Robert has introduced our viewers to string theory; he's explained the arcane physics of "WIMPs" otherwise known as Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. I think I've got that right. He's shown us how to measure supernovas. He's explored the dark corners and the black holes of the universe.

There are three things that I think make Robert's work so wonderful. The first is a kind of a childlike curiosity about everything he does. And when you think about it, those truly, truly big questions: Why this? How come that? What does that mean? What's that for? Those are the questions that a 3-year-old would pose; and they come so naturally to Robert.

You know, Robert's curiosity is hardly limited to the grand things, like physics. He's investigated why people so love shopping malls, it's the design apparently. He's asked what life was like at the beginning of the last millennium: itchy tunics, no forks, lots of porridge. He's asked how many homes Santa really would have to cover on Christmas Eve. 1,178 per second, is what Robert found out. And he's fathomed the origin of the word "honeymoon" and you can ask that later during the Q&A.

The second thing that strikes me about Robert's reporting, and always has, is its humanity. He shows us the human side of people, often respected scientists and people who are experts in their fields. He shows us the human side that we might not otherwise see.

One of our favorite sayings in television news is: "Hey, it ain't brain surgery." But one of Robert's great pieces was on a pair of brain surgeons, a husband and wife and the story was pretty simple. It just laid out how these brain surgeons juggled their marriage, their kids, their household … and yes, brain surgery.

One of my all-time Krulwich favorites features a woman named Porter Colley, whose body is covered with grotesque tumors, lumps, and bumps. She suffers from a genetic disease. Neurofibromatosis, I think it is? Every year, Porter Colley goes to Harvard Medical School, where she gives the students perhaps the most valuable training of their medical educations. She teaches medical students something that so many of them seem to forget and that is empathy.

Robert showed us, how in one phenomenal lecture, this woman gets these prospective doctors to see the human being inside the patient. And she's so effective at this, that by the end of her lecture, and Robert captured this beautifully for Nightline, this woman who is covered with the most grotesque tumors you can imagine, by the end of the lecture, Harvard medical students are lining up to give her hugs. And by the end of Robert's piece, I was convinced that most of our 5 million viewers wanted to give her a hug, too.

Two days ago, Robert and I attended the funeral of a former colleague, a wonderful man who died of brain cancer at the age of 45 and whenever Robert reports on that disease, you can be sure his story will include not only the scientific, but also the human dimension.

The third thing, of course, and indeed the very reason Robert is being honored here today, is his talent at explaining even those cosmic stories. Like most great storytellers, Robert is not above employing any device to get you to pay attention. He's hired Loudon Wainwright III, you may remember that hit classic, "Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road." Well, Robert hired Loudon Wainwright III to write a song to explain the declining population in the world, "The Birth Dearth." Robert stood in a field of red and white balloons, to show us how red and white blood cells interact.

Just this week, Robert interviewed his own right hand for a series of programs on surfing the Internet. And it was stimulating conversation, too.

To illustrate just how Jupiter functions in our solar system, and it functions like this giant vacuum cleaner sucking up all the stuff in space that might hit Earth and the other planets, Robert got four 5-year-old kids, and he had them wear T-shirts -- Earth, Mars, Venus, Pluto -- and he put them into a batting cage with this gigantic inflatable ball, representing Jupiter. And then he turned the machine on, and all this stuff was flying, and the planets were there, and Jupiter was there … and Robert explained how it all worked. Lucky for him, none of the kids were hurt, or were the children of lawyers.

But the point here, of course, is that Krulwich is shameless. He will do anything to tell a story. And the reason that's so important is because there is this huge chasm; because so many of you who are brilliant scientists, and so many of us who are hopeless liberal arts majors. And not to offend anyone, but because so many scientists are, well … as dry as soda crackers in the Sahara sun; and because so many of us liberal arts majors have this "MEGO" problem as in M-E-G-O: My Eyes Glaze Over. And sometimes, great communication boils down to simply doing whatever it takes to bridge that gap between the boring and the easily bored.

As talented and smart as Robert is and no one doubts that I would be committing journalistic malpractice, not to let a little air out of the tires I've just been inflating. There is the time that Robert submitted an expense account for hiring a seamstress to stitch his conception of what a one-eyed alien reptile might look like. Well, ABC's bean counters, the green eye-shade division, rejected that expense voucher and at the bottom the accountant wrote: "And by the way: Who is Robert Krulwich?"

A couple of weeks ago, you remember the sinister virus that was attacking so many computers, the one with the "I Love You" attachment. Well, it happened just during a time in which Robert had sent one of his scripts for review to a mucketymuck in New York, an ABC News Vice President. A little while later and mind you, this is after the "I Love You" virus has been front page news for a couple of days, Robert gets an e-mail from this ABC News Vice President, and there's a little attachment there, and it says "I Love You," at the bottom. Now, Robert is so convinced that this e-mail is from a Vice President who loves his script, and loves him … and everything is lovey-dovey, that Robert, of course, opens the attachment and it ruins his hard drive.

That wouldn't be so bad, of course; but a couple of weeks later, when the "Jokes" virus hit, Robert did it again. And he's our science guy … that's what I heard, anyway; that's the story and I'm sticking to it.

Whenever Ted Koppel introduces Robert for a piece on Nightline, Ted Koppel's Page 2 is what we call the introduction, it's always a variation on: We're not really sure what this crazy guy is really up to, but we kind of like him anyway, so what the hell? But my all-time favorite Koppel introduction of Robert was: Well, think of your mind as soil, and Krulwich is the fertilizer.

So without any further ado, I would like to introduce Ted Koppel's favorite fertilizer, ABC's Cosmic Correspondent, and my esteemed colleague Robert Krulwich.

Awardee: ROBERT KRULWICH

Oh, boy. Thank you, Chris, sort of. The thing about Chris is, in the culture of TV, when you're wondering, like, who to be in awe of, it scares me I mean, the thing that I would least like to have is the telephone ring, and have them say: There's a missile coming in, and at exactly 2 o'clock you have to run in and do that kind of reporting. It scares me to death. And there's really nobody in television who can handle the breaking stories with such extraordinary, just … When he goes on, it's like, sometimes like 20 minutes after whatever it was happened; and there he is: the tie, so calm … it's not me. Not me.

Before I begin, I am very honored by this invitation … Rick's invitation. And I never met Eleanor, although I get the impression and this is nice, I think that when someone leads a life, a magical life, or a life that just is important … when they die, there's this glow that sort of just hangs in. And since I got this honor, I have heard more things more often about Eleanor. And when I come here … a lot of you must have known her and known her well. Or, if you didn't know her well, something about what she left behind must still be very much alive in the room, and day-to-day, because I feel sort of a presence. It's I'm not a mystical person or anything but I … so I'm particularly honored to be here.

About 5 years ago, I had mostly covered economics and politics and diplomacy, and very little science. And then I got a sense, it's a reporter's instinct really, that something in the world that I cover … when you have choices … that something had changed.

When you cover people running for president, say, or the people who are covering the people who are running for president, or the people whose professional business is to elect presidents … you do get a sense lately, that there is something kind of quiet and a little dull in the political culture. Maybe, they think back to earlier presidents, President Kennedy, President Reagan who just seemed to be better at it, or bigger at it in some way. But when you hang at the White House or in the political culture, you do sense that the moment has somehow passed a bit. I mean, it's very self-referenced. You go out on campaigns and you see bubbles of people walking together and you think you can draw a circle around it. And it's sort of a little quiet bubble, unto itself.

You go cover economics, as I do, and you see there's a sense of a little bit of exhaustion in the air; trying formulas that have worked, that aren't quite as much as before again, a sense of wistfulness.

And then, in the daily business of being a reporter, you walk into a laboratory … by accident, almost. It could be the physical sciences, biology and something is in the air. You suddenly get the feeling that the people in this room are so happy to be alive right now. That this moment when things are percolating … that this moment, maybe 500 years from now, people will remember what's going in the labs, think about the people in the labs. That you think: Well, now … I don't know. There is something so over-the-moon about these guys, and sort of under-the-weather about those guys, that a sort of natural reporter's instinct, is: Well, I think I just want to spend a little more time with "these" and a little less time with "those." Which is, more or less, what I did.

Because I began to look at the menu. I mean, the genome; the mystery of how we're made; why we get cancer, Alzheimer's, AIDS; how we create, store a memory; nature of consciousness; the things that Chris mentioned -- how the universe began, dark matter, black holes. To think that they're really learning about this stuff right now -- chaos theory, mass extinctions. I just want to be near these people, I thought.

There are several problems with my desire. I don't know anything.I had high school biology. I had physics. I had, I think, chemistry. Although the C minus 3, at my high school they give you three forever, which was really unfair, because I sweated it, was a long time ago. And the question, of course, is like, how dare you … how would anyone dare to talk about something in front of millions of people that you have no formal training in, no degrees … well, it may shock you guys to learn that, really, for reporters, this is not a problem. Oh! I know what you're thinking. Sure! They talk about things they know nothing about. That's what they do.

Um … let me give you our version. We learn on the job, as we go. And the best of us are constantly aware and a little bit frightened by all the things we know we don't know. So you'll find a fact … I mean, you know you have no peripheral vision. You know you have no sense of perspective yet. You learn a fact, you check it, you know it's true. But deep down, you know there is some other fact that they didn't teach you because you didn't go to school, you didn't run into yet that will color the facts that you know so dramatically; a fact that in some way that you haven't yet learned wrong.

So you check. You go to your editors. Bit by bit, as you do the beat, you get better. But every day, in the early run, it's like a pop quiz that you are not quite prepared for. It is really scary. If you love learning it's so much fun. And the best part is, that you have a mike, and you have all these cameras, and all this equipment.

So, this is kind of like … if you did get the C minus 3 in chemistry, imagine if you could go back to the chemistry teacher who had no time for you, and who wouldn't explain anything to you when you raised your hand and spoke in a mumble in the back of the room. Now you've got the mike and the cameras, and when you walk into the room they have to talk to you; and most important … they have to please you. Because it's on your terms. The power of this is wonderful.

One other thing. This style of journalism -- the idea that you learn as you go, comes I think, from a deeper faith. That in most subjects in life, we are …all of us, amateurs. We have a system of government that expects us to be amateurs. We try to think for ourselves. It's the essence of our system that we do not leave important decisions to Plato's philosopher kings, or kings, or savants of any kind. In a democracy, we the people, claim to be collectively, the wise ones; we are expected to form opinions on matters that we sometimes know very little about. They're very technical: the viability of life in the first 3, or second 3, or third 3 months of a pregnancy. Cloning. Genetically-manipulated foods. NAFTA. Balance of trade. I mean, most people really don't understand these things too well. But we try to understand them because we know we are going to, at some point, have to choose between a number of options. And in the end, we believe and this is the faith of all democracies that when we choose, most of the time we will choose well.

And in that sense, the journalist as amateur stands in, I think, for all of us. Every day we go out and we question wizards of one kind or another, all of you in this room would be in that category; as far as we're concerned and we try to understand what you're saying, and of course we make mistakes; but in the end, we use all our wits, and being as careful as we can the better ones to tell our neighbors and everybody what we learned. This is a noble business. Even though, of course, some of us are lazy; some of us are looking for the quick quote so we can get out of here; some of us do come to you looking for buzz or controversy, and we just want to get an argument going, we want to get something exciting as Chris mentioned. Some of us want to just be beautiful and glamorous and you have white coats, many of you … and you speak in three syllable words, many of you … and so when you go on camera, you say: Here I am with Dr. Seymour Jones; he's in the coat, he speaks this way; I'm next to him, I'm talking to him; he's smart, therefore … It's like a flash you know.

But the people who do that, they're the stupid ones. We've got I mean, it's no big open secret. We have stupid ones. You guys have stupid ones, right. But …

I'm here today to make a case for the smarter ones. And I know that reporters and especially TV reporters suffer right now from a widespread feeling that we are all … not entirely to be trusted. We are not all that way, however. There are some of us trying to make sense of what we see; but it is hard. And so in this talk, I want to give you a sense of the difficulties and of the pleasures of doing, as it says in the title, "The Things I Do." So maybe the next time one of us comes around, you'll be a little more empathetic; but I suggest you be very careful, nonetheless, of what you say.

Why is it hard. Well, first of all, television is a visual medium. It requires pictures. If this were the radio, where I used to work, I could if I used the right words, say: "Just close your eyes and imagine a mountain. And on top of the mountain, just put a little cottage." Well, if you're following me, then… how ever many hundreds of you are here, will make many hundreds of mountains with a hundred little cottages. They're your cottages, they're not my cottages and we're coauthors. In your ear, I get you to paint my picture. But it's your picture, too. No argument.

On television, I can't say, "close your eyes" because you're watching television. You don't do that. So I have to give you a mountain. It's going to be my mountain. Twenty of you, 50 of you, a hundred of you will say: What kind of a mountain is that? That's not a mountain. I've never seen a mountain like that and, from then on, I've lost you. Because you're arguing with the mountain. There's a literalness to the medium that's tough.

If you're going to do a story about a virus, and the virus is going to be your main character, you want people to follow the action of the virus … or a cancer cell, or a photon, or a quark, or whatever … the thing is, of course, it's invisible most of the time, or very hard to see. So you're working in the visual medium and you have a threshold problem there. If you could see a photon or a virus, the average person has no idea what it's doing when it does whatever it is that it's doing. They don't know.

If you put President Clinton on the screen you know who he is, you know what he does for a living, you know where he lives. That's wind at your back. You can get on with it. Try that with a virus. I mean, you've got a problem. So if you tell a story about, say HIV, you know that most people don't know what a virus is or what it does for a living, and so on … maybe they think it's something you catch, that makes you sick.

So here's a situation. Five years ago in Vancouver, they announce they've got a triple cocktail that's been extraordinarily effective against HIV. Peter Jennings says, "Well, why don't you explain how it works." I go, "What?" He said, "Why don't you explain how the cocktail works?" Now, understand this is an invitation with certain parameters. On the evening news, we call it World News Tonight, you get minutes - two minutes to explain how a virus works. If they want to be extraordinarily generous, they give you 2:15. In this case, a bequest from Peter Jennings, I get 3, 3 minutes … and remember, the virus is not President Clinton. So I'm going to have to introduce a completely unfamiliar landscape to the audience, introduce my main character, describe as vividly as possible what the virus does and I know that I'm not talking to a high school biology class, let alone a college class. I'm talking to your mama, basically. That's who watches the evening news, older people at the end of their workdays. And they're not on the edge of their couch saying: "Martha, get in here. They're going to discuss viral loads!" They don't say that. And Martha doesn't say: "Okay, dear! I'll get the popcorn!" It's not that kind of thing. You're up against a sort of low level of resistance.

It's one thing if you're on National Public Radio, which I presume many of you listen to. There you're talking through the radio, first of all, and to the curious. When I was there, I used to call them "the curious." They actually want to know what you're going to say. On television, they're largely the incurious. They're just sitting there hoping that something interesting will happen, but they're not anxious for an experience, they're just there. If you're on breakfast television, you're talking to the incurious and the in-the-shower. This is a hole or passing by, to put galoshes on a girl, or something. So imagine, I spent quite a few years trying to talk about high-yield bonds on breakfast shows. Hello!

So, what do you do in the HIV situation. There are some classical story telling devices that are available to you, and you use them. And in the piece I'm going to show you, I went for a sort of Red Barber - Mel Allen approach. This is a play-by-play description of a virus. It is a narrative and I would never say this except to an "in crowd," like you are now becoming. This is a narrative of a sportscast. You create a set of pictures, and then essentially, you narrate right on the picture, hoping that the combination of words on picture will keep people very, very attentive.

So in this case, my producer was Nirage Kimlani, we went on the Web to something called "ProfNet" which is the public relations arm of many universities, and we said, basically: "Does anybody have pictures of HIV viruses in action?" And from all over the world, we began to get pictures, for some reason, principally from Belgium … I always like to give kudos to the Belgians; so they came in, all these pictures, and then we decided to make an assembly of them and turn them into the story you're about to see. I got Disney, the parent company, to lend me a computer, where we were able to take all these pictures, which came in different colors and sizes, and just level out the color and render them so they looked like the same action; and we put them in a progression … that is, the real progression, and we created the scenario you're about to see. So, I want you to watch this. I want to tell you, though, in advance, that there is something wrong. Not on the fact here, but something "TV wrong" about what you're about to see. So let's take a look at this first clip.

This is the virus, and it's going to land on the T-cell. However, the thing that you need to see, the thing that's wrong with it, is the way it sounds. So maybe they'll give us a progress report … [Audio technical glitch with video; Tries to get update from crew; No response.]

(Laughs) I see we're just sort of on remote control. Well, let's consider this kind of a wallpaper thing. [Laughter]

What happens in there is I get very excited. When you get a chance to play Red Barber you can get into it in a big way. And if you're not careful about this, as you start narrating the flow of information, you start becoming … I don't know, Orson Welles, or something. I began to get mail saying: "Why did you use this voice?"

Now, it's interesting … as soon as you tip-toe into the adventure of talking in somewhat theatrical terms, you run the risk that people will resent the theater element. The theater element will lure them in; but on the other hand, there is a sound that television people make that is the sound of credibility. And you know the sound. It's [demonstrates deep "reporter voice"] That sound. If people talk like that, that must be true … somehow. If people say [uses "reporter voice", then "high voice"] you think there's something wrong with the nasal guy … not only is he nasal, but he may not be telling me the truth. Or, if it goes [uses "reporter voice"] and then goes to [uses "very deep voice"] then that somewhat overly articulated sound also sounds too good to be true. And that's what I ran into there.

So the mail came in saying: "It's not a police drama; it's a news story." The other classic device for storytelling would be the metaphor which also has its pleasures and dangers. The simplest one is props. I love props. I have a DNA molecule that I have used over, and over, and over again. I don't know how many pieces it's been in. I hold it … it's a large collapsible thing, and it's very multicolored, and you can see the base gene pairs colored brilliant green and yellow, I believe … and you walk into somebody's office you know, very shortly somebody's going to announce that they have sequenced virtually all three billion base pairs that make up the human genome, and they want to patent certain genes, certain segments. So it's a hugely important story. It has ethical, monetary, and scientific issues of profound importance; but I know that most people don't know what a genome is.

And if you want to talk about something like a DNA landlord, someone who owns a piece of the chemistry that's in every one of your cells, it's very hard to talk about; but it's so much easier if you come into the office with the "know-it-all," and hand them a DNA molecule. Then you can say: "Well, let's say this section right here contains, say, the trigger for male pattern baldness, would that be big?" And the guy who probably is bald, will say: "Yeah, that would be big." [Laughter] But you get the audience to focus on the thing that he's holding. And then if I say: "Well, if we fix this step here, and this one, then you wouldn't have to be bald anymore." He goes, "That's right." I said, "Well, if you were the landlord," and you hand him the thing, "like, how much would you charge to work this section of the gene."

See, people at home when the landscape is there, and portable, they can follow the action. But it, too, has its dangers. This was a story about T. Boone Pickens. I decided I would explain, a few years ago, what a leveraged buyout was like. I went on television, and I said: You know, if you were in the ocean, and a little minnow came up to a big whale and said to the whale, "I am going to eat you up" (minnows might make comments like that); but if the whale reacted in horror and seemed to be frightened by the minnow, then you'd have to imagine that the minnow had some means to make itself as large as a whale. That is what leveraged buyouts actually do, I said. And I had ordered from a zoo store, an inflatable beluga whale. So I had, on the table in front of me this flat object, and I was going to pump it with my foot. And the beluga whale was going to grow and grow; and then when the beluga whale achieved whale-like size, I was going to do what leveraged buyouts have to do. I was going to cut it off into pieces and sell them off with a real bowie knife. And the whale would get sick and so forth, which had its own political message underneath.Watching at home was T. Boone Pickens, an actual leveraged buyout guy, and a TV connoisseur.

So I go ahead and I create the whale; the whale goes up, and I cut the whale, I explain the whole thing, and I go upstairs to my office. The phone rings. T. Boone Pickens on the phone. At first I thought it was my friend Phillip Garvin from high school, who does this all the time, but … gradually I decided that it really was T. Boone Pickens, and the blood flowed to my feet and I felt I would never move again. My tongue got dry … And what T. Boone Pickens said, he says, "You know, I don't mind," he said, "that you build this nice little whale and then you get this bowie knife and you chop up the whale," he says, "but the thing is, the whale had a cute smile on its face. So if you're gonna use a metaphor, be careful about the details. Because this made it be cruel; if it didn't have a smile, it could be abstract. But if you're gonna play this game, play it carefully." I thought: Wow! This guy's not dumb for nothing. He's like a real smart guy. But it does just talk about the tensions that are here. And they are everywhere.

I do like props … I was going to show you my cancer prop; this is a show I did on cancer, I wanted people to understand what the nature of cancer is. I knew that a lot of people thought that cancer is cells dividing and dividing and dividing and dividing out of control. And so I went on television, I said: Well, cells are supposed to divide, that's how you get to grow from a baby into adulthood. You grow because your cells are dividing and dividing; that's the reason you grow. So cells are supposed to divide. Let's not be frightened that cells are dividing.

But the other thing that cells know how to do is... our DNA has created what I call the "suicide cops," these are the regulator genes that essentially say to certain cells, "Okay, it's time for you to die." Particularly the bad cells. So in a healthy person, I've got these cops regulating the action. You get cells dividing, dividing, dividing, dividing … and then you also get cells dying, and dying, and dying … especially the mutant cells; so if you do this right, it should all balance out, and the cop is in control.

So I decided to play the cop. Now, this clip that I have is a prop fiesta. I built a very, very large container; and in the container, as Chris had mentioned earlier, I used balloons. Balloons, I think, are very effective things. So I had all these white balloons; the malignant ones were black balloons. Although again, when theater issues come in, it's just difficult. Because people … African Americans wonder why it is that black is always the bad guy. And so you have to just adjust. You have to actually say in the copy that you're choosing black, and say so just to eliminate comments like this.

The balloons are on the floor, and underneath the floor is Max Culhain, my unfortunate intern at that time, who is buried under the balloons; and I said: "Now what I want you to do is when I go in there, I want you to give the balloons some energy, so I want you to kick the balloons. And what I will go in is, as the regulator gene, I will starting stabbing the malignant balloons with a very large ice pick."

What you would have seen … and this is very interesting. I walk in … I can't see where Max is because of all these balloons. The last thing I hear before I begin the cut, he says, "Please … don't stab me." And then I proceed to teach a lesson, there in the large balloon cage, stabbing everyone but Max, happily. And then the idea is set up here, and then it gets debated, and so on.

The idea always, is to make concepts that seem a little remote, and a little hard to get, totally comprehensible to an ordinary person. That means you sometimes have to create the entire field, the whole world that they can see, in order to talk intelligently about it. And it's a nice way to work.

It takes time, in my case this is the key, it takes a willingness to be a little silly. [Cue given by crew: technical problme corrected]

So in this same show … Yeah? Okay, let's go back to the glorious moment, earlier on, where you hear the voiceover see, now it's ruined, but if you listen closely, you'll hear the moment in the virus story, where I get a little carried away. Do you want to run the virus? Well, we could try. The virus one is the first one … [remarks regarding video sequence]

[Virus video clip plays with audio]

So there you use the can't spawn, can't spawn, can't spawn, as your Red Barber moment. Right? I mean, I think I've got a play-by-play going … if I just keep it going, I get a little carried away. But it was the "dead" part, the "into the center of cell," that people thought was a little much. And it's funny, you know? You think you're doing okay, and some people will find some things excessive that other people don't.

Let's go on to the next one. This is Cancer-A, and this is me, Max, the balloons, and the stabbing.

[Cancer cells video clip plays with audio]

All right. You get the general idea. [Applause] Thank you.

The thing you have to be very careful about is "anchor faces." If Barbara Walters was doing this one with me, the thing you have to control for, is if the no, I'll say Peter Jennings. If Peter Jennings comes off this going [makes pose or gesture] … you lose. So you have to make sure that they have their right face on. The face of … ahhhh, now I understand.

This was a little difficult in the next section. In this next section, I decided in order to discuss the various cancer therapies, I needed a focal point; so I decided I would build a huge cancer cell, about four feet across, with parts that I wanted to be able to manipulate.

So I sat down with some guys at Slung, Kettering & Rockefeller. We came up with a design, and then I called a lady who makes pillows for a living for Park Avenue people. I called her up … I only had the weekend, and I said: "I know you make pillows, mostly; but could you make me a very large cancer cell with an intake valve, removable wires, and it has to open like a clam shell." And there was a very long silence on the other end … I said, "Hello?"

We went down to Canal Street and bought this very large plastic thing. She then stitched, and stitched, and stitched, and stitched, and stitched … and now I will show you what came to the office, $1,200 later … Next section.

[Cancer cell video clip]

There is, of course, another way to deal with invisible science stories on television; and you don't need the dramatic effect, and you don't have to use the sportscasting, or the play-by-play, or the voice, or the metaphor, or the props, or even the imaginary landscape; because after all, science is done by scientists. By people. And people are always interested in other people.

So when a person … a real-live person is on the screen … the audience knows what people do; they know what it's like to cry, or laugh, or discover something, or fail or cope. It's not a virus or a cell; but if you have people as your stars, now, like with President Clinton, you have wind at your back. And as a storyteller with people, you can go places that the props and the funny stuff can never reach.

The thing that Chris mentioned before I'm going to show you a little bit of. It's an excerpt from a story I recently did, as he said, on the Harvard Medical School. Now, the purpose here was; there was an education dean up at Harvard named Dan Fetterman, who over a number of years, had pretty much helped to radically change the curriculum at Harvard. It was based on his notion, that as machines got better and better at diagnosing diseases, and at providing steady streams of information to doctors, and at actually helping people get better -- Docs would begin naturally paying more and more attention to the machines, and less and less and less to the people, to the patients.

And Fetterman, noticing this trend, among others, decided that he wanted to build up the "people muscle" in his students. He wanted to make sure that they had the ability to listen, and touch, and take histories … and so he gradually changed the curriculum. No small business, in a very academic institution like that; because he had to get professors not to lecture on the 25 pathways to this or that … and he made the classes smaller, and more intimate, and case studies and this is happening all over the country.

But I wanted to capture this idea. And as Chris mentioned, we happened accidentally, upon a class where a 160 students were invited to look and listen to what really was, literally, a loathsome person; in the sense that she had neurofibromatosis and was covered with tumors. And this is a principle with me: because so much news on television now is based on conflict and on taking a little disagreement and making it bigger; or taking a fear, and making it scarier; or taking anger, or hate, or despair … or any vivid emotion, and making it louder. I always want, whenever possible, to establish some kind of connection between adversaries; not to lighten the difference. I want to leave, I want to embrace … particularly the unembraceable. Or include the excluded; whether they be poor, or outlaws, or different … or sick.

And the woman who walked into this classroom, right before our eyes, was a very good example of this. Her name was Porter Colley, and she had a story that she told. This is a very, very tricky business to do this on television. Because she is covered with these things. And the kids reacted in some shock, when she sat down in front of the room. And I decided, watching this, that that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to take my audience and have them have the same experience … the same connecting experience, that the students were having.

The students had to look at her right away. In the classroom, they were passing around a picture of this woman when she was 23 years old. And she was wonderfully, radiantly beautiful, without a blemish. And I concentrated on that picture being passed from hand-to-hand, and I had my V-cameraman rush two cameras right in, right away and I said: I want … just take pictures of the kids watching.

So for the first portion of this program, you'd hear the story of this woman, and you'd watch the faces reacting, and you'd see occasional glimpses of her when she was young, and ever-so-slight glimpses of her now, from distances. We moved in, and moved in, and moved in.

I want to let you see the beginning of the middle of this, just a bit of it … and then we'll follow up. So let's just take a look at this next section.

This program went on, and it got quite interesting. She decided that at the end of the lecture she was going to remove her top and submit to a physical examination.

We had big cameras in the room. We also had a reputation in the room. Television has a reputation. And the kids who attend Harvard Medical School … for whatever reason, and maybe for good reason … decided that ABC in the Harvard Medical School, watching a woman like this taking her clothes off, could only do ill.

And a very brave student came down the stairs at the end of her lecture and suggested that she not do this; either in front of us, or remove herself to another room. She, who was a preacher for her cause, just as you guys are preachers for cancer, wanted the attention. And the class had to decide whether to let us … the potential perverts in the room … watch this woman do what she did. They debated it. We rolled through the whole thing. The class decided that if Porter Colley wanted to do this even though they weren't so sure it was a good idea, that it was in the case of "Porter Colley rules," so she went and proceeded.

The thing that Chris described, I am now going to show you what happens at the end. So, let's see … this is now, I should tell you, a little bit before.

She explains to the class that these lumps and bumps on her are very, very sensitive. And therefore, she, for example, can't be cleaned. She can't take shower pressure because the pressure of the water on her body is just too painful. Her brother has to clean her with a toothbrush, very gently. She can't be hugged, because people don't know how to give light hugs, she said. So, she's gone a long time without ever really being embraced.

Sometimes the very best reporting and the very best stories, period all they do is say: Look. This is what people can do. This is what we can do. And if I get to do things like this, even once a year, I have a tremendous amount of fun playing around and explaining, and I have a tremendous amount of fun seeing things that startle me.

But every so often you just touch the thing that makes the most difference in the whole world; and then if you can show it to a lot of people, you can lie down and get a really good night's sleep.

I thank you, very, very much.

Richard Klausner, M.D.

That was fantastic. I think this series is now aptly called "The Great Communicator Series." A few years ago I gave a lecture at the Lastra Awards, which was entitled "Who Will Tell Our Stories of Science." And we're very lucky that we have someone to tell our own stories back to us.

We're also lucky of the fact that we checked him before he came in, and we removed the ice pick … and so I feel very comfortable being around him, especially as a cancer doctor.

We do have an actual award here. From Chris's introduction, this is only the world; we'll clearly have to send him a larger glass of the cosmos, but we haven't finished with that full model yet.

But in recognition, it says: "The Extraordinary Communicators Award from the National Cancer Institute, June 16, 2000, to Robert Krulwich."

We will have time for some questions, not of me, but of him and afterward there will be a reception out in the lobby. I also want to thank the people in the NCI who made this possible; and particularly, Barbara Rimer, the head of our Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, whose idea this was, and who has taught us all a lot about communication.

So I think Mr. Krulwich will take questions about the cosmos, about him … about anything, I suspect.

Question: Climate change is a big issue, how can you present this story?

Robert Krulwich: Climate change could be the most boring story ever conceived, in a way. Because it has a problem. It's about a system. It's about a whole piece of machinery, heavily involving the oceans, the transfer of gases from the air down back into the sea, tunnels of water that go as rivers through the oceans … and it's the whole thing together, that seems to be at risk. And one of the great mysteries is: what part is broken, and what part needs fixing, and how the consequences go.
We wanted to create a model that we could actually work with. And interestingly, NOVA suggested that I do a show on that, and they didn't want to do the model version; they wanted it to be beautiful pictures of Iceland melting or something, and I thought that really wouldn't work. There are certain things that your instinct tells you; if you don't get at the whole shape of it, it's just very, very hard to do. If you do it in beautiful pieces, it's sort of public television on a bad day, I think.

The other problem with it, which we ran into at ABC with the movie star and the President and all, is that it is a tentative subject. I mean, you don't think so. But I mean, I think you have to reserve if it is to do that story in the indicative instead of the subjunctive, I think would be a mistake. It comes down an awful lot of times to things like rolling dice. I mean, people think: "Gee, it was hot again. Oo! And it was hot again! Oo! And it was hot again! The world is ending!" It seems to be an ordinary three hot days, and here comes global warming.
I think one of the jobs of reporters is to pull back a little bit from the anecdotal and instinctive reaction to something that just happened to you because this is a story that operates in a huge way, and over long periods of time. Without sort of stepping back and looking at it with some sense about time and the fullness of the system, I think you'd be in trouble. So that's been the problem for me. Although this is a huge subject, no question.

Question: Do you direct your stories to talk to decision makers?

Robert Krulwich: The only time I ever educated the government, was when you were there. No, I don't do that too often. I don't know why. I mean, I don't really want to.

I once talked to a bunch of members of the Cabinet and mucketymucks; that was the one time downtown. But mostly, I'm actually more interested in talking to people who don't think they would get it.

I mean the best gift is, you're on the A train going on to Nevins Avenue in the central part of Brooklyn, and a guy leans over and says, "I saw your biology … " and then they tell you like, six or seven facts, and it's 3 days later. If you're a TV guy, you're on your knees with pleasure. I mean, most TV viewing is at a glance, and, "Yo! Saw you on TV," which makes you into a somebody; but what did you say? They don't know. It's like a suppository. You went on, it was nice, it's over.

And so for a person who does this for a living, if someone can recall the subject -- do you know how many times they -- you're on the 104 bus and they say: "Oh, how are you. I know you from somewhere. Oh, yeah. The TV the other night, you did the, um … you did the, um … oh, god. You did the, um … remind me. What did you do?" I say, "Was it the talking hand?" "No, it wasn't the talking hand." I say, "Was it the balloons in the … ." "No, it wasn't balloons. I just saw you." Well, that's sort of deflating. Not to mix the metaphor.

And so when you have a hit, truthfully, when you have a hit, is when someone remembers something you said. I know it's a little sad and modest, but it's true. And it is, however, the best thing. It is the best thing. As any teacher can tell you. It's the best thing, if it's sticky. And I work as hard as I possibly can to give you something to remember visually, so that you can attach a thought to it. I mean, a lot of this fun and games is just really about that. It's about giving you some hook that would help you remember the words attached. The words in life are slippery and difficult. And the image is really the trick. It's a seduction. The image gets you in, and the image hopefully survives the experience.

So you may not remember what I was doing with the cancer cell, but it had something to do well, so the surgery is the no. Even … but, you know, if I could get one of those four things remembered, I'd be okay. Why was he tearing out the wires? But I remember the part about starving it, where they took the blood out. That's okay. One out of four? That's okay.

Question: You did a series last year, a longer show on ABC. I still remember the string theory.

Robert Krulwich: That was the nuttiest thing I ever tried.

Question: I thought I finally understood string theory. What was the reaction to that series, and will the network support more … ?

Robert Krulwich: The reaction to the series was very strange, I mean, among the audience. A lot of people did not say to me, what you said. They said: So I followed it from A to B to C, but I decided that you really don't understand string theory either. Because I couldn't quite figure out at the end what you really were saying.

And while that sounds like an insult that's fine. It's fine that I could take a subject that no one in their right mind thinks that they can understand, that I could hold them in place and get them through C. And the truth is, I didn't really quite understand it. I went as far as I could go.

So what you want to do, I think in these things, is you have to lower your sights a little bit. I mean, you're not Tennessee Williams or William Shakespeare; and the material you have also has to be true. And the other important that I'm talking about in this lecture is that they have to appear to be true. So if you're playing around in this more theatrical vein, you nevertheless have to keep the credibility going somehow.

The best kind of reviews sometimes, because in that particular case we had kids bouncing balls on things, and there was a lot of weird stuff going on, but a lot of people, if it is done right, don't pay any attention to the gimmicks.

I once did a story about how the Federal Reserve works, in which I had a ballet dancer tied completely around with chains. And I got a furious letter from a member of the Fed; with copies to Larry Tish and the heads of CBS. It never once mentioned the fact that it was a ballet dancer and that it was in chains; he just said he thought the argument was erroneous on these, and these, and these points. And I thought: This is wonderful.

And the fact was, if that was done during the New Hampshire primary, and I had the difficulty in primaries in those days anyway, all the correspondents would go up to New Hampshire, and every room that was being worked on would have an output, and there would be all these TV screens, and you could see what was going on in every bay. So Leslie Stall was working here, and Dan Rather was working here … and so their pictures were all [mimics reporter talk]. And on one of the screens there was this ballet dancer tied up. And everybody would look over in the corner and say, "Oh, man … "

Question: What are you working on now?

Robert Krulwich: For a future program? I'm working on a hip hop series; and I had to totally clear my head to do this. Because last night I was with J.Z., a gentleman who, when he met a guy with a bootlegged tape, stabbed him … and it was not a knife that was invited, unlike any of your knives. The premise of this particular series is that music, and a culture that seems very, very ugly on its face, full of vile language, and all kinds of stereotyping and such, that when you get down under it and start listening and looking through the people who are meeting at the clubs and listening to the artists and just sort of meeting them, you discover that it's something quite different than what it appears.
And that once you get past the rather pathetic 13, 14, and 15 year olds who actually think they're gangsters with attitudes in Scarsdale, or whatever, you then run into a bunch of older people, 19, 20, 21, and 22 year olds, who are really using this music and the style and the culture that's associated with it, to try all kinds of interesting experiments with each other and themselves. Trying on skins, trying on each other's experiences, and just trying them out for size. And there is a sort of very American, and very wonderful set of … sort of a giant national drag ball going on, right below your eyes there. Nightline will, so Ted says, though he has to see it but he promises that he will at least give me the chance for back-to-back-to-back three nights, talking about death jam and so on. It doesn't have anything to do with science, but it has everything to do with your younger brothers and sisters and your children.

Richard Klausner, M.D.: Again, let me thank Chris Bury for joining us, and of course, Robert Krulwich for educating and entertaining us so well. Thank you.