Kendrick Frazier’s outstanding book - Shadows of Science: How to uphold science, detect pseudoscience, and expose antiscience in the age of disinformation

 

 

 

 

 

Kendrick Crosby Frazier (March 19, 1942 – November 7, 2022) was a science journalist who edited Skeptical Inquirer magazine from 1978 until his death. In 2024 his outstanding book titled Shadows of Science: How to uphold science, detect pseudoscience, and expose antiscience in the age of disinformation was published.

 

The Introduction begins as follows:

 

“Misinformation swirls around us like a hurricane that never ends. It is constant, ever-renewing, resilient, overwhelming. It seems that we might never escape the maelstrom. Falsehoods have always flown like the wind, while truth does a slow walk, as Jonathan Swift and others have long noted. But something seems different these days Way back in 1987, my organization held a conference titled ‘The Age of Misinformation.’ That theme was both topical and prescient because today, in this third decade of the twenty-first century, studies show that misinformation spreads faster, farther, broader, and deeper than accurate information. The algorithms of social media sites, the bots of bad-actor nations, and the current political-cultural climates of divisiveness all actively encourage the spread of misinformation. These and other toxic social forces amplify the abuse exponentially and poison our own sense of reality and the trust in others necessary for societies to cohere and for democracies to function.

 

When that misinformation and disinformation seek to nullify facts and evidence about the science of nature, life, and ourselves and present false and unsupported views as true, the result is something we can likely call pseudoscience. Pseudoscience is everywhere, following real science like a shadow, never quite revealing itself for what it is. Pseudoscience is pervasive, potent, unrelenting. It confuses people and impedes the public acceptance of good science. It advances powerful countercurrents contrary to common sense and good science, making truth constantly swim upstream against cascading headwaters of misguided information designed to appeal to our deepest fears, wants, and wishes. What can be done? The first thing is to recognize it….”

 

 Titles of chapters in this book are as follows:

 

Science and the Frontiers of Discovery

Pseudoscience and Unfounded Ideas

What the Heck is Pseudoscience?

What’s the Harm? Why Does It Matter?

The Subjects of Pseudoscience

Pseudoscience in Medicine or SCAM

The Values of Science

The Demarcation Problem: Philosophers and Pseudoscience

Climate Antiscience and Denial

The Rise of Organized Skepticism

Skepticism Goes Global

Final Thoughts, Future Hopes

 

Pages 61 and 62 list the following representative topics that attract pseudoscience, which could also be what you expect to hear on the late-night Coast-to-Coast-AM radio show:

 

Archeology and Earth Sciences

Ancient astronauts, ancient inscriptions, the Bermuda Triangle, dinosaur and human footprints together, dinosaurs contemporary with humans, dragon hoaxes, fire-breathing dinosaurs, global flooding in human history, a hollow Earth, lost ancient technologies, lost continents (Atlantis), psychic archaeology, psychic earthquake predictions, undersea “pavements”, unverified early visitations to the New World

 

Astronomy and Space Sciences

Alien abductions, alien artifacts, alien visitations, astrology, big bang rejection, cities on the Moon, crashed saucers, an electric universe, end-of-the-world apocalypses, a face on Mars, full-Moon effects, Moon-landing denial, neoastrology (‘Mars effect’), recovered saucers, rogue planets, UFOs, Velikovskyian ‘Worlds in Collision.’

 

Biology and Anthropology

Antievolutionism, birth-date-based biorhythms, bogus fossils (the Piltdown man), cattle mutilations, chupacabras, creationism, cryptozoology, or undiscovered large animals (bigfoot, yeti, Loch Ness monster, or lake monsters, etc.), intelligent design.

 

Cognitive Science and Neuroscience

Mind-body dualism, near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, pop psychologies about the brain, seeing Heaven, split-brain exaggerations, visiting Heaven.

 

Medical Sciences (Pseudomedicine)

Acupuncture, alternative medicine, anthroposophic medicine, antiaging creams, applied kinesiology, aromatherapy, ayurvedic medicine, chelation therapy, chiropractic (other than for treating back pain), coffee enemas, colonics, complementary medicine, cleanses, crystal healing, cupping, detoxification, ear candling, electrodermal screening, energy healing, energy medicine, essential oils, fad diets, faith healing, feng shui, flower remedies, food supplements, herbal remedies, homeopathy, integrative medicine, iridology, jade eggs, magnet therapy, meridians, natural remedies, naturopathy, oil pulling, oxygen therapy, performance-enhancing bracelets, psychic surgery, quackery, quantum medicine, quantum quackery, reflexology, spontaneous human combustion, therapeutic touch, unproven medical remedies, weight loss schemes.

 

Physics and Chemistry

Accelerators creating mini black holes, anthropic principle misinterpretations, antimatter pseudoscience, Bible codes, blood of Januarius, bomb-detector devices, cold fusion, dowsing, energy catalysis (e-cat), energy healing, faster-than-light travel, free energy, human-presence-detector rods, Kirlian photography, magnetic healing, misapplications of quantum mechanics to the macroworld, New Age physics, perpetual motion, psychic photography, quantum mysticism, relativity denial, the shroud of Turin, water with memory, weeping statues, young-Earth creationism.

 

Psychology

Aura reading, bogus self-help schemes, Dianetics, divination, eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), facilitated communication, fringe psychotherapies, fortune telling, ghosts, graphology, hauntings, hypnotic age regression, mass hysterias, mediums, multiple personalities, parapsychology, past lives, pop and fad psychologies, premonitions, psychic claims, psychic detectives, psychic powers (ESP, precognition, psychokinesis) psychics, rebirthing, recovered memories, reincarnation, repressed memories, remote viewing, Rorschach inkblot tests, Satanic-ritual-abuse rumors, spirits, thought-field therapy, transcendental meditation.

 

The looney looney looney title was adapted from here at Wikimedia Commons.

 

A flawed White House document regarding President Trump’s accomplishments in his first hundred days

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first hundred days of a presidency often is used as a benchmark for what to expect. There is a White House document titled President Trump’s 100 Days of Historic Accomplishments. It has a mixture of arrogance and ignorance we would expect. This document contains a list of his executive orders compared with predecessors (as shown above in a bar chart). But that list is missing results for both his immediate predecessor Joe Biden (42) and his first term (24). Worse yet the claim of only 30 executive orders is obviously wrong:  the Wikipedia page titled List of executive orders in the second presidency of Donald Trump shows 26 signed on the very first day, 36 in the first week and 130 total.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another bar chart (shown above) from the March 27, 2025 Ballotpedia article titled President Donald Trump issues most executive orders in the first 100 days since 1933 says Trump instead had 103, versus 33 in his first term.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trump’s document also has a list of number of laws enacted (shown above in a third bar chart). Again, it is missing both his immediate predecessor Joe Biden (with 11) and his first term (again with 28), but it also left off Franklin Roosevelt with 77, who was included in the list of executive orders.

 

A controversy about Boise displaying a pride flag at City Hall

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flying a flag is a graphical form of speech. You would expect conservatives to want that speech to be free. But that’s not what the Idaho legislature did during this session. There is an article by Kyle Pfannenstiel at the Idaho Capital Sun on February 18, 2025 titled Idaho bill limiting types of flags state, local governments can display passes House.

 

Our legislature passed House Bill 96, which limited what flags government entities (the state, a county, municipality, special district or other political subdivision) can fly. The only flags allowed are: the United States flag, the official flag of a government entity, official flags of any U.S. state, the POW/MIA flag, and official flags of Indian tribes. Curiously these restrictions do not apply to schools, colleges, or universities.

 

There is another article by Greg Pruett at the Idaho Dispatch on April 13, 2025 titled Day 10: McLean Stands Firm Against Removal of LGBT flag. Besides the Dispatch he runs the Idaho Second Amendment Alliance (also see this Idaho Voters article).

 

Yet another article by Richard Rodriguez at KTVB7 on April 15, 2025 is titled Idaho Attorney General urges Boise Mayor to remove pride flag. He noted that:

 

“…during legislative debate that the bill appeared targeted specifically at Boise, as examples presented during hearings focused exclusively on pride flags displayed in the capital city….

 

Meanwhile, Bonners Ferry in northern Idaho continues to fly a Canadian flag outside its City Hall.”  

 

There is a press release by Raul Labrador on April 15, 2025 titled Attorney General Labrador Asks Boise Mayor to Comply with State Law. In it he noted:

 

“...Although there is no express criminal or civil penalty provided for in this statute, you should comply with the law out of a sense of duty to your oath of office. As Idaho’s Attorney General, I ask that you reconsider your defiance of this duly enacted law and remove all prohibited flags.”

 

A statute without a penalty really is quite silly.

 

An image of Boise flags came from here at Instagram.

 

Using funhouse mirrors to evaluate your speechwriting

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Ada Community library branch closest to me is a couple miles away on Lake Hazel Road. But another branch is a couple miles north of it on Victory Road. Recently I visited that branch to look for new books and movie DVDs. I also looked on the shelves for books about public speaking, whose call number is 808.51. Just to the left under 808.02 I found an interesting 1999 paperback book by Eric Maisel titled Deep Writing: 7 Principles that bring ideas to life. There is a brief article by Heather Grove at Errant Dreams on June 20, 2006 about it titled “Deep Writing: 7 Principles that bring ideas to life,” Eric Maisel. I skimmed through the book, and was intrigued by the following section on pages 124 to 128:

 

“FUNNY MIRRORS

 

I recommend the following special way of evaluating your work. It can feel strange at first, because it involves a process that is intuitive and impressionistic, but once you master it you can learn what you need to know about your writing in almost an instant. I call this process funny mirrors.

 

Imagine that you’ve taken your work to a surrealist amusement park, and you discover a funhouse there. You go inside and encounter a long corridor lined with mirrors on both sides. On one side are mirrors with names: the mirror of the adjective, the mirror of the original idea, the mirror of the living thing, and so on. On the other side are mirrors that have a place on them for you to inscribe your own names: the mirror of Editor Jane, the mirror of the German-American reader, the mirror of the subplot, and so on.

 

When you hold up your work to one of these mirrors, you see only and exactly what that mirror reflects. In the first mirror you might encounter a talking head, in the second an image or a scene, in the third a phrase written out in script. Sometimes nothing will appear, a nothing full of information, as when you hold up your work to the marketplace mirror and the mirror can find nothing in your work with commercial appeal. Sometimes there are question marks, exclamation points, or strange squiggles in need of deciphering. This is a surrealistic funhouse, after all, and sometimes what you see will need interpreting.

 

The following are the named mirrors:

 

The Mirror of the Adjective

When you hold your work up to this mirror, you get back a single word: dark, confused, rushed, sentimental, stiff, clever, simplistic, elegant, unflinching, detached, depressing, deep, commercial. This is the mirror’s understanding – that is, your intuitive understanding – of your work’s current state, summed up in a single word.

 

The Mirror of the Original Idea

Your piece of writing started somewhere, with a feeling, an image, an idea. This mirror will reflect back to you insights about whether and to what extent the work is still harboring that original idea and is still guided by it. You might see a tiny dot: all that remains of your original idea. You might see an abstract painting: the idea gone wild, fragmented and mutated in the writing.

 

The Mirror of the Living Thing

In this mirror you get a sense of your work’s organic growth: whether it is growing tall and spidery, short and squat, spare and anemic. It may have nothing of the original idea left in it, but may still be a healthy, thriving organism, growing with its own fine logic.

 

The Mirror of Alternatives

In this mirror you get a snapshot of how your work might look if written differently. This mirror is invaluable: you get to see powerful alternatives that might have eluded your vision because of

 your focus on the work-as-it-is. Each time you hold up the work you see another alternative: how the book might look if narrated omnisciently, or if Sally told the story instead of Harry, or if Sally’s best friend did the telling.

 

The Mirror of Shape and Form

Every piece of writing has its own shape, its own architecture. In this mirror you might see reflected a skyscraper with the top fifty stories separated from the bottom fifty by a jarring gap of open air. Your book may be missing the middle chapter that connects the first half with the second. You might see a Calder mobile, which reminds you that the twittering bird chapter early on needs balancing with a meditation on the lightness of being.

    

The Mirror of the Ideal Reader

In this mirror a face appears and chats with you. He or she is serious, respectful, intimate, and understands your intentions but also has his or her own ideas about what is or isn’t working. If you hold your work up a second time, a different ideal reader may appear, one with a different history and different tastes but one still absolutely on your side and interested in seeing your work succeed.

 

Here are ten more mirrors:

 

The Mirror of the Typical Reader

The Mirror of Narrative Flow

The Mirror of Rhetorical Power

The Mirror of Intention

The Mirror of Voice

The Marketplace Mirror

The Mirror of Mystery

The Mirror of Grandeur

The Mirror of Truth

The Mirror of Goodness

 

Can you imagine how each of these mirrors works? What do you see reflected in each of them?

 

When you want to know something in addition to the information available in the named mirrors, walk down the other side of the corridor. There stand the mirrors waiting to be named by you. You might hold your work up to a mirror you call Mary and get a short, important answer about whether Mary is an effective character or a distraction. You might hold your work up to a mirror you call Dialogue and learn that your character John is making boring speeches and that Howard is barely grunting. You might hold the work up to a mirror you call Ending and learn whether your whisper of an ending is necessary, a problem, or both.

 

When you’re working with an editor, then naturally you will want to add an Editor mirror to your funhouse array. When you hold your work up to this mirror you get to hear your editor’s thoughts about the book. Editor Jane appears and says, ‘Darn it boy, didn’t we discuss this? I wanted much more action and much less philosophizing!’ With this mirror you foretell editorial objections and nip problems in the bud by engaging in dialogue with your intuition. This mirror alone is worth the price of admission.

 

Visit this funhouse when you want to evaluate your work. Use exactly as many mirrors as you need. Invent the ones that will help you the most, creating custom-tailored mirrors that answer your most pressing questions. Have you written several short stories and wonder if they amount to a collection? Invent a mirror. Is your self-help book helpful enough? Invent a mirror. See what there is to be seen.”

 

The mirrors at Science City in Calcutta came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

A sticky story on the glue you lick to seal envelopes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an interesting article by Joe Schwarcz at the McGill Office for Science and Society on March 26, 2025 titled A Sticky Story. He states that:

 

“The adhesives that are used on envelopes and stamps have very stringent safety requirements. That shouldn’t be surprising. After all, some of the stuff may be swallowed, so it has to be regulated as a food. Gum arabic from the acacia tree, dextrin from corn starch and the water-soluble resin, polyvinyl alcohol are the adhesives most commonly used. There are also additives for flexibility and spreading quality which include glycerin, corn syrup, various glycols, urea, sodium silicate and emulsified waxes. Preservatives such as sodium benzoate, quaternary ammonium compounds and phenols are also included. These substances may not taste great, but they are not poisons.”

 

The final episode from the 1995 season of Seinfeld titled The Invitations is not realistic:

 

“Disregarding George's suggestion to use glue for the wedding invitations since the adhesive in the envelopes takes a lot of moisture to work, Susan keeps licking envelopes until she passes out. George returns to his apartment, finds that Susan has collapsed, and takes her to the hospital. After the examination, a doctor informs George that Susan is dead from licking the envelopes, since the adhesive is toxic.”

An interesting 2024 book by Mark Edwards about storytelling - Best Story Wins

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Via interlibrary loan from the Twin Falls Public Library, I got and am enjoying reading the 2024 book by Mark Edwards titled Best Story Wins: Storytelling for business success. The biography from his publisher says that:

 

“Mark Edwards has two parallel careers—as a journalist and as a trainer/life coach. As a journalist he began his career writing in magazines, including GQ, Esquire, and Blitz. For the past twenty-five years his work has appeared virtually every week in the London Sunday Times, and for twelve of those years he was the paper's chief pop music critic. As a coach and trainer, he works with individuals to help them live with more purpose and meaning.”

 

Chapter 4 of Best Story Wins is titled What gets in the way of good storytelling? He says one problem come from a default in PowerPoint.  The slide template just says to: Click to add title.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But what we really want on a slide instead is a storytelling headline, as described above. That’s a good way to think about it. An even better way was described in detail over a decade ago by Michael Alley. I blogged about it on February 19, 2014 in a post titled Assertion-Evidence PowerPoint slides are a visual alternative to bullet point lists.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On pages 102 and 103 in a table, as shown above in color, he describes his six-step, three-act SUPERB process for storytelling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And on page 189 he describes the writing process with the acronym AUTHOR, as shown above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On pages 213 and 214 is another table (shown above again in color) on using the SUPERB process for telling about yourself.

 

The frontispiece for a 1916 book of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Are you a really good listener?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an excellent five-page article by Jeffrey Yip and Colin M. Fisher in the May-June 2025 issue of the Harvard Business Review on pages 139 to 143 titled Are you really a good listener? which you can listen to here. But you have to pay for the full text unless, like me, you can find that magazine free in databases such as EBSCOhost at your public library.

 

There are sections in that article titled Haste, Defensiveness, Invisibility, Exhaustion, and Inaction with the following statements:

 

Under Haste:

 

“Good listening is a demanding task that tames time. In our work we’ve found that people feel heard only when listeners focus their attention, demonstrate interest, and ensure that they’re understood.”

 

Under Defensiveness:

 

“The lesson is to steel yourself against defensiveness by calming your own emotions and seeking to understand the other parties’ intentions before responding. Before you speak, take stock of yourself. If you feel criticized or threatened, buy yourself time by simply restating what you think the speaker has said or thanking that person for sharing.”  

 

Under Invisibility:

 

“One of the most common mistakes we see among managers is not showing that they’re listening, which makes them appear indifferent and disconnected. Sometimes organizational leaders are working behind the scenes to fix problems identified in town halls or staff surveys but fail to broadcast those efforts to employees.”

 

Under Exhaustion:

 

“Exhaustion is a silent killer of effective listening. When leaders are physically or emotionally drained, they lose their capacity to focus, process, and engage productively with employees.”  

 

Under Inaction:

 

“The final pitfall is perhaps the most pernicious: receiving the speaker’s message but then not following up on it.”

 

The cartoon was adapted from one at OpenClipArt.

 

 

Factfulness is a wonderful book regarding how to think about the world

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hans Rosling (1948 to 2017) was a Swedish physician. He gave a TED talk in 2014 with his son Ola on How not to be ignorant about the world. There is another 2007 TED talk titled The best stats you’ve ever seen | Hans Rosling.

 

There also is a wonderful 2018 book by Hans Rosling, with Ola Rosling, and Anna Rosling Roennlund titled Factfulness: Ten reasons we’re wrong about the world – and why things are better than you think. It has a Wikipedia page too. They discuss ten instincts which can distort our perspective. In March 27, 2025 I blogged about one chapter in a post titled There may be no warning before as disaster.

 

 There are eleven chapters in the book, ten of which end with as summary as follows:

 

“Chapter 1 [page 46]: To control the gap instinct, look for the majority.

 

Beware comparisons of averages. If you could check the spreads you would probably find they overlap. There is probably no gap at all.

Beware comparisons of extremes. In all groups, of countries or people, there are some at the top and some at the bottom. The difference is sometimes extremely unfair. But even then the majority is usually somewhere in between, right where the gap is supposed to be.

The view from up here. Remember, looking down from above distorts the view. Everything else looks equally short, but it’s not.

 

 

Chapter 2 [page 74]: To control the negativity instinct, expect bad news.

 

Better and bad. Practice distinguishing between a level (e.g., bad) and a direction of change (e.g. better). Convince yourself that things can be both better and bad.

Good news is not news. Good news is almost never reported. So news is almost always bad. When you see bad news, ask whether equally positive news would have reached you.

Gradual improvement is not news. When a trend is gradually improving, with periodic dips, you are more likely to notice the dips than the overall improvement.

More news does not equal more suffering. More bad news is sometimes due to better surveillance of suffering, not a worsening world.

Beware rosy pasts. People often glorify their early experiences, and nations often glorify their histories,

 

 

Chapter 3 [page 100]: To control the straight line instinct, remember that curves come in different shapes. [See the image shown above].

 

Don’t assume straight lines. Many trends do not follow straight lines, but are S-bends, slides, humps, or doubling lines. No child ever kept up the rate of growth it achieved in its first six months, and no parents would expect it to.

 

 

Chapter 4 [page 123]: To control the fear instinct, calculate the risks.

 

The scary world: fear vs. reality. The world seems scarier than it is because what you hear about it has been selected – by your own attention filters or by the media – precisely because it is scary.

Risk = danger x exposure. The risk something poses to you depends not on how scared it makes you feel, but on a combination of two things. How dangerous is it? And how much are you exposed to it.

Get calm before you carry on. When you are afraid, you see the world differently. Make as few decisions as possible until the panic has subsided.

 

 

Chapter 5 [page 143]: To control the size instinct, get things in proportion.

 

Compare. Big numbers always look big. Single numbers on their own are misleading and should make you suspicious. Always look for comparisons. Ideally, divide by something.

80/20. Have you been given a long list> Look for the few largest items and deal with those first. They are quite likely more important than all the others put together.

Divide. Amounts and rates can tell very different stories. Rates are more meaningful, especially when comparing between different-sized groups. In particular, look for rates per person when comparing between countries or regions.

 

 

Chapter 6 [page 165]: To control the generalization instinct, question your categories.

 

Look for differences within groups. Especially when the groups are large, look for ways to split them into smaller, more precise categories. And…

Look for similarities across groups. If you find striking similarities between different groups, consider whether your categories are relevant. But also…

Look for differences across groups. Do not assume that what applies for one group (e.g. you and other people living on Level 4 or unconscious soldiers) applies to another (e.g. people not living on Level 4 or sleeping babies.

Beware of ‘the majority.’ The majority just means more than half. Ask whether it means 51 percent, 99 percent, or something in between

Beware of vivid examples. Vivid images are easier to recall but they might be the exception rather than the rule.

Assume people are not idiots. When something looks strange, be curious and humble, and think. In what way is this a smart solution?

 

 

Chapter 7 [page 184]: To control the destiny instinct, remember slow change is still change.

 

Keep track of gradual improvements. A small change every year can translate to a huge change over decades.

Update your knowledge. Some knowledge goes out of date quickly. Technology, countries, societies, cultures, and religions are constantly changing.

Talk to Grandpa. If you want to be reminded of how values have changed, think about your grandparents’ values and how they differ from yours.

Collect examples of cultural change. Challenge the idea that today’s culture must also have been yesterday’s, and will also be tomorrow’s.

 

 

Chapter 8 [page 202]: To control the single perspective instinct, get a toolbox, not a hammer.

 

Test your ideas. Don’t only collect examples that show how excellent your favorite ideas are. Have people who disagree with you test your ideas and find their weaknesses.

Limited expertise. Don’t claim expertise beyond your field: be humble about what you don’t know. Be aware too of the limits of the expertise of others.

Hammers and nails. If you are good with a tool, you may want to use it too often. If you have analyzed a problem in depth, you can end up exaggerating the importance of that problem or of your solution. Remember that no one tool is good for everything. If your favorite idea is a hammer, look for colleagues with screwdrivers, wrenches, and tape measures. Be open to ideas from other fields.

Numbers, but not only numbers. The world cannot be understood without numbers, and it cannot be understood with numbers alone. Love numbers for what they tell you about real lives.

Beware of simple ideas and simple solutions. History is full of visionaries who used simple utopian visions to justify terrible actions. Welcome complexity. Combine ideas. Compromise. Solve problems on a case-by-case basis.  

 

 

Chapter 9 [page 222]: To control the blame instinct, resist finding a scapegoat.

 

Look for causes, not villains. When something goes wrong don’t look for an individual or a group to blame. Accept that bad things can happen without anyone intending them to. Instead spend your energy on understanding the multiple interacting causes, or system, that created the situation.

Look for systems, not heroes. When someone claims to have caused something good, ask whether the outcome might have happened anyway, even if that individual had done nothing. Give the system some credit.

 

 

Chapter 10 [page 242]: To control the urgency instinct, take small steps.

 

Take a breath. When your urgency instinct is triggered, your other instincts kick in and your analysis shuts down. Ask for more time and more information. It’s rarely now or never and it’s rarely either/or.

Insist on the data. If something is urgent and important, it should be measured. Beware of data that is relevant but inaccurate, or accurate but irrelevant. Only relevant and accurate data is useful.

Beware of fortune-tellers. Any prediction about the future is uncertain. Be wary of predictions that fail to acknowledge that. Insist on a full range of scenarios, never just the best or worst case. Ask how often such predictions have been right before.

Be wary of drastic action. Ask what side effects will be. Ask how the idea has been tested. Step-by-step practical improvements, and evaluations of their impact, are less dramatic, but usually more effective.”

 

The image of a chart on children came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Excellent ways to hook your speech audience in thirty seconds

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an article by Ryan Lynch at American Express on September 20, 2024 titled 12 ways to hook an audience in 30 seconds. They are:

 

Use a contrarian approach.

Ask a series of rhetorical questions.

Deliver a compelling sound bite.

Make a startling assertion.

Reference a historical event.

Use the word ‘imagine’.

Add a little show business.

Arouse curiosity.

Use quotations differently.

Quote a foreign proverb.

Walk through a ‘what if’ scenario.

Tell a story.

 

There is another article by Maurizio La Cava at MLC Design Agency titled Presentation Hooks: The 13 most successful presentation hook examples. He also has a Hooking Strategy Map with a six-column table. His examples are:

 

Storytelling

Questions and audience interaction

State a shocking fact

Use quotations to grab them

Break common belief and provoke the audience

Bring it to life

Make them laugh

Leverage historical events

Trigger the audience imagination

Straight to the problem

Set the expectations

Use a surprising metaphor

Combine more hooking techniques together

 

And there is a 2015 book by Brad Philips titled 101 Ways to Open a Speech: How to hook your audience from the start with an engaging and effective beginning. 

 

There also is a long article by Jennifer Herrity at Indeed on March 26, 2025 titled 26 Ways to Start a Speech and Capture People’s Attention. They all are:

 

Use a quote

Tell a joke

Find a commonality with your audience

Ask a survey question

Pose a problem

Offer a relatable statistic

Tell a fictional story

Describe a personal experience

Give a demonstration

Use visuals

Recognize your audience

Provide background information about the event

Predict objections

Challenge the audience

Give a detailed description

Incorporate shared narratives

Define your concept

Share your background

Start with an interactive activity

Pose a rhetorical question

Ask for audience volunteers

Refer to a relevant current event

Reflect on the theme of the event

Preview your call to action

State an expert’s opinion

Create a positive affirmation or tagline

 

The fish hook image came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Making a huge mural from all your fears

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brian Rea is an illustrator who was interviewed by Emma Tucker at Creative Review on November 18, 2020 in an article titled How I Got Here: Brian Rea:

 

“I had this crazy sense of a white noise of anxiety in my life, where I was feeling anxious and couldn’t quite figure it out. I started keeping a list of all the things that were making me anxious and nervous, like a mind-mapping of feelings and emotions. That list ended up becoming a reference point for a lot of other work. I did a mural based on it in Barcelona, and I’ve gone on to do paintings based on happiness, love, beauty and anger, and all these other topics. For me it’s a different way of telling a story.”

 

That mural is 11.5 feet high and 23 feet wide. It is described by Alissa Walker in another article at Fast Company on March 1, 2010 titled Fear Not These Murals: Brian Rea’s Art Is What Keeps Him Up at Night. Just the first image of a section from it shows us the following 38 fears:

 

“Atlantis, bad trips, banged head, bigfoot, bird droppings, carnivals, child abduction, chupacabra, contaminated food, crop circles, dreams, drive by shooting, earthquake, eye poke, fall through ice, falling objects from very tall buildings, falling scaffold, falling tree, false imprisonment, farm runoff, fights, frostbite, hit by bus, hit by pitch, humidity, hurricane, mad cow disease, moose attack, night visitors, prophecies, spilled ink, striking out, sucker punch, swamps, tampered food, tele-marketers, volcano, water balloon.”

 

A second mural just is about UFOs.

 

Darwin’s image of terror from his book on The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals was colorized from one found at Wikimedia Commons.

 

Alton Brown’s new Food for Thought book

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have long been a huge fan of Alton Brown, who created the Good Eats television show. He has a new book titled Food for Thought: essays and ruminations. On pages 109 and 110 there is an essay titled Children and Food, which you can find at Google Books. It discusses getting them to try foods by employing reverse psychology – “oh, these are only for big people … grown ups.” And on pages 127 to 131 there is another essay titled …Fundamental, which you also can find at Google Books. That one describes a botched photocopying which  missed the part of a recipe at the bottom of an early page telling how to marinate the chicken. He instead added those ingredients at the end as a sauce.

 

There is another essay titled I Hack Therefore I Am which begins on page 151. On page 154 he tells a story about dehydrating foods:

 

“For instance, when I wanted to do a show about beef jerky and dehydrating in general, I discovered I couldn’t find a decent dehydrator for under $200, which seemed crazy. Also, I found that in order to achieve UL (Underwriters Laboratory) certification, dehydrators have to create enough heat to male the food safe, which means most such devices aren’t dehydrators at all but very slow roasters, or even kiddie ovens. So, again, no. But I really wanted to make beef jerky, a favorite of mine from my scouting days, and possibly the only thing I enjoyed of my scouting days other than those rakish red berets they introduced in 1972.

 

So, off to the hardware store. Despite my inability to make wood do what I want it to do, ditto my lack of welding skills, or basic machining skills, hardware stores have always been my cathedrals of problem-solving. My father’s father ran a hardware store and, while I was growing up, I had two or three I hung out in, sometimes for hours, especially on weekends when I was often left to my own devices. So, whenever in doubt … hardware. At the one nearest my house, they don’t even ask me anymore if I need help finding anything, because they know I have no idea what I need until I actually find it.

 

So, I was wandering around the store, and it was fall, so they were pushing the whole ‘time to check your furnace’ thing, and were running a special on square furnace filters. I noticed that, besides the hypoallergenic filters and the fiberglass filters, they also had cellulose based filters and that the cellulose is folded, kind of like a Japanese fan, with a lot of ridges. Interesting. After a few more turns around the store, I noticed that these very filters were the same size as the box fans on discount over in aisle four. Hmmm. I did some quick math, bought a fan, three filters, a couple of bungee cords, and headed out.

 

Once home, I deep chilled a flank steak, cut it into long strips, marinated said strips in a big zip-top bag for about an hour, drained them well, then lined them up in the grooves of two of the furnace filters. I stacked them on the fan with an empty filter on top and secured the stack to the fan with two bungees. I turned the contraption right side up, turned the fan to medium, and left it in the bathroom tub for twelve hours.

 

And thus was born the Blow-Hard 5000.”

 

That description takes license compared an earlier version. In the 2010 book Good Eats 2: The Middle Years he describes it on page 264 in Episode 132 from Season 9 titled Urban Preservation II: Beef Jerky:

 

“Me: Honey, I want to make beef jerky.

 Her: That’s nice honey.

 Me: So, I’m going out to buy one of those dehydrators.

 Her: Oh no, you’re not.

 Me: I’m not?

 Her: You’re not bringing one more piece of junk into this kitchen.

 Me: I’m not?

 Her: Everyone says you’re the MacGuyver of the kitchen.

         So go MacGuyver something.

 Me: Fine, I will.

 Her: Fine.

 

 I stormed off to sulk in the basement, and that’s where I found an old box fan that had served as our sole source of air-conditioning during culinary school. Then I saw a stack of furnace filters and a plan started to form. The resulting rig, christened the Blowhard 3000, was originally utilized in ‘Herbal Preservation’ (episode 90) as an herb-drying device [there called the Blowhard 2000]. Although it excels at that (and other) chores, jerky was in fact the original application.”  

    

The cartoon guy was adapted from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Preply survey on UK attitudes toward and fears about public speaking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a post at the Preply blog from the Preply Language Learning Team on April 3, 2025 titled Speak with confidence: Tackling the UK’s public speaking phobia. But it doesn’t really talk about phobia. Instead  there are results from a survey of 2,007 adults regarding their attitudes.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One bar chart (shown above) has answers for six questions about how they felt about public speaking. 21% both said “it’s fine – I will do it but don’t actively go after opportunities and “I hate it and I avoid any occasion that I have to do it. And 20% said “I don’t like it but will do it if I have to.”   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A second bar chart (shown above) has the top ten settings which caused the most anxiety. A job Interview was first at 32%, followed by Presenting in Public at 25%, and a tie between Speeches and Work Presentations at 22%. Then came Performing in Front of Others at 21% and Talking to Authority Figures at 14%. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A third bar chart (shown above) has the top ten fears while public speaking. Forgetting words was first at 36%. Then at 33% was a tie between Freezing Up and Looking foolish. Fear of Being Judged was third at 32%.

 

The cartoon of a confident female speaker came from Wikimedia Commons.