I'm Alan Alder and this is Clear and Vivid. Conversations about connecting and communicating.

I don't know if I learned much physics at MIT but I learned how to kind of look like a

physicist and dress like a physicist and hang out with the physicist so much that I was

just part of the furniture and then and they would forget I was there and then you can

start doing good reporting and then you know catching people being themselves which is

an important part of science I think.

That's Dennis Overby the veteran science journalist with the New York Times reflecting

on his approach to making even the most complex scientific stories clear and vivid.

To give you a recent example of a wobble of a muon that's right the wobble of a muon

could overturn the model of the universe that physicists have had for over 50 years and

why many physicists couldn't be happier.

This is so great to be talking with you because you're such a terrific communicator a communicator

of science mainly but I bet it spills over into every other area.

I didn't realize until I looked you up that you had you have an MIT physics degree.

Do you think that's important for a science communicator it doesn't matter.

I didn't spend a lot of time in class at MIT and I used to show my transcripts sometime

when I gave talks but it was so embarrassing.

What was embarrassing about it?

Oh the all the season D's and the classes I took over again.

You know I think that sometimes a sign of looking for a better a better answer to your

questions so does the science degree help you?

Well it helps me and the people I went to school with now are famous senior scientists

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