From Scientists to Storymakers

When it comes to environmental issues, Americans have an action gap.

Numerous social studies have found that people in the U.S – regardless of background or political orientation – care about environmental issues such as biodiversity loss, climate change, and pollution. But those studies also show that the same people quickly deprioritize environmental concerns when asked to compare them to other important issues, such as the economy. 

Joe Árvai, director of the USC Wrigley Institute for Environment and Sustainability and a professor of psychology, has studied this challenge for years. He and his team routinely find that, even when people are concerned about the environment, they often don’t know much about environmental systems or the actions needed to protect them. Worst of all, study subjects tend to rank eco-friendly behavior change very low on their priority lists.

When Árvai joined the Wrigley Institute as its first social-scientist director in 2020, he was determined to do something about this disconnect.

“I’ve met so many incredible and engaging scientists generating knowledge and solutions that could change the world. I’m talking about experts in arctic ecology, energy transitions, deep oceans, cosmic dust. They have such amazing stories to tell, but their audiences only seem to include people who know them personally, or who see their academic talks or read their papers,” Árvai says. “I wanted to create opportunities for superstars like these to break out and reach a broader public through popular storytelling.”

And so the Wrigley Institute launched its Storymakers program, with the first session held in 2022. Designed and co-led by communications consultants and lead instructors Liz Neeley and Victoria Fine, the program accepts up to 12 fellows per year for a one-week intensive at the Wrigley Institute’s satellite campus on Catalina Island. Fellows are typically mid-career researchers at leading universities, government labs, state academies of science, and similar institutions in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.

“So many scientists right now feel desperate to do something more to protect the ecosystems they’ve devoted their lives to. This program is a precious opportunity for researchers to reconnect with their creativity and purpose,” Neeley says.

Making Things Personal

Storymakers focuses on narrative: how to translate findings from the fellows’ research into environmental storytelling created by the researchers themselves. The Wrigley Institute encourages them to come to the program knowing what story they want to tell, but with an open mind about how they will tell it. Fellows receive intensive mentoring from program instructors, who teach workshops on narrative theory, defining and reaching audiences, writing for non-academic audiences, podcasting and audio production, and immersive and interactive experiences (such as museum exhibits or artistic performances). Featured instructors in 2025 included:

• Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist Ed Yong, whose New York Times-bestselling books include An Immense World and I Contain Multitudes
• Award-winning podcaster and audio producer John Asante, whose portfolio includes projects for NPR, Audible, and Pushkin Industries 
• Award-winning experience designer, creativity consultant, and writer Catherine Connors, who has also worked as head of content for Disney Interactive

Overall, the program seeks to broaden fellows’ sense of possibility regarding avenues for reaching general audiences, and to equip them with the skills and supportive network to complete an environmental storytelling project based on their own research.

For many fellows, a major challenge is getting past the rules of academic research and writing. In academia, scientists are trained to make their work objective, minimize narrative, eliminate bias, and “just focus on the data.” Storymakers teaches them how to make their work personal, evocative, and engaging, without sacrificing accuracy.

Fellow William Deverell (2022) caught the storytelling bug after launching his first podcast, a Wrigley Institute-supported production focused on wildfire. He joined Storymakers to develop ideas for new audio stories focused on the environmental history of the American West.

“Many of us started at ground zero. But by the end of the week, we’d launched into new and effective ways to communicate not only what we have discovered but what drives us both as scholars and as people,” Deverell says.

Emerging Impacts

Many Storymakers alums go on to write books for general audiences, and several are now under contract with major trade publishers. The first volume to come out of the program – Feminism in the Wild, by 2022 fellow Ambika Kamath – was published in 2025. Inspired by Kamath’s background as an evolutionary biologist, the book looks at human biases and how they shape our understanding of animal behavior.

“I really value everything I learned and the connections I made at Storymakers,” Kamath says. “Informal interactions with the group long after the workshop were a crucial part of the book-writing process for me. It was great to have a group of people I could bounce ideas off of and share successes with.”

Like Deverell, many participants also want to pursue audio formats for environmental storytelling. Fellow Scott Taylor (2025) set a record by launching his podcast and accompanying website Okay, but…Birds just six months after attending Storymakers. NPR recently featured the project, which is already one of the top 75 science podcasts worldwide.

Other fellows have created limited-run audio series. Simon Donner (2022), who studies climate and coral reef ecology, published the 10-episode Pacific Voices in 2023. With a focus on first-person stories, the series highlights how climate change is affecting the lives of people who live on small islands.

Finally, a number of fellows are opting for experience-based projects. Rosie Alegado (2023), for instance, is contributing to a three-movement symphony about ecosystems in her native Hawai’i. The first movement, inspired by Hawai’i’s oceans, is complete, and the work as a whole is designed to be playable by school and community orchestras.

Heather Leslie’s 2023 Storymakers experience has sparked a wide-ranging creative journey as she seeks to engage communities in Maine, where she lives and works, on the issue of coastal resilience.

“I came to Storymakers with a clear vision of who I was and what I could offer the world: an academic book about my research area. I left with a very different project, a community theatre performance. These last two years, I’ve embraced the uncertainty of this new path and my identity as a writer and creative person more than ever before,” Leslie says.

In addition to winning a grant for her theatre project, which is under development, Leslie has been attending writers’ workshops and building coalitions with local environmental groups. In July 2025, she helped lead a storytelling canoe trip up the Medomak River.

As the Storymakers program begins its fifth year, organizers are excited to break the 50-fellow mark and increase the number of story-minded researchers interacting with the world.

“Working conditions for scientists are more challenging than they’ve ever been. Between endless obligations, uncertain funding, and a high-intensity news cycle, many of them feel depleted,” says program co-designer Victoria Fine. “By coming to Catalina, connecting with each other, and exploring new modes of expression, they get a chance to unlock new insight and a vastly expanded sense of what’s possible.”