What is a flame?
There are loads of ways you could answer that,
from a simple explanation of fuel, heat, and light,
all the way down to the chemistry of combustion
and the physics of electromagnetism.
But a good answer will be one that makes sense to the person asking,
and takes them a little deeper into these fundamental processes.
A bad answer could be technically right, but totally wrong for the enquirer.
So imagine the frustration of one eleven-year-old boy in 1947,
who asked his teacher that same question and was simply told...
“Oxidation!”.
That inquisitive schoolboy was Alan Alda.
Given the less-than-encouraging response he got, it’s not surprising
that instead of a scientific career,
he followed in his father’s footsteps and became an actor.
Since the 1950s,
Alda has starred in scores of films, TV series, and Broadway shows,
picking up dozens of nominations and awards.
But throughout his career, he’s also remained a science enthusiast,
which in the early 1990s led to him presenting
the documentary programme "Scientific American Frontiers".
While interviewing researchers for the show however,
Alda found himself encountering a problem.
Much like his teacher before,
these experts would often lose sight of who they were talking to,
switching to autopilot and regurgitating technical jargon,
rather than engaging him in conversation
and making sure what they said was being understood.
It made for boring TV, and worse, it made science look boring.
Alda’s solution was to draw on his own area of expertise.
Decades earlier, he’d started out
in improv troupes – groups that would improvise scenes on the spot.
Without a script to follow,
improvisers learn to be completely focused on each other,
picking up clues from their fellow performers to guide their reactions
and develop the story collaboratively.
Alda believed this training had made him a better communicator off-stage as well;
so, wondering if it might do the same for scientists,
he began leading small groups of them
through exercises designed to hone these skills.
In one exercise, the group stands in a circle, and its members take turns
throwing each other a ball.
The twist is...
the ball is imaginary!
meaning they have to pay close attention to each other’s body language
for clues about its size, weight, speed, and direction.
Silly though it looks, a game like this teaches a fundamental skill: empathy.
By focusing on other people,
thinking about the non-verbal cues they’re sending and receiving,
the players learn to see communication as
a two-way process, rather than a one-way street.
Which sounds great... in theory. But would it work in practice?
In his fantastically titled book
"If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?",
Alda tells the story of a trainee doctor who had attended his improv workshop.
As the trainee did the rounds,
he heard a senior doctor give a patient the worst possible news:
a diagnosis of terminal cancer.
Except he spoke in such dry, technical terms,
the woman didn’t seem to understand.
The young doctor, recognising what his superior hadn’t, went back
and used the skills he had learned:
connecting with her by following her body language
and explaining the facts in words she understood
so that she truly grasped what was happening.
With cases like that bearing out Alda’s hunch,
the next move was to scale up.
After all, hard-working as Alda is, he’s just one guy;
he can’t teach improv to everyone!
In 2009, Stony Brook University opened
"The Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science".
As well as providing
academic and professional courses based on the Alda Method of improv skills,
the Center also runs outreach projects.
2012 saw the launch of the first Flame Challenge:
a competition to answer the same question young Alan had posed all those years ago,
with the entries to be judged by eleven-year-olds.
Six more Flame Challenges were held, answering questions from schoolchildren
such as “What is time?” and “What is Climate?”.
This initiative helped engage children with scientific thinking,
and encouraged scientists to develop their communication skills.
Good communication isn’t only for teaching, though;
it’s becoming ever more important for society as a whole.
We need scientists to advise us on life-or-death issues,
providing information that’s technically complex a
and often politically controversial;
if they can’t communicate these messages clearly,
they’re in danger of being misinterpreted or ignored altogether.
What I think Alan Alda’s work demonstrates
is that we can have the clear and vivid science communication we need
to overcome future crises – but it won’t happen by chance;
it takes training, practice, and teamwork,
which is why we need organisations like the Alda Center.
Even for those of us who aren’t scientists,
who couldn’t benefit from better communication with our colleagues,
friends, and family-members?
Engaging our empathy
by remembering to really pay attention to those we’re trying to reach,
and considering what we’re saying from their perspective
isn’t always easy;
but Alda’s experiments with improv
show that we can all become better communicators –
and even have fun doing it.