Episode 19 – Eric Lander On Using Performance To Educate Your Audience

What this episode covers

You, the speaker, have all the data and knowledge and understanding of the subject you’re speaking about. But if you can’t convey its significance and why it’s deserving of all this attention, it lessens not just the importance of the data but the audience’s desire to care. According to Eric Lander, a scientist’s job performance involves not just data collection and interpretation but the ability to engagingly educate others. EPISODE CREDITS Guest Starring Erica Lander, Ph.D., President & Founding Director of the Broad Institute Produced & Hosted by Adam Greenfield Executive Produced by Patrick Yurick, Instructional Designer – MIT OGE Executive Produced by Heather Konar, Communication Director – MIT OGE Special thanks to the following editors who provided us invaluable feedback that aided in the development of this show: Christopher O’Keeffe, Co-Founder of Podcation Kristy Bennet, Manager – MIT Women’s League Jennifer Cherone, Phd Candidate – MIT Burge Laboratory Erik Tillman, Phd, Formerly of the Kim Lab & Currently A Fellow at Vida Ventures, LLC The Great Communicators Podcast is a part of Gradcommx. Gradcommx, targeted at enhancing research communication, is the first offering of Gradx – a professional development project created for the graduate student population at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by the Office For Graduate Education. MUSIC & SOUNDS “All The Best Fakers” by Nick Jaina is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License (http://freemusicarchive.org) “Mccarthy” by Blue Dot Sessions is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial License “Grand Fell” by Blue Dot Sessions is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial License. (http://freemusicarchive.org) “Deliberate Thought” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0 Train Sound Standard YouTube License https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oJAVJPX0YY EPISODE SCRIPT Print The Script Here ADAM GREENFIELD Welcome to The Great Communicators Podcast presented by The MIT Office of Graduate Education, a professional development podcast expressly designed to bring lessons from the field to our graduate student researchers. My name is Adam Greenfield and if you’ve ever been moved by a speech or by something someone said, what did it was probably how the words and ideas were conveyed to you, or the performance of the communication. There may not have been dancing or music involved but still, a performance was put on. And as we’ll hear in this episode, that communication performance can include a lot of useful tools, like images or objects, or pacing. So if you’re not a dancer or musician, have no fear. You’re about to find out why you don’t have to be and still be able to perform and communicate effectively. Now, in your career as a scientist, you may find yourself communicating your work to a wide range of audience types and sizes. It could be one person, it could be thousands of people, it could be the head of a company, it could be an entire high school.