Dear storytellers,
We’re back from the summer break, and buzzing to share more stories that help us imagine better ways of living and creating together.
In search of such stories, some of our team hit the road in Iași and Timișoara, meeting local change-makers and preparing for our local October editions. (Have you seen what they’ve been up to on Instagram?)
We’re looking at what storytelling makes possible: what helps a good story take root, who it reaches, how it can drive change, and what that change can look like over time. We’ll be exploring this alongside community members, speakers old and new, plus recommendations from our team.
We start with a conversation with Mădălina Cocea, a Iași-based science communicator who has spent the past 20 years helping scientists translate complex findings into compelling stories. She also curates the weekly newsletter Romanian Science Digest.
“Science is built on errors. Yet we tell almost none of those stories”
Why does communicating about science to non-scientists feel necessary right now?
I was once hanging out with a funny, educated, well-paid corporate employee who pulled me aside to warn me about detergent. “It has calcium carbon trioxide in it,” she said gravely. “God knows what that can do to us.” That was calcium carbonate or, as we call it, limestone. It’s one of the most common compounds on Earth. I blurted that out, and our conversation ended shortly after in rather cold terms.
What stayed with me is how I wouldn’t have expected this person to be a member of the “detergent conspiracy” group. So it was not about being smart, but rather convinced. Pseudoscience tells better stories than science does. It’s personal, urgent, emotional. The only fix I can think of is for science to learn how to do the same and better.
What surprised you about what actually helps people understand complex science?Nothing about this actually surprised me, as it’s been documented dozens of times. Storytelling. But knowing something and practicing it are two very different things. I’m a naturally logical person. Left to my own instincts, I’ll list science facts in order of importance and call it communication.
However, my readers eventually corrected me. They wrote asking about the people behind the research: how they got there, how they failed, what kept them going. So now, when I have something important to say, I try to carry the story alongside the data.
What other forms of storytelling would you like to experiment with and why?TikTok. I dread it, I’ll admit it, but I also can’t stop thinking about it. There’s something remarkable about a platform that can be toxic, funny, educational, and emotional, all within the same ten minutes of scrolling. The potential for science storytelling there is real, and largely untapped for Romanian science. My problem is that it takes me too far away from my comfort zone, so I am actively looking for some partners.
What’s a science story that feels under-told these days?
This is an easy one: failure. Science is built on errors and wrong turns. And yet we tell almost none of those stories. What normally reaches the public is a very sanitised story arc: problem, breakthrough, hero.
My friend Ada Roseti and I got tired of this, so we started something called the Super-Errors Conference. This is a casual and unofficial space at scientific events where researchers share spectacular failures and near-quitting moments. We’ve done it twice during a very large conference in Romania called Smart Diaspora, in Timișoara and Cluj, so now we just go ahead and call it a tradition.
What is one tool, habit or piece of advice you keep returning to in your work?
I am a pretty technical person, so my brain has a reflex question whenever I do something twice: can this be automated? Now I’ve added a second question: does this need a human decision or an AI decision? If it’s the latter, I delegate happily.
When I combine the two (automated actions and AI judgement), I can create entire systems which employ various AI specialized agents that delegate tasks to each other, work together on text, graphics, social media videos and only require my final approval. I know that most people think that AI is a very witty discussion with ChatGPT, but for me the actual magic comes from using it on autopilot, in chains of agents and actions, with minimal or no supervision from me. It has cleared a lot of the clutter in my work and brain!
Postcard from Gura Pravăț, Argeș
This spring in Bucharest, to drive home the message that hope is action, we designed a needs-and-offers wall together with our partners at PPC. We were floored by how quickly the wall filled up, and in the weeks that followed we began to see what came of the exchanges.
One of them led to something special in the village of Gura Pravăț, Argeș, where community organizer Adela Alexandru and her colleagues at the women’s rights organization Centrul FILIA help women fight for their rights and those of their community. We shared a short version of their story here. Now, Adela takes us through what happened next:
When I filled out the needs card, I was hoping to find people who could help us organize workshops for children as part of a Cultural Week. Doru, a fellow PoS participant and program lead of Leaders for Justice, read my card and reached out. From one person to the next, we ended up assembling more than 30 workshops, along with the local school and town hall.
More than 100 children came to school every day during their summer holiday to take part in woodworking, dance, theater, collage-making and other activities. With the lead singer of Eyedrops, they even wrote their own song. We organized hot meals with women from the village, and the whole community came together to watch a performance created by the children. Here’s to the Cultural Week becoming a tradition in Gura Pravăț!
If you also contributed to the needs-and-offers wall, and something came of the match, we’d love to hear the story!
Our team’s (science) storytelling picks
📚 Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green is more than a medical and social history of one of humanity’s most prolific killers. It’s also about the public narrative of a treatable disease, and what we might do to break out the “economic efficiency” framing of its cure, so we don’t let hundreds of thousands of people die. (Cristian Lupșa, conference host)
📚 The Story of a Heart tells the story of how a heart transplant changed the law in Britain in 2020. The writer and palliative doctor Rachel Clarke manages to create a suspenseful and beautifully crafted narrative that intertwines Max’s one-year long story (the recipient) with the four-day long story of Keira (the donor) and the 60-year long history of human transplants. You can read the book in Romanian too. (Sorana Stănescu, stage manager for PoS and writer of the healthcare newsletter Foaia de observație)
🔊 This conversation between Ezra Klein and Yuval Noah Harari touches on many modern ills, from Trump, to the genocide in Gaza, to AI, often through the lens of narratives and how we might change them. Here’s Harari: “The mind can hold on to stories with extreme force and violence but then let them go. Because ultimately, again, it’s a story. It’s not the laws of physics. It’s not a law of biology. It’s just a product of the human mind itself.” (Cristian Lupșa, conference host)
📚 Bad Habit by Alana S Portero is a touching novel about a transgender woman growing up in a Spanish working-class neighbourhood after Franco’s dictatorship. It’s a story about resisting the narratives imposed on our bodies and identities, but also about the high cost of refusing to conform to the expectations built around them. (Alina Cristea, speaker host and yours truly)
📚 Mother Mary Comes To Me by Arundhati Roy is a memoir portraying the complex dynamics of maternal and systemic struggles, and the way they shape the writer Roy becomes. Mary Roy was a dedicated educator and school founder, best known for securing women’s inheritance rights in India; but she was also a cruel, abusive mother, the author’s “shelter and storm”. Instead of forcing a single truth, Roy’s storytelling holds these contradictions together. (Denisa Răduță, participants’ coordinator)
One more thing before you go
Our friends at the regional chapter of Women in Marketing (WiM) are running awards with 15 categories, including copywriting, creativity and impact. You can submit your work by August 10.
There might also be a familiar PoS face on October 2, which will be Talks Day!
Until next time,
Alina and The Power of Storytelling team
I relate to this so much. As a brand strategist at a large tech company, a large part of my job involves translating complex research into easily understandable formats (blog posts, social media posts, etc). Some of this research is genuinely incredible/boundary pushing, but I’ve come to realize that no one cares about it if they can’t understand it. Finding ways to simply explain the impact of something is like a puzzle, but I love the challenge!
"Science is built on errors. Yet we tell almost none of those stories." Yes, true, cause they go through series of tests and experiments, yet we see only the results. The best outcome of it. 👏✨️