I sh quite.

You're listening to Radio Lab, the podcast.

From New York Public Radio, WNYC, and NPR.

3, 2, 1. Hello, I'm Jad Aboumra.

And I'm Robert Quilwich.

This is Radio Lab, the podcast, and we're working busily on season five. We thought while we do that, we would bring you a little... Extra. So, we very recently went to the Cushland Science Museum, run by the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., to talk to an audience. Not... Well, there were a bunch of scientists there, but they weren't all scientists.

No, they were mostly just people.

And we asked those just people to consider three very puzzling radio questions that we have

every time we put our show together.

So here is that conversation.

So we figure since this is a science place, you guys are probably science-inclined folk,

we would talk about some of the troubles that we run into when we talk about science or try to.

Problems like density, like unfriendliness of ideas, but they're great ideas,

but how do you somehow make them friendly to people who

maybe don't like or don't know that they like science?

So we're going to kind of go through some of our favorite problem solving techniques.

We have hurdles.

The most obvious hurdle is when you step into a room to have a conversation with someone

who is smart, knowledgeable, very knowledgeable actually, and articulate, and they start talking

and you think in the back of your mind, uh-oh.

And they write papers like, which is going to be the subject of our first clip,

Selective silencing of cell

...