"The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms."
--Muriel Rukeyser (American poet/journalist 1913-1980)

  A previous KITP journalist-in-residence advised me before I arrived: "Don't use the word story or narrative in the title of your talks. Scientists really don't like it." She was only half joking. After all, we're writers. Telling stories is what we do.

  In this the second of four linked seminars, I'll explore our varied, and at times very different, attitudes towards stories. I'll make the case that the only real choice we have as scientists and journalists/writers, in both doing and popularizing science, is whether we understand and use the power of story -- or are used by it.