Why we do Science and Storytelling

Why we do Science and Storytelling: "As I got the bus home this evening, I was proof-listening this week's compilation of the 365 Days of Astronomy episodes. I listen each week to check if my automatic script has created the show correctly (it has only failed once). I was particularly taken by two of the episodes this week both of which featured storytelling.

The first one was Monday's episode by Ben Lillie - a physicist who hosts a monthly science storytelling show in New York named The Story Collider. Ben's episode was a monologue about why we do science and makes for a good listen. I particularly liked his final quote:

And so this is what we do. We go out and explore because we have to, and when we go out there we find things we don't expect. And sometimes those things are beautiful, sometimes they're useful, sometimes they're evil, and sometimes when we find them we just look at that and say, 'Huh. We needed to know that, and now we do.'

The second episode I want to recommend is from today. It was created by Oscar, Cornelia, Katie, Connie, Abigail, Tom, Khairul, Ina, Jonah, Thomas, Andreas, Isaac, Isabel, Manveer, Solu, and Tatiana who are all students at the British School of Washington. They presented a series of their own imaginitive stories all with a space theme. The students are fairly young (4th form) and I think they've done a brilliant job with their episode. The purple aliens with orange spots of Planet 63 remind me of my childhood imagination.

This variety of voices, sharing a passion for the universe, is what I think the 365 Days of Astronomy is all about. So turn off the internet for a few minutes, get yourself a cup of tea, pull up a comfy chair, and give them a listen. - taken from Astronomy Blog (www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/)

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