Dr. Christopher Cummings on the high stakes (and universal value) of risk communication

177 Chris Cummings
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Mikey Mioduski: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Presentation Thinking AKA, the Storyteller Study Club. This is Mikey Meki, your co-host, a founder of Ghost Ranch Communications, a presentation design agency, and I'm joined by my co-host, your favorite, Molly Gagan, somewhere on the West edge of America. Molly, welcome back to the show. 

Molly Geoghegan: Yeah, Mikey, we haven't connected on the show as co-host for a little bit, and I am really excited that we're connecting on this particular episode.

Because Presentation Nation, if you've been listening for I think maybe six, seven episodes back, we did a little Ted Talk and episode on a [00:01:00] very fun, um, individual who is very skilled at communication and communicating risk. Uh, this TED Talk was, oh yeah, episode 1 67, Mikey, the Dark Magic of Communication.

How we manipulate others. Christopher Cummings is a social research scientist. And this has been, I think, maybe our third or fourth connection where we do a Ted talking episode. And Chris, welcome to the podcast and then we get you here. 

Chris Cummings: It's great to be here. Yeah. I enjoyed the listen. I, uh, appreciated that after you made that podcast, you reached out to me personally and uh, it's been great to connect with you all and happy to be here to talk today.

Molly Geoghegan: That's so rad. Now, I know I said one title of many, so please give us a little, like, what's, what is it that you, do you wear many hats? Give us a few of, uh, a few of your titles here, Chris. 

Chris Cummings: Sure. So, uh, for the past two years I have served as a research social scientist with the United States Army [00:02:00] Corps Engineers for their engineering, research and development center.

Uh, so I am a social scientist by training, which means that I do quantitative and qualitative inquiry to understand. All of the human factors that go on with decision making, with risk. Uh, and I formerly was an assistant professor at Na Yang Technological University in Singapore, where I, my official title was Assistant Professor of Strategic Risk and Health Communication.

Uh, it was then that you actually, uh, I, I recorded that TED Talk, uh, back, I think. Yes. Right? Yes. In 17, 20 18. So, uh, since then I transitioned back to the United States. Uh, my wife and I started a family and we decided after six years of living in Singapore, it was time to relocate. So we moved back to North Carolina, uh, December, 2019, uh, serendipitously right before everything got locked down with COVID.

Yeah. Uh, so, uh, I started work, uh, with. The US Army Corps of Engineers and they asked me to join their team as a contractor [00:03:00] because of my background in work and risk and pandemic planning and understanding what kinds of things go into people's accounting and decision making for responding to disease risk.

Uh, and then I also at the same time rejoined some research teams with colleagues at North Carolina State University. So I live in, in the area, and so I have a faculty appointment now. With the Genetic Engineering and Society Center at North Carolina State University. And then I'm sunsetting a third appointment at Iowa State University with their gene edited foods program, uh, where I've been doing work with them over the past few years as well.

So many hats, uh, at least one of them is coming off soon. Uh, end of the year I'll, I'll sunset my Iowa State appointment, but having a lot of fun, uh, doing really interesting work. Uh, I lead a group called the Center for Health Engineering. Within the Army Corps of Engineers. And, uh, our mission is to help make the world a little bit better, a little bit safer, and help people understand a lot of the risks that we encounter in the world.

Uh, so that's, that's where a lot of my academic research [00:04:00] has been. Mm-hmm. And now my professional practice, uh, working with the government, 

Molly Geoghegan: so as I, I'm. And that's why we have sometimes the guests introduce themselves because wow, that is such a background, such a cool arc. 

Mikey Mioduski: You just got back, straight back from a visit to the un, is that right?

In multi, uh, 

Chris Cummings: to, yeah. I was working with nato. Nato, uh, so I put on a NATO advanced research workshop. So I got to direct this workshop that brought together, uh, about 50 participants across 30 different nations to talk about biotechnology and how we can usher in safe. And developments that can accrue benefits while minimizing risks.

Mm-hmm. And so, uh, you know, in that job, I, I like to call it herding geniuses 'cause I have like the best and brightest, smartest people from around the whole world. And my job as the director is to, to guide them and lead them to, uh, a fruitful working group. And then that will actually turn into a book. Uh, we just finished another book from a similar kind of workshop that we just, that we completed last year in cart, Tejeda, Columbia.

Uh, and so [00:05:00] that one was also looking at biotechnology risks and how can we navigate information hazards? So how do we make sure that the kinds of things that are produced in biotechnology don't get used by? People who might want to use it for harm. Mm-hmm. Uh, to maximize the, the good of new technologies.

Wow. 

Music: Mm-hmm. 

Molly Geoghegan: Yeah. Uh, presentation agent, if you're listening to Chris with these amazing, like really, uh, deep cut research titles, we talked about this a lot in the episode with your TED Talk, uh, Chris, where we're like, your job is so niche at the niche version of communication that's so important and comes up in business.

And, um, and B2B and marketing all the time with like, you're, you are communicating risk or there's like something at stake, right? Mm-hmm. And so, um, we just found it was such an interesting take that we hadn't yet covered in the realm of communication, persuasion, and delivery as well. And I know you've said you've had some experience teaching people about persuasion and delivery as well.

Um, what is that like, like that's the, some of the core fundamentals of your job. What, how does that come [00:06:00] across for you? 

Chris Cummings: Yeah, absolutely. You know, now I do it professionally. You know where I am. Oftentimes speaking or writing in, you know, presenting in one form or another in very high stakes scenarios. Uh, but previously, you know, when I was a professor, I taught classes on advanced public speaking, on business communication, uh, advanced presentation for the workplace, how to navigate, you know, being on film in front of cameras, use teleprompters, uh, all kinds of scenarios.

So I would drill students with all kinds of scenarios, how to speak to a hostile audience. Uh, I used to teach courses, persuasion theory, argumentation and debate. Um, so you know, even though right now a lot of my professional practice is really in this more high stakes, how do we communicate about risk and health effectively, a lot of my training is, is more classical rhetoric and, and public speaking.

And so, mm-hmm. For, you know, probably about 15 years I was teaching classes like that, uh, either at North Carolina State University doing my, my graduate work. [00:07:00] Uh, and then in Singapore, uh, and, and I loved it. I miss teaching, uh, persuasion. Uh, I miss teaching people how to. Uh, craft a message to organize their content to then be able to deliver it effectively.

Um, and of course we can have some conversations about that. Yeah. Mm-hmm. You know, I miss a lot of that. Um, but I try and apply a lot of those lessons now, uh, when I'm speaking to, you know, senior leaders within our government who need some information quickly and easily, they have to digest it on their own terms and their own style.

And so a lot of what I do is translating heavy scientific. Data to manageable and understandable and actionable messages that can actually get taken up by the people who need them at the time that they need them. Yeah. So it's a lot of translation work. Totally. It's 

Mikey Mioduski: amazing. And Molly, like so many people are freaked out about like, speech class in high school and Chris, here you are just fully embracing it.

Yeah. What, what drew you to it? Why do you think it's so important? Uh, well, 

Chris Cummings: I think it, [00:08:00] it has never been as important as it is now. Uh, you know, we have so many different competing voices who are vying for people's attention, especially in the world of risk and safety. There's so much mis and disinformation out there.

Uh, we're seeing now AI being used to purposefully try and destabilize. Uh, even nations, uh, through their messaging to try and get people to believe conspiracy theories and, you know, uh, non-truths. And so a lot of the work that I do and that I see of value is to try and figure out how do we not just talk to people.

Through the head, you know, meaning that they can understand risk issues and come to their own meaning about them, but also make it more actionable. How can we speak to their heart? How can we make sure that the types of things that we communicate to the public that we might, you know, know to be the best thing to help protect them from particular risks.

Uh, actually get through, you know, how do we talk through their values? How do we talk through [00:09:00] their. Their situation. And, uh, we, we come, you know, I, I try to start from a basis of understanding that no matter who the people are, that they want the best for themselves and the best for their families. So no matter what their beliefs are, we all kinda share that common base for the most part.

Uh, and so if we can start from that common base and then apply good science and understanding, then we can hopefully figure out what are the best kinds of messaging. That can help to improve a lot of our, uh, riskiness that we see in the world today. 

Molly Geoghegan: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I suppose like there's so many different kinds of media now and like of course the tools to change and alter media and information like AI now.

So would you say that like with the age of social media, has that changed from just a news like people used to get information via newsprint or pigeon, you know, a carrier? So what has kind of shifted, and I know you have kind of a news journalism crossover as well. 

Chris Cummings: Yeah, no, absolutely. You know, I did a lot of media study, uh, through my, my master's in PhD.

Uh, what we used to see, or what we would call one to many models, which [00:10:00] is what we think of when we think of like classic public speaking. One person speaks too many. Mm-hmm. And that's how most major media was. You, you had, you know. If, if you're old enough to remember you, neither of you I think are, but I am had a TV where you had a dial that went click, click, click.

We didn't have a remote. Right. We had like 15 channels that we could get. Yeah. That was it, right? Yeah. That was all of the media. You had very limited selection and it was a one to many media format newspapers, one to many media format. Uh, what we see with social media is a many to many media format, and so the ability for content creation.

That has democratized the ability to create content has also allowed for the entrance of all kinds of forms of messaging that could be persuasive to certain audiences. So it changes a lot of the models that we've used. You know, classically we had studied things like agenda setting where if this story is in the mainstream media the most, then it will be on the public's mind, and that's not the theme anymore.

Uh, we have. A whole bunch of siloed communities that [00:11:00] have confirmation bias, right? Confirmation bias is a term that's only come up since the digital era. Really interesting. Uh, where we now have this ability to select what media we want, that already precon conforms to our worldviews, to our values. And then we diminish everything else because we don't have to watch it because it's no longer a one to many model.

It's a many to many model. 

Molly Geoghegan: Yeah. There's like infinite permutations in that way. We're like platform to people and everyone's doing it. You can take one idea, one trending song mm-hmm. And spin it a million different ways. Yeah, it's really interesting and overwhelming and 

Chris Cummings: distort messaging. 

Molly Geoghegan: Mm-hmm. 

Chris Cummings: Yeah. So, you know, a lot of what we see now is something might start out as a pretty decent message and someone will chop it, change it, alter it into something that could be misleading, right?

Sure. Uh. Deep fakes are a real issue. Uh, yeah. And becoming an issue as well, so, oh gosh. You know, it's not even just like the, the permutations of what's out there. It's, it's a purposeful distortion that can also be Sure. Highly problematic, especially in the world of risk. 

Molly Geoghegan: Yeah. [00:12:00] When you, uh, taught, uh, did you ever kind of think about that crossover with.

Advertising and marketing as well, like the ability for a company of course, to mm-hmm. Pitch itself. And, you know, not that everyone has these like dark intentions or anything like that, but, but you know, it's of course to pick the, the, the highlights of, to show themselves and that kind of thing. And, um, there, you know, audiences need to have a level of discernment, but also it's important for, you know, companies to, um, craft a particular message.

Did you ever talk about that kind of persuasion and delivery as well? 

Chris Cummings: Absolutely talked about it, taught it, uh, did it. Yeah. Uh, so I used to run my own, uh, sole proprietor, LLC consultancy firm. And so I would work often with Fortune 500 companies on message crafting. Uh, and so, you know, I have a lot of fun stories I could tell you over a beer chat house raw.

Totally. Yeah. But they are behind the, you know, CI [00:13:00] agreements. Yeah, yeah. And, uh, but no, I've worked, worked with many companies, uh, and, uh, I have done exactly that. Mm-hmm. How to help make a message that. Uh, can be resonance that, uh, and also how to actually navigate. When you have these moments of increased attention, so say there's a controversy, you know, in the PR world, they'll call it a crisis.

Uh, in my world now, an emergency risk and management, that's a different kind of crisis. It's not a PR crisis. I'm talking about moving people away from hurricanes. Yeah. So getting them flood, flood zones. Um, so a different kind of crisis communication versus what? Most companies would have, but a lot of the tenants are the same.

Mm-hmm. How do we actually, uh, get through? And so I teach and do work on things like how do you actually do good media advocacy? Mm-hmm. How do you actually have pre-prepared dossiers and cases ready to go on the types of attention you're likely to get based on what your business is and what kinds of things occur.[00:14:00] 

Um, so, you know, for instance, I was working with a very large food company. And one of their products, which was just an all juice product, uh, had a tiny tear in it, and it was in the middle of Florida in the swamp. Uh, and, uh, that brought home the package and inside the package, while it was probably sitting outside in this hot, humid environment, uh, it fermented or built a, a mold spore kind of a thing inside the, the little juice container.

Uh, you know, mom stabs into it, hand it to the kid and freaks out what's this thing? And the juice, uh, you know, tries to make a big scene about it in social media. Yeah. My role is to come in and figure out how do we navigate cases like that. Uh, and we saw all kinds of amazing stories pop up. Uh, you know, people reacting on the internet saying thing looks like a mouse.

That looks like a, an ear. Yeah. Oh, you saw all these conspiracy, right? The, the rumor mill and the void starts getting right. And so, you know, a lot of what I tried to do was how do we navigate those kinds of moments quickly? Mm-hmm. [00:15:00] Uh, so what we did was. We said, Hey, get a sample. Have that person keep a sample.

Have them do whatever they want. We'll send it to a toxicologist. 

Mikey Mioduski: Yeah. 

Chris Cummings: We send it to a, a tox top toxicologist at in, at a university in Chicago who said, what do you want me to do with this mold spore? He said, study it and tell us it's a mold spore. He goes, it's obviously a MT for it's juice and humid air.

Yeah. This person should just reach to their shit supermarket. It's like, I know. Can you just build a one pager so that we published that on uh, yeah. Super simple social media and the community that wanted to talk about food took care of itself. After that said, great. The company did everything right.

They took the time to distill the myth, revise their FAQs, reassure the public, and then the public can get back to talking about tasty treats and recipes, right? And this person who wanted to complain. Kind of had to go away at that point, right? Mm-hmm. So, uh, you know, a lot of what I do is can counsel companies on what are the kinds of flowcharts and action plans you need to [00:16:00] have in place.

Hmm. When that attention comes, when that, you know, quote unquote crisis arises, who needs to be at the table? Mm-hmm. And you could do a lot of that kind of tabletop exercising in advance. Uh, you know, starting a business. 'cause you'll know that there will be likely things like that, that you need to have a game plan for.

Yeah. Yeah. And if you don't, then you have a problem. So I look at it this way, good risk communication can stop the need for crisis communication. Mm-hmm. And so that's, that's my starting tenet. 

Music: Yeah. 

Mikey Mioduski: You've, you're pretty credible here in that you were in the thick of it during COVID you were communicating risk the ultimate during the, yeah, during the time when Molly and I were.

You know, playing drinking games every time we heard the word unprecedented, you know, it's like, yeah, 

Music: right. 

Mikey Mioduski: You know, like, but you know, seriously, I mean, you, you just talked about like, well, you kind of need to have a game plan, a flowchart. Here's what's gonna play out. Were were those in place, you know, what can you tell us about that experience?

I'd be happy to. Um, 

Chris Cummings: they weren't less in place than they are now. Yeah. [00:17:00] Now a lot of agencies have done a lot more to get those kinds of things in order. Um, COVID taught us that. A lot of high level organizational decision making really does happen and occur in real time. And for something like a global pandemic, that meant us working with countries around the world and with.

Limited time, significantly limited information. Mm-hmm. Uh, and so most people were not prepared for, uh, the types of organizational change that was needed to base early intervention decisions. And we were basing a lot of that information on incomplete, unconfirmed and potentially erroneous data. So really the lesson from COVID is that it revealed not only the technical requirements that are needed to understand something like a new virus.

Also the social and institutional challenges of how to operate in a global, literal crisis, uh, and are really renewed. The need to help address the challenges for how science can best [00:18:00] help in these extreme needs. Yeah, and sadly, science isn't always the answer. Um, science is I think, the best way to, you know, reduce uncertainty, study the thing, come to a new idea, but science trades off swiftness for accuracy.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. To get science right, takes time, right? Mm-hmm. To develop a vaccine takes time to understand what a disease is, how it spreads, to what degree it spreads, how lethal it is, what's its are not value. All these things, uh, takes time. Mm-hmm. And fortunately, that creates what we consider a a, a pacing problem.

So when we're considering this risk, this crisis. Being able to understand the thing is step one, and then step two is coming up with the action plan. How do we solve for the thing? And then actually going to doing the plan, step three, right? All the while that thing is a moving tart. Mm-hmm. The virus is mutating, it's spreading to new areas.

So what we were left with was trying to characterize and manage a risk that was ever evolving. So [00:19:00] I was helping and working on teams where we had scientists literally, uh, around the world. So I'd work an eight hour shift. And then pass off a data set to somebody on the West Coast, they pass it off to another colleague in Asia.

By the time I woke up, it was completely different data set. Yeah. Um, just trying to figure out what's going on. Um, yeah. And so we were trying to access data from all over the world, getting, uh, a lot of records from state departments, from fema, CDC, the White House COVID response team. Mm-hmm. You name it.

We were sticking in models trying to figure out what's gonna be the best way that we can actually. Manage the risk. How can we put the right resources in the right place to help the best? 

Molly Geoghegan: Yeah. 

Chris Cummings: Yeah. Highly problematic issue. Um, and yeah, a lot of those initial decision making trees, flow charts, things that like I would've wanted to have been there were not, were not there.

Molly Geoghegan: Mm-hmm. 

Chris Cummings: It was, it was a lot of operational chaos. Oh yeah. 

Molly Geoghegan: The demand for swiftness, as you said Yeah. Was probably so, it's so much. What pre, yeah. What is a ton of [00:20:00] pressure and we know you've developed an amazing keynote and presentation from this experience. Um, and of course with distance and the time to, of course, digest everything after the fact with that distance lessons from the COVID-19 war room, you know, these challenges and communicating the science and uncertainty of pandemic risk and response.

Tell us a little bit about how that. Talk came to light and kind of the, maybe the need for that talk after this, this really intense experience. 

Chris Cummings: Yeah. So my team and I, we had 735 continuous days of what we call black sky work, emergency authorized work. Oh my gosh. Yeah. We were doing continuously on this.

Um, and while I had just said in the PR world, if you have good risk communication, you might preclude the need for crisis communication. Yeah. Well. Throw that out the window during COVID, right? Because the crisis is here. Was there, right? And so now it's how can we communicate the best information with what we know and what we know now?

Uh, and the problem was extreme uncertainty, right? Like I said, science is just one form of [00:21:00] reducing uncertainty. A lot of other people started turning towards alternative forms of uncertainty, uh, reducing. Abilities. So looking for who they trust, who do they trust best? Yeah. I'm gonna ask my doctor. I'll ask my, my, uh, clergy member.

I'll ask my best friend. Uh, I'll ask my grandma, uh, whoever you trust most in that close circle. And, uh, if you already brought with you worldview or trusting views about certain groups, EG, the government, that then colors a lot of how you're going to perceive things like a new pandemic in response to that pandemic.

So. Sure. Uh, we were doing work and studies with the, uh, US census household pulse survey, which helped us to understand how Americans, uh, representatively across the entire country responded to risks and how they responded to planning for things like vaccines. Um, and so a lot of the work from. And, and that keynote talk is reviewing a lot of [00:22:00] the data and information from, you know, many of the publications that we got to write after doing a lot of the emergency work.

So while we had the, you know, 735 days of just trying to do the thing, um, we then got to, okay, let's digest it. And that. My team is mostly academics, right. I have a, a academic appointment. Uh, colleagues have appointments at University of Michigan, Carnegie Mellon. Wow. Uh, we're kinda all over the place. Um, and so, you know, being academics, we wanted to be able to put a lot of that back out for public consumption, academic consumption.

So, uh, you know, we have a, a laundry list of a whole bunch of academic peer reviewed publications that look at. Uh, things like what are the causes of unintended effects from COVID-19 messaging? Um, if messages weren't trusted or trusted too much, what were the outcomes? Mm-hmm. Because we saw all kinds of different things.

We saw, like the, the under cautious folks who said, ah, I don't believe your message. Denial, dismissal, boomerang effect masks are a hoax. Mm-hmm. I'm gonna go to the rock concert. Uh, and we saw all these pop-ups, uh, COVID [00:23:00] hotspots, right? And then we had the overcautious. Oh my gosh, it's so scary. I'm never gonna leave the house.

Uh, and we saw increases in depression. Yeah. Weight gains, lifestyle. Mm-hmm. Heart disease, uh, isolation, you know, uh, different mental health outcomes, uh, that are also persisting. And both sides are getting the same message. So how do we navigate that? Right? Uh, and the, the true answer is we've gotta do a better, more robust job to communicate the right message to the right person at the right time when they're willing to accept it.

And that's incredibly taxing and difficult. It means. Different messages for different folks. Yeah. Uh, which is something that is not used in that one to many kind of model Right. Now we've got to get to a point of. Organized many to many communication that does speak to the values and worldviews of distinct populations.

Uh, and so that's where a lot of my push and work is now. 

Molly Geoghegan: Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I talk about audience first messaging. Mikey, we've always talked, you, you know, when you create a presentation for [00:24:00] someone, you've gotta have the audience in mind. And I can't think of a more like important context in what you need to deliver that, that, uh, specific audience, their messaging so that it can be successful.

Chris, what's a day like a day in the life of your work? Now, as you, I know you continue to work in this risk communication space, but it's a slightly different and probably ongoing with some pandemic communication, right? Obviously COVID is still out there. It's not a hoax. Um, what's it, yeah, what's it like now?

Chris Cummings: Uh, a day in the life? So, uh, I, I have the privilege of leading an incredible team of, uh, other federal employees and contractors for the Center for Health Engineering. And we do all kinds of work in all kinds of spaces. So while, uh, you know, you all wanted to pick my brain on COVID and pandemic response, you know, I have a, a 12, 15 years of looking at how people come to understand disease and vaccination right rot, a theory called secondary risk theory that helps to explain why people feel and make decisions about.

Potential cures [00:25:00] and the potential secondary risks of those intended cures. Um, now, uh, my team and I have all kinds of other stuff going on too. Uh, so we do work on flood risk mitigation. So, uh, I have a project on post wildfire flood risk mitigation. Hmm. So what we see after a wildfire is that that land is barren and it's much more likely to flood.

And so we end up with debris flow and flooding issues, uh, in urban spaces and, and wildlife spaces that could be catastrophic. Uh, and so I'm now doing work to help understand how we can improve decision making. At these districts levels. So the United States Army Corps of Engineers has many districts across the country, so trying to help tackle what are the unique challenges at each district that they face, uh, with this problem of, of post wildfire flood risk management.

And so I'm helping them with decision making at a high level, um, to build rubrics and frameworks to, uh, help improve their decisions so they can [00:26:00] allocate resources to hopefully, again, minimize risks, maximize benefits in those spaces. Um, so that's one area. Biotech is another huge area. Hmm. Um, years ago, my, my colleagues at Army Corps of Engineers and I wrote a book back when I was a professor in Singapore on synthetic biology, uh, which is, you know, how can we engineer biology for useful purposes?

And so a lot of the work that I have been doing now, uh, is working with senior leadership in the United States government to help improve responsible innovation and use of biotechnology. Uh, which is broad ranging, uh, you know, it's biotechnology is, uh, how you got your vitamin C and your vitamin this morning.

99% of all vitamin C that you get that's not taken from a citrus fruit is created your biotechnology. It's fermented from a bacterium. Mm-hmm. Um, and we capture it and use it in beneficial way. Uh, enzymes in your laundry detergent, biotechnology. Right. Every single food product you've ever eaten.

Biotechnology. [00:27:00] Right? True. Uh, we've been cultivating food. For millennia, there's no such thing as a, a giant wild watermelon and traveled the whole world. Never stumbled into a watermelon patch in the wild, right? It's actually from a bush in Africa where the berries are about a half an inch wide. Um, so I mean, biotechnology is all around us.

We need to demystify it. We need to make sure that the novel uses of biotechnology are safe, uh, or just are equitable. Are able to be accessed by a broad population. So a lot of the work that I do is on that front, how do we align technological innovation with societal needs? Mm-hmm. Uh, so that's been a, a fun journey that continues.

And, uh, I'll keep working on biotech as well. 

Mikey Mioduski: Yeah. Uh, most interesting man in communications. Molly. I would say truly this 

Molly Geoghegan: is, I know, yeah. I wanna go back down. I do a whole episode on the watermelon. Yeah, let's go, let's get to the seed. Let's, 

Mikey Mioduski: it's like a, uh, seed. A Ted TEDx. Where are they now? You know, just like Mic Ted, drop Ted with Chris here.

I know. 

Molly Geoghegan: And when Chris, yeah, when we recorded your TEDx, [00:28:00] talking obvi. Just, uh, I mean a few months ago, right? Mikey? We were like, oh man, we were the, the longer we listened to your talk on risk communication, you would specifically focus on disease. And we were like, what year was this? And then we saw 2017, we were like, I wonder what he's thinking now.

Or like, you know, we were like, we gotta know the post COVID update. So. Really appreciate all the insight. It's so, so fascinating. Mikey, I I cut you off, but I have, I have a million things I could ask you about. Oh yeah. I mean, we, 

Mikey Mioduski: well and Chris, so we always, we love to hear what it's like, 'cause a lot of people listening fancy, you know, someday maybe I wanna, I want to maybe give a TED talk or I just want to be able to communicate better to my boss and sell these ideas internally to my coworkers.

What was it like speaking? Um, can you talk about the TED experience? 

Chris Cummings: Yeah, my, my TED experience was probably different than most. Um, I had no idea that they were going to be recording it and doing anything public. Oh, no. With it whatsoever. Uh, I [00:29:00] thought that it was a program mostly for our students. We have a very large auditorium at the university, so my audience was mostly all of my undergrad students from around the university.

About few thousand, few thousand students there. Uh, and so I wanted to do something that was going to be lively, fun, and for them. Uh, so interestingly, my wife and I. Like two days before the actual taping, uh, had just gotten back from, I'd gotten invited to give a, a lecture at the, uh, higher School of Economics in Moscow.

And it was one of those interesting opportunities as an American living in Singapore. Can't turn that down. So we got to go to Moscow and probably won't to go again in her lifetimes. Um, but, uh, had a wonderful time. And I wrote my presentation, made my slides basically on the flight home and, uh, ready for it.

And I knew it was going to be different. 'cause normally when I'm teaching or speaking in most settings, I have my slides and notes. I have some papers with me, [00:30:00] something. But when you're standing on the red dot, it's just you. Uh, and so you've gotta have everything pretty buttoned up. Uh, and so it's more.

More practice needs to go into it. I'd say, uh, more timing needs to be curated. Uh, 'cause they have a, a timing window that they want you to fit. Yeah. Um, and uh, so I had done all this practice and, alright, I think I got it ready to go night before we have the dry run walkthrough. My wife comes, she sits in the audience.

Uh, I give the presentation, you know, the people there. Okay, that's great. We'll see you in the morning. I walked down, asked to look at my wife, like, Hey, well what'd you think? And she goes, it's fine. Oh no. Oh no. It was right. I would, oh, terrible. Right? So I stayed up completely rewrote the whole thing. So what you saw was the first time I'd ever done it.

Oh my. So, wow. Turned into, uh, a bit of a hodgepodge, truthfully, like all of my favorite hits from my persuasion and risk communication courses kind of jammed together. If I were to do it again, I'd [00:31:00] probably make a clearer thesis at the start. Gotcha. Mm-hmm. Uh, you know, 'cause it's, I think it's, it's a bit ramly, truthfully, and it wasn't intended for this kind of mass public audience.

Right. Sure. I was, I was doing something that I thought would be fun, uh, for, for the undergrads. Hmm. That being said. Being on the big red.in front of thousands of people is terrifying. Even for me, it was probably the most harrowing public speaking event that I've had. No 

Mikey Mioduski: kidding. 

Molly Geoghegan: Oh my gosh. It was, 

Chris Cummings: yeah, and part of it was, it's validating here.

I forgot about what the difference would be like from when I did the practice to the actual. Presentation. So I was the first presenter, so 8 45 in the morning. We welcome to the stage, Dr. Cummings and I walk up and I stand on the red dots and I turn and on comes a light from Heaven spotlight right down on just me and I can't see the audience.

Nothing. Yeah. In the classroom setting, in a business setting. I rely on looking for nonverbal feedback. I'm always trying to connect with [00:32:00] people. Yeah. Nods that nonverbal level. Get the nod, get the smile, get the quizzical look. That no makes me know I need to go back and, you know, define something or Yeah, put a little notes in my little memory jogger for, okay, we need to go back to something.

Can't do that on the stage. Mm-hmm. And so it's a, it's a different game. 

Mikey Mioduski: Mm-hmm. Did you have a confidence monitor? Could you even see Yeah. Any sort of confidence Oh, wow. Slides, nothing. That's, oh, that's rough. I had, I 

Chris Cummings: had my, uh, little clicker to go through my slides. Yeah. And I had about a laptop sized Oh.

Monitor that I could see my screen. And that was awful. So that's pretty bare bones. 

Molly Geoghegan: Yeah. 

Chris Cummings: Nothing else. It was bare bones. 

Molly Geoghegan: Yeah. But I mean, that speaks to your experience as well, because I mean, we watched that and we were like, this guy's an incredible position. Yeah. He's done this before. We're like, if you're saying that was the first time you'd done that specific talk.

Um, obviously people always say the familiarity with your content, like makes a huge difference in the confidence and delivery. Of course. Yeah. So I can tell it's your, as you said, your favorite hits, [00:33:00] um, top hits for the Kiki and Boba exercise risk AL algorithm, the Synesthetic ideation. I wanna make sure we talk about this because you coined this.

Tell us a little bit about secondary risk theory and how you talked about it in the TED and how it kind of applies now. 

Chris Cummings: To your work? Sure. I I kind of hinted at it in the ted I was developing it at that total. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Gotcha. So I was, uh, at the time of that talk running large scale experiments across, uh, a four by four factorial desired experiment, which means that you had, we took four different diseases that we, that were all candidates for vaccination.

And we created four different messages for them, um, which mi mixed the high and lowness of their intended, uh, riskiness. So if you remember that two by two grid where I go through a, a high, high risk and a low low risk. We mi maxed all those together, but only in what the vaccines might do to a person. Do they have a likely small or likely [00:34:00] large side effect?

And if so, how severe is that side effect? Mm-hmm. Is it, or high? So 16 different cases. We then did that across multiple, uh, populations and countries in order to derive my theory, secondary risk theory. Mm-hmm. Um, so the theory takes, uh, an old theory from the 1970s protection motivation theory, which says that if you fear something.

And you feel like you are susceptible to it. So that thing is both, uh, highly severe and you are highly likely to have it happen to you. Then if there is a cure and you can do the cure, and the cure works, it's efficacious and you have self-efficacy, then be motivated. It's a do the thing to stop the risk.

And I said yes, but because that is true for many instances, but not all, especially in this new world of many and to many, where there are competing voices always saying, don't do that. That's not the right way to deal with the risk. This way is better, right? Mm-hmm. And with this many to many model, what we see now are competing voices.

It's [00:35:00] not one to many. One, you know, person from a hospital saying, this is the way to deal with this risk. Now you have all these competing voices with all kinds of competing ways to deal with risk, and that leads to different audiences, having high threat perceptions to things that many scientists or medical practitioners or epidemiologists, or you name it, expert.

Would say this is the best cure eg vaccination for solving many diseases that are comedic within our world. Yet we have lots of anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories, uh, lots of information that they put out that, uh, oftentimes feels scientific and is very persuasive when is designed to be so. Uh, and so I wanted to understand how do people come to make decisions around this kind of an issue?

So that's where secondary risk theory comes in. Mm-hmm. It not only looks at. Is the primary risk severe? And are you susceptible to it? And it not only looks at does the cure work, right? Because all of those things can be high and people will still [00:36:00] go, yeah, I still don't want the vaccine. Mm-hmm. It'll hurt.

Mm-hmm. I still don't want the vaccine. It is gonna cause autism. Right. They're gonna come up with other side effects, other secondary risks that don't even have to be true to be persuasive. And that can then change that calculus on how people will decide to respond to any given risk. And so that's the idea behind secondary risk theory, is we need to add in that extra level of what are the potential perceptions of the cure that might actually dissuade people from wanting to do it.

And if we can wrap our heads around what kinds of people might perceive different secondary risks, we can communicate to them better. At that value-based level. Yeah. To help identify what, well, what is the concern that you have about this? Mm-hmm. Um, we saw it early on with seat belts. Oh, I don't wanna wear a seat belt because if I get in a car crash, I'll be stuck in the car.

Right. That was the secondary risk concern that people had and people spilled the myth over years. But now in our [00:37:00] advanced world where things are moving so much faster, we need to start anticipatorily understanding what those secondary risk considerations are so that way we can have better engagement with people.

To help them come to, uh, a better decision about the risks that they face in the world. 

Molly Geoghegan: Yeah, yeah. I liked the things you put in the quadrant about, you know, the low probability, high magnitude, something like a plane crash. Like there's is not most likely happening to you, but it's like this high, high stakes thing of course.

Whereas something, there's like tons of people. Deal with allergies, but that they're relatively lower magnitude of risk. Mm-hmm. Like you take allergy medication. So it this perceived risk of like, what are you sc like creating the fear and then also communicating around it. It's very That was that, that I love a two by two.

We love a two by two quadrant, don't we, Mikey? 

Chris Cummings: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, now I wonder if, uh, at least through especially the Delta variant Yeah, I was gonna say that we saw that would be the high, high now. 

Music: Mm-hmm. 

Chris Cummings: Definitely. You know, it was acute and if you were in the right vulnerability brackets [00:38:00] for Delta, you had like a 30, 40% mortality rate at if you got, and it was, it was, uh, a nasty, nasty buck.

And I'm glad that it is, that that variant has. Yeah. Burned out. Right, right, right. So we, you know, and, and, uh, you know, at the end of the day, biotechnology saved the world. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, our ability to usher in safe and responsible vaccine that has persisted, you know, has, has literally saved the world.

Uh, it is through the good advanced science and, and international collaboration that, uh, you know, we were able to, to literally save billions of lives through, through getting people the what they needed, they to get the right cure at the right time. Yeah. 

Molly Geoghegan: Yeah. Here, here. 

Chris Cummings: Yes. 

Molly Geoghegan: Um, I wanna ask before we get into the spice cabinet, Mikey.

Yeah. Like this was such that you deal with such complex subjects matter and then have to communicate to the masses a variety of different ways. Helping people distill those messages with any message, like someone developing messaging and narrative, um, especially in the B2B world with people dealing with tech and stuff that you have [00:39:00] to simplify a lot of complex subjects.

Into a simple presentation format, often with just a few words or an image, like I see in some of your slides here. You just have a couple of icons, which I think is really powerful. How do you do that? Like what's your strategy on simplifying that stuff for an audience with little to no background on the subject matter?

Chris Cummings: Yep. Uh, you need to oftentimes get the, the complex subject matter out of the way. Which is really difficult, especially if you are the subject matter expert. That's your world, right? Yeah, yeah. But what you need to be able to communicate are, especially in my world, uh, issues around impacts. What is the problem?

How is the solution going to be viable? And what is that going to do? So in my world, I boil it down to a few areas. Uh, risk response, reputation, uh, all become very important. So what is the risk? What is the actual problem that we need to be looking at? Uh, and we see that at the B2B world too, right? Uh, yeah.

Everyone is dealing with a problem at a time. So, uh, when I talk about the risk, we're talking about not only just problem [00:40:00] identification. But what's the, the opportunity cost here? What's the risk if we don't act, if we don't do a thing? What's the repercussions here? Uh, and so, uh, that can be financially motivated.

That can be, uh, in my world, oftentimes public health, motivated, we don't act, people die, uh, in other areas. And it's, we don't act, we don't accrue benefits. Um, and so you need to understand what, what those, uh, repercussions are. And then what's the reputational potential issues here? So what are the impacts on society?

If you do this perceived course of action, how's it likely to actually be understood by your audiences, by your stakeholders? Uh, and that could vary tremendously. A lot of companies that I've worked with go, oh yeah, our audience is the people who buy our products. That's part of your audience. Sure. We should also be communicating to a lot of others potentials.

And you need to. Uh, you know, I did a lot of work, uh, early on where there were tons of protests against major [00:41:00] companies who started using nanotechnology and there were NGOs and. Groups that popped up all over the world in France and the United States. Mm-hmm. Outraged by people, uh, using, you know, nanotechnology because they were scared.

The nano technologies were gonna create a great goo and kill the world. And, uh, all these untoward things. Uh, pet crossed the blood brain barrier and everyone's gonna die of cancer in five years. Uh, things that were not founded by science, but that. Filled the void while we waited for the science. Right?

And at the same time, technological production kept going. So companies wanted to use these products 'cause they saw the benefit and they communicated, Hey, look how great this thing is to the people that buy the products, but not to those beyond who are outraged. And then, you know, take the company. Uh, and so you do need to have a better, broader.

Understanding about who you need to communicate when and why and how. And so, uh, being able to boil that down into something as simple as risk results, repercussions, reputation can [00:42:00] be a powerful way to do that. Yeah. Uh, the other thing when we're talking with very senior leaders is we do a bottom line upfront.

So even if we have a PowerPoint presentation, which truthfully oftentimes has like a maximum of five to seven slides. Yeah. Slide number one is bottom line up front here is the thesis. And that way, if you know, general so-and-so, or senior official so-and-so needs to get an emergency phone call and leave two minutes into the presentation, they got your message.

Ah. And so we do a bottom line up front first and then we go into the details. Uh, and so that bottom lineup front needs to be, here's the problem, here's the actual actionable repu recommendation. Uh, and go from there. Gotcha. 

Mikey Mioduski: Yeah. Said don't bury the lead. It's the lead about where that phrase came from.

That's so smart, Chris. Yeah. Well I think now we are in the spice cabinet. This is where we like to get real technical lightning round. What? Pick your poison PowerPoint G slides. Keynote, what's your, what's your go-to for building slides? 

Chris Cummings: For me, they're all poison. I have [00:43:00] enough rapid design skills. I wish I did.

Uh, people go, oh, you the communication guy. Can you make our video? Can you do the, no, no, that's not me. Different kind. You can call Molly and Mikey. I was gonna say, you need to get off my phone for that one. Um, so I've been a classic old school PowerPoint user. Uh, very, very lightly dabbled in anything else.

For a little while, I did do some, uh, presenting with a green screen. Oh, wow. And so we did the slides on the green screen where it's like ch body shots, uhhuh with stuff, weather style city and Ting Jing, which is kind of fun. Mm-hmm. Uh, but that's about as far as I go. Uh, typical day to day. Everybody in my world wants Ida a PDF.

Uh, so it will literally be a PDF version of your slides or, uh, just your actual PowerPoint. Yeah. Yeah. In the world of government, a lot of these other programs I can't even access on my computers. 

Mikey Mioduski: Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, so yeah, so we're stuck in PowerPoint land, PPT and PDF is, and the, those PDFs like read ahead, is everyone expected to kind of glance through something Yeah.

Before the meeting? Oftentimes, [00:44:00] 

Chris Cummings: yeah. Oftentimes people will have, uh, our slides in advance or. Uh, immediately after. Yeah. Um, so everything gets shared and Yeah. Goes into the void, you know, we'll give a presentation that, you know Yeah. We give to official so and so and then have no clue how far it goes after that.

Right, right. And you read the paper the next day and go, was that, was that because of us? Yeah. Was that in our slides? And, and it may well have been. Right. Uh, you know, there were issues through COVID that are. Our actual recommendations were very much taken. Wow. Um, by, by very senior agencies. Um, so, uh, you know, we can, we can rest well at night knowing we did our best.

Sure. 

Molly Geoghegan: Yeah. Yeah. Well, we have to compliment you. You have, like, we love your slides in the TEDx, like very simple. Just like a speech bubble, a word box Yeah. Goes a long way. Like you don't have to stuff it with stuff. It was really, really well done. Um, Chris, do you have any favorite speakers or presenters that you've admired along, along your journey?

Chris Cummings: You know, this is a, this is a fun idea to think about. You know, who, who do you [00:45:00] like? Uh, when I teach advanced public speaking, I oftentimes talk about a speaking signature. So these are people that have such a tremendous singular style that you remember them for that speaking signature. When I was, uh, a young child like 7, 8, 9, 10 years old, my parents had gotten me a set of audio cassettes and I would fall asleep every night listening on my little boombox, you know, in the late eighties, uh, to the classic golden age of radio.

And so these were pre television comedy shows. Jack Betty, George Burns, Gracie Allen amo, and Andy Abbott Castello. Oh, 

Molly Geoghegan: amazing. Yes. And 

Chris Cummings: they had incredible uses of voice because they had to, right? Mm-hmm. It's rain. And so, uh, you know, they, they brought in props and made sounds that emulated like they were on a street quarter in New York, yet they're in, you know, a phone booth sized, you know, recording studio.

And I fell in love with language and communication at that age. [00:46:00] Mm-hmm. From that era. Um, and I've always loved comedy, so, you know, as I grew up, yeah. Uh, I, I really got into Rodney Dangerfield. Um, if you want to talk about his Snu, he, he's got it like the non-verbals. He like manifests like ticks where he is like pulling his tie, like he's too hot under the tie because the tie is choking him out.

Uh, everything about his comedy act is like buttoned up to perfection. Uh, and then I think that bleeds over to folks like Richard Pryor too, who have just incredible speaking style. Yeah. Um, in, in other worlds that aren't comedy. You know, I, uh, in my science communication classes, I talk about how the public doesn't care about science.

They care about risk. And there's only two areas of science that the public likes, and that's animals and space. That's like the only types of science that the public's like, here's the science. Oh yeah, I love science. Let's learn about animals and space. People called out. Um, so I love David Attenborough.

Yeah. And of course, you know, uh, attenborough's the, the classic for me. Uh, and then, uh, you know, as you get into. [00:47:00] Formal speeches for a while as a graduate student, I studied, uh, presidential State of the Union addresses for many years. 

Molly Geoghegan: Super fascinating. And 

Chris Cummings: so through history, how did they manifest language?

How did they use language to their advantage? What kinds of tropes were they using in invoking? Uh, and so a lot of my early academic work as like a master's student, was looking at, you know, old state of the union, addresses inaugural addresses by JFK and famous speeches through the world. Um, and truthfully in the modern era, no one's better than Obama.

Uh, his, his ability to craft a message and make it compelling is certainly, uh, laudable. 

Mikey Mioduski: Yeah, 

Chris Cummings: definitely, 

Mikey Mioduski: definitely. Unreal. So good. What about books? Are, are there any go-tos if, if someone is like. I need to get better at this stuff. Is there a go-to book or podcast or resource that you point them to other than your own classes?

I'm, 

Chris Cummings: I'm a, yeah, I'm definitely, uh, you know, so when, when you walk into professor's office and you see like the giant wall of books Yeah. Your [00:48:00] first thought is an undergrad student. There are no way prof read all these damn books. You bought all this things on Amazon or read 'em someday. And that's not true.

Right? Yeah. Third year of post PhD programs is like a reading year. Yeah. So it's like, oh, you want to be known in this field? Okay, you study persuasion. Here's every book ever written on persuasion. Go. Yeah. Right. So like that's when you build this corpus of knowledge to say, yeah, no, I know there that I know everything up to this point.

Right. You have to, that's right. Yeah. Uh, and then be able to demonstrate it. So I've got a couple for you that are really fun. The first one is called persuasion, social influence and Compliance Gaming. Mm-hmm. It's like my undergrad reading go-to. So it's great for an anybody kind of a read. It's not super technical.

Breaks down what is and what is not persuasion. Uh, and then it starts getting into things like autonomic response, which I start to get into when I talk about affect. Right. And the Kiki and Boba and that kind of stuff. Yeah. This is how do you get people to do what you want them to do, even if. They don't want to.

[00:49:00] How do you do the undercover compliance gaming, which is different than persuasion. Interesting. Persuasion is the, the listener has to accept and wants to be persuaded and is persuaded by the message. Compliance. Gaming is, you're still gonna do the thing even if you hate it. Right? And that's a completely different kind of messaging.

Uh, and so that's, that's a great book. It's by Gas and Cider. It's had many editions. Okay. Uh, another one, uh, by Bob Cialdini. It's called Influence. It's a classic. Yeah. Um, influence Science of Practice. It's a good beach book. It's got like six or seven major chapters. So you like, read a chapter while you're lying on the beach and, okay, put that one down.

It talks about like these different ways of, of breaking down influence, so things like reciprocity. Um, I do something for you, ergo, you should have to do something for me and I can use that to my advantage. Um, and so that's a good one. Uh, another classic Nobel Prize winner, Richard Taylor, along with Kas Sunstein, uh, wrote Nudge.

Nudge is amazing. And that's one that I certainly would like to, uh, put out there. And then [00:50:00] one that most people have never seen or read, but is a great read. Uh, Jean Noel Kaur wrote a book that my dissertation advisor, Dr. David Barbi, shout out to Bubs, uh, gave me as a graduate student called Rumors. And it is just all the theory and a ton of wonderful case studies on what rumors are, how they're so important in our society, and what kinds of things.

Uh, they do to influence things like our understanding about risk and it's got incredible case studies in there. Yeah. One of 'em talking about village UIF leaflets, some guy in a small village in France dropped thousands of these little pieces of paper all over the village that had a whole bunch of made up health recommendations.

Just like a social experiment. Some random dude's like, I just wanna see what happens. Uh, and it had things like. Be afraid of ascorbic acid. Stay away from ascorbic acid. Ascorbic acid is vitamin C. Sure. Right. Uh, so like the, and he just then, like someone threw all these [00:51:00] out there and probably some crazy social experiment.

Right? This is early 19 hundreds. So well before. Ability to access good information. Mm-hmm. And so this little town just kind of went mad. That's wild. Like all these brewers. So just started going everywhere, uh, around the leaflets and people were freaking out and like taking the bad health advice. Um, and so the book is, is fascinating 'cause it goes into cases like the village that leaflets and, and many, many others.

Fun, fun book. Yeah. Um, so I'll Those are amazing, amazing, amazing. Yeah. Thank you. Chris. You know, of course I've got giant syllabi of all kinds of other stuff, so if anyone ever Yes. 

Molly Geoghegan: We'll link a syllabus. Perfect. Yeah. That's sweet. No, I'm excited to link all those. Yeah, that's really fascinating. Um, okay, we always ask, um, we need to know if you've, you've spoken all over the world as someone that's traveled a lot, I wanna know what is your dream presentation venue?

Doesn't have to be like an actual auditorium. It could be like the top of the Eiffel Tower or something. And what song is playing as you walk out to speak 

Chris Cummings: and what song is playing? Um, [00:52:00] ooh, this is a tough one. Um, you know, I do not have much like pursuit of grandeur to like, want to speak to the royal family.

Yeah. 

Molly Geoghegan: Yeah. It could be in your backyard, you 

Chris Cummings: know? I, I don't ever care to be like a senior politician, so I don't want to like, yeah. Do a speech on maybe, maybe, maybe for, I, I, I could probably have eyes to, on a nice holiday, give a speech at a major, uh, American monument, you know, maybe that would be sweet.

Give a talk in front of the Lincoln, um, that looks at how we can improve. Oh, cool. You know, our social fabric or something like that. Walkout songs. I mean, just for, just for like a jam, maybe like electric feel by NGMT. Oh yeah. Nice. Something like it got some, it's got some vibe to it. It's gonna pep the audience up.

Mm-hmm. It's gonna be lively, it's gonna be fun. Which is my presenting style. Even if I'm speaking about heavy things, I'm gonna. Up. Right? Yeah. I'm not a, I'm not a somber speaker, [00:53:00] so. Mm-hmm. You know, getting the audience up for many occasions would help. I was thinking a bit too, uh, there's a great song by Jack Johnson, uh, inaudible Melodies, where there's a lyric in there where he says, slow down everyone.

You're moving too fast. Mm-hmm. Frames can't catch you when you're moving like that. And like a lot of what my messaging is, is. Don't just take the thing that you hear at face value, slow down, absorb it. Uh, make sure that you understand what is being communicated to you so that way you can judge it better.

Right? Have good media literacy, have good message literacy, and so I think that one probably resonates to me as well. We need to slow down a little or. It was very fast paced and so we need to, we need to stop and pause and reflect more. Yeah. On the daily basis. 

Mikey Mioduski: Yeah. I think Jack Johnson thought of that quote while he was reading some chelini on the beach.

Molly Geoghegan: Yeah. Know for sure. That's what everyone, you guys have that in common songwriters are doing. 

Chris Cummings: He may, he may have been, you never know. He knows how to party. I had the pleasure of meeting him once and the original song, how Fun Actually [00:54:00] Isn't. Slow Down everyone. It's Slow Down. Bruce Lee, you're moving too fast.

Oh. Perfect. Fast and Furious. The original was about how Bruce Lee's punches were too fast for the camera, so the frames couldn't actually catch. It looked like a blur. Yeah. So interesting. They actually had to coach Bruce Lee to punch and kick slower for the movies because the fist so could catch it.

Couldn't catch how fast he movie. But that Jack Johnson turned into more social commentary when he revised the songs. So now it's slowed out. 

Molly Geoghegan: Yeah, 

Chris Cummings: yeah, yeah. So I like the revised version. I like the original. There's a fun story to it. That's cool 

Molly Geoghegan: that that totally resonates. Yeah, 

Mikey Mioduski: absolutely. Dr. Cummings, this has been.

Yeah, epic had so much fun. I feel like we could have you on as a regular guest. Oh my gosh, this has been a blast. 

Molly Geoghegan: Most interesting man communications, as Mike said. That's right. Yeah. Um, do you have any, uh, we can link your LinkedIn if folks wanna follow you. Do you have a, like a newsletter? Anything you wanted to, um, to shout out?

Presentation Nation of where to find you? 

Chris Cummings: Uh, I, I work for the government. Yeah, you define me. Yeah. It's public. It's public. Uh, no, uh, public [00:55:00] information. LinkedIn. LinkedIn is more than fine. Um, you know, beyond that, uh, you know, we can certainly connect and I'd be more than happy to speak with anyone, uh, on just about any subject.

Yeah. So feel free to reach out Presentation Nation and thank you Mikey and Molly for hosting me. Oh, it's been a blast. Yeah. 

Mikey Mioduski: Chris, thanks for being here. And everyone, thanks for tuning in and until next time, keep on pitching. Keep on.