Workshop summaries
Sex, fads, and math
Scientists might use a term like “computed statistics of social synchrony” to refer to what normal people might call sex, fads, and math. Our two texts this month brought us together around these questions: Can mathematical models describe the mating rituals of fireflies, the love life of secret agents, and treatment trends in hospitals? Firefly…
Read MoreWould you want to live longer but get younger?
We had a fun challenge this month from Hanna Västinsalo, our celebrity filmmaker, who leverages her PhD in genetics to entertain audiences with unexpected science stories with a human perspective. We workshopped Hanna’s marketing strategy for her powerful new science-fiction film depicting the psychological experience of reverse aging, Palimpsest. To help with that task, we…
Read MoreOn using metaphors and irony—carefully
The metaphor of modern medicine as a tower anchored a draft piece of fiction that we workshopped this month. In the story another tower appeared through the mist, too: alternative medicine. This text used concrete visual drama to take an idea and, as the screenwriting teacher Robert McKee puts it, wrap that idea in an…
Read MoreUsing dramatic stories to teach
How to get readers interested in the nuances of complex debates over climate policy? Yawn. Unless, maybe, you start your story like this: A typhoon has hit Manila during a UN climate summit, and world leaders are stuck in the basement of a Manila hotel. The American president has a psychological meltdown after a tree…
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