Tag Archives: donald trump

Randy Olson: “Don’t Be Such A Scientist”

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if the picture is a bar graph with a bunch of statistical notations? It may be worth a thousand words, but only to a handful of people. In the context of climate change, that’s clearly not enough. This week’s guest on Sea Change Radio, is Randy Olson, a marine biology professor turned filmmaker and author whose book “Don’t Be Such A Scientist” makes the case that scientists can and should be better communicators, especially to regular (non-scientist) folk. Olson draws what he considers to be an important distinction between narration and storytelling, attempts to explain the mystifying ascendancy of Donald Trump, and gives us examples of what does and does not work in messaging scientific knowledge.

Dave Zirin on Tom Brady and ConflateGate

DaveZirinIt has been a nightmarish week. The new president has kicked off his reign with a series of illegal and immoral executive orders and a set of preposterous appointments. Every day we wake up and remember that this is really happening. Many of us are looking to the upcoming Super Bowl more and more for solace and distraction. Today on Sea Change Radio we are having a Super Bowl special of a sort. Our guest is Dave Zirin, sports editor for The Nation magazine and host of Edge of Sports podcast, best known for his articulate treatment of the intersection of sports and politics. Zirin and host Alex Wise talk about the Brady-Trump connection (or what we are calling ConflateGate), and more broadly about the role of athletes in our political discourse.

How We Fight Back: Part II

zackbeckyThis week on Sea Change Radio, in the second half of our discussion with former senior advisers to the Bernie Sanders campaign, Becky Bond and Zack Exley, host Alex Wise struggles with the harsh reality of an incoming President completely unqualified and unprepared to lead the planet’s only superpower. We recap the 2016 presidential election and draw parallels between the fight to improve this country’s healthcare system and the battle to cut carbon emissions. Then we revisit part of Alex’s discussion with Ralph Steadman, the British artist best known for his work with the godfather of gonzo journalism himself, the legendary Hunter S. Thompson.