It often seems, at least to me, that our cul­ture is slow­ly slid­ing back­ward when it comes to sci­ence edu­ca­tion. As a human­i­ties per­son, my obser­va­tions may not count for much, but I do find myself get­ting nos­tal­gic for pop­u­lar sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tors like Carl Sagan and Richard Feyn­man; peo­ple who could appear in America’s liv­ing room and enthrall even the most hard­ened and recal­ci­trant of minds. Sagan’s influ­ence peaked at the dawn of the cul­ture wars, and it doesn’t seem like any­one could fill his shoes.

But sev­er­al influ­en­tial sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tors have made sig­nif­i­cant strides in bring­ing sci­ence to a pop­u­lar audi­ence in the past few decades. Among them is the very affa­ble astro­physi­cist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who takes Sagan’s man­tle in the Cos­mos reboot on Fox next year. There are media fig­ures like NPR’s Ira Fla­tow, Bill Nye the Sci­ence Guy, sci-fi author Neal Stephen­son, and Emmy-award-win­ning Tra­cy Day, co-founder of the World Sci­ence Fes­ti­val. Physi­cist and pop­u­lar sci­ence writer Bri­an Greene has done excel­lent work for NOVA, and sci­en­tif­ic heavy­weights Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins reach mil­lions with pop­u­lar books and media appear­ances.

Now imag­ine all these peo­ple on the same stage togeth­er, trad­ing sto­ries, jam­ming, riff­ing like great jazz musi­cians, like some Jus­tice League of 21st cen­tu­ry sci­ence lovers. Well, you don’t have to, because this hap­pened, not on prime­time tele­vi­sion (alas), but at Ari­zona State Uni­ver­si­ty under the aegis of their “Ori­gins Project,” whose mis­sion is to fos­ter inter­dis­ci­pli­nary research, build sci­en­tif­ic part­ner­ships, and “raise the pro­file of ori­gins-relat­ed issues and broad­en sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­cy.” Ori­gins Project direc­tor Lawrence Krauss MC’ed the March 30th event, and the pan­el filled a 3,000-seat audi­to­ri­um for a two-hour ses­sion that focus­es on “the sto­ry­telling of sci­ence” (part one at top, part two above).

The event har­ness­es the slick, enter­tain­ing for­mat of TED Talks to demon­strate how cut­ting-edge research can reach a wide audi­ence eager for a fuller under­stand­ing of the phys­i­cal uni­verse. The first video up top opens with a quote from Michael Sher­mer: “Humans are pat­tern-seek­ing sto­ry-telling ani­mals, and we are quite adept at telling sto­ries about pat­terns, whether they exist or not.” The sto­ries that the mem­bers of this excit­ing pan­el dis­cus­sion tell are con­nect­ed to phys­i­cal real­i­ty through sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence that—without art­ful and com­pelling narrative—can seem bewil­der­ing­ly com­plex.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Unveils a Daz­zling Pre­view of the New Cos­mos

Richard Dawkins Makes the Case for Evo­lu­tion in the 1987 Doc­u­men­tary, The Blind Watch­mak­er

The Unbe­liev­ers, A New Film Star­ring Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Wern­er Her­zog, Woody Allen, & Cor­mac McCarthy

Bill Nye, The Sci­ence Guy, Says Cre­ation­ism is Bad for Kids and America’s Future

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness