Tell me a Story

Robert Krulwich (one of the co-hosts of RadioLab) gave a commencement speech at CalTech last Spring that really nicely expressed a lot of the reasons why it is critically important for scientists (and science communicators) to be able to inform the public about their science. In many ways, he has summed up the motivation for why we developed this class. I highly recommend it.


Download MP3

Books

The required books for this class are:

• Ideas Into Words: Mastering the Craft of Science Writing by Elise Hancock. This is a great, concise book on the art of writing about science.
  
• Galaxies and the Cosmic Frontier by Bill Waller and Paul Hodge (also available at the publisher's web page here). This is an excellent book on galaxies and galaxy evolution that hits just the right topics for this class.
  

I've put the Amazon links here, but feel free to get them wherever you want (they are not, however, in your campus bookstores). I've also put a third book on reserve in many of the libraries that my prove useful to you. It's called "The Hands-on Guide for Science Communicators" and is more a guide for press officers than anything else. However, there is still some good stuff in there and there will occasionally be optional readings from it.