From the Crows' Nest

Ken Miller [00:00:09]:
Welcome to from the Crow's Nest, a podcast on electromagnetic spectrum operations, or mso. I'm your host, Ken Miller, director of advocacy and outreach for the association of Old Crows. You can follow me on LinkedIn or you can email me directly at hostromthecrowsnest.org thanks for listening. All right, well, it's great to be here with David Kirby. He is the department chair of Interdisciplinary studies in Liberal Arts at Cal Poly. David, thanks for taking time to join me here. From the Crows Dense. It's great to have you.

David Kirby [00:00:38]:
Oh, no, it's great to be here, for sure.

Ken Miller [00:00:40]:
All right, well, just. Just to begin, you know, this is part of our ongoing series taking a look at innovation through the lens of both, bringing together both the lab and our ability to tell our story using to reach the masses through media, through narrative and so forth. You might be a little bit unfamiliar or our community might be a little bit unfamiliar with who you are. So I wanted to give you a chance just to kind of start off, tell us a little bit about your role in interdisciplinary studies of liberal arts and your role of trying to look into the role that Hollywood plays with the science community in portraying scientific endeavors and why this has inspired you in this field of study.

David Kirby [00:01:22]:
I'm actually trained as a scientist, so my PhD is in molecular evolutionary genetics. And I did that a long time ago and was a biology professor for a while, but got very interested in the idea that you're talking about.

Speaker A [00:01:37]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:01:37]:
How do we better communicate scientific information or try and get innovative development using the media, basically? So my interest was, yeah, how do we use narrative? How do we use movies in order to think about doing those types of things? So I actually left my cushy academic job at American University and retrained as a science communication specialist up at Cornell University. And so I was looking at the ways in which, you know, movies, television, computer games, you know, what we call entertainment media, how do they serve as vehicles for science communication?

Speaker A [00:02:19]:
All right.

David Kirby [00:02:19]:
How do they communicate ideas to the public? How can they better communicate ideas to the public than other forms of communication or stimulate technological development?

Ken Miller [00:02:30]:
And so you're the author of a book that I read in advance for our discussion today. It's called I'm Holding it up to the Screen as if Anyone Can See It. But it's called Lab Coats in Hollywood, Science, Scientists, and Cinema, a fantastic book. It was written back in 2011, and so we're going to kind of use this book as kind of a framework for our discussion. What was interesting is that Just, just recently I was visiting some senior stakeholders in military and we were discussing, you know, the evolution of our trade space of electromagnetic spectrum operations and how we have to do as a community a better job of communicating to the masses. Because the electromagnetic spectrum, electromagnetic energy, it touches everybody. It holds our world together. It's a fundamental force of the universe.

Ken Miller [00:03:18]:
And so whether or not we know it, we're. We're playing a role in it. And so we have to do a better job of telling our story. And so actually the, the conversation of how would we portray this in Hollywood in, in a movie to help, to help reach the masses, to, to democratize EW or mso, how would we do that? And so our conversation is, is timely and we're going to get to a little bit of a look into what we can do as a community later on. But I want to kind of go into a look into Hollywood. This is part of a series and we're taking a look at how we do this through fiction, through cinema. You know, we could also probably do some, you know, through music and all the different arts play a huge role in reaching out to people and almost normalizing or familiarizing really complicated scientific material that oftentimes, I think scientists, they want to keep it in a lab, but they want to, they want to kind of keep it close hold because there's methodologies they got to follow and everything. But when you're trying to develop policy and so forth, part of policy, part of successful policy is story.

Ken Miller [00:04:27]:
So first question is within the book of lab coats in the Hollywood. Your book starts off kind of looking at, among other things, the King Kong movie back in 1933, I believe, and that kind of interaction of how do we make a realistic depiction of a scientific phenomena that in and of itself is fictional, yet we want it portrayed accurately. And there's a series of interactions. So could you give us a little bit of context of, from a Hollywood perspective, that early origination of dialogue between scientists and cinema. What, how, how did that go? How did that kind of get started and how is that portrayed? Obviously there's Hollywood, but there's other global markets. So like, how, how did that originally.

David Kirby [00:05:18]:
The interaction between scientists and Hollywood is very, very long standing, right? It goes back, I mean, I talk about it in my lectures with my students that movies actually emerged out of scientific research.

Speaker A [00:05:29]:
Right?

David Kirby [00:05:30]:
That was the, that was the goal. So Etienne, Jules Murray and others who are working on creating movies were doing it so that they could study movement, right? They were scientists, they wanted to study how things Moved. And cinema provided a way to do that. So they inadvertently created this sort of entertainment medium, trying to study it, right? So you have that connection between science and movies almost from the beginning. And even a lot of early films, you know, they were focused on spectacle, right? The idea that at this point in cinema's history, the best thing you could do is show rather than tell. And what kinds of spectacles have most people not seen? Well, scientific spectacles, right? So, you know, you put a camera on a microscope and you show them bacteria. Because most people at that time would have never seen something like that before. So you already have that sort of linkage going on.

David Kirby [00:06:25]:
You also have the idea that movies are a sort of realist medium, right? The idea that, you know, especially early on, what are people getting out of this? The idea that you are seeing life up on the screen, right? And when you talk about realism, you know, the thing that comes to mind most is science, right? I use this quote from a historian of science named Stephen Chapin that I think is just sort of perfect for this, where he said, science is modernity's reality defining enterprise. So she's saying, hey, when we think about adding realism to things, science is the thing that does it for us, right? It tells us what truth is. And that's the way we want, you know, if we want to tell something that's real, we rely on science. And so even early on, if you wanted to tell a story that you wanted people to sort of buy into, the best thing to do would be grab a scientist, have them help you to do it, put it in your publicity material, right? So even in the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, not saying it happened all the time back then, but you would definitely find a lot of filmmakers who would do that and use that in their sort of marketing, right? So something like King Kong or a German film from 1929. Well, the German title is Frau in Mond, but the English translation is Woman in the Moon. Fritz Lang, the guy who did Metropolis, this was sort of his follow up film. It's one of the. The earliest films that really hung its hat on the idea that, yeah, we got scientists involved, man, this is a scientifically accurate film you'll ever see.

David Kirby [00:08:01]:
So, yeah, it provided them a way to tell the story they wanted to tell, publicize it in a certain way, and something we can get into a little bit later as well. It provided constraints for them, right? So you are telling a story. You could do anything you want. Like I said, no one's ever seen a giant Gorilla of that magnitude before we could do whatever we want. But for filmmakers or anyone who's creative, that sometimes is too much. When you don't have any constraints, you really can't begin to think about what you do. But someone gives you a little bit of constraint, you say, okay, now I can grab hold and figure out something to do with it.

Ken Miller [00:08:39]:
So we'll dive more into constraints in a little bit. But you just mentioned something I want to kind of dig into and, and that's the. Almost the. With the King Kong movie using that as an example. You know what's interesting in your book, you kind of discuss how scientists were employed to try to come up with the realistic representation of the dinosaurs that King Kong fought. And so you have this interesting juxtaposition of a fantastical oversized ape that has really nos. Not much scientific backing at all, but yet it was very important to represent dinosaurs accurately. And there seems to be a tension that actually works in Hollywood that would never work in a laboratory.

Ken Miller [00:09:21]:
So kind of digging into that, how. How does that tension kind of play out from a scientific perspective? You know, as a former scientist yourself with here with aoc, we can go through a lot of symposia and briefings and lectures and. And I get overwhelmed with math equations and all this other stuff that I don't even understand. But it's very constrained, it's very methodical, it's very. It follows a process. And then you put it on a. On a silver screen and you combine it with a giant ape. And all of a sudden you have this story that captures people's attention that feels hard to do.

Ken Miller [00:09:57]:
So how does that tension play out from a scientific perspective? You mentioned in the book, and I like this quote, the ascent of the Expert throughout the 20th century has paralleled the commodification of knowledge in our society. Talk a little bit about that. And that tension with the science in.

David Kirby [00:10:14]:
Hollywood on that front, again, it goes with this idea I also talk about combined with this notion of realism. Right. So when we talk about that notion of commodification for Hollywood, you know, the history of Hollywood has moved a lot towards the idea of realism. And realism being a major selling point. And again, if you want an expert in realism, scientist is. Is a good way to go. The other thing in terms of scientists working with filmmakers and sort of wrapping their head around on t is, yeah, they want me to make an accurate dinosaur, but it's fighting a giant ape. So how accurate can that actually be? They understand, you know, they are telling a story and that their role is to add plausibility to the story, basically, right? So we make the dinosaur as accurate as possible.

David Kirby [00:11:08]:
To add plausibility to the idea that a giant ape and a dinosaur are fighting together on an island. Also the other thing, in terms of the notion of realism, I talked about the idea of cinema naturalizing science, right? So it makes it look plausible or makes it look sort of quote unquote realistic to the audience so that they buy into it. And one of the reasons I talk about King Kong in the book is that for the time, that dinosaur was as accurate as possible. But we look back at it today and we realize it's inaccurate, right? They brought in a world's leading expert or one of the world's leading experts on dinosaurs to work on that Tyrannosaurus Rex. How many digits does it have on its forelimb? He was convinced it had three, right? It's gotta be three. That was his argument in the public. That was his argument in scientific circles. They give it three.

David Kirby [00:12:01]:
Lo and behold, an ax has two, doesn't have three.

Speaker A [00:12:04]:
Right?

David Kirby [00:12:05]:
So now we look back at it and say, wow, what an inaccurate depiction of. Of dinosaurs. But if we look at it at the time, there were lots of debates going on, right? If they grabbed his. His rival and said, hey, you be our consultant, then it would have two. And we'd say, wow, amazingly accurate, you know, for the time. So that naturalization effect makes everything on the screen seem that much more real, right? Seem realistic. And so because of that, when you communicate a story about science, it's for the audience. They take it in and say, oh, this is the way it is.

Speaker A [00:12:40]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:12:41]:
So it's easier for them to buy into it. And is.

Ken Miller [00:12:43]:
Is that a. A normal phenomena with the viewer, with the audience to assume accuracy in Hollywood when there's a movie, you know, obviously there's some movies that are completely. We. We know, are made up. But like, by and large, you mentioned, you know, like the, you know, representation of very, you know, of bacteria and stuff like things of science that they show in the media. It gives people a first glimpse into it. Is there a. Is it natural for audiences to assume Hollywood is almost the.

Ken Miller [00:13:16]:
The negotiator of TR. Of truth that they need to understand?

David Kirby [00:13:21]:
Yes, yes, because audiences want to buy into the story that's being told, right. Their first reaction is not to question it and say, oh, I wonder if that's true. It's more to say, I paid my money. I'm sitting in my seat. I want to enjoy this movie. So if you tell me, you know, genetic engineering can be used to create giant creatures who are going to battle each other, I'm on board. That's what I want to believe. So it takes really inaccurate science for them not to buy into it, Right.

David Kirby [00:13:52]:
If they can look at it and say, that doesn't seem right to me.

Speaker A [00:13:55]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:13:56]:
That, that's, that's not their default, generally. So when you have something that's totally out there, maybe then they'll start questioning it, but their first move is to say, yep, suspension of disbelief. I want to be immersed in this movie.

Speaker A [00:14:12]:
Right?

David Kirby [00:14:13]:
So with fantastical creatures, I talk about with the Marvel films, right. The Hulk on its face is totally unbelievable, right. Didn't make any sense. But you throw some science, some real science, use real science to sort of give them a plausible backstory and they say, okay, good enough. Now I just want to see Hulk smash.

Speaker A [00:14:33]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:14:33]:
I buy into it enough to do that.

Ken Miller [00:14:36]:
Would you say that science validates the story or does the story validate science?

David Kirby [00:14:46]:
That's a great question. And it's, you know, it gets one of those sort of, you know, wishy washy sort of answers. Is both, right? Is both. So you're using the science to legitimate the story, and then the way in which it's dealt in the story can legitimate it even further.

Speaker A [00:15:03]:
Right?

David Kirby [00:15:03]:
So I talk about it with Jurassic park and the idea of dinosaurs or so birds evolving from dinosaurs, right. Nowadays most people are like, yeah, yeah, that's the way it is. But back when Jurassic park was actually made, raging debate amongst the scientific community, right? So they use these scientists, especially this one guy, Jack Horner, to validate. Yeah, the, the science in our movie is totally accurate. But then the movie, the way it shows birds and dinosaurs really convinces you, oh yeah, this, this is totally true. Birds must have, must have come from dinosaurs. So it's a sort of two way street. But I would say the first step is, yes, you're using the science to legitimate the story.

David Kirby [00:15:48]:
And then how the story deals with the science legitimates it even further, so to speak. So I mean, if it's something that everyone agrees on, it's not going to be, it's not going to do anything. But if it's something either people don't know about or if it's something that's controversial, then it can sort of get into people's heads that, oh yeah, that's the way it is.

Ken Miller [00:16:09]:
One of the interesting kind of elements, and we, we've been touching on this with the King Kong movie and the kind of the, the, the post movie analysis of whether or not the, the dinosaurs were realistic is the notion of almost a peer review of the scientific material. Obviously, when you're, when you're doing an experiment or a study in a lab, you do many iterations of the experiment. You, you gather the evidence, you make a conclusion, you test the hypothesis, all that, and it sounds great. You put it on paper and you put it out there and people just devour it. Or they might say, hey, this is, you know, the theory of relativity. We've unlocked a new understanding of the universe. But oftentimes, even with that, that just triggers a little bit more peer review. On and on and on.

Ken Miller [00:16:53]:
That seems to happen with Hollywood too, even. But we kind of contain that peer review to the role that science has played in the story. So no one is going back and saying, oh well, genetically modified gorillas can't really exist and therefore they don't really comment on that. But they commented on what the scientists provided into the story, which interestingly enough, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, from a commoditization standpoint, that actually helps the movie. It keeps it current, it keeps it in the minds of the audience. And so does the scientific community kind of understand. Is that an accurate effect of having, of bringing scientists together with Hollywood? And does the science community understand that there is a peer review responsibility for science in cinema as much as there is a kind of a working within constraints responsibility of the storyteller of the movie producer to depict it?

David Kirby [00:17:58]:
Yeah, no, I totally, totally hear what you're saying. Yeah, it gets at. What's the sort of benefit of having a particular science in a movie for the scientific community.

Speaker A [00:18:09]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:18:09]:
So I talk about it in the book, something I refer to as the War Games effect.

Speaker A [00:18:14]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:18:15]:
Sort of 1983 film. The idea that movies can be used to call attention to something that the scientific community feels needs, you know, either more scientific attention, political attention, financial attention, what, whatever the case might be. So when it's depicted in a movie, the movie calls attention to it. And then like you said, you have this auxiliary attention from the media.

Speaker A [00:18:39]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:18:40]:
So, you know, newspapers cover it, it's covered on television, and then you get the scientists sort of responding to it, saying, oh, that's not real. Let me tell you the real story. And they're getting more attention to it really. When we think about it, you know, we live in what we call an attention economy.

Speaker A [00:18:58]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:18:58]:
Especially nowadays with social media.

Speaker A [00:19:01]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:19:01]:
The public's attention is a finite resource that is very difficult to get to grab hold of. So people spend billions of dollars on PR so that they can gain attention for something. But if you have a big Hollywood movie on that topic, you've got attention right there. And so scientists sort of critiquing the science of it, you know, some of them are probably just a little bit grumpy or they're trying to get their 15 minutes of fame, but a lot of them understand. Yeah, this is a way to publicize the thing that I'm interested in and to get people to think more about this phenomena. So, like the movie Twisters that came out last year.

Speaker A [00:19:44]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:19:45]:
Lots of atmospheric scientists talking about the what's right, what's not right about. About the movie. Fun for them. But also, yeah, this is an issue. We need people to really be thinking about this, this particular danger. And so it's very useful in that way to do that type of thing.

Ken Miller [00:20:03]:
You know, a lot of our listeners are probably wondering, okay, we're. I'm here talking about Hollywood, you know, science, but what does this have to do with electromagnetic spectrum operations? This is a, you know, a science is a scientific field that, you know, I, I've often said, you know, it's arguably, from a military perspective and even a societal perspective, the most important field of study I think, that we can be involved in because you're dealing with one of the four fundamental forces of the universe. It's the force that's responsible for basically holding all of us together and whether. And. And it's interesting that, you know, you have a molecular biology background. A few years ago, we had a, A keynote speaker at one of our events. He was an evolutionary biologist by training turned NSA expert. So.

Ken Miller [00:20:53]:
But he talked about how everything we want to do in this field of science and electromagnetic operations, electromagnetic warfare, it's already been done in nature, and so we're just basically learning from nature. So if we're. For our listeners who are in this field, I, you know, what the purpose of trying to do this is. You know, we're trying to democratize our understanding of this field because it touches everyone. And whether or not you, Every moment, every time you pick up your mobile phone or even just walk down the street, you are participating in the scientific field. And from a military perspective, from an MSO perspective, it's our belief, it's our understanding, and quite frankly, I think it's backed up, is that future conflict. It's the first and last thing that's going to bookend any conflict, is how we operate or maneuver in this weird space called electromagnetic Energy. So what I want to try to do is look, and you mentioned this a little bit later in the book.

Ken Miller [00:21:59]:
You talk about this notion of monolithic science, of really just almost overly simplified in, in our minds, but also gigantic and overwhelming the monolithic nature of science in a lot of our minds. Hollywood really tries to take that and bring that down to, in bite sized pieces for us to, for us to devour and as consumers. So thinking of this scientific space, wanted to kind of ask you a little bit about what are some of the key elements of the scientific community that would be represented in MSO world? For example, what are some key steps or guidelines that we ought to be keeping in mind if we want to take our field and tell the story about it to the public?

David Kirby [00:22:54]:
So I would say, I mean, the first one is sort of keying in on the idea that it's a story that you're telling, right? So it's not that you're trying to teach people about this world or this type of science. You're trying to tell a story that will get people engaged with it so that they may want to find out more about it. But even if they don't, they're now aware that this is a thing that they should be thinking about and has, can have a major impact on their lives and everyone else's lives.

Speaker A [00:23:24]:
Right?

David Kirby [00:23:25]:
So that's the thing. When I, when I, you know, when I talk to groups and scientists who are thinking of doing this type of thing, I always say that first and foremost, what is it that you really want the public to know?

Speaker A [00:23:37]:
Right?

David Kirby [00:23:38]:
And once you have that, then you just sort of work out from that.

Speaker A [00:23:43]:
Right?

David Kirby [00:23:44]:
So it's not that you want them to understand exactly how it operates at, you know, a small level. You want them to know this is the impact it might have on their lives. It's an unknown impact. It's exactly, it's a perfect thing for this War Games effect that I was talking about, because you can build a story about why it's important, but you could also build a dramatic story about why it's important, right? Yeah. We're talking about, you know, potential in warfare, potential for everything to be sort of shut down, right? To have a sort of post apocalyptic element associated with it. But even before that, you can set it up right before the apocalypse comes, you know, having your protagonists talk about, well, what does it mean, how do we use it, that, that sort of stuff. So that's the most important element when you're, when you're trying to get Hollywood interested in These types of things, they have to see it as a story first. And from your perspective, that's also the most important thing, right? I talk about it as from a science communication perspective.

David Kirby [00:24:48]:
So I'm a science communication scholar. And how do we generate movement amongst the public? So for a long time everyone thought, oh, we just give facts to people and that will change their minds. We give them the right facts, they'll change their mind. But in science communication, we refer to that as the deficit model. And Starting in the 1990s, science communication scholars showed actually doesn't work.

Speaker A [00:25:18]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:25:19]:
And nowadays we can see it easily.

Speaker A [00:25:21]:
Right?

David Kirby [00:25:22]:
Lots of information thrown out there. Facts try and convince people they still act in ways that are against what scientists are telling them to do. So if we can't rely on facts, right, what else can we rely on? Well, one of the major ways that you can shift public opinion is through what I refer to as the cultural meanings of science.

Speaker A [00:25:42]:
Right?

David Kirby [00:25:43]:
So don't shape what people know about it, shape what it means to them. And the cultural meanings of science is different than, you know, the definitions of science. So again, I do this sort of thing with my students. I say, okay, what does DNA mean? Okay. And a lot of them are science students. The video, they can give the exact deoxyribonucleic acid or it's, it's the genetic material. So what does science, what does DNA mean? Go, go out on the street, ask your parents what does DNA mean to them? And things like, oh, it means I'm who I am, what's what makes me? Or oh, isn't that that stuff they make monsters out of?

Speaker A [00:26:17]:
Right?

David Kirby [00:26:18]:
So there's a meaning attached to it that has nothing to do with its scientific meaning, but everything to do with how they react to what the thing is. And that is true for any type of science that you see in the movies. So the goal in communicating science through fiction is to frame the cultural meanings of science, not to teach people what it is, teach them a little bit what it is, but not the sort of down and dirty, this is exactly what it is. But to frame it as, this is what you need to know in terms of your life, the meaning it is to you within your own life.

Ken Miller [00:26:53]:
It's interesting that you mentioned War Games in another interview we had. We were talking about this topic in, in, in narration, but War Games also came up and War Games came out, I think in 83, 84, somewhere around during the Reagan administration. And, and actually it was detailed in a book on the history of US Cyber warfare. That President Reagan watched the movie and was like, wait a second, can this really happen? Does this really go on? And his advisors came back to me like, well, Mr. President, it's yes, A and B, it's worse than you think, because we've been working on this for two decades. And that movie, I don't want to say, was the key thing that drove policy forward, but it really kind of marked a shift. And if we all know Ronald Reagan, love him or hate him, he was from Hollywood. He knew how to tell a story.

Ken Miller [00:27:45]:
And so you. He. He blended those two things together very well. And that story launched what has now been 30, 40 years of cyber policy that is embraced in successive administrations. So that. That is one example. However, what the question that I want to attach to that is, there are a lot of movies out there that depict scientific fact, that depict. Put something out there that might interest or speak to senior leaders, whether it's military or government, that have zero impact.

Ken Miller [00:28:22]:
Are the most successful storytellers. The movies that have the most impact in shaping policy, Are they trying to shape policy, or are they trying to tell the story that just so happens to ignite a change in policy? Does that make sense? Is it more active or passive? And. And what do movies get wrong when trying to tell that story of a scientific reality?

David Kirby [00:28:46]:
Yeah, it is. I mean, based in terms of things I've studied, it's. It's a lot more active than people think.

Speaker A [00:28:52]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:28:52]:
So you get scientists who want to be involved in these movies again because they think this is an issue that has to be told to get people to change the ways in which they're approaching things. So the movie's deep impact in Armageddon, for example, they actually had a major impact on policy towards near Earth objects before that came out. You know, one of the scientists who I interviewed who worked on the movie said, yeah, there was this idea, the giggle effect. You tell people we might get hit by an asteroid, and they kind of giggle about it. And so they make this movie show that, yeah, it would be devastating if it happens. And then you get, you know, congresspeople and people in parliament saying, did you see those movies? We need to do more about it. And so they get these funding boosts off of it.

Speaker A [00:29:37]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:29:38]:
And that generally is. Can be very successful. So, for example, the movie Outbreak, very, very successful in doing that type of thing. Again, you had a lot of scientists working on that, because this is something that we're interested in. But what, you know, if it has a shift or not, to be honest, has probably has more to do with whether it's a successful movie or not. So a movie that came out a couple of years ago called San Andreas, where it has the rock in it, it's all earthquakes.

Ken Miller [00:30:04]:
Okay.

David Kirby [00:30:05]:
Yeah. And I see you're shaking your head. You probably didn't see it. Many people probably didn't see it, but they actually had seismologists working on it because they were like, we got to pay attention to this. This is an issue everyone needs to know about. Went into the theaters and left because it wasn't a very good movie.

Speaker A [00:30:20]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:30:21]:
And so no one's talking about it. Whereas last year with Twisters, everyone's talking about it. Meteorology got some funding boosts and shifts in the ways in which people talked about these things because it was a, you know, made a billion dollars worldwide type of thing. So that has a lot more to do with it. How successful is it? You know, used to be the idea of what kind of legs does a movie have?

Speaker A [00:30:46]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:30:46]:
Because before streaming, you know, or even before home video, how long were you going to be in that movie theater making, making money? But for a scientific issue, it's like, yeah, what type of legs does it have? Are people going to be talking about it for a while or is it like San Andreas? It comes out, you get a couple articles about it, it's dead. No one's even thinking about it and knows that movie even exists.

Speaker A [00:31:08]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:31:09]:
Where a lot of the movies that, you know, like I talk about in the book, like Deep Impact, Armageddon, those came out a long time ago. It's hard to think it was a long time ago, but we're still talking about those movies right after Tomorrow. Even young people have heard about these types of movies. So that's, that's kind of, I'd say a major part of it.

Speaker A [00:31:27]:
Yeah.

David Kirby [00:31:27]:
How successful was it? What type of impact were did it have people talking about or just sort of being like, yeah, it's another disaster film. We don't need to really pay attention.

Ken Miller [00:31:36]:
So what are some of the pitfalls that or consequences that can happen when you bring science in Hollywood together? I'm thinking you go in and you talk in your book about, you know, the, the moon landing. Now I'm not a conspiracy theorist by any stretch, but I certainly don't believe the government bats a thousand. So, you know, but it's interesting how Hollywood's role in depicting moon landings around that time really influenced people's conspiracy oriented mindset that, oh wait, we never actually went to landed on the moon. It was made in a Hollywood basement. You know, is conspiracy theory mentality. Is that kind of a downside to or represent a. Maybe an error in the ways that science and Hollywood work together that creates these conspiracy theories? It throws people off it. Is that a downside to the interaction? Or what other pitfalls might there be that we as a scientific community in MSO need to be thinking about as we talk about telling our story in a cultural mindset?

David Kirby [00:32:39]:
I would say that most of the downsides. So things like that that have a sort of negative impact are often cases where scientists weren't involved or they weren't paid attention to, you know, because if you're not involved, you have no influence over how these stories about science are being told.

Speaker A [00:32:56]:
Right?

David Kirby [00:32:57]:
And so that's a major reason you want to be involved, to say, okay, I want to have an impact in the book. And even since then, lots of stories about scientists being involved and then getting a major say in sort of how things are depicted. Because they're there, right? They're there talking to them. They could get their ear of the filmmakers, tell them what ideas are good, what ideas aren't good. Lots of examples where scientists would get the script and be like, no, no, no, no, no, no, We. You can't have that. You know, why do you have us as the bad guys? Make us the good guys. So always better to be involved and to have that.

David Kirby [00:33:31]:
Even if you are evolved, though, you always have to pay attention to the sort of. I talk about the sort of filmmaking constraints that all media makers are under, right? You know, budget being a big one. But there's lots of other ones. You know, one of the ones I talk about is audience expectations, right? That if I were to rewrite the book, I would make much more of that. You know, my conversations with people who make film and television since then, that always pops up. The audience expects this to happen. And so it takes a lot of work to sort of shift a science thing if audiences want it to happen like that. So you got to overcome that, certainly.

David Kirby [00:34:04]:
But the other thing is that if you need to overcome one of those constraints, coming up with an alternative for the filmmakers.

Speaker A [00:34:12]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:34:13]:
The best science consultants I spoke to weren't the ones who just said, oh, no, no, no, no, that's totally inaccurate. You can't do that. But would say, you know, that's not right. But let me give you an idea about what you could do that would work better off of it. So that avoids those sort of pitfalls because, yeah, I mean, you could still. People often Ask me, so what are the worst films out, you know, science films out there? Like, I could talk about films like 2012 and things like that, but one of the ones that. Some of the ones that really, I think are not just bad because bad movies bad because they can have an impact on lives.

Speaker A [00:34:51]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:34:51]:
So things that have medical procedures or, you know, things that affect health.

Speaker A [00:34:57]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:34:58]:
If those aren't right, then that's a real problem.

Speaker A [00:35:01]:
Yeah.

David Kirby [00:35:02]:
Then. Then you're, you're talking. So same thing with the stuff you, you're talking about. You want that to be right. Because if it's not right and people believe something different that can actually hurt people.

Speaker A [00:35:12]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:35:12]:
They don't know.

Ken Miller [00:35:13]:
You can generate a level of fear and anxiety that actually sets back any sort of positive outcome because you're not accurately portraying the possibility or the probability of that occurrence.

David Kirby [00:35:28]:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You can cause fear and anxiety that's unwarranted or get people to change their behavior in a way that you don't want them doing.

Speaker A [00:35:37]:
Really. Right.

Ken Miller [00:35:39]:
So, you know, it's interesting, within electromagnetic spectrum operations, there's a lot of different capabilities, technologies, processes that go into it over the years. You know, one of the, one of the areas that's gotten a lot of attention and I think arguably some. An important dose of critical response as well, is the notion of electromagnetic pulse and what it means and how it would work. And, you know, there's the Ocean's Eleven movie. I was just, it was on the other day. I was watching. I was like, I don't really know if you'd put an EMP thing in the back of a van and it would work and shut down Las Vegas, whatever. But it's, it's always been one of those areas where you're just like, how would that work? And we, we did a.

Ken Miller [00:36:21]:
I took part in a, in a kind of a war game exercise years ago. And the war game scenario was like, oh, well, you know, Allah. What was the red Dawn from the 80s, you know, parachuting into the US adversary nation, probably China would somehow get nuclear missiles off the coast of United States, all around the major cities and launch them all at one time. And it. They would detonate in the atmosphere and shut down the grid and blah, blah, blah. And I, I actually walked out because I'm like, this is stupid. Like, there's. This would never happen.

Ken Miller [00:36:56]:
Like, yeah, and. And one of my colleagues was mentioning, like, yeah, if, if, if a country's going to detonate a nuclear device, they're going to make it impact on the gr. Like they're not going to risk everything and then shoot it off and detonate. Detonated outside the atmosphere or whatever. So all that to say is I've always been kind of hesitant to, like, I don't really want to get too deep into. Although there is some element to it that is true. Like there. Electromagnetic pulse can wipe out a grid can do.

Ken Miller [00:37:24]:
There is damage there. But the scenario that they were using was too unrealistic, too fantastical. Fast forward to just even this summer. We. There is a. There's operation. We followed through a lot with the Russian Ukraine war, and there was a. A drone operation called Operation Spiderweb.

Ken Miller [00:37:39]:
And it's f. It was amazing to like, learn what this. What happened. But basically, drones were loaded into a cargo container, put on a truck, driven into Russia using Russian trucks, Russian truck drivers, Russian communications. And they communicated, jumping from WI fi to Bluetooth and everything got to the location the truck driver is supposed to go to, not knowing that the cargo he had was not the right cargo. It was actually Ukrainian drones. And then at a certain time, given a signal, opened up. Drone attack.

Ken Miller [00:38:13]:
And very effective. So it spurred on a conversation, well, could that happen again in the US or something? And all of a sudden you're starting like, okay, now, cargo containers, millions of them. How many do we inspect? How close? And now you're not talking about detonating nuclear weapons. You're talking about getting a cargo container of drones near an airport and taking that. So there is a realistic aspect, like, oh, man, that's. That's a real threat. However, and it's could be backed scientifically because we've already done it. However, to do it recklessly would.

Ken Miller [00:38:48]:
Could make people afraid of flying or make people afraid of, you know, going to someplace where they need to get essential services, a hospital or so forth, or get a pacemaker. You know, hey, if you. If you send out a pulse and it shuts down your pacemaker, people. People might be like, oh, I don't want a pacemaker. And then that hurts them so that it almost seems like the more accurate you get in science, the more. The higher the consequence of getting it wrong or triggering some sort of anxiety or fear that you don't want to be responsible for. Long kind of preface to the question, how do you get around that? Because you can't really control how people respond. And as we've seen with conspiracy theorists and so forth, it only takes just a little bit.

Ken Miller [00:39:33]:
It takes one person to get on the Instagram, say, I recognize this photo. It's Come from Stanley Kubrick's movie on space landing and next thing you know, mushroom cloud of conspiracy. How do you manage that? To make sure it is received by the audience with the rational response that you'd want to something that's more fantastical.

David Kirby [00:39:57]:
Yeah, well, you've already sort of put your finger on it. You can't control what audiences do.

Speaker A [00:40:02]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:40:02]:
I mean, this is when I switched from being, you know, a scientist to sort of looking at science communication and movies. Looked at a lot of film studies stuff. And first thing that pops out with film studies is the audience takes away what they want to take away. You really the main thing I would say is if it's grounded in fact and it's grounded in plausibility, that's sort of the best thing that you can do.

Speaker A [00:40:25]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:40:26]:
So in your scenario, if someone brings drones and, and they attack an airport, you don't want to make people afraid of flying. Well, it's a plausible scenario.

Speaker A [00:40:35]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:40:35]:
It's something that you're making people aware. Yeah. Something like this could possibly happen. If it's not, then you could be seen as fear mongering. But if it's plausible. Yeah, this, you know, if you can't be held responsible that someone else is going to become afraid of that thing. When you're saying, but we do need to be afraid of this thing.

Speaker A [00:40:55]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:40:55]:
Or maybe not afraid, but we need to be concerned. We need to think about ways to address this thing in a way that we can control it from happening. And I also. Yeah, so you want it to be plausible first. And this gets back at the idea of if there are movies, and there could well be movies made about the electromagnetic stuff soon because it is. Yeah, like I said, it's, it's going to start popping up. People will be thinking about it. You want to make sure it's like, it's like the, the line from Hamilton.

David Kirby [00:41:26]:
You want to be in the room where it happens.

Speaker A [00:41:27]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:41:29]:
So if you are there helping them, then you can sort of temper some of the things or some of the science consultants I've talked with. Yeah, you can remind them. You know, if you do it that way, that's just fear mongering or that's you're upsetting people without cause or reason. So yeah, that's part of it is to, you know, if they start doing these things, make sure that they're contacting, you know, scientists who understand what's happening. And generally nowadays they, they do that. It's rare now to have movies and TV shows that have science Heavily deep within them that don't. Trying to find scientists who are involved in these types of things. And so one of the things you could also do is contact.

David Kirby [00:42:16]:
They're called the Science and Entertainment Exchange. They're run by the U.S. national Academies of Science. Well, it's called Science and the Science and Entertainment Exchange. And they have been running for almost, almost 20 years now, maybe 15 for sure. And they. I've worked with them before. In fact, I was just there like a month or two ago working.

David Kirby [00:42:41]:
The American Psychological association is trying to get movies and TV shows and things made about social media and phone addiction, basically.

Speaker A [00:42:51]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:42:52]:
They see this as something that no one's talking about. It's a. It's a thing that's affecting everybody. How do we get people thinking and talking about these types of things?

Speaker A [00:43:01]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:43:01]:
What kinds of stories can we make off of that? But at the very least, now they're in the database. Science and Entertainment Exchange are well known now at this point in Hollywood. So if someone's making a movie on these things, they now are in the database and they say, ah, yeah, these guys, you want to talk to them about it. So, yeah, contact them for sure.

Ken Miller [00:43:22]:
It's a great segue to kind of put a bow on the conversation. You know, that's one step from our community perspective. Hey, we want to get us the story out there. We want to kind of work on whether it's a movie or a show or whatever. We want to be able to tell the story to the masses. That's one step. What are some other steps that we need as a community to be thinking like we ought to look into this because it could produce an opportunity that opens that door. Or is it just a matter of people wait, just passively waiting until someone reaches out?

David Kirby [00:43:53]:
Well, that I would say you're more. You're better off trying to be proactive on this. And some of it is if you have friends who are writers, get them starting to come up with story treatments and scenarios and things like that.

Speaker A [00:44:11]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:44:12]:
So that way you can, you know, when the opportunity arises, you can say, hey, look, we've already got something that is dramatically interesting in a way that would interest you off of that.

Speaker A [00:44:22]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:44:23]:
So a lot of scientific groups have sort of looked to sort of narrative storytelling as a way to, yeah, talk about the things that they think people need to be interested in, essentially. So, yeah, science fiction writers or people who are script writers or just sort of story treatment so that you have a sense. So if it ever comes up. Yeah, you know what to sort of talk to people about, I mean, the science and entertainment exchange. They also try to sort of get Hollywood filmmakers interested in these stories when they've been contacted by groups to say, yeah, we need to be talking about this. This is something that we need to be doing. So they could try and be a little bit proactive about it. But at the end of the day, it's all about, like I said, commodification, making money.

Speaker A [00:45:10]:
Right.

David Kirby [00:45:11]:
Is someone going to see this as a story that people are going to want to watch?

Speaker A [00:45:17]:
Basically.

David Kirby [00:45:19]:
And if they don't, then, yeah, you could do lots of things and they just won't. It just won't go anywhere. But, you know, to be honest, this stuff I can see having a much more dramatic appeal.

Ken Miller [00:45:32]:
Yeah.

David Kirby [00:45:33]:
Than some of the other types of sciences that people think we should be talking about.

Ken Miller [00:45:37]:
Well, David, it's been a pleasure talking with you. I really greatly appreciate it. Again, your book is called Lab Coats in Hollywood, Science, Scientists, and Cinema, produced in 2011 out of MIT Press. Great book, especially for our community that wants to kind of look, explore this topic a little bit more, take off their lab coat a little bit and sit in their director's chair and just kind of think about what's possible. Really appreciate you taking time to join me. I hope that this will spur on some thinking on your end as well as of where the scientific community is, and hopefully we will be able to continue this conversation down the road at a later time. But thank you for joining me here today.

David Kirby [00:46:14]:
Oh, thanks. Great. Great conversation.

Ken Miller [00:46:16]:
All right, well, thank you. Well, that will conclude this episode of from the Crow's Nest. I'd like to thank my guests for joining me. Please take a moment to review, share, and subscribe to this podcast. We always enjoy hearing from our listeners, so please take a moment to let us know how we're doing. That's it for today.

Speaker A [00:46:32]:
Thanks for listening.