University Place

cc >> Welcome. What a wonderful evening. I know many of you but not all of you, and in case you don't know me, my name is Paul DeLuca, and I have the privilege of serving as provost of this institution. However, most people refer to me affectionately as the faceless evil on campus.

LAUGHTER

You can make of that what you want. This is a terrific event, and the part that's really quite surprising, this is only a couple years old. The growth and penetration and breadth of this kind of activity into the campus and into actually statewide activity is just spectacular. I don't know if you've had a chance to take a look at the program in detail, get a copy of it or look it up on the web. There's tons of activities that are really fascinating over the next couple, three days. It's a wonderful kickoff. We have some just great people that you're going to hear from. I have several roles, one to welcome you to the campus, but I also have the role to introduce the introducer, namely Bassam. Now, many of you know Bassam. Some of you don't, and you'll really be quite amused by Bassam. But the best part about Bassam is he and I share two core features. The first core feature is we both love science. We love the whole question of curiosity. We love talking about it. We love doing it. We love participating in it. We love watching other people do it. And it's just ridiculous how much fun we have doing science. The second point is we both love this institution. We've spent our careers, I've been here almost 40 years. Bassam's only been here 12, he says, but I'm sure it's 40.

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We marvel at each other's ability to get in the sandbox and have as much fun as we do, and then someone pays us for doing that. It's completely unforeseen and unanticipated. Now, I have to warn you, the last time Bassam did something like this, I had to replace the ceiling and half the electrical wiring in the system.

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And Ira is, I noticed, distancing himself carefully from what might happen up here.

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So I'm sure you're going to enjoy this, and you'll look forward to it very much. Bassam, it's yours.

APPLAUSE

>> Thank you very much, Paul. And good evening, everyone, and welcome to the 2013 Wisconsin Science Festival!

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

It's a dream come true. The provost introducing me...

LAUGHTER

I'm introducing Ira Flatow. And all of you are here to help celebrate the joy of science, the beauty of the arts, and the impact of the humanities on all of us. All beautiful human endeavors that bring us together in Madison, Wisconsin, and across the Badger State. Bucky, that was a cue for you. Where's Bucky?

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Not yet, not yet. Here he comes.

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Take it easy, Bucky.

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We are here as part of responsible and caring individuals. We're responsible for the education and for the advancement of science. We are caring for our fellow citizens. That's what the Wisconsin Science Festival is for. And that's why we are all committed to do our best, not only in Wisconsin, but across the nation and around the world. Science and society today face grand challenges. Population growth, finite resources, especially water, climate change, spreading disease, deadly violence, war, and the denial of basic human rights to people as a result of great advances in science and in technology. We're all committed to deal with these daunting challenges, and we are ready. Not because I say so. We are ready because we each feel in our bones the importance of advancing science and communicating science. It is through the advancement of science that we enjoy just about everything you can think of today compared to our ancestors 50 years ago or so, when I came to the United States from my native Lebanon, or 100 years ago, or 500 years ago. These great advances in science and in technology have come because dedicated people, curious people, have worked and enjoyed what they've done, and because in America the American public continues to be generous in supporting us for what we want to do. And so does the private sector. Thank you, John, thank you, Mrs. Morgridge, and thank you to all the sponsors and partners in the Wisconsin Science Festival. Yes, thank you.

APPLAUSE

When we do science experiments, we always obey the safety rules, so here's the first one.

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And everyone sees what I'm doing, right? Ira, can you see me? >> Got you. I'm standing back.

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>> All right. Don't stand back too long, Ira. We need you up here. What I'm going to do now is illustrate the components of what the Science Festival really is and what it deals with. So the first thing I do, I turn the switch on, and I turn this magnetic-- By the way, let me pick this up here. This is a glass beaker. This beaker is four liters in volume. If you look at it just now, you just learned how big four liters is.

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And you cannot unlearn it.

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You may forget it. That's something different. You think about that. This glass beaker is empty except for air. I take this Teflon-coated magnet and put it down there, and can you see the magnet spin? Is the magnet spinning in a clockwise direction or counter-clockwise direction? You can't tell because you have a digital watch, is that what I heard you say?

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I look down at the magnet and I see it's spinning in this direction. This is what we call? >> Clockwise. >> Clockwise, right? Now, what I want you to do is visualize this magnet, the same magnet that's spinning except you're looking at it from below. Visualize a ceiling fan up there and tell me when you look up, what direction do you see?

INAUDIBLE

You're getting me confused now. Is this my right hand or my left hand? I look up, it's my right hand. Now, I look down, it's still my right hand. Right? So what's going on here? What's going on is that you and I know the convention. We agree that this is the right hand. If you find a glove, you can instantly tell whether it's right-handed or left-handed. Right? So the perspective that we have is very, very important. Yes, as you look up you can see that it is spinning in a counter-clockwise direction. Speaking of clocks, here's a clock that I have.

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Can you see this clock? Is it moving? Not yet, right? Can you tell time by this clock? This clock has on it, what? Does it have numbers on it? >> No. >> What does it have on it? It has symbols. Symbols of what? Symbols of the chemical elements that correspond to what? The atomic number of the element corresponds to the number one, two, three, four, right? It's a 24-hour clock. This clock is a special gift from me, it's even autographed up here, to Ira. Ira, do not leave without it! >> Thank you.

APPLAUSE

>> It comes with a battery.

LAUGHTER

Back to the illustration here where we mix the ingredients of success. The first one is curiosity and imagination. The second one, you see we have a clear, colorless liquid, which is now a little more cloudy, the second one is being in an environment that is conducive to excellence. And all that has happened so far is that the volume increased.

LAUGHTER

And you begin to see what looks like a tornado. I hope this is the only tornado you will ever see in person. Now we take the third ingredient. The third ingredient is to have the will to excel. And you see all kinds of wonderful things begin to happen when all these three ingredients are together. What are you oohing and aahing about?

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The last time I looked at the color of the liquid in the beaker, it was blue. You tell me when to look. Should I look right now? Yes or no? >> No. >> I'm getting confused. I don't want to trip over anything here. Yes or no? Should I look right now? >> No. >> No, she said no, okay. We've got time, Ira. You've got time, right? We have time. Tell me when to look! >> No. >> Yes? Look now? I don't want to trip over anything, right? It's dark blue, almost black. Maybe you can help me better on this side. Peggy, tell me when to look now. Should I look right now? >> No. >> No, okay. I'll take my cues from you. >> Now. >> Right now, you sure? I don't want to trip over anything here, right?

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Every time I look, the color is dark. What is it that you're seeing that I'm not seeing? What is it that you're doing that I'm not doing? You're looking, what? All the time, right? I'm looking all the time too.

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But I'm not looking at the same thing you're looking at it, right? So in order to succeed, we have to pay attention. Whoa, look at that.

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We have to pay attention. We have to be focused. We have to be vigilant. This is an example of what we call a chemical oscillating reaction. Do you remember those, Ira, from your Newton's Apple days? >> Absolutely. >> Absolutely. This is called the Briggs-Rauscher reaction. It's named after two high school teachers who discovered it, and it has in it about eight or nine different chemicals. It has hydrogen peroxide, potassium iodate, sulfuric acid, be careful, potato starch. It has malonic acid. It has water of course. It has manganese sulfate, and the yellow color we see now is the color of iodine, but it combines with the potato starch that's in there and gives us this deep blue color that is characteristic of that reaction. And these oscillations continue for a while, in fact. We'll leave this up here and see how long they last. This is an example of how we succeed in science. Briggs and Rauscher published a paper in 1973 describing this beautiful and captivating behavior. It took researchers, high powered researchers, members of the National Academy of Sciences, it took them nine years to figure out what's going on in here. But can you imagine the thrill and the joy of the discoveries that they made as they were vigilant and patient, and also received a lot of financial support to do it.

LAUGHTER

Yes, all of these components are very, very important. So, what I'd like to do next here before I introduce, semi-formally introduce my friend, Ira. He and I have been on several platforms together, and it's always a special privilege for me to be on the same platform with him because he facilitates the communication of science. He's tenacious in his persistence on how science is to be communicated. And he is fierce in the questions that he asks the scientists on his shows and elsewhere where he makes presentations. So, I would like, with your permission, Ira, and the permission of the audience-- This, by the way, Volume 5 of my book series, Chemical Demonstrations. There's my name down here. See? Volume 5. You can see that, right? It says Bassam Shakhashiri right here. Paul, Paul, you see this? Right here. All right. So what I want to do is just read a very short sentence from this book. Just bear with me as I open the book and read it. Oops.

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This is no ordinary book. This is a hot book.

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It's not really a book at all, right? You knew that, Paul, right? Laura, did you know that? She didn't know that. Look, this is a book cover. What this is, oh, Ira's interested now. Look at Ira. He's leaning over now.

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Okay. I'll come on this side, Ira, so you can also see this. I don't want to fall off. >> Don't fall off. >> Safety is paramount in everything we do.

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Safety is paramount. All right, so, look, there is a battery down here. And there is a light bulb here. Actually, it's the filament from a light bulb. And there is, I sprayed a little lighter fluid here when you weren't looking. I used it but I want you to know what's going on. Here it is. What I haven't told you yet is that down here, there is a little what? Can you see it? It's a little button, right? So, batteries have stored in them chemical energy. When I press the button, the chemical energy changes into electrical energy and the filament lights up, but this filament, like all other filaments, is not 100% efficient. It gives off light energy and... >> Heat. >> So now we talk about the three things that you need to start a fire. You need something that burns. You need, what? Oxygen, usually, in the air. And then you also need a source of ignition, usually it's heat. So, I'm going to do this again, but I move it away from my face.

LAUGHTER

I open the book, I push the button, the flame came on, right? You see that? Now, you tell me what happens when I close the book? What happened?

INAUDIBLE

The fire went out, right? Right. Why did the fire go out? >> No oxygen. >> Because there's not more oxygen from the air. All right, I open the book. Is there oxygen now or not? But there's no fire, how come? You need three things to get a fire going, right? So what should I do? I'll come over to this side here so the people on this side can see it. Away from my face, right? Here we go. All right, you see that? Okay. So, we teach about the fire triangle not to help people start fires, but to help them put out fires. Ira, this book is for you, too.

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>> Thank you.

APPLAUSE

>> So, Ira has been the host of Science Friday for many, many years. He is an outstanding interviewer. He understands science. He understands the role of science and technology in our society. He is an award winning journalist, and he is, of course, a most engaging interviewer. I listen to him and I marvel about how he pronounces whatever he's saying. The words roll out of his mouth magically. He has discussed many cutting-edge science stories on a range of programs on PBS, on NPR, and has been recognized for his contributions through the public engagement. That's what, I think, characterizes Ira the most. Public engagement. He wants everyone in society to learn and to benefit from the scientists that he interviews on his shows so that we all achieve science literacy. He's made many appearances at a variety of programs I won't mention now, but he's been honored by the National Science Board with the Public Service Award. He's been honored by the Carl Sagan Award for the Public Understanding of Science, and more recently, he was named the winner of the 2012 Isaac Asimov Science Award. Ira, it is a great personal pleasure for me and a great honor to have you on the campus of the University of Wisconsin Madison. It's about time that you came here, Ira.

APPLAUSE

>> Thank you, Bassam. Bassam Shakhashiri!

APPLAUSE

You know, there are only two acts harder to follow, Bassam, and those that usually involve animals. Cats and dogs. He is the penultimate demonstrator and popularizer of science. Thank you, Bassam, for all of your work that you have done.

APPLAUSE

The theme of my talk is "Smart is the New Sexy." Bassam is the sexiest guy in the room.

LAUGHTER

Because I think he's the smartest guy in the room. As he said, everybody is trying to make science popular, to give scientists more exposure to the public, to make the public interested in science and critical thinking. So my first question is, what are you all doing tomorrow night?

LAUGHTER

Sunday night? You all want to join with me and take a chemistry lesson? Maybe Bassam has watched this program and taken a chemistry lesson. Who knows who this guy is? You all know who this guy is, right? Breaking Bad. The most popular show ever on cable television is about a chemistry teacher. It's about a man of science who has brought more people to watch a scientist or a chemistry teacher, a person of science, on TV than anyone. Since this guy, and I'll get to him in a little minute. And it's amazing that science is the new sexy, just popping up everywhere in popular media. I'm going to try to show you tonight how even though our school systems or whatever may be failing us in teaching science that people are still learning science. They're learning it in different places, places you may not think about, but they're still learning science. And I hope to make the case to you tonight because Breaking Bad is one of these new places that are making science. But, of course, you already know that because you're here in one of these new places. You're at the Wisconsin Science Festival, and in case you didn't know it, there are science festivals going on all over the country in states across America. They're happening in Europe. They're happening in Colorado Springs; Windham, New Hampshire; Petersburg, Florida; San Francisco; San Diego; Atlanta; Dayton, Ohio; you are one of the many places where science fairs are happening. New York City. Of course in New York, they have to call it the World Science Festival.

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Go figure. And, in fact, science festivals are being so popular now that there is a website called the Science Festival Alliance, and if you miss a science festival and you'd like to go see one, if you're on vacation, you can go to that website and actually find where all these science festivals are happening around the country. You can see on their website they happen all during the year. They happen in countries all over the place. I you go visit some countries, you can go see them there. The first science festival, by the way, happened in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I think in 2007. I was there at the first one. We did a little science quiz there, and then they have been taking off all over the place because, as we know, smart is the new sexy. And you can find smart people and smart things, informal science happening everywhere. On the Internet there are guys wearing t-shirts that say science is awesome. Science is everywhere in public. There are science rock bands out there now taking science themes because the theme of everything now is people love to be geeky, people love science. You don't really have to talk people into liking science. They do like science. They'll find them in science museums. They'll find them if they go bird watching. They'll find science if they go looking for elements that Shakhashiri will show, Bassam will show you where to find them on the Internet. And sometimes there are these maker fairs. How many of you have been to a maker fair, know what a maker fair is? Where you see people bringing a lot of their inventions. Let me get used to this clicker. Wrong direction. All right. Come on, come on. Okay, get through there. Maker fairs are places where people are bringing their inventions. In fact, I think the first 3D printers were shown at maker fairs across the country. This one that I'm going to show you was in New York City. Can you believe that 20,000 people came out on a weekend to see young adults bringing in the stuff that they do. They started out in San Francisco. They are all over the country also because science is becoming very sexy. It is sexy now, but you know what? It wasn't always sexy.

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Let's review history a little bit. If you go back into history, if you look back 75 years or more, science was really about a wrinkled old man with a bad hair day. This was what Hollywood wanted you to know about science.

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In fact, this is the image, this is what Gene Wilder, in that movie Young Frankenstein, if they wanted to portray a scientist, that's the image that they created. So, over the years, people started trying to think of how can we get people to be interested more in science. And some of you may have remembered Mr. Wizard back in the 1950s-1960s. He tried to get people interested in science in this big experiment here about lighting this dollar bill on fire... >> This is the kind of money that will not burn a hole in your pocket. Isn't that true? >> Yes. >> Because it's phony. The reason it won't burn a hole in your pocket is because it won't burn at all. >> True. It won't burn. But you know why? Because it has this in it. A metal object. >> What is that metal object? >> That's a good conductor, and it will take the heat from the flame before... >> You can do that with a balloon, too. A balloon will not break. You put a balloon full of water. His mouth is open. He doesn't believe it. You can put a flame under the balloon. It will not burst the balloon because the heat is extracted by the water so fast that it doesn't reach the melting point of the balloon. Science is sexy, right? Something like that. To make science sexy, to help make science sexy, you need a good presenter. Bassam is a great presenter. There have been some great presenters along the history of science. I'm going to show you one of my favorite of all time. One of the greatest presentations, the simplest presentation I have ever seen was done by this woman, Grace Hopper. Anybody ever hear of Grace Hopper? You're shaking your head. Grace Hopper was a computer scientist. She invented the cobalt program, that big program that ran on big mainframes in the 1960s. She worked in the Navy for 40 years. She was an officer in the Navy. And one of her claims to fame, and it's an important one, is this entry in her lab book. What you see here is this little piece of old Scotch tape, who remembers Scotch tape?

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This is an entry in her lab book. It says relay number 70, panel F, moth in the relay. This is the first recorded actual bug in a computer.

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This is it! Historians have been trying to figure out where the term bug in a computer came from. They tried to pin it down, but Grace actually had the first recorded one that can be verified. There was a real bug in the computer, and she wrote it down. It got caught in the relays. They made mechanical relays in those days. But that's not why I'm showing you Grace Hopper. I'm showing you Grace because she happened, as she was retiring, she appeared on the David Letterman Show. Grace Hopper, a scientist, on the David Letterman Show. And it was about 20 years ago as she was retiring. As I said, she spent 40 or so years, she was the longest serving officer in the Navy ever before she retired at 40-plus years. She went on the David Letterman Show, because David wanted to learn about something called nano. The term nano had been coming into the vocabulary. We all hear of it now, nanotechnology, nanotubes, nano whatever, but David had not heard of that term, so he asked Grace to come on and explain what did we mean by nano. And this is my favorite explanation of all explanations I've seen. The most simplest, well, let me just have her explain. >> You're known as the queen of software, is that right?

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>> I know quite a bit about that. >> That conjures and image of somebody who has a lot of Tupperware parties.

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>> I could give you a nanosecond. >> See, I don't even know what that is, Grace. >> Well, you see, we started with milliseconds, thousandths of a second, and then we went to microseconds, millionths of a second, and now we talk about nanoseconds. That's a billionth of a second. They told me billionth of a second, and I didn't know what on Earth they were talking about. It didn't make sense to me. So one day I called over to engineering and said cut off a nanosecond, send it over to me.

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So I've got a bundle of them here, and you can pick your color. >> Oh, they come in colors. See, I didn't realize that nanoseconds, in the old days you only had you choice of white or gray, I think.

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Now, Grace, I understand that this is a visual... >> That is the maximum distance that light or electricity can travel in a billionth of a second. >> No faster, no farther. >> When an admiral asks you why takes so damn long to send a message via satellite, you point out to him that between here and the satellite there are a very large number of nanoseconds.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

>> As Bassam said before, you cannot unlearn that.

LAUGHTER

Right? You cannot unlearn how long light, which goes at 186,000 miles a second, how long light travels in one nanosecond. It was about an inch or something like that in that demonstration. It's simple. You'll never forget it. You'll know what the word nano is. Learning science is just terrific when we have the right science presenters. Now, one of the great science presenters of all time was Carl Sagan. Carl Sagan created probably the most popular TV series there ever was, which is Cosmos. It ran about 30 years ago. Billions-- And we made fun of the way he said billions, but really actually billions of people really watched that show all over the world. He had the nice turtleneck and he had the way he said those things and he was very, very enduring to a generation of people. But Carl moved on, and we had other people who came along after Carl. We had Bill Nye the Science Guy. He's still got the same tie. I saw Bill a few weeks ago. He's still doing, he's still trying to teach people about science. Still trying to talk about why science is relevant. Bill came along and he also became a great science presenter and also was trying to show why science is sexy. Then along came Bassam.

LAUGHTER

Bassam has been around quite a long time. He overlapped Bill and Carl Sagan, and as you saw tonight, Bassam would go around the country doing his science demonstrations, trying to show people and talk to people about why science is important. Why do you have to tell people that science is important? Don't they inherently know that science is important? Well, they don't know very much about science these days. In fact, 40% of the population of this country, 40% really think the Flintstones were real. That people lived at the same age as the dinosaurs. They lived with the dinosaurs even though they were millions and millions of years apart. Surveys show that 40% of the people still think they were real. There are a lot of people who think that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. And you can go take a trip down the Grand Canyon and you can have a boat where a geologist will point up the sides of the Grand Canyon and say we really don't know how the Grand Canyon got here, because they really don't, it's a lot more than just water going through a gorge and eating it away, but he'll say we're studying this and the Earth is billions and billions of years old. But other people will go down the same trip and they'll be told by their tour guides that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. And even some of our leading politicians in high places, they can't even tell you how old the Earth is. They're not willing to actually go out on a limb and tell you what the age of the Earth is. In fact, about some of the basic ideas of science, even though we have people in government, it's not limited to government. If you ask people how long it takes the Earth to go around the sun and what a year is, 53% of the people don't know that. They don't know that the Earth goes around the sun in 365 and a quarter days. That's why we have that leap year, that quarter day there. It adds up. A lot of people believe, 51% of people believe in UFOs. If you look at this, you know this is a what? What kind of cloud? Very good. Extra credit. A lenticular cloud. Beautiful if you get to see them. You can see them all over the place. And if you attempt to turn to the mainstream media to find some of the answers, you may be severely disappointed because science journalists, like myself and other media, are being fired left and right. They're eliminating science positions. Miles O'Brien left CNN a few years ago. CNN actually fired their whole science staff. I guess they felt that no science was going to happen that was of any importance. Miles landed on his feet at PBS. Even the New York Times which owned the Boston Globe at a certain period, it killed its health and science section. Kept it's own science Times section, but killed the science section in the Boston Globe saying it would spread the science throughout the paper. And other newspapers have killed their science sections, all the time thinking we'll do away with it. My most interesting example of the problem is that there are people who make an attempt to teach you a little bit about science, but they only make a halfhearted attempt at it thinking that maybe you won't know the difference. Well, I'm going to play you a story that was on NBC by Brian Williams. It's very short. It came on a time when the population of the United States the next day was going to be 300 million. The next day at a certain time in the morning, Brian Williams came on the night before and said the population would change to 300 million, and this is his report. I want you to listen to it and see if there's something disturbing about it that disturbed me. >> We are back this Monday night with NBC News in depth. An American milestone. It will take place across this country tomorrow morning, and if you didn't know it was coming, there's no way you would know. It wasn't all that long ago, November 20th of 1967, President Lyndon Johnson was giving a speech at the Commerce Department in Washington. The crowd started to applaud, noticing what was going on behind him. The President turned around just as the huge digital population counter above him, state of the art at the time, cranked the estimated US population to 200 million. A lot of Americans thought we had grown just about as big as we ought to get. But, of course, we didn't stop there. Well, tomorrow morning at 7:46am eastern time, and don't ask us how they estimate it, the US population will click over to 300 million... >> Don't ask us how they estimate it. This is a news program. They're supposed to find the answers for you. Don't ask us how they know that.

LAUGHTER

It's $100 million news organization, they can't send a librarian out to figure out how we know what's going to happen tomorrow morning

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46am. Now, I happened to switch over, I TiVoed that, I thought it, I was just so dumbfounded by this because I got three people on my staff who could find that out in 20 minutes, and they've got god knows how many people. I said maybe CBS has got a better way of doing it. Somebody's got to know how to figure it out. >> Every 11 seconds, America moves one person closer. And number 300 million could come by birth, by oath, as a legal immigrant, or by stealth, someone sneaking into history. >> Any way of telling who number 300 million is going to be? >> No there really isn't because we don't count every single birth in the United States, and we don't count each person as they cross the border either direction... >> So, they at least told you how they knew or how they were going to figure out who the 300 millionth person. What NBC did the next day was actually, they sent somebody to a hospital in the Bronx at midnight, and they pulled, midnight, there's got to be a baby. That's got to be the 300 millionth person. Let's pull it out and dub that person the 300 millionth person. And they did that, and they dubbed that the 300 millionth person, forgetting about that it could be a border, it could be a death, it could be the total sum of the thing, and then the next night, afterward, Brian Williams came on again and said don't ask us how they know this. He had 24 hours to figure it out!

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He could have watched Katie Couric. He could have watched CBS to figure out how they knew this. This is a real problem about teaching science in the US. And it's not just a problem with people in the news. You could say, well, maybe people in the news, they fake, maybe they're trying to fake they don't know these things because they want to attract the couch potatoes who are sitting there and saying that guy's as dumb as I am, I'm going to watch him. He can't figure out what 300 million people is. I like this show. Well, it's not that simple because even some of the smartest and brightest members of our world, our next generation of lawyers, scientists, doctors, or teachers, they know very little about basic science. I'm going to give you an excerpt from a famous video called A Private Universe which came out in 1989. This video was made at the commencement ceremony at Harvard, and they set up a camera and they grabbed all the graduating people they could, I think there were about 32 in the class, and they asked them one simple question. These are some of the smartest people in the world. And they said, tell me why is it hotter in the summer than it is in the winter? See if you know the answer to this. >> As the Earth travels around the sun, it gets nearer to the sun, which produces warmer weather, and gets farther away, which produces colder weather. And hence, the seasons. >> How hot it is or how cold it is at any given time of the year has to do with the closeness of the Earth to the sun during the seasonal periods. >> The Earth goes around the sun. >> Why does it get hotter? >> And it gets hotter when we get closer to the sun, and it gets colder when we get further away from the sun. >> These graduates, like many of us, think of the Earth's orbit as a highly exaggerated ellipse. Even though the Earth's orbit is very nearly circular with distance producing virtually no effect on the seasons. We carry with us the strong, incorrect belief that changing distance is responsible for the seasons. >> I took physics and planetary motion and relativity and electromagnetism. >> I've never really had a scientific background whatsoever, and I got through school without having it. I've gotten very far without having it. >> Isn't that the problem? You can go four years of Harvard and not take one science course and that's a college education. If you said I went to four years of Harvard and never studied a word of Shakespeare, people would look at you funny. Or I've never studied anybody, the great authors. They'd look at you funny. Or I never studied any philosopher. They'd think you didn't get any money's worth. But you can say I never took a science course at all and get away with that and not think that anybody is going to say anything. Of course, you all know the answer to that question, right? The answer to that question is because the Earth is tilted, and when the Earth goes around the sun, when it's pointing at the sun is the summertime; when it's pointing away from the sun, it's the winter. Now, what could have been a follow-up question about here, when it was winter over here? You could have asked why is it summer in Australia when it's winter in the north? It also answers the question when you were a kid and the teacher always had a globe on the front of the desk, wasn't there always this thing through it that sort of tilted it? Right? Didn't you wonder why it wasn't going straight up and down like that? Because it had that tilt. In fact, people make that mistake all the time. This despite the fact that all studies show that Americans, people everywhere love science. In fact, we're getting so little science in the media, it goes against what people really want. This is a survey done by the Pew Center, and they asked people topics that get enough science in the news and topics that don't. And if you go down to the bottom of the list here, this shows you that 50% who say that science news and discoveries, there's not enough coverage down there. Most of the people wanted more coverage of science and news topics than all the other topics that they asked about. And, in fact, if you asked kids in school, they're smart enough to know, they say that between teachers, doctors, and scientists, these three are the top categories that teens as view as society's top contributors. They know who the smart people are, and they know what kinds of things deserve to be paid attention to. In fact, we all start out as young scientists. We all start out our lives and inquisitors. As kids we experiment with everything. We do all kinds of stuff with stuff around the house. You take the Pop-Tart and you stick it in the VCR.

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It looks like it should go in there. It's the same shape and size, and we slap their hands instead of trying to figure out a way of channeling that inquisitiveness to a more positive end. What's really interesting and the point I'm making tonight is a new study out, recent study by Falk and Dierking, show that school is not where most people learn their science. You are here tonight as part of this paper, showing that you're not learning the science you're learning at the science festival in school, you're learning it outside of school. In fact, you only learn about 3% of your science in your whole career, it just drips, drips, drips a little bit in the air, in your lifespan, a tiny little bit of that lifespan in school is where you're learning your science. Where are you learning science? You're learning science in other places. And some of those places are? TV shows like, who knew what this show was? Anybody know what that one is? Numbers. The producers of Numbers used to make sure that every show had at least a minute and a half of a tiny little mathematics piece in it. The first show had a little flower sitting in a vase, and the flower has a Fibonacci series that the leaves take as they go around, and they took a few minutes out before they got into the meat of the program and explained to the audience what a Fibonacci series was and they went on and did their thing about solving a crime or something like that. But the producers made sure you learned a little bit of science in that show. Of course, probably the most popular place to do science on TV, or most people know about it, is MythBusters. I used to do a show called Newton's Apple many, many years ago. It was a demonstration show, and we knew that, we were only on the air for about 15 years, but we were to continue we figured we'd morph into MythBusters because the producers discovered that if you want to keep the audience's attention, you have to blow something up.

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Actually, we had a lot of bad experiments that went bad on Newton's Apple trying to blow stuff up. But what MythBusters does teach you in science is it teaches you how to plan an experiment, how to carry it out, how to make a prediction, and how to collect the data, make observations. And they do that and even though they blow something up at the end of the show, that's the pay-off of you watching, they teach you the basic fundamentals of how science is done. Of course, I showed you before the most popular show on cable which has a science theme. This is the most popular show on television. The most popular entertainment show on television is the Big Bang Theory. It has a higher audience than any other. This is about a bunch of geeks. This is a show that features a bunch of physicists and engineers all talking, and the science in it is real. They have science advisors in the show who make sure that every one of those little formulas you see in their living room on the blackboard is an actual formula and really means something. People go through that. I actually visited the set of Big Bang Theory a few weeks ago because, actually, Sheldon Cooper was on Science Friday. We had Sheldon Cooper on. The producers called us up and said, hey, we want to put Sheldon on a radio show, and we thought, hey, what other show but Science Friday. Would you work Sheldon into a Science Friday? So we created a script in which I interviewed Sheldon in his office, and this is what that sounded like, that little bit of it. >> This is Ira Flatow, and you're listening to NPR's Science Friday... Joining us today by phone from his office in Pasadena, California...

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Is Dr. Sheldon Cooper. >> This is going to be a riot.

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>> Thanks for being with us today, Dr. Cooper. >> My pleasure, Ira. >> Now, let's talk about magnetic monopoles. Can you explain to our audience just what a monopole is? >> Of course. First, consider an ordinary magnet which has, as even the most uneducated in your audience must know, two poles...

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A north and south pole.

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If you cut that in half, you have two smaller magnets, each with its own north and south pole. >> Dr. Cooper, I think there might be something wrong with our connection. >> No, I hear you fine... >> Now, I'll bet you learned more about physics in that minute and a half than you learned in your whole physics class, at least about magnets and magnetic monopoles and research. You've got more there and you can put all these shows together and see why we are learning what we are learning outside of class. Now, to prove science is becoming really sexy and moving into its own, I present for your consideration the stereotypical TV character. This is really an interesting, even though Sheldon Cooper may be the nerd that we all see on TV, there's a modern day rocket scientist named Mohawk Man, Bobak Ferdowsi. He was a rocket mission scientist for the Mars Curiosity, the rover experiment. You know, the rover that's running around on Mars. He's one of the mission scientists, but look at his hairdo. He has a mohawk hairdo. That mohawk hairdo, along with his attitude got him an incredible amount of viral attention on the Internet. So much that the entertainment shows on TV put a rocket scientist as somebody they want to interview. >> Hey, it's Shira Lazar for What's Trending. The world was captivated, millions of livestreams online by Mars Curiosity landing on Mars last night. But one man did capture the web's attention. He actually became the Mohawk Man. I'm joined right now from JPL in Los Angeles, California, by Bobak Ferdowsi. How are you Bobak? >> I'm good. Still living the dream. This is an amazing experience, and I just can't believe it still happened last night. As much as, if my mohawk gets a few more people excited about science and this mission, that's awesome. That's what it's all about. >> Can you show me it? Can you give me that profile shot? So people know it is you that I'm talking to. You are the Mohawk Man. >> Yeah. >> Have you seen all of this? >> I've seen a couple of the memes, of course. They're hilarious. I can't help but laugh about it. I'm hoping whatever comes of this, I hope it encourages a lot of people to get into the math and science and technology and engineering stuff. It's a lot of fun and you don't have to look like the guys in those skinny ties and the white shirts and the horn rimmed glasses. Although, I'm wearing my glasses today. But you can be whatever you want. As long as you have a passion for this, it's a great job. >> And the fact that an online entertainment show would interview a rocket scientist, this does show you how science is being sexy and it's percolating up from the bottom and how the entertainment industry has discovered that science is sexy and is making sure that it's followed by the public. And one of the greatest examples of this is a series that's coming up. You know who this guy is. Seth McFarlane. In case you didn't know what he does, maybe that will tell you a little bit more. He is the creator of Family Guy, and what he has done is that he has gotten together with Neil deGrasse Tyson and Ann Druyan, who is the late Carl Sagan's wife, and they are going to create a new series called Cosmos. He is the host. Neil deGrasse Tyson is going to be hosting the series. It's going to come on again next spring, and what is a guy who's on the Fox network doing a cartoon show, what is he doing making a very serious science program? And not only are they going to make a science program on Fox, they're going to promote it in all the other Fox programs. Little bits, I was just talking to Neil the other day, little bits are going to show up in very different shows. They're going to make mention of it in different programs because obviously they believe that the public is, again, finding science sexy, and they are willing to watch another episode of Cosmos with a whole new star. Well, it's not hard to pick the star, and this is Neil deGrasse Tyson because when you pick Neil deGrasse Tyson, you get somebody who's a really good explainer. Here's him explaining about why he decided to take-- He was at the forefront of taking the planet Pluto out of the realm of the planets. >> It's simple. The word planet has lost all scientific value. If I'm looking for planets in another star system and I say I've just discovered a planet, you then have to play 20 questions with me. Is it big? Is it small? Is it rocky? Is it gaseous? Does it have rings? Does it have moons? Is it close? Is it far? Is it in the habitable zone? Might it have water? And so if I have to ask 20 questions once I've told you I've discovered a planet, the word has no utility anymore. >> I can't wait for that Cosmos series to see what he's going to do. How he's going to treat the other planets in the solar system. But what's interesting about this is it's not only the TV producers have discovered that science is popular, science is showing up all over the arts. You may have seen Flash of Genius. It was a film starring Greg Kinnear about a guy who's trying to get back the rights to the windshield wiper. The windshield wiper stops and goes, it's intermittent. It took him 30 years to get Ford to admit that he actually invented it first. So science is showing up in film. It's showing up in other kinds of romantic comedies. There's a romantic comedy about science. This show called Losing Control in which a young lady, she conducts an experiment on her boyfriend. The observation, everything that's legitimate about an experiment, she conducts her experiment, and, actually, the word control, controlled experiment is a play on words in the title, in a romantic comedy to see if he is worthy of getting married to. A romantic comedy about science, that's really interesting. There are science festivals, science film festivals all over the place. This is the Imagine Science Film Festival. It encourages young filmmakers to make films about science, gives them a platform for films about science. You can create, in your own city, a science film festival. As part of your science festival here, bring films in. You can give out awards. You can get producers to come in. You can encourage local filmmakers to bring a little bit of science themes in their films. There are Broadway plays about science. I'll show you a few of them. This one is one of my favorite ones. This was called the Farnsworth Invention. You all know who invented television, how television was invented? You think you do. You think you know. Television was actually, the idea of how to make TV work was invented by a 17-year-old kid named Philo Farnsworth. When he was working a farm and he used to plow the farm, I think the potatoes, and he used to go back and forth making rows, back and forth and back and forth with the plow, and he said, gee, you know, maybe I could paint the TV screen the same way I'm making these rows with the beam of electricity and I could paint the screen to make an image appear. And he spent 30 years himself. He came up with this idea way back in the early part of the 19th century, and he spent 30 years fighting some of the biggest tycoons, including Sarnoff of RCA, General Sarnoff of RCA. This Broadway show called the Farnsworth Invention, put that on Broadway, and what was interesting is that Sarnoff was played by Hank Azaria. It's tough to sit there and watch a serious play about Sarnoff with Hank Azaria and not think of Moe the bartender. He's the voice of Moe the bartender. It's like listening to the William Tell Overture and not thinking of the Lone Ranger when it's playing at the same time. So there are a lot more plays, there was a really interesting play that was revived. This is Enemy of the People. Are you familiar with Enemy of the People? It's a Bertolt Brecht play. It's 130 years old, this play. It was revived on Broadway, and it could have been written yesterday. It's about scientists wrestling with their consciences about, this is a town that has a spa in it. The whole town's business is it's a spa and that people come for the waters. And a scientist in town discovers that the waters are all polluted with bacteria, and it's killing all these people who come to this spa. And he tries to tell it to the town leaders, and they say if you let this word out, we're going to wreck you, we're going to ruin you. So the whole play is an interaction, does the scientist talk about what he knows or does he not? Is this a message about us today? Absolutely. There are other revivals off Broadway. This is a great off Broadway play, Galileo. Maybe some of you have seen the revival of Galileo. This is Galileo starring F. Murray Abraham, a full-time, big time star. Why would you put a big time star like that if you didn't think you were going to recoup it. And of course a lot of people came to see this play. A lot times these plays run over because people love science. They want to watch a play that has a science theme. One of the more interesting new plays that came off Broadway was a play about Isaac Newton. It was called Isaac's Eye, and in fact it deals with a real experiment Isaac Newton did on his own eye by sticking a needle into a tear duct in his eye and trying to see what the nature of light was like. You have to sit through this play for three hours, you know he's going to stick a needle somewhere along the line in his eye, and you're just sitting there like this, don't do that! It's an interesting discussion, because he's wearing modern clothes. This is how a playwright tries to envision what Newton would be like in a modern day setting having this discussion, and he's having this discussion here with scientist Sir Robert Hooke. That's the other scientist who was a contemporary of his, talking about science and light. There are other plays, not just plays, there are lectures about mathematics. If you talk about mathematics in the movies, Pixar senior scientist Tony DeRose, who won an Oscar for creating a lot of the mathematics that you see in movies like this. >> Touching each other and bumping into objects. It's complicated... >> So it's physics. >> One short cut... >> We only simulated 100... >> And it's really interesting stuff to talk about how you create the mathematics that makes the animation. I'm going to show you something that we try to do on Science Friday because science is really, really popular. We, on Science Friday, don't just do a radio show anymore. We make hundreds, we have made hundreds of short little videos about science. A lot of scientists will send us their raw footage, send us footage that they have collected as researchers, and we'll take it and we'll turn it into a great little story. And I'm going to show you the most popular video we've ever made. It's called Where's the Octopus? It's got over a million downloads. And this is going to blow you away. If you don't remember anything else about tonight, but we not only make the video that's going to blow you away, we tell you why it's important and the real science behind it. So here's Where's the Octopus? >> I have to admit I was screaming when I got this video thing. >> What makes a marine biologist scream? Roger Hanlon captured this about 10 years ago. He was doing a study in the Caribbean, and he'd been following this octopus for about an hour when it crept behind the rock and went into camouflage mode he... >> Jammed the camera down right in its face, so to speak. >> Prompting it to go from camouflage to a startle defense. >> Blanching white very quickly. >> And then inking him. >> But I followed the animal and finished the dive, and I popped to the surface, it was only about five feet deep, and I screamed bloody murder and they thought I was having a dive accident. >> When, actually, he was having... >> It was a eureka moment, there's no doubt about it. >> And that's because Hanlon is trying to understand just how camouflage works in cephalopods. >> Yeah, cephalopods. Squids, octopus, and cuttlefish. >> They are masters of optical illusion. >> They are the animals best known to go anywhere in camouflage. No animal comes even close to the speed and diversity of appearances of this animal. >> And they have a few tricks at their disposal. Octopus and cuttlefish can change their skin texture. >> This is the only animal group we know of that has fine control of its skin to create the bumpiness. >> And they match their skin dimensionality by sight, not by touch, which is a... >> Vexing visual perception question. >> And of course they change color. So, here's an octopus... >> Doing what we call the moving rock trick. >> I'm a rock. I'm a rock. Now watch this. >> So the amazing thing is that these animals are color blind, yet they are capable of creating color matched patterns, but we don't know how. >> But of course Hanlon would like to. And one way he's studying this is by looking closely at squid skin. That's what you're seeing here. >> These are super close-up images of live, unanesthetized squid. >> And those dots of pigment are called chromatophores. They come in three colors. >> Yellow, red, and brown. But there are reflectors under the pigments, and the reflectors produce the short wavelengths, the blues and the greens. >> And, as you can see, the chromatophores can change shape to change the predominate skin color. >> Each one of those little spots on there can expand up to 15 times its diameter. >> And these chromatophores seem to be twitching all the time. >> They camouflage all night long. They don't sleep as far as we know. >> That's because cephalopods, with their squishy bodies, rely on camouflage as their main protection from predators. But of course camouflage is not just color, it's also pattern. This is one of Hanlon's major hypotheses. >> We found only three to four basic pattern templates that they use to achieve all this camouflage. >> So there's uniform. >> By uniform we mean that there's little or no contrast in the pattern. >> There's mottle. >> Mottle is small scale light and dark splotches. >> And disruptive. And the idea there is... >> To interfere with the recognition of what the animal is. >> Based on lab studies, Hanlon says that the animals flash particular patterns based on a few visual cues they encounter in the environment. Hanlon wouldn't call it a reflex because... >> And that's a little bit of, that was Flora Lichtman doing, if you want to see the rest of Where's the Octopus? There's also the sequel Where's the Cuttlefish? We'll hopefully get Where's the Squid one of these days finished, because they are just beautiful little videos. We believe so much in Science Friday that the art should be part of science, including not just cuttlefish and animals, that we've created a whole website for science and the arts because there is a real intersection of science and the arts, whether it's the films that we showed you or we actually have a contest every year. We ask people to send us, these people sent us 400 leaves. Every fall we say send us some of the pictures you take of fallen leaves. And they're gorgeous little pictures, and we teach them in instructions how to take the picture. Put a background, do this, do that, and they send this in, and we have a contest of what we think the most popular leaves are. Science in the arts is very, very important. There are people who are making beautiful artwork. This is Lynn Fellman. She's an artist in Minneapolis who creates art inspired by science. She takes her own DNA sequence and she'll trace your DNA from where she thinks it originates and show you where it has migrated to. And she makes these gorgeous full color and large portraits out of your DNA. Science is sexy. Now you know science is sexy. You know science is sexy when the 4-H gets involved.

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4-H creates a national science experiment with all its members every year. They've been doing it, come on back, they've been doing it now for a few years, and there it is. This was last year's national science experiment. I had the head of the 4-H come on, and we talked about it. We tried to encourage this and give it some publicity. And I said, you know, you need a fifth H in that now besides, you know what the four Hs are? Heart, whatever those things are. I'm from New York. We don't talk about the 4-H a lot. But it's there and they said, well, what would you say the fifth H would be? And I said how about hypothesis. And I got the same reaction from him as I got from you guys.

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So, we're waiting for that to happen. But you know science is also sexy, science is also sexy when it shows up at the White House. President Obama created the first science fair ever in the history of the White House. It's unbelievable. In all the history of the White House. He said we bring basketball players, we bring football players, we bring Super Bowl players, all the winners, we need to bring scientists into the White House, we need to bring science fair winners into the White House. And now for the last three years, I think, he's had a science fair at the White House. What's interesting about watching the science fairs at the White House and people who are there and science in general is you get to know, look at all the women, look at all the young women who are now in science that were never in science before. There is a trend now, I'm going to show you a little bit, a trend to make science and to draw women into it. In fact, the winner of this year's Intel Science Talent Search was a young woman. And she was a finalist. She's Sara Volz of Colorado Springs. She had algae powered biofuels. And for the last few years not only has the winner been a woman, a young woman, but have been in the top 10 finalists, young women in the finalists. Science is sexy also in books. This is Danica McKellar. Who remembers Danica McKellar? Yes. Who is she? Winnie. That's right. She played Winnie Cooper on The Wonder Years. She has sort of taken on a second career as an author. She writes these books. This last one is called

Hot X

Algebra Exposed! When she talks, the X in algebra, the hot X, she tries to speak to young teenage girls in a language you would think that she thinks they want to be spoken to. They talk about boys. They talk about clothing. But in the middle of all of it, she's teaching algebra. And she's now written three or four bestselling books. Science is sexy on the Internet. This is Deborah Berebichez. She has a physics page called the Physics of Science, and the first one she has on there is the physics of high heels. And she'll show you why the pressure that's on the tip of your little stiletto high heel on the ground is greater than the pressure of an elephant's footprint on the ground in that one spot. But the real, I think, you know really when science is sexy for girls...

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Is when the Barbie people put out a Barbie doll about science. When the Barbie folks, when they want to create a Barbie doll, they ask, they poll the people who buy Barbie dolls. And they ask them, what kind of Barbie doll do you want us to make for you? And the winner, and this was in 2010, the winner was a geek. They wanted a Barbie geek. They wanted a Barbie scientist. The computer engineer of 2010. It's very telling because they gave Barbie a little blouse. They gave her a little laptop she was holding out there. She was dressed very casually but very conservative. But the most telling point, to me, is she had very flat shoes on.

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Sensible shoes for Barbie in this one, showing that they had really thought this out. There's no better example that science is sexy. In fact, there's now a race going on to how to attract young women to become scientists. How do we bring them? We see there's a trend in young women to become science. How do we attract them? Do we attract them from the sexy side? Do we attract them from their dress and wear? Or do we attract them from the brainy side? What's the best way to portray young women who we want to attract to science? I'm going to show you two very short commercials. This commercial was put out by the European Union. It had its own way of attracting what they thought young women to science. And this is, I'm going to show you both and get your opinion of which one you think works better. Let me play this one first. >> Science. Science, it's a girl thing. It's a girl thing. >> You like that?

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Raise your hands if you like that. Do you think that's going to attract young women to science? No. Well, this was issued, yes, this was issued by the European Union. It was pulled off the Internet so fast...

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Faster than cold fusion, yeah, in a lifetime.

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And there was push back on it. There were a group of young women who thought that's not the kind of thing we want to image. That's not the image of real scientists and how they work. And so there was the Barber Lab Quartet, some young women in a laboratory, put out their own version. They worked in the Coral Triangle in the South Pacific, and they put out their own version of what it's like to do research on the coral in the South Pacific and how the coral grows there. This is what they came up with. For the longest For the longest time For the longest For the longest time Populations Living far apart Were a single species At the start Now allopatric New mutations working magic In isolation For the longest time This divergence process Is long Because larvae are small And currents are strong Somehow They still know Where they are They recruit near and far And it's my job To find them Who knows How much fieldwork Will go wrong Maybe I'll be sampling All year long I'll take my chances To obtain genetic samples And do lab work For the longest time...

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>> Do you like that one? Do you like that one better?

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That was cute. Science is showing up all over the place. We created our own little science cabarets. We have science cafes. We have people who sing science songs. These are neurosurgeons who will sing science songs about the brain. This is done in a night club in New York City where Bruce Springsteen got his start. They were very happy that we would go in there and present a science act. We brought musicians in. We also brought in physics demonstrations. We have guys, the Jerseys guys came in and went around the audience with a bed of nails. All kinds of physics demonstrations. It was a lot of fun and people really went away and they went away happy and they wanted to come back and they wanted to see more. All to show you that science, even though you're not learning it in school, science is bubbling up in all different places. Really, science is becoming sexy and people really love it and they will take as much as you can give them. Which brings me back to my first picture of Albert Einstein. If you're wondering, gee, why was science not sexy back then? It's because we see this picture of Albert Einstein all the time. And if I have one request to make to the university, to science festivals, don't show this picture of Albert Einstein because this really was not the real Albert Einstein. In fact, as a student he was no Einstein, as they'll say here, because that's not who Einstein was. Einstein did his work, his best work, when he was a youngster. Look at that picture. Now tell me that's not a sexy picture of Albert Einstein.

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Sitting a little hither look, his hand in his pocket, and you can see even back over a hundred years ago, science was sexy back then in that golden age of science back when Einstein was doing his work. So, get rid of that picture, go out and enjoy the festival, try to promote science as much as you can, and we will all enjoy the fruits of all of our labors. Thank you very much for taking time to be with me.

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