Ira Flatow is the host of National Public Radio’s Science Friday, an in-depth radio talk show that reaches radio and Internet listeners with discussions on science, technology, health, space, and the environment. He also is president of Science Friday, Inc. and founder and president of TalkingScience, a non-profit company dedicated to creating radio, TV and Internet projects that make science “user friendly.” A 35-year veteran of public radio and television, Flatow has served as host and writer for the Emmy-award-winning Newton’s Apple on PBS and science reporter for CBS This Morning. He wrote, produced and hosted Transistorized!, an hour-long PBS documentary about the history of the transistor, which aired on PBS. He is also host of the four-part PBS series Big Ideas. His most recent book is entitled Present at the Future: From Evolution to Nanotechnology, Candid and Controversial Conversations on Science and Nature.
What are you looking for from scientist sources?
We’re looking for them to be able to speak plain English to the public in common, everyday language, and it’s rare to find someone who can do that. We’re also looking for the prime source of the research. If we can’t reach them or they can’t speak very well, we go to someone else. Sometimes the scientist will do very well in the pre-interview, but put them in front of a microphone and they don’t do well – one launched into an eight-minute PowerPoint presentation. We reverted to ‘let me summarize and you say yes or no.’ I asked one scientist about why one alternative energy source is better than another, and he launched back into the history of civilization and how cavemen used fire. When we got to the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania, I stopped him.
Do you have a background in science? Does that matter?
I have a background in engineering, I don’t have any formal training in science; I’m just one of these ‘gee-whiz, how does it work?’ guys, and that seems to work. It’s difficult to understand the human genome, for example, but if I’m a good interviewer, I can ask scientists to tell it to me in English. You have to be able to continually ask the same question over and over again, and not be afraid to sound stupid. I had one scientist who almost threw me out of his office during a television interview. I was challenging him on one of his theories and asking him to go deeper into his research. He said, “You’re not smart enough to be asking me these questions and I’m going to throw you out of the office.” But we did finish it. My advice? Don’t insult the interviewer.
How important is the scientist to your story, generally?
If it’s a radio show you have to have somebody talking, the voice is key, especially on a talk show. I have had people – from Al Gore to others – say “What time can we tape this?” and I keep repeating, “This is a live radio interview.”
Are scientists worried about how they sound?
Only after they’re done. Everybody hates the sound of their voice, even professionals. I would say practice what you’re going to say in advance. I don’t mean you have to come up with sound bites, but write down the points you have to make and take them to the interview if you want to. I have lots of scientists who go off on tangents, but if they want to sound authoritative, they should take the time. It’s not as easy as it sounds.
How do you handle the balance between scientific accuracy and "dumbing down" information?
On our show, we have enough time that we can get to the detail; we aren’t limited to 40 seconds or a minute and a half, as some programs are. The beauty of science is in the details. When our producers talk about a story idea, we ‘ooh’ and ‘ah’ about the details. We like to see science in progress and get into the minds of scientists when they come up with the ideas. Sometimes we go in the opposite direction and don’t dumb down the details, which happens a lot with cosmology and quantum physics, and people can't understand what’s happening. We have a very diverse audience. If we don’t sometimes shoot for the hard-to-explain stuff, we’ll lose that part of the audience that understands, so I’ll allow details to come out to serve the listeners who understand it. But I always try to recap and summarize, to find out why the scientist is so interested in understanding this. I have truck drivers listening as they’re driving, people with PhDs, kids in schools listening.
One of the ways we’re trying to reach that diverse audience is in Second Life. We have created an area in Second Life with a big banner for Science Friday. It’s another medium. People can go to the Science Friday area and their avatar can touch a box and get a Science Friday t-shirt; there are hundreds of avatars walking around Second Life with these t-shirts on. We have an avatar called Ira Flatley. Your avatar can ask a question, and Ira Flatley will send it to me and we’ll ask it on the air. We now have a community in Second Life that meets on Fridays, and the show is simulcast in Second Life, so you can go there, watch the show, and meet other science-minded people.
We’re also creating videos now, on our Web site, and we’re asking scientists to help us create videos about what they do. This all started with the first video we got from a scientist who milks venom out of spiders. We were wondering how you do this, so we went to her lab and made a video out of it. We put it on YouTube and on our website, and now we’re asking scientists, teachers, and students to create videos and send them to us. On Facebook, a college student has created a group called “Science Friday: The Best Day of the Week.” We’re looking at ways to work with these audiences to further the information we put on the show.
Talk about some ways scientists have been useful to you in covering a story.
Sometimes we get surprised; they don’t realize what they’re saying is news. Often, there’s a story we’re working on, and we’ll see an article with quotes from the people we will be interviewing. But when we get them on the air, they’ll launch into something in more depth than they would in the newspaper. We also have some mind-blowing surprises. The best so far has been Jane Goodall. She was on the show talking about her latest book. We had two minutes left, so I took a call. The caller said, “Dr. Goodall, is there some ape out there you’d like to find that you have yet to find?” It sounded very cryptic, as if the person knew something. So I asked, “Are you talking about Sasquatch, the abominable snowman, Bigfoot?” and she said yes, that they have samples they can get DNA on. She’s subsequently been saying it. And that happened in the last two minutes of the show.
What would you like to see scientists do differently in interviews with you?
Stop starting every discussion with the word ‘so.’ You ask a scientist, “Why is the sky blue?” and they say “So...” What else could they do? They could be a little honest sometimes, and a little more forward. I was on a panel discussion on global warming and we were talking about its effects. The scientist sitting next to me said, ‘We’re talking about ambiguous information and scientists are equivocating their data, but for a lot of us, it’s much worse than we let on.” But he wouldn’t say that in public. I asked him to come on the program and say that and we’re going to have him on. I need them to say what they're thinking. I don’t need them to be outlandish. I want them to be frank, know what they really fear. Let us make the judgment about how much to be scared.
What’s a story you’d love to do, but haven't been able to? What’s missing that a scientist could provide?
I think nutrition is really the untold story: How much do we know about what we eat and what it does to us? Why is that? The whole idea of the local farmer who had it right all the time. I guess the other story I want to do is who’s controlling our energy future? I want someone who is a big thinker, can think on a broad scale, and is not afraid. Someone everyone respects, to talk about how we need to not be afraid of big ideas. I’m looking for someone who can lay out an energy future for us that incorporates all the energy types, has thought it out, has a plan and can actually make it work. That’s a story that’s hard to do, because it takes multigenerational thinking, it covers international issues, big business. We seem to have lost the ability to tackle really big problems. People have individual pieces of it, but not global ideas.