So communicating about science/the truth in Ag is my destiny.

And it could be yours too. Not because it needs doing (which it does) or because we'll destroy the planet without it (which we will), but because we are uniquely suited by our nature to do it.

Lemme show you. THREAD

1/ You know the story about the organ thieves?

Yeah, you know it. Guy goes to a bar in a strange city, goes to a hotel with a lady. Wakes up in a tub of ice with a note that says 'call 911, your kidney has been removed.'

It's a really, REALLY sticky story.

2/ So sticky that Dan & Chip Heath wrote a book where they dissect why we all know that story even though it's totally and completely made up.

Their insight? It's because it's; surprising, simple, concrete, memorable, emotional, and credible.

3/ Definitely read the book "Made to Stick" for more, but what we care about here is the fact that it *is* sticky. That no matter where you heard it, from whom, how long ago, it put a little hook in your brain, and it stayed there.

So communication in ag...

4/ The story of small family farming is sticky. Just reading the three word conjures "the whole story" for you. Images, sites, smells, characters, emotions. Connected to so much other mental infrastructure we have about patriotism, nature, independence, etc...

5/ It's not even that we necessarily "want" to believe it. We just do. Like the Organ Thieves. We don't really know much about it, but what we do know has got hooks in us, and there's *not* a lot of competing stories trying to push your knowledge of them off the shelf...

6/ (Just like, until this thread, there was no knowledge trying to push your Organ Thieves story off the shelf.)

But why does it matter if we believe the Organ Thieves story anyway? It's not hurting anyone, right? WRONG. https://www.liveabout.com/kidney-thieves-3299488

7/ Even *seemingly* harmless urban legends have lateral consequences (and we live in a moment where un-truths have terrible and tremendous consequences).

It leads to better outcomes for all of us if we *stop believing in it.*

Okay, so now you know about Organ thieves...

8/ ...but science is harder. Why? Because science's role in our lives has been to (steadily over the course of centuries), strip away our sense of centrality and importance and put us in our rightful place. Carl Sagan's "We come from muck and live in the cosmic boondocks."

9/ You've gotta head straight over to @SarahTaber_bww to learn about terror management, but at it's foundational level, science, by it's very existence, forces us to confront the existentially dreadful fact that we are not important beings to the universe...

10/ ...and yeah, a lot of folks don't take to that too kindly, no matter how compelling your charts or equations are.

So, when we ask people to unhook their embedded stories through appeals to science, it's worth noting that you're asking them to bear a real cost, humility.

11/ When you ask someone to pay, you've got to offer them something in return, right? What does science/the truth have to offer compared to the adrenaline rush of a great true crime story with a devilish twist like the Organ Thieves, which doesn't upset a molecule...

12/ ... of their world view?

Awe. It's really the only thing. Gaps in your knowing are uncomfortable, but when you realize they're there, you can become curious and fill them, and doing that triggers its own endorphin hit, an emotion called awe.

13/ Okay, so we know the trade we have to make. We have to offer awe, in addition to a simple, concrete, memorable, emotional, credible story, because that's the kind of story that *is* sticky. (And no matter how true something is, without the stick, it's forgotten.)

14/ So. The Problem With Ag.

The thing about knowledge around farming is a lot of people don't think they have many gaps. Everyone has lived experiences; eating, being in nature, learning about plants, etc. There's a lot of stories with a lot of hooks crowding the ag brain

15/ maybe people don't feel like experts, but most people don't think ag = astrophysics in terms of complexity and unknowns (and so potential for awe)

But the thing is tho, it is. Because we know just about as much about complexity/emergence in nature on earth as we do in space

16/ .... Not nearly enough.

Just because humans have been feeding themselves for millennia doesn't mean we've figured it out! Our ancestors have * famously* effed it up *many* times. Procuring food and fiber from nature is a difficult, complex, ever-changing challenge...

17/ and "knowing where your food comes from" completely misses the point of how big a problem we're trying to grapple with simply by putting seeds in the ground.

Food is it y'all. Growing it, eating it, that's kind of the whole thing we're doing here (so much room for awe)...

18/ ...but how is communicating science/telling the truth our destiny? The whole point of science is it says 'no destiny.' Checkmate.

But wait. I want to tell you a story that @neiltyson told about the domestication of dogs.... (we'll get there I swear)

19/ For thousands and thousands of years, wolves were our ancestors enemies. They hunted us, to the extent that our fear of them is nearly biological.

So what did we do about it? We could have killed them all. Our ancestors hunted many animals to extinction...

20/ ...it wasn't out of the question.

But we didn't. We did something I once heard described as, "instead of killing our enemy, we killed the enemy within them."

Instead of using violence and force, we used our brains, and we turned an enemy into, arguably, our greatest ally.

21/ If science could offer us a destiny, a thing we were meant to do by virtue of who we are and what our natural strengths are, that seems to me like what it is. The ability to use our brains to collaborate rather than violate. To turn enemies into allies.

22/ So why communicate about science/truth in ag? Not because the enemies of science and the truth are not formidable. They are. They have their own motivations, intelligence, rationals, and strengths.

But false narratives, be they organ thieves or small family farms, do harm

23/ ...harm we can't abide.

So I'll be out here with the folx who have been doing this way longer and better than me (have I mentioned @sylvanaquafarms yet?), sharing stories that have helped me pry deep hooks out of my brain, and the awe-inspiring alternatives I've found...

24/ Because it's our destiny. It's the best of our inheritance, what the ancestors we should be proudest of did when they came up against a formidable foe.

So welcome if you're new, the fun has only just begun