I'm thinking about an upcoming talk I'm giving called "Building Trust: Advocating for Real Science in a Fake News World." After Ben Lillie's session, I flipped through the slides I'd prepared over the last few days, and I could see that storytelling was largely absent. There were slides on how we spend science dollars in the US, and graphs with the breakdown of industry vs. government R&D. Blocks of text about how to call your congressperson, or how to run for office.

But this has been one hell of year. Since Jan 21, I have marched with scientists on Washington. I have protested white supremacy. I funded a billboard to harangue my congressman into holding town hall meetings. I am running my spouse's "Stacy Palen for Mayor" campaign. I am calling my congress people every third or fourth day. I have my local reps on speed dial, and resistbot is running constantly in the background.

In other words, I've got stories. You'd better believe it.

Ben founded Story Collider, kind of The Moth Radio Hour for science. Ben's a fellow physicist, but he jumped ship after earning his PhD to study improv and storytelling. As a physicist, you are trained to question everything. "As soon as an idea jumps into your head," Ben says, "you ask 'what is wrong with this?'" Improv is just the opposite, where you are supposed to just say yes to whatever your collaborators do or say and ask "what is right about this idea?"

He talked about the tension between storytelling and accuracy. Stacy's family is Irish, and her grandfather used to admonish her mom for "telling stories," his euphemism for lying. "Yer just tellin' stories, Margaret" he'd say in his thick half Irish, half Boston brogue. Now Stacy writes astronomy textbooks, some very good ones, where her desire to tell compelling stories often hits a wall with reviewers. "You didn't mention the importance of the Kirkwood Gaps in the planetary formation theories, you should cut some of the storytelling to make room." As Ben said, it is hard to tell completely accurate compelling stories.

Ben discussed the use of narrative, and reminded us we have a wealth of cultural forms to choose from. If Pixar can have a successful "story skeleton" why not borrow it? Both Hollywood and Broadway tell amazing stories. Why can't we use those ideas to talk about science?

According to Ben, "If you aren't out there telling your story, someone else is." There are lots of folks out there telling very compelling and blatantly false stories about climate change. My stories need to be more compelling than that. What about all of the stories about my NASA friends who sacrifice their leisure time to make sure we have the best data available to study this? How do they see the "refocusing" of NASA to downplay Earth science? How must they feel seeing their life's work belittled as "Fake News?"

So I've got six days to revamp my talk. Six days to develop something to motivate my fellow scientists and students to join me in promoting, communicating, and defending science.

Because when 100,000 reclusive nerds are marching in the streets because people think there are "alternative facts," we've got some serious work to do.