The Benshi

I spent 20 years searching Hollywood for them.  Seriously.  They are the best.

BRIAN PALERMO AND DORIE BARTON: She’s story, he’s improv.

space

DOIN’ THE CONNECTION HUSTLE

Dorie and I had a busy week in D.C. doing 4 talks in 3 days at AAAS, an EPA conference on their Children’s Environmental Health Centers, National Academy of Sciences, and then we ran a mini-version of our workshop at the Union of Concerned Scientists. In the meanwhile, Brian (who, like Dorie, is constantly either auditioning or performing in TV shows and movies) did an hour long appearance on a radio talk show on LA Talk Radio.

He does SUCH a good job as our spokesman. I’ve known all along the guy is an amazing listener, but when I hear him regurgitating back things that Dorie and I present in the workshop I’m stunned — at times thinking, “I didn’t even know he was in the room for that.” Granted, he gets his philosophers a little mixed up (Kant and Heidigger versus Hegel), but then I gave Hegel the wrong first name in one of my talks in DC so nobody’s perfect.

Since moving to LA 20 years ago I literally have met and worked with hundreds of actors. All the while I was looking for the few who actually have a curiosity about the world — enough to make them take an interest in my long term journey of exploring communication. These two turned out to be the best, and continue to get better.

We have now done 8 workshops together. Each one builds on the last. One of the wildest things is watching Dorie and Brian change their perspective on the science world. Three years ago they didn’t even know how to make a Powerpoint slide or what “hooey” was (the acronym for Woods Hold Oceanographic Instititute, WHOI, pronounced hooey). Now Dorie knows words like, “stoichiometry,” and Brian routinely talks about ocean acidification and invasive species.

NEXT TUESDAY’S PLENARY PANEL ON SEA LEVEL RISE AT CERF

Next stop is next Tuesday morning, November 5, in San Diego at the CERF (Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation) meeting where I will be moderating this panel titled, “SEA LEVEL RISE:  New, Certain and Everywhere,” with senior statesmen Gary Griggs (coastal geologist at UC Santa Cruz) and Mike Orbach (coastal policy professor at Duke University). We’ve spent the past month working diligently on the event — bringing a very cool narrative structure to it, unlike anything I’ve done before. It will definitely be interesting and will provide a good overall snapshot of this issue of sea level rise today.