From a Caltech postdoc mailing list:
I am working on two science show teasers for Discovery and we are looking for a couple of articulate, passionate scientists who would be interested in appearing in reality television. The first show is called “Get Out of There” in which we recreate survival situations that actually occured and two scientists have to figure out how to get out/survive. The second show is called “Brain vs. Brawn” in which two contestants are both given the same challenge and one is coached on how to accomplish it by a scientist and the other by a non-scientist. The challenge we will be shooting for the pilot/teaser will be fire-walking, so ideally we will have scientist who can explain the physics behind it and the other will be a new agey-type who will focus on a more mind over matter approach. If you can recommend anyone, please contact: *******
(if you really want to know who to contact, please email me.)
Cool. Have you seen the show “Boarding House”? It’s a reality show based around a bunch of surfers living in a house during Hawaii’s big wave season. Could you imagine a scientists version? Maybe they could follow a group of physicists around on conference/seminar circuit across North America or Europe. There could be lots of scenes in airports rushing to get planes. Or maybe there could be lots of those scenes with people waking up in the morning with a killer hangover trying to work out what city they are in….
I’m not really convinced that either of them is going to do a lot for promoting science, let alone trying to take down the scientist stereotype. That said, it might be interesting – can you really expect scientists to be better at “survival situations”? And would the advice given by the scientist vs the “new age” type for fire walking actually be quantitatively different? i.e., although the reasoning will (presumably!) be very different, would they give the same advice? (“Walk at a moderate pace, put your whole foot flat down, don’t stop, stay balanced”, etc)