I feel like there's even a simpler thing to note - movie studios, sports franchises, social media companies all have (often massive) marketing departments.
Great essay overall, although as much as I love Tim Duncan I don't know if I can give you that one. JJ Redick and Pat Beverley are two recent examples of athletes who are making good commentators. I think it would be interesting to discuss the dialogue between practitioners and popularizers, for example the recent Ryan Clark and Tua Tagovailoa spat. Mark Cuban also has this phenomenal rant where he dunks on Skip Bayless about how bad his commentary is because it's so reductive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRaO1mN5EEM
As a Maryland guy from before the move to the Big Ten, I have a lot of history to get past with JJ Redick. In the same way that as a Giants fan I had a hard time celebrating Tony Romo. I do grudgingly have to admit that they're both good at what they do, though.
I've really enjoyed the Manning Casts, though I don't get to watch them that often.
There's definitely a lot of tension between people who are only "popularizers" and those who are (ex-)practitioners. The sports version is a perennial talk radio bit, and the parallel in science is the debate between journalists and scientists, which was fodder for quite a few blog posts back in the day, and I'm sure will come around again.
I think you're fundamentally right -- whether "popularizers" is the word, those things all have intermediaries, and the intermediary complex feeds the things themselves. But if they don't have popularizers in the same way it might be because *they are already popular!* Science needs popularizers (the word is beginning to lose all meaning) because it's not already all over our lives in the same way that, say, sports are.
Also, yeay for rejecting presentism in sports fandom. (Jordan never got out of the East when Bird was healthy ...)
I can't find it online, but the first Doonesbury collection (_The Doonesbury Chronicles_) has an introduction by Gary Wills, in which he describes the characters as acting like "sportscasters manque" because of the way they narrate their own behavior as they act.
I think that speaks to the long history of popularizers that you describe.
I don't know whether the movie, sport and social media popularizers are any good, mostly because I have very limited interest in their topic.
But I'm notably unimpressed with the quality, cluefulness, and comprehension of professional popularizers of science, and for that matter other academic fields. I expect any book by a "science journalist" to either misunderstand their topic badly enough that a random well-educated engineer can point out their errors, or concentrate on the personalities involved rather than the actual science. Every once in while I'm pleasantly surprised, but I still commonly check the author's profession as part of deciding what to read or not read.
I totally get it that the ability to explain to non-specialists is not the same as the ability to do useful research. (And we see the same thing in engineering - quite a few engineers lack that skill; some can't even explain things to people in related specialties.)
Books by people who got a relevant doctorate (not in journalism) and then abandoned the tenure track usually show rather more cluefulness. But I treasure books by people who actually work (or worked) in or near the fields they write about, but are able and willing to explain it to non-specialists. (That *might* just be how I came to subscribe to this blog ;-))
While I mostly agree with you, there are a growing number of exceptions. The mathematics content in Quanta Magazine is nearly always outstanding. Natalie Wolchover, in particular, is really good. I believe she has an undergraduate degree in physics, but doesn’t have a graduate science degree to the best of my knowledge.
I feel like there's even a simpler thing to note - movie studios, sports franchises, social media companies all have (often massive) marketing departments.
Great essay overall, although as much as I love Tim Duncan I don't know if I can give you that one. JJ Redick and Pat Beverley are two recent examples of athletes who are making good commentators. I think it would be interesting to discuss the dialogue between practitioners and popularizers, for example the recent Ryan Clark and Tua Tagovailoa spat. Mark Cuban also has this phenomenal rant where he dunks on Skip Bayless about how bad his commentary is because it's so reductive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRaO1mN5EEM
As a Maryland guy from before the move to the Big Ten, I have a lot of history to get past with JJ Redick. In the same way that as a Giants fan I had a hard time celebrating Tony Romo. I do grudgingly have to admit that they're both good at what they do, though.
I've really enjoyed the Manning Casts, though I don't get to watch them that often.
There's definitely a lot of tension between people who are only "popularizers" and those who are (ex-)practitioners. The sports version is a perennial talk radio bit, and the parallel in science is the debate between journalists and scientists, which was fodder for quite a few blog posts back in the day, and I'm sure will come around again.
I think you're fundamentally right -- whether "popularizers" is the word, those things all have intermediaries, and the intermediary complex feeds the things themselves. But if they don't have popularizers in the same way it might be because *they are already popular!* Science needs popularizers (the word is beginning to lose all meaning) because it's not already all over our lives in the same way that, say, sports are.
Also, yeay for rejecting presentism in sports fandom. (Jordan never got out of the East when Bird was healthy ...)
I can't find it online, but the first Doonesbury collection (_The Doonesbury Chronicles_) has an introduction by Gary Wills, in which he describes the characters as acting like "sportscasters manque" because of the way they narrate their own behavior as they act.
I think that speaks to the long history of popularizers that you describe.
I don't know whether the movie, sport and social media popularizers are any good, mostly because I have very limited interest in their topic.
But I'm notably unimpressed with the quality, cluefulness, and comprehension of professional popularizers of science, and for that matter other academic fields. I expect any book by a "science journalist" to either misunderstand their topic badly enough that a random well-educated engineer can point out their errors, or concentrate on the personalities involved rather than the actual science. Every once in while I'm pleasantly surprised, but I still commonly check the author's profession as part of deciding what to read or not read.
I totally get it that the ability to explain to non-specialists is not the same as the ability to do useful research. (And we see the same thing in engineering - quite a few engineers lack that skill; some can't even explain things to people in related specialties.)
Books by people who got a relevant doctorate (not in journalism) and then abandoned the tenure track usually show rather more cluefulness. But I treasure books by people who actually work (or worked) in or near the fields they write about, but are able and willing to explain it to non-specialists. (That *might* just be how I came to subscribe to this blog ;-))
While I mostly agree with you, there are a growing number of exceptions. The mathematics content in Quanta Magazine is nearly always outstanding. Natalie Wolchover, in particular, is really good. I believe she has an undergraduate degree in physics, but doesn’t have a graduate science degree to the best of my knowledge.
I'll keep an eye out for her work. Thank you.