A: I love that. “The only thing that stays the same is change.” That’s a bumper sticker right there.
S: It’s a good one.
A: It is, it is. Alright, Sage, I really appreciate you taking the time and doing this for me. I had a great time talking with you.
Whether you’re on stage giving a talk or explaining what you do to friends or even on a field being pursued by 11 large athletes who want nothing more than to tackle you, you will at some point fail at least once. It’s inevitable. Sage Rosenfels joins us to help how to tackle unavoidable failure when approaching your communication obstacles and how rebound effectively from those failures.
EPISODE CREDITS
Guest Starring Sage Rosenfels, a retired NFL quarterback of 12 seasons and also a football broadcaster, analyst for television, radio, and podcast
Erik Tillman, Phd, Formerly of the Kim Lab & Currently A Fellow at Vida Ventures, LLC
The Great Communicators Podcast is a part of Gradcommx. Gradcommx, targeted at enhancing research communication, is the first offering of Gradx – a professional development project created for the graduate student population at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by the Office For Graduate Education.
MUSIC & SOUNDS
“All The Best Fakers” by Nick Jaina is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License (http://freemusicarchive.org) “Drifting Spade” by Blue Dot Sessions is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial License. “Dirtbike Lovers” by Blue Dot Sessions is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. “Deliberate Thought” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Welcome to The Great Communicators Podcast presented by The MIT Office of Graduate Education, a professional development podcast expressly designed to bring lessons from the field to our graduate student researchers.
My name is Adam Greenfield and this episode is all about the F word: Failure. Countless quotes about failure have been made throughout time, like “Failure is not an option.” This particular quote is attributed to Gene Kranz, the NASA flight director for several significant space missions.
Of course, in space, failure would be catastrophic. But here on the ground and in the universe of communication, failure is not only inevitable but also our friend in the end. It may feel bad at first but as we’re about to hear, failure can actually be an advantage when it comes to communication, if not life in general.
Our speaker in this episode had a career in a field that dealt with failure as just part of the process. SAGE ROSENFELS Failure is very much a part of sports. Of all sports. ADAM GREENFIELD That’s Sage Rosenfels, a retired NFL quarterback of 12 seasons and also a football broadcaster and analyst for television, radio, and even podcasts. SAGE ROSENFELS I am a father of three kids, so that’s one of my occupations, I guess. ADAM GREENFIELD And probably one of the more tougher jobs ever, too. But since this is more of a professional communication podcast series than a family dynamics podcast series, we’ll just stick to how we’re communicating at the office, so to speak. In Sage’s case, his office is on a football field where split second decisions need to be made. But just as he mentioned, it’s not just football where failures occur; failures happen in all sports and even the best athletes fail. SAGE ROSENFELS
I mean, Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player of all time in my opinion, he missed more shots than he made. So he failed more than he succeeded as far as shooting the basketball. ADAM GREENFIELD And even though we weren’t there to witness how he processed those misses, we may not actually need to be. I mean, it’s pretty clear how successful of a career Michael Jordan had. So how did he maintain his level of success even with all those missed shots? Sage explains it from a football perspective. SAGE ROSENFELS It’s all about really playing each individual play as its own separate entity throughout the sixty minutes of a football game.In football, very early, whether it’s high school, football, or pro, coaches are always pushing “next play, next play, next play.” There’s really nothing you can do about whatever happened on the last play whether it was really good or really bad. Many times it’s bad when they’re bringing that up. “Hey, next play. Let’s move on. That was a mistake. Next play.” Because the clock is ticking. You don’t have time to sit there and mope and contemplate and worry about what happened. Obviously you have some time between games but not much. The week is so regimented that, yes, after a loss you maybe have 24 hours but the next day? Worrying about that game and feeling bad about that game or the play is not going to help you win the next one. When you’re actually in a game or in a practice and, say, you have a bad play, again, that play is not going to have an effect on the next play in a positive way on the next play if you spend any time worrying about it. Bad play happened. What’s the next play and how can we maximize that play because that’s the great thing about football, is you can have a bad play and the next play or the next group of plays you can play perfect football and make up for that bad play. ADAM GREENFIELD So what do you, the scientist, do if you make a blunder during a moment that’s more likely to occur in your world, like a speech or presentation? Well, nothing much you can do besides finishing strong and leaving a good mark on your audience. SAGE ROSENFELS When it’s something like, say, you’re speaking in front of 1000 people or you’re in a ballet or you’re in a play, if you fall down and have an incredibly embarrassing mistake, it’s hard to really make up from that. I think the difference is in football or, say, golf, another similar sport to football in a sense that there’s individual plays or individual shots and the last shot doesn’t necessarily need to affect the next shot. The hard part is when you’re speaking in front of a crowd or maybe doing some theater, if you make a really, really bad mistake, there’s not really much you can make up for that. So then just put on the best performance you possibly can from then on out. People may remember that mistake or they may remember the rest of your performance as being spectacular. ADAM GREENFIELD Now, I know that bouncing back from a mistake, especially right in the middle of a performance, can be a major challenge. And if you’re just starting out down the path of communicating your work, it can be pretty frightening, too. But Sage’s experience of moving on from a bad play on the football field or giving wrong information when he’s in the broadcast booth gives him the edge when it comes to useful insight on this subject of recovery. And when it comes to being so afraid of failing that it prevents you from even trying, try to keep in mind the amount of time and effort you’ve put into your work. This can be a great confidence builder and reminder that the knowledge you’ve gained from all that time and effort has some significance and is worthy of the time needed to communicate it to others. SAGE ROSENFELS I think some people are sometimes concerned about not saying the right thing or possibly being wrong. You know, I have to go on the radio all the time and give my opinion about what’s going to happen in a football game and I’m sure I’m wrong all the time. I still can have an opinion about it based off the information I know and I understand. I can also change that opinion. That’s ok. You learn- you get new information, your opinion changes and I think that’s what a lot of times slows people down or intimidates people, is the possibility that they could be wrong and I think that’s- I think that should be let go and I think it’s important, if you feel strongly about what you have to say, people aren’t going to realize how important it is unless you communicate it strongly and sell it. Not in a fake way but in a genuine way that you really believe based off the information that you have acquired over the years or the project you’ve worked on, that you really feel strongly about the results that you’ve gotten. ADAM GREENFIELD Of course, that confidence comes from practice and having a routine. In sports, athletes try to be very regimented from morning to night, from how much sleep they get to what they eat to being sure they’re doing what’s necessary to understand and play their game. This routine can train your brain and body in hopes of minimizing mistakes and having a great performance. The added bonus is when you make a mistake, it’s easier to get back on track. In football, this test of how well you perform, and also your recovery skills, is tested on a weekly basis through the NFL season. SAGE ROSENFELS This is one of those things that Norv Turner said to me one time. He was my quarterbacks- well, he was an offensive coordinator back in, I think, 2002 and 2003 in Miami- and he said, “The great thing about football is we get to take a final every Sunday for, basically, 16 weeks in a row. Most people don’t get to do that.” You work on a project, you work in a company, you never really see the results ever over the course of maybe years or you see them- or a project over the course of a few months or six months or something like that. You really do get to see your work come to fruition very, very quickly throughout a season. ADAM GREENFIELD And here’s the crazy thing, another connection between science and football: Just as science is fluid and constantly growing and becoming more and more understood, the game of football is also changing, growing, just as the athletes are. So while it’s still vital to practice, it also helps to understand the game and all the players will not be static in their growth. Adapting now becomes another part of the process. SAGE ROSENFELS Everything is always changing. That’s one thing you can expect from game to game, year to year, in the NFL, was change. The only thing that always stayed the same was change, and always the ability to adapt, to learn more. So the ability to take in more information and possibly adapt to it.
ADAM GREENFIELD
So whether you’re on stage giving a talk or explaining what you do to friends or even on a field being pursued by 11 large athletes who want nothing more than to tackle you, you will at some point fail at least once. It’s inevitable.
But as Sage pointed out, failure is not the end. What you do from there is even more important than the failure you just experienced. People will remember the recovery, or lack thereof, more than they will the mistake.
Of course, when you’re in the moment, that’s easier said than done. But Sage mentioned one key point to recovering from a failure or mistake: If you feel confident in what you’re communicating, use that confidence you gained from all the studying and practice you’ve done to pull yourself up and finish strong.
Thanks for listening to The Great Communicators Podcast brought to you by The MIT Office of Graduate Education. My name is Adam Greenfield, and feel free to talk amongst yourselves.
This is episode is the full, unedited interview with Ed Boyden. If you haven’t listened to the fully produced episode yet, we strongly encourage you to do so before listening to this one. They’re shorter in length and much more refined.
EPISODE CREDITS
Guest Starring Ed Boyden, Associate Professor of Biological Engineering and Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT Media Lab and McGovern Institute & Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology
Erik Tillman, Phd, Formerly of the Kim Lab & Currently A Fellow at Vida Ventures, LLC
The Great Communicators Podcast is a part of Gradcommx. Gradcommx, targeted at enhancing research communication, is the first offering of Gradx – a professional development project created for the graduate student population at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by the Office For Graduate Education.
MUSIC & SOUNDS
“Divider” by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under Attribution 4.0 International License (http://freemusicarchive.org)
Hello, Adam Greenfield here, host of The Great Communicators podcast series. What you’re about to hear is the full, unedited interview with one of the guests we spoke with. If you haven’t listened to the fully produced episode yet, I definitely encourage you to do so before listening to this one. They’re shorter in length and much more refined. You can find them all at gradx.mit.edu/podcasts.
The idea behind these longer, unedited conversation is to give you an opportunity to hear the entire talk, warts and all. This is not only a fun way to hear the full flow of the conversation but it also emphasizes the importance of the points made in the shorter, produced episodes, which again, can be found at gradx.mit.edu/podcasts.
Thanks for listening and enjoy the conversation.
Patrick Yurick: Can you tell me your name, title, and what you do here at MIT?
Ed Boyden: My name is Ed Boyden. I am an associate professor here at MIT where I direct a neuro technology group, and I work with people across all different disciplines, science and engineering, on a quest to understand and repair the brain.
P: Great. I was kind of interested in, we were just talking, and I was interested because you do have to communicate with a lot of people. So like, on a daily basis and at different levels. Can you describe the different ways that you have to think about communication?
E: Sure. So in my own research group, we have clinicians, roboticists, chemists, people who are trained in the humanities, people who have trained in mathematics, and everything in between. I spent a lot of time trying to understand and frame problems so that they can be solved. This is a very difficult thing to do because looking at a problem a little bit the wrong way can mean the difference between somebody coming up with a solution and somebody completely missing the boat. So, very often what I think is most important is sort of having empathy for the person you are talking to, and also simultaneously empathy for the world at large. So, if I am trying to convey an idea, like here is a deep problem in the understanding of the brain and I am trying to motivate a chemist and roboticist to develop some new technology together, then I have to sort of think about how do I project the value that is achieved by solving this problem into their reference frame to make it a reality for them basically. That is difficult because you kind of have to understand how a given background perspective or an individual will receive a message. So, I call it extreme empathy. You need to have extreme empathy for your listener, and I think that only comes with a lot of experience. You spend a lot of time trying to understand how somebody might respond. You have a model of their mind in a way. For example, somebody who is a clinician might be motivated by a certain kind of way to help people, where somebody who is more motivated by liking to do a certain kind of skill, like programming a computer, might have a totally different set of motivations. So, it is both important and dangerous to sort of try to understand what people are really motivated by in order to make sure that they can work together and solve some bigger problem.
P: That is interesting. It sounds a lot, I just got out of a leadership program, so it sounds a lot of like leadership skills. There is a little bit of knowing, or at least my reflection is on leadership, which is like knowing how to move individuals around so that they can complement each other and work together.
E: Yeah, it is all about maximizing people’s positive impact on the world. You know, in a lot of graduate students and post-docs come to me with great skills, and I almost think there is a point in one’s life where you have learned all the skills that you want to, at least for now, and now you want to go solve some really big problem. Right? Then the question, though, is how do you find the plan of attack? You have this big mountain and this little crowbar. You have to find some place in the mountain to start prying the rocks apart from each other, and where do you begin? It can be very daunting. So, part of it is trying to also frame the problem from an emotional standpoint, you know, making something sound easy can backfire. Sometimes you really want to point out just how difficult something is and prepare people for failure. I often ask people to think about aiming for a constructive failure. It is probably going to fail, but you will know what you need to do next. I think from that comes wisdom. You know, I think that a lot of people in my own group, for example, spend a year trying things out and learning a lot but not making much progress. But then, all the dots will start to align, and then we can actually start to make new things, actually have a real impact.
P: Did that understanding of constructive failure, did that come naturally to you or did you intuit that when you started doing research and work or was it something that you had to learn?
E: I figured out the constructive failure strategy and other strategies I used to help guide people to solve big problems a bit by trial and error. I would see other people talk about how simple it was to solve a problem. So, join my group and you can solve this problem really fast. I tried that out, but the problems I wanted to work on were much harder, and it backfired. People were like, well, I couldn’t solve it in one day, and I feel bad now. So, I said, alright that didn’t work. So, then I started trying the opposite. I said, alright, this problem is really annoying. We are going to be really frustrated tackling it. We have to bring it down to lots of parts. We are going to really deconstruct them one by one and go after them. It is not going to be fun, but the impact is going to change the world. Then, something amazing happened. People learned how to deal with these problems, and they toughened up and were able to go through the constructive failure process and make their way to the other side and get to the wisdom phase. It is great to see these people as they graduate and move on to start their own jobs, groups, companies, whatever. I feel like, in some ways, in an era where skills can be learned, you know, you can read about things on the internet and so forth, maybe what is most important is this ability to pick really good problems to work on. There are lots of things that people can do, but doing the very most important thing is still very tricky. I often feel that, you know, what is that old saying by, I think, by Marcel Proust, “traveling to new landscapes,” I am going to botch this quote, “is as important, if not more, to see with new eyes.” Right? I feel like that is kind of important. The problem might look intractable from four different points of view, and then through wisdom, struggle, and a little bit of out-of-the-box thinking and collaboration, you find a fifth plan of attack. You can go for it.
P: Kind of going back to empathy for a minute, was there, I mean, I am an analytical guy. I sometimes have problems with empathy because I tend to assume things that might not be true. I wonder if you have run into surprises around that with people or strategies to develop empathy?
E: Yeah. I also do a lot of volunteer work outside of my MIT duties. For example, I am one of the four interviewers for the Hertz Foundation. What that means is they award five-year PhD fellowships to people who want to go do applied sciences. So, over the years, I have done this interviewing for a decade now. I have learned how to ask questions to learn what really people are interested in, and a lot of it means listening. So, I will often start an interview just by asking somebody, you know, how did you get to where you are? Where do you want to go next? I will sit there. I feel like it is very easy to want to say something, but sometimes just sort of sitting back and listening, people will tell you things. A big part of communication, I think, is knowing when not to communicate and when to listen and also knowing what is important. Not all information is equally important. You both have to convey what you think is most important and also listen and acquire what you think is most important. It is like a game of tennis where you hit the ball back and forth in a conversation. The goal is not simply to have a random [9:17 ____________], although sometimes it is, most of the time
you are trying to figure something out. Like, hey, is this the right path to go down? Or, will this person really enjoy this job? Or, is this the right direction that science should be headed as a whole?
P: I kind of want to talk about your TED Talk because I think a lot of our audience for the course are going to be interested in that. I would assume, well I don’t know, maybe that is a wrong assumption. I am new to MIT, so I have no idea. I would assume that is kind of like a great avenue to start disseminating your work. Could you talk to me a little bit about the process, and then I’ll talk to you a little bit about how that has implications to the rest of the field of your work.
E: Sure. Let’s see, so I was invited to a small conference at Google, of all places, and I gave a little talk about one of our areas of research, which is that we have invented a way to control brain cells with light. This is really powerful because you can understand how the brain computes by activating cells in the brain, and thousands and thousands of researchers in academia and the industry are using this now to study the brain. Recently, therapeutic trials in humans began also to use these tools and help cure people. So, I gave this talk. This gentleman came to me afterwards and said, “That was about 90% of a TED Talk. Do you want to give one?” Which later, I found out was about 2% of a TED Talk. Of course, if he had said that, I would probably not have signed up. That was about several months before TED. About two to three months beforehand, I started to work on it. I was lucky to have a lot of help from people here at the MIT McGovern Institute, Julie Pryor and Charles Jennings for example, and we decided to make some animations to tell the story. You know, we work in little, tiny, nanoscale things that we put into neurons to make them light controlled. You cannot just hold that up in your hand, you know, it would be invisible. You have to kind of find a way to convey this three-dimensional dynamic story to an audience, and to us, we finally decided that required animation. So, we started working on a script and took a lot of time to figure out what the story should be. I really wanted to lose nothing of the hard science, but I also wanted people to be understanding of it and also wanted people to be, at least to some extent, entertained or interested. That is difficult to balance all three. In fact, I had to resist a lot of pressure from different angles. People had different things they wanted to see. “Oh, if you did this, it would get millions of views.” But that is not exactly scientifically accurate. Or some people would be, the flipside would happen as well. There were points in time where we wanted to show neuro networks of the brain, but to actually draw them as densely as they actually are in the brain, it would look like a gigantic mess, right? You know, in a cubic millimeter in the brain, you are going to have a million connections between cells. So, it is just not graphically feasible to show that. So, we had to constantly balance aesthetics, accuracy, clarity, and serve conciseness as well because you only get fifteen or twenty minutes to give these talks. We spent a lot of time thinking about what is necessary. I mean, every sentence of that talk was scripted. I memorized it. Again, my talk was only eighteen minutes. There is not thirty seconds to pause and think about what you are going to say next. It has to be basically delivered from memory, or if you are really good at improvising, which I was not at the time, then you can do it. We had lots of practice. Juan Enriquez, the curator of Ted, who invited me to give a talk, he is here in Boston. He would invite us to come to his house or his company. We would have to give a talk for a bunch of people, a lot of whom we did not know. They all had to understand it and had to agree it was accurate and say they liked it. That was interesting and a little tense at times because you are trying to deliver a story and juggling so many different variables. Right? There is the health aspect. There is the brain is interesting from a philosophical standpoint aspect. There is the how do you motivate more people to get interested in the science aspect. Somehow, you have to get all those messages projected, again like we talked about earlier, into the value frame, the value reference frame of the listener. But, it paid off. A lot of people have seen the talk. It has been used by many people to teach. It has been used for science exculpation purposes to the public. It has been used to present to congress, I heard. When people needed to explain something about neuroscience to representatives in the US Congress, people have been using it a lot because you can get a lot of mileage out of a well-done communication piece. I also learned a lot about just how to communicate in general. I look back at talks I gave before that and thought, “wow, that was not very good.”
P: That is kind of what I wanted to talk about next. Implications. I mean, one of the things we have noticed in talking to different researchers and faculty here is that, and the whole reason this course is getting made is because this is a very under-represented part of what is taught to in professional development. Alumni cited communication as one of the most important things or skills that they needed going into the professional world. Students were talking about how they would like more teaching to it. I am really curious because of your TED Talk piece, going through that and having knowing what you presented before and then having gone through that, I wonder what kind of connections you made to, how communication, well, I guess, how did your communication change since then?
E: Well, it really reinforced a lot of stuff that I knew at a cognitive level but was able to make more part of everyday life. For example, as a professor with a large group at MIT, I spent a lot of my time writing papers, analyzing data, and planning experiments with people in the group. If you try to plan out an experiment, logical step by logical step, or trying to write a publication, here is where we began, we did this first, we did this second, these are all communication efforts, right? I think good communication is good thinking is good science in a way. In some ways, when you are trying to think through an experiment or think about data analysis or whatever, you are communicating to yourself in a way. If you are not communicating to yourself clearly, then you might be actually going down the wrong path. Are you doing the right things for the right reasons? So, I covered all sorts of different exercises and strategies to help people get good at communicating. You know, when we write publications in my group, sometimes people will have writers block, but everybody can talk about their work. So, I would say, just write the way you talk. Start talking. They would start talking, and bam. Sometimes I would just wish we could record everything they say and then just type it up later. Then, people would get a little uncomfortable sometimes. So, you try to get people to talk, and then they start making sense. I think different communication modalities are very tricky to juggle for some people. Some people are better at writing than talking. Most people are better at talking than writing, I think. In writing, of course, you have a great privilege. You get to craft your words and reflect on them before somebody else sees them. That is something that is really kind of a reason why it is a good place to practice. You know, another thing that I do a lot of now is to really try to help people with logical flow. I will start people just by writing in almost a formulaic model. If A, then B. Since B then C. Because C, then D and so forth. You know it is funny, although the model of writing is formulaic, the text that comes out sounds beautiful because it flows logically. People are like, “wow, of course. Duh. Of course I should do that. That is the best idea ever.” It can be very compelling to have sentences that flow one to the next like a force of inevitability so that you get to the conclusion at the end, and it is compelling, accurate, and interesting. So, I work a lot on trying to find almost algorithms to help people communicate. Although the algorithms sometimes seem formal, the outcomes are usually better than if one tries to just write or communicate in some random way, like pulling sentences out of a hat.
P: You just triggered something. I am a trained educator; that is my background. It is common to understand learning styles, right? Or whatever that is, and there is always science coming out about that. I never really thought about communicating styles and how you can generate, like there are different ways that we kind of prefer to start thinking about communication and that that might lead to being able to better communicate in other styles. So, that is really interesting. I like that. That was cool to think about. The question I have after this in regards to the TED Talk, do you have any thoughts on how it might have expanded your broader understanding of communication in the STEM field? Like, maybe not your own but just, would this be a process that a lot of researchers could actually learn from? Or is it more like there are parts of it that you think would have been good to know in your own training prior to going through that?
E: Hmm. I think what I learned through the TED process, there were lots of little things. There was not like, do this one thing and everything will be easy. You know, I think a lot of us do not like to practice talks because it is boring, laborious, and sometimes scary. But, forcing myself to practice many times actually really helped. That is the one thing that I think I learned the most. I have always been the kind of like, write the talk the morning of or the night before. But practicing many times, I actually found myself rethinking things, like, wait, that sentence doesn’t really quite follow there. Then, I would reorder everything. So, nowadays, I gave a talk at the World Economic Forum earlier this year on engineering revolutions, how to help revolutionize a scientific discipline or a field, an inventive area, or some other area when it got stuck. How do you overturn something for the better? After the talk, people would bring up all these questions like, Oh, I’m in this war-torn part of the globe and I want to galvanize humanitarian efforts, and this sounds like it could help. I thought, really, wow. I didn’t think about that because I was thinking about the scientific and engineering implications. That one, I practiced that every day for like a week. I have given now, I don’t know, well over three hundred talks, not including all my classes that I teach, but every time I practice it, I would change it just a little bit. Over a period of four, five, or six practices, I found myself really almost converging upon an ideal message, at least at the time. Now, looking back at the script, it is like, wow, I could have improved a bit more. So, that is the thing I learned most; communication that is experienced can be stressful because you are critiquing, you are finding flaws, but it is better to find them early and catch them, you know, be your own critic before the world is your critic. That is one thing I learned a lot through that process.
P: Yeah. It is interesting. Through our interviews with different faculty members studying very different kinds of scientific things, my background is in art, so I am getting more of a mental picture of what STEM is as opposed to what I thought it was before I came to MIT. I am not a scientific researcher. But one of the things that I keep thinking about is, like, and you started talking about the role of communication in your work, and it is funny because Yang brought up this idea that audience, you have to be careful with creating foreign audience with the scientific method because that can actually have detrimental effects on uncovering the truth. Sometimes the truth is not entertaining. I did not know if you had any thoughts on that because I do see TED Talks, and there is criticism on what TED Talks are from different people because it does boil down really complex ideas. I did not know if you had any thoughts on that. Like, the entertainment factor versus, especially for grad students who are just starting or potentially just starting in their journey as professionals.
E: That is a good question. I have a half-joking principle that I call the principle of applied laziness, which is if something is too difficult to do, it is probably not worth doing. For example, to try to take a really complex topic and force it into a TED Talk, and it just does not fit and you end up ruining the science. You know, well, that is too hard to do, you should not try it, right? It is going to ruin the science and backfire in the long run. So, when I agreed to do that TED Talk and now am writing a second one, these were topics I thought could fit in that format and that could be clearly communicated without losing any of the science, but there are certainly topics where to squeeze it in would cause you to lose too much of the science or you would work so hard to get it into that time limit. It could take many, many years to try to force it in, and it might not still work. Maybe that should not be tried. So, yeah, I have a sort of way at looking at things where things that naturally seem to fit, go with those. If something just does not work, then you know, as long as you have good skills, you tried hard, and it was not for lack of trial or judgement, then that is that.
P: Yeah. I keep thinking about how much the role of communication lays in success within a research profession. I am wondering if you have any thoughts on that?
E: Yeah. Let’s talk about two examples. One is communication to others. The second one is what I earlier called communication to yourself. So, somebody might be doing an experiment or doing science, doing engineering, or doing whatever and they do not stop and try to explain back to themselves what they have done, they might actually miss out on something important that they have done. I have seen people start a project and achieve something really cool, and they kept plowing on and never got what they had done out into the world because they had not appreciated themselves what the importance was. There are so many examples, especially in biology and medicine where somebody discovered something or invented something, and they did not stop and appreciate what it was and realize the importance of it. They just kept going, and that not only is bad for one’s career but it can hold back science and health as a whole if people do not stop, pause, and think about things. So, I spend a lot of time where I will actually meet with people and have conversations, and I will take notes. I will go back and re-read those notes. Even if something hit a brick wall and was a failure, I will go back and re-read them. I call it failure mining. That is me communicating to myself. I think it is one of the most important things I do. We had a project that we thought up back in 2007 or so, but we did not think it was very important at the time. Then, five years later, some new graduate students joined my group, and we decided to give it a go. It worked great. Now, we have a new way of imaging things like the brain that is growing very rapidly in the scientific and medical community. I think sort of reflection, introspection, and kind of communicating to one’s self is really important. Communicating to others, of course, is also very important. Again, you can find examples where something did not have the impact that it could have because it was not appreciated by others. I do not think that is important. So, for example, when we publish technology, we think very much about different story elements, like validation, we want people to trust it. Demonstration, it sends a sense of urgency because it is powerful and people look at the technology and say, “wow, I got to do that, that is going to help me.” There are so many examples of people inventing something but they did not do a demonstration that conveyed a sense of urgency, and people said, “Eh, that seems optional.” Or somebody did a cool demo but did not validate it, and people say, “Eh, it seems like it is not very trustworthy.” So, again, it goes back to say that good communication is good science. If you think about what impact really comes from, which is an idea, an extenuation, a demonstration, and a dissemination, you know, communication actually is happening at every one of those stages.
P: That is fascinating. Yeah. Also, I like the fact that you mentioned people and other people as a big role in that, almost like a collaborative nature helps having different points of checks and reflection. I imagine going back to empathy, that plays a big role in collaboration.
E: Yeah, it does. In fact, I gave a little seminar a while back on what I called architecting innovation: The idea that problem experts want to solve their problem and solution experts want to apply their skills to something. By catalyzing connections, starting with trusted, paralyzed interactions and then building to larger groups from thereon, I am not a big believer of throwing thirty people in a room and having a workshop, I do not think that works. People do not share their best ideas so they do not collaborate well when you do that. But, if you start building these trusted, paralyzed interactions and then they can increase in scale, then you can actually, in that fashion, build collaborations that can solve problems.
P: Totally. There is this funny Dilbert comic where they had, well, we have determined that this project is going to take three-hundred days to complete. So, we have hired 300 of you, and you all have a day to complete it. And, you are all fired at the end of the day. It was this logical fallacy about management, right? Like, you cannot always throw money at a problem to solve it. Like, there are other things that go into it that are very important. I guess, finishing up, I do not want to take too much more of your time, but is there is anything you have noticed
that you could say to anybody in the STEM field, you know, as you have noticed things progressing in the last couple years. The last decade has been a big change in communication period. I am wondering if you have any like advice that we have not covered?
E: Hmm. You know, it is hard to give advice in general because I think everybody is so different. The advice that I give even people in my own group can differ quite a bit because sometimes people need different things. You know? You know, there are some people who I think are too cautious and should say more. Then, there are those that say too much and should think more about what they are going to say. I think that there is no general rule. But again, I am a firm believer that if you really think backwards from the end goal and if you really work backwards from the outcome you want to achieve and then survey all the possible paths, or at least as many as you have patience for, then you make your strategy or plan after that. That is sort of a general meta rule that can help with communication and with life in general, frankly. So, yeah, whether somebody is crafting an advertisement to try to sell a product or a manuscript to a scientific journal, you want to be thinking about what you want the outcome to be and then anticipate other outcomes as well. Oops, this may have a side effect. People might interpret this the wrong way. This is not quite what I wanted to say. This is not accurate. You should anticipate those things early on. What is the old saying? All great battles are won before they are ever fought? I think that is especially true with things like communication.
P: Yeah. Totally. I think that has been a through line within all of our interviews. There has been this idea of what you called constructive failure. This idea that humility and letting go of what you expected to happen when something else occurs and figuring out how to roll with that but still achieve what you were setting out to do.
E: Yeah, you also craft a culture where constructive failures are celebrated. I think sometimes that takes a bit of work, but yeah, I mean, I often tell people, “Look, if it is working perfectly, you know, I cannot help you anymore because it is already done, right?” I want to help the problems. I want to see the chaotic destruction and the issues that people are struggling with. That is where I can help. Yeah, it is hard sometimes to get people to do that.
P: I know we were talking about that earlier with the whole concept of this podcast series and communication, which is like, well if it was something that was like breathing, we do not need to think about breathing. It is already something we do. But no, there is work needing to be done with professional communication at MIT. That is why we are hired to work on this project because it is a problem, and that is kind of fascinating in and of itself trying to figure out what that problem is.
E: What’s fun, I think, I mean, we have been talking a bit about my TED Talk, and I think the real trial by fire that taught me communication is being near my home department, the school where I am faculty. I am in the School of Architecture at MIT. You might ask what is a neuro engineer doing at the School of Architecture. Well, it was because when I first was looking for a faculty job, neuroscience was not necessarily as appreciative as engineering. So, I was hired by the MIT media lab. Now, neuro engineering is cool and all, so it spread. I had to spend many years where I was surrounded by people who [32:48 _______________] case and everything, and none of them were experts in neuro engineering. Frankly, nobody was, not even me at the time. We were making up the field as we went along. So, I think that is where I learned most how to communicate. In the media lab, there are about seventy corporate sponsors that fund the lab, and they come by. You have to explain to an executive who works on cell phones or a person who works on environmental cleanup or something else why you are relevant. I was an undergraduate at MIT, and I did my undergraduate research at the lab. So, you would have Martha Stewart or the Duke of York or somebody come back, and you would have to explain in three minutes how you were changing the world. This was good training. But, it has been fun because I have been in such a communication-intensive environment having been an undergrad researcher and a masters student in the media lab in the late 1990s and then being faculty at the media lab during, getting the neuro engineering going phase of things. Once you have done it a lot, you actually can start to improvise. So, that is a lot of fun because you can start to connect with people and motivate people. In the end, it is improvisational. You are trying to connect with somebody, motivate them to solve some problem, let’s say, or to change the world in some way. Whether you are a professor or starting a company or whatever, that is kind of your job, to take people who have skills but need to be directed towards some goal and to collectively achieve that goal. I still remember, it was probably a couple years after my TED Talk and also after doing all the Hertz interviewing and the media lab faculty thing and so forth where I realized I was actually not that bad at improvising, but that was after thousands and thousands of hours of this.
P: I do not want to give Malcolm Gladwell all the credit, but that concept of you have to work at it and expose yourself for a lot of hours, it is very rare to just be talented at something without putting work into it.
E: It is not just the time, though. It is having the context, right? I think 10,000 hours or whatever the number everybody quotes of communicating to other physicists studying engineering could be good, but if your goal is to motivate new people to enter the field and to galvanize a movement that is going to start a new discipline, then you have to communicate to people who are not in that field.
P: I really appreciate that. You are the first person to bring up culture in interviewing, and that echoes a lot of what I feel. I teach art. I think if you want people to be creative, they have to feel safe to be creative because creativity is potential failure. Well, what they would consider failure. It is not what they want it to be. It is similar. I always tell teachers that it is less about the skills that I am teaching the students technically and more about creating safety for them to play with new ideas. Learning has expediential growth when people feel safe to learn. That is where I think setting up that culture is really important, so I am really glad you said that.
“I often ask people to think about aiming for a constructive failure.” says Ed Boyden, Associate Professor of Biological Engineering and Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT Media Lab and McGovern Institute & Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology, “It is probably going to fail, but you will know what you need to do next. I think from that comes wisdom.”
EPISODE CREDITS
Guest Starring Ed Boyden, Associate Professor of Biological Engineering and Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT Media Lab and McGovern Institute & Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology
Erik Tillman, Phd, Formerly of the Kim Lab & Currently A Fellow at Vida Ventures, LLC
The Great Communicators Podcast is a part of Gradcommx. Gradcommx, targeted at enhancing research communication, is the first offering of Gradx – a professional development project created for the graduate student population at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by the Office For Graduate Education.
MUSIC & SOUNDS
“All The Best Fakers” by Nick Jaina is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License (http://freemusicarchive.org) “Open Flames” by Blue Dot Sessions is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial License. “Stingray – Dangerous Thought” by Blue Dot Sessions is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License (http://freemusicarchive.org) “Deliberate Thought” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Welcome to The Great Communicators Podcast presented by The MIT Office of Graduate Education, a professional development podcast expressly designed to bring lessons from the field to our graduate student researchers.
My name is Adam Greenfield and one of my favorite quotes is by the ancient poet Ovid, and it goes “Perfer et obdura; dolor hic tibi proderit olim.” That translates to “Be patient and strong; one day this pain will be useful to you.”
I bring this up because in this episode, we’re going to be hearing terms like “constructive failure” and “principle of applied laziness,” things that require patience and perseverance while going through inevitable failures in both communication and elsewhere in life.
But as you’ll also hear, it’s more than that. It’s how those failures benefit you and make you a stronger, better communicator in the end.
Now, I don’t know many people who have done a TED Talk. In fact, I only know one person and you’re about to hear from him.
ED BOYDEN
I look back at talks I gave before then and thought, “wow, that wasn’t very good.”
ADAM GREENFIELD
That’s Ed Boyden, an associate professor at MIT. He’s in charge of a neurotechnology group but his knowledge and expertise has him working with others in all kinds of different science and engineering studies. Oh, and he’s on a really important journey. ED BOYDEN …on a quest to understand and repair the brain. ADAM GREENFIELD Now, when it comes to this type of quest and other quests Professor Boyden is a part of, including the aforementioned TED Talk, assuming you have the skills you need, the first step begins with… ED BOYDEN ….how do you find the plan of attack? You have this big mountain and this little crowbar. You have to find some place in the mountain to start prying the rocks apart from each other, and where do you begin? It can be very daunting. ADAM GREENFIELD Professor Boyden is also not one to sugarcoat something when talking to students or others who are about to embark on a difficult quest of their own. ED BOYDEN Sometimes you really want to point out just how difficult something is and prepare people for failure. I often ask people to think about aiming for a constructive failure. It is probably going to fail, but you will know what you need to do next. I think from that comes wisdom. ADAM GREENFIELD Ok, let’s dive a little more into this constructive failure idea, and for several reasons. What Professor Boyden has pointed out is that you are going to fail, including when trying to communicate concepts and ideas you’ve been immersed in for many years. Once you accept this, it then becomes how do you turn that into your favor. Also, this wasn’t something Professor Boyden just thought up one day. This notion of failing up, so to speak, came out of his own processes and failures. ED BOYDEN I figured out the constructive failure strategy and other strategies I used to help guide people to solve big problems a bit by trial and error. I would see other people talk about how simple it was to solve a problem. So, join my group and you can solve this problem really fast. I tried that out, but the problems I wanted to work on were much harder, and it backfired. People were like, well, I couldn’t solve it in one day, and I feel bad now. So, I said, alright that didn’t work. So, then I started trying the opposite. I said, alright, this problem is really annoying. We are going to be really frustrated tackling it. We have to bring it down to lots of parts. We are going to really deconstruct them one by one and go after them. It is not going to be fun, but the impact is going to change the world. Then, something amazing happened. People learned how to deal with these problems, and they toughened up and were able to go through the constructive failure process and make their way to the other side and get to the wisdom phase. ADAM GREENFIELD When it came to the TED Talk, Professor Boyden went through a pretty significant preparation process, as well. First, an initial script was written. It was then practiced in front of small groups of people from various backgrounds numerous times in order to make sure everyone understood it. This practice part of the process, whether in front of others or by himself, turned out to be one of the more helpful things Professor Boyden took away from the entire situation. ED BOYDEN I have always been the kind of like, write the talk the morning of or the night before. But practicing many times, I actually found myself rethinking things, like, wait, that sentence doesn’t really quite follow there. Then, I would reorder everything. I gave a talk at the World Economic Forum earlier this year on engineering revolutions, how to help revolutionize a scientific discipline or a field, an inventive area, or some other area when it got stuck. How do you overturn something for the better? After the talk, people would bring up all these questions like, Oh, I’m in this war-torn part of the globe and I want to galvanize humanitarian efforts, and this sounds like it could help. I thought, really, wow, I didn’t think about that because I was thinking about the scientific and engineering implications. That one, I practiced that every day for like a week. I have given now, I don’t know, well over three hundred talks, not including all my classes that I teach, but every time I practice it, I would change it just a little bit. Over a period of four, five, or six practices, I found myself really almost converging upon an ideal message, at least at the time. Now, looking back at the script, it is like, wow, I could have improved a bit more. So, that is the thing I learned most; communication that is experienced can be stressful because you are critiquing, you are finding flaws, but it is better to find them early and catch them, you know, be your own critic before the world is your critic. ADAM GREENFIELD Professor Boyden also has a semi-serious doctrine that sort of aims to ensure the science you are attempting to convey to an audience doesn’t get mangled or lose it’s footing in proof of something. He calls it… ED BOYDEN …the principle of applied laziness. ADAM GREENFIELD The idea behind it is that when things become too problematic… ED BOYDEN …it is probably not worth doing. For example, to try to take a really complex topic and force it into a TED Talk, and it just does not fit and you end up ruining the science. You know, well, that is too hard to do, you should not try it, right? It is going to ruin the science and backfire in the long run. So, when I agreed to do that TED Talk and now am writing a second one, these were topics I thought could fit in that format and that could be clearly communicated without losing any of the science, but there are certainly topics where to squeeze it in would cause you to lose too much of the science or you would work so hard to get it into that time limit. It could take many, many years to try to force it in, and it might not still work. Maybe that should not be tried. So, yeah, I have a sort of way at looking at things where things that naturally seem to fit, go with those. If something just does not work, then you know, as long as you have good skills, you tried hard, and it was not for lack of trial or judgement, then that is that. ADAM GREENFIELD Of course, Professor Boyden knows that people are different and not all advice is one size fits all or there’s one general rule that should be applied to everything by everyone. However, there is a process he considers significant enough to mention. ED BOYDEN
I am a firm believer that if you really think backwards from the end goal and if you really work backwards from the outcome you want to achieve and then survey all the possible paths, or at least as many as you have patience for, then you make your strategy or plan after that. That is sort of a general meta rule that can help with communication and with life in general, frankly. So, yeah, whether somebody is crafting an advertisement to try to sell a product or a manuscript to a scientific journal, you want to be thinking about what you want the outcome to be and then anticipate other outcomes as well. “Oops, this may have a side effect. People might interpret this the wrong way. This is not quite what I wanted to say. This is not accurate.” You should anticipate those things early on. What is the old saying? All great battles are won before they are ever fought? I think that is especially true with things like communication.
ADAM GREENFIELD
At the top of the show I brought up a quote that stressed patience and strength, as there will be failures in life but from those failures comes success. And really, that’s a lot of what Professor Boyden was talking about when it comes to constructive failure, wasn’t it? That all those little rocky bumps in the road eventually smooth over. This is certainly the case in communication.
Professor Boyden also talked about how beneficial practice can be. This is brought up by several communicators in this series but in Professor Boyden’s case, after giving hundreds of talks, he’s learned that practicing a communication is very helpful in trimming out things that don’t further the idea he’s trying to get across.
And finally, when preparing a communication, start with the desired end result and work your way back to the beginning. This’ll help you anticipate any potential problems that need clearing up before it comes time to give the actual communication.
Thanks for listening to The Great Communicators Podcast brought to you by The MIT Office of Graduate Education. My name is Adam Greenfield, and feel free to talk amongst yourselves.
