If scientists could communicate more in their own voices - in a familiar tone, with a less specialized vocabulary - would a wide range of people understand them better? Would their work be better understood by the general public, policy-makers, funders, and, even in some cases, other scientists?
I think it's important for scientists to speak in their own voices and not just be mediated by journalists or others speaking for them.
America's Founders were committed to a wide-open public forum in which all voices and perspectives could have a chance of being heard.
It's writing songs within the structure of telling a story, so it becomes a platform for diverse songwriting, for a writing process that's broader than just figuring out a song. You're also dealing with always pushing the story forward, with casting the voices, with the orchestration, with the arrangements.
Guided By Voices was huge when I was 16. Then I got into the Beatles, then classical music, Beethoven.
I was kind of the comic relief in my household. We had a chronic illness in the family. And so, a lot of emergency room visits, and my role was to be silly and add levity, and we're Jewish. So every Passover is a performance. You kind of learn to role play and do voices at the Passover Seder.
From the late David Broder on down, the most powerful and influential of the great Washington columnists and journalists tend to cultivate the driest, least lively voices possible.
If you're trying to learn how to collect art, the key is getting access to insider opinions, and we pride ourselves on working with the most relevant artists and the collectors with the most authoritative voices.
In 'Finding Nemo,' all of the voices were recorded separate - so I would be in a sound booth in a studio by myself reading the lines with just the director. Basically, you can just come in, and it doesn't matter what you are wearing or what you look like; it is all about how your voice sounds.
I tend to focus on young people and on giving a voice to groups of people who don't normally get their voices heard.
