PELLSTON — Listeners give a story seven seconds before they turn the dial.

“If you don’t grab their heart right out of the gate, you’ll lose them. They won’t listen to what you have to say,” said Kyle Norris, a journalist who uses sound to tell stories for local and national NPR radio programs and podcasts.

To create powerful stories, Norris said, no matter the topic, Rule No. 1 is to know your audience.

And keep their ear by breaking up the words and information with “natural sound” to give a sense of place — like a door slamming shut or the rhythm of the water, wind, birds and trees of northern Michigan.

It’s one of many communications techniques Norris is eager to share with scientists and students when he serves as the August artist-in-residence at the more than century-old University of Michigan Biological Station, where laboratories and cabins are tucked into more than 10,000 acres along Douglas Lake just south of the Mackinac Bridge to support long-term climate research and education.

Norris, a Michigan native who lives in Bellingham, Washington, will use his NPR skills honed over a 20-year career in public radio to make an audio profile of the historic scientific field station in Pellston and help scientists and students tell powerful and clear stories about their research.

From Aug. 1 through Aug. 18, the U-M alumnus will immerse himself in nature, use his microphones to record sounds of the forest and the lake, conduct interviews with researchers and students, and hold workshops to teach the field station’s scientific community how to communicate about their work so that “an everyday person” can understand them.

He’ll also share details about what it’s like to work in the worlds of podcasting and public radio. And he can talk about his behind-the-scenes production work on the top rated, true-crime podcast, “Suspect.”

Norris plans to leave the U-M Biological Station with enough recordings to make a sound-rich profile of the field station.

“We can tell a compelling story about what we’ve learned from this place,” Norris said. “We just have to tap into emotions first to hold someone’s attention and deliver insights about why they should care. Art and science aren’t so different. We can learn from each other and incorporate each other so people like my grandma and your grandpa can understand what’s at stake when scientists present their facts and research results.”

Norris studied creative writing and earned a bachelor of arts degree in 1997 from U-M. His career started at Michigan Radio. He now freelances as a journalist for both local and national NPR.

He also works on national NPR’s self-help podcast Life Kit and teaches teenagers how to tell stories on the radio through the podcast RadioActive at KUOW, Seattle’s NPR station.

Versatile and engaging, some days Norris is writing obituaries, like this one about the actress Betty White in 2021, and this week he created a podcast story about how to make awesome salads.

“Moving through the world, I’m always ingesting sounds,” Norris said. “I have never been to the Biological Station, but I know this place in the Northwoods of Michigan has got to have incredible sounds.”

Day and night, he will record and weave together the sounds of nature — lapping water, footsteps through the forest, the call of a loon — with interviews of people in the community and bring that to life.

The UMBS Artist in Residence program, which began in 2018, brings science and art together to open hearts and minds, increase public understanding of environmental issues and inspire a change in behavior in daily lives to protect natural resources.

“I’ve interviewed many scientists and environmentalists in my career. The thing I bump into a lot is scientists who speak at an academic level. That doesn’t work,” Norris said. “They’re doing really good stuff and important research. I want to give them tips to tell their stories in a conversational, compelling way.”

A challenging, but essential, responsibility of scientists is to clearly convey to non-scientists what they’ve learned from studying and monitoring everything from bees and soil to lake temperatures and plants — what nature is telling scientists and what that means for the rest of us.

“We think by allying with artists and embedding them in our field station, together we can inspire deeper understanding and appreciation of local ecosystems and improve public engagement to support conservation,” said Dr. Aimée Classen, director of the U-M Biological Station and a professor in the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. “Kyle’s lessons about sound and flow in science communication will have an especially big impact over the next few decades because we’re training the next generation of scientists here.”

The U-M Biological Station’s Artist in Residency Program is designed to introduce new artists to the region and give them the opportunity to interact with the robust scientific community on campus.

“When we think of an artist, audio and podcasting aren’t necessarily considered. But it is an art form,” Norris said. “I love that the Biological Station in northern Michigan thinks about art in a really broad way.”

For 114 years, students, faculty and researchers from around the globe have studied and monitored the impact of environmental changes on northern Michigan ecosystems. The U-M Biological Station is one of the nation’s largest and longest continuously operating field research stations.

Since the field station began in 1909, an estimated 10,500 students have passed through to engage in scientific discovery needed to understand and sustain ecosystems from local to global scales.

Norris will hold three workshops for students, researchers, faculty and staff at UMBS during his residency. All start at 7 p.m. in Nichols Lab, including:

  • Thursday, Aug. 3: "An Audio Journalist Explains his Career in Radio and Podcasting"
  • Thursday, Aug. 10: "Ask an Audio Journalist Anything." The workshop will discuss how scientists can talk about their work so the public can understand and how to find and tell your own powerful stories about yourself and/or your work.
  • Tuesday, Aug. 15: “Ask an Audio Journalist Anything.” (Same as Aug. 10.)

Participants are encouraged to record audio samples of a sound they regularly experience in the field and bring them to the workshops. Use voice memo on your cell phone. Anything from 10 seconds to 1 minute will work.

Visit Norris’ website to learn more about his work.