Hollywood Meets Harvard:
Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey
For those who haven’t had the chance to watch Cosmos, it is a tour de force through the scientific history of the world.
In 13 episodes airing on Fox this year, Cosmos explores a wide array of scientific topics including the Big Bang, the evolution of life on Earth, the discoveries of gravity, electro-magnetism, light properties, nuclear forces, and much more. In addition, the show told the stories behind each great discovery from the collaboration of Isaac Newton and Edmond Halley to the curious and imaginative mind of a 26-year old patent clerk, Albert Einstein.
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson partnered with Seth MacFarlane (of Family Guy fame) and Ann Druyan (widow of the late Carl Sagan, who created the original Cosmos series in the 1980s) to bring science education to life.
I learned more about the story of physics in 13 hours than in all of high school.
Much more importantly, I was inspired to read up on the science and the people behind them.
Cosmos brought me to a fundamental question. How can we use the power of media to not only educate at scale, but to inspire students at scale?
Why?
Humans are creatures of “Why?” In fact, the question “Why?” is the favorite question of every child. It would make sense then that our education should be fundamentally based on answering that question.
But that’s not what we do currently. Science education in particular is a series of drill-and-kill exercises to memorize formulas that make no intrinsic sense.
Media can inspire on a scale that formulas in a textbook cannot. In fact it is designed to do so. This is an idea that we call:
Hollywood Meets Harvard
Faraday
∇ X E = -dB/dt
What does the equation above mean to you? Unless you have a photographic memory or do professional work that directly relies on electromagnetism, it means nothing. You can’t remember where or when you learned it, and how it affects your life. It’s actually the Maxwell-Faraday equation that governs how electric and magnetic fields work together.
Contrast this with Cosmos. In episode 10, Tyson tells the story of Michael Faraday. Faraday was a child of poverty. He showed little promise at school but took on apprenticeships to learn. After hearing a lecture from eminent chemist Humphry Davy, Faraday applied to be an assistant to Davy. Eventually, he got his chance to work in Davy’s lab and through tinkering and iterations, developed devices that produced “electromagnetic rotation” that formed the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology—satellites, television, video, the Internet, etc.
Faraday was the father of electromagnetism. He solved the questions that had stumped Newton and years later, Einstein kept a picture of Faraday on his study wall.
Wow.
My interest in electromagnetism has never been higher. I re-watched the Faraday episode as part of writing this essay and I got goosebumps—again. A boy born in the slums of London rose to become one of the greatest scientists in history and whose work is the reason why I can write this and you can read this. His impact on our world cannot be understated.
I don’t think I have ever had goosebumps of inspiration or for that matter any real emotions in the classroom. Media can tell stories that weave the bigger picture for learners to understand not just concepts, but their importance to the world.
Millions
The original airing of Cosmos on TV received over 50 million views and countless more people have since watched it online (I did). There are 55 million K-12 students in the United States so about as many people learned physics and science in 13 episodes through Cosmos than all K-12 students will this year. That’s a generous assumption since science is really only a middle and high school endeavor.
While it’s necessary to learn the nitty-gritty details, Cosmos should complement education in the classroom. In fact, I think its required watching before any student takes a serious science class so that they can know “Why” they are learning “What” they are learning.
In addition to the educational impact, companies like Netflix and Audible (part of Amazon) have demonstrated the economic models for subscription and content companies. The idea of Hollywood meets Harvard has the potential to create the next generation of high growth companies.
“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”
—Albert Einstein
We were all born to be curious and imaginative. Media applied to education can teach all of us “Why” rather than just “What” and “How”. New media models in education will not only teach and inspire at massive scale, but also create the next generation of valuable companies.
Let’s all get back on the Ship of The Imagination that we were born on.
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