Star on radio and TV

Take a deep breath and slow down!

Andrew Fraknoi
Former Executive Director, Astronomical Society of the Pacific; Chair, Astronomy Department, Foothill College, California, USA; radio talk show host

Having spent over 25 years explaining astronomy on the radio in the United States, both in short segments on National Public Radio and in one-hour interviews on local radio stations, I would distil my advice for scientists as follows:

• Visualize explaining your work to your relatives or to your child's 5th grade class (don't use technical jargon and give compact answers that will make sense to a beginner)

• Use analogies to everyday thing and processes, whenever possible -- I like to call meteor showers "democratic", since they appear all over the sky and don't require everyday equipment, for example. I call Black Holes "star corpses" and compare the search for extrasolar planets to trying to see a firefly near a commercial search-light from an airplane high above.

• Don't use the term "of course", which we professionals tend to use when explaining well-known ideas to our peers. What you are explaining is not well known to the audience and saying something like "of course you know," when the listeners don't know, makes them feel dumb.

• Take deep breaths and slow down; we all tend to talk fast in our profession.

• If it's a good question, take a moment and praise it before you answer.

• If you use the word "theory", be aware that it means something quite different to lay audiences than it does to scientists. To most people, a theory is a good guess (or one of many guesses, like a police detective might offer, when just starting to solve a murder on a TV show).

• Try to explain what the significance of the discovery or idea you are explaining is for the average person. What large issue does the research address that your listener would care about? So, research on supernovae tells us something about cosmic recycling and how the universe turned into us and research on asteroids might one day be a matter of life and death if we find an asteroid headed for Earth.

• Try to show that you are having a good time explaining your work (even if you are really nervous inside). You are a role model for scientists, and the public thinks that we are a grim, humourless lot, for the most part. If you can show a sense of enthusiasm and a bit of humour, that's half the battle.