Becoming The EleMentor: a Journey in Science through Showmanship

"Without promotion, something terrible happens... nothing!"  – P.T. Barnum

Science explores the wonders of existence. As scientists, we’d think science should be self-promoting by its very nature. Unfortunately, that is not true. So what can we do to promote science? We can take our cue from P.T. Barnum, the greatest showman on earth. We can assemble the wonders of the ages for our audiences’ edification, education, and enjoyment – for a price. That price is their attention and time spent with us. We constantly compete with distractors from few-minute videos on social media to big budget TV science show productions to gain and maintain their attention. These very distractions inspired the birth of my alter ego The EleMentor – a being merged from science and showmanship. I will describe the ongoing evolution of The EleMentor in this presentation.