Yodelling fire in a crowded theatre

A sneak preview of Future Fire's new Netflix stand-up special

Intro

[Shot of me at my desk, looking at basketball scores. A colleague enters my room and I scramble to switch windows to something work-related]

Colleague: Hey man, how’s it going?

Me: Yeah, good thanks, just working on… just working on some stuff.

Colleague: Do you want to come out tomorrow night for the Neil de Grasse Tyson show? Everyone’s gonna be there!

Me: Ah, yeah I’d love to but I have plans sorry.

Colleague: Ok, maybe next time.

[I look glum while the colleague leaves. Cut to me in bed on my computer working. My wife enters the room and I scramble to switch windows to the basketball scores]

Wife: Shouldn’t you be preparing for your first ever stand-up comedy show tomorrow night?

Me: Yeah, um.. No, I think I’m good.

Wife: Have you thought about what you’re actually trying to achieve with the show?

[I look glum while my wife leaves. Cut to a stage with an audience cheering wildly.]

PA: Ladies and gentlemen, would you please put your hands together for…Future Fire!

Empty stage for a stand-up comedy show, Carlos Delgado (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Me: Thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you Pingelap Atoll!* Thank you so much.

[Applause dies down]

Well. Look, first of all I want to apologise. I need to say sorry. I know some of you bought tickets to this show when it was first advertised - what - 8 years ago? Was it eight years ago? My God, that’s a long time.

All I can say is, this is an ARC-funded show and those grants are bloody hard to get! It’s not like I’ve been sitting here twiddling my thumbs, you know. I’ve been trying. Putting in application after damn application.

Boy, those things are tough. Anyone out there ever applied for an application?

[Audience cheers]

Wow, that was a surprisingly upbeat reaction. I’m not surprised you’ve applied, but I would have expected a slightly more negative reaction. Maybe some boos, some whistling. Maybe an impromptu “ARC you suck!” chant.

Can we get an “ARC you suck!” chant going?

[Crowd chants for a moment]

Fantastic. I think we just made a lot of people’s dreams come true. Anyway, I do want to thank, from the bottom of my heart, the good people at the ARC for funding this show. They do amazing work, truly groundbreaking stuff, and it is an honour and privilege - deeply, deeply humbling, to be funded by them, to put on tonight’s show.

So let’s hear it for the ARC!

[Crowd gives half-hearted applause]

Wow. No love lost there. This is - this is a black day for research funding.

Applications. What can you say about applications? Does anyone else think it’s a bit weird that we’re constantly applying for things? We apply for grants, we apply for promotions, we apply for prizes, we apply for conferences, we apply for seed funding, we apply for committees. Our contracts run out every year so we apply for jobs. In our performance review they tell us we’re not applying ourselves enough, we go home, break out in hives, apply some ointment. Then we apply for stress leave. But we’re not eligible for the stress leave because *terms* *and* *conditions* APPLY.

Boy, I’m getting pretty good at applications now. My science has gone down the gurgler, but my applications - my God, are they something to behold!

I’m like an old gunfighter in the Wild West, six shooter in each holster, staring down the funding body.

CV? [Pretends to draw gun and fire] Bang!

Top 10 publications? [Pretends to draws other gun and fire] Bang!

Research impact? Governance and service? Teaching and supervision? [Fires three times] Bang! Bang! Bang! [blows smoke off imaginary guns]

I’m working on a pretty special one right now. It’s gonna be my Magnum Opus, my crowning achievement. Children are gonna be taught about this application 150 years in the future. AI ChatGPT David Attenborough’s gonna be narrating documentaries about my applications.

[does David Attenborough impression] It’s one of the great migrations known to academia. This scientist moves back and forth between three share drive folders, his email and a web browser over 600 times in a six hour period. Painstakingly assembling evidence of his excellence, the end result is this finely crafted application. Despite all this work, fewer than one in eight make it out alive. Those who do survive are destined to repeat the process every year, the only guarantee sore wrists, red eyes and deep pangs of existential angst.

Applications… My Lord, have you seen the success rates of some of these? 15%? 10%? That’s not even a roll of the dice. You need one of those weird ten-sided dice from role playing games to simulate that. Well, maybe an 8-sided dice, if we’re talking about a success rate of 12 and a half percent.

Anyone else out there like math?

[Lone audience member hollers]

Thank you. Thank you!

I dunno, I dunno, man. Maybe all these applications are the way to do it. I mean, it seems kinda stupid, right? But.. But scientists came up with this scheme. So… it’s gotta be right? Right??

Scientists! You know - *us*! The smart ones! We’ve really snookered ourselves there, haven’t we? *Every* *single* *stupid* rule or metric or procedure you’ve had to follow as a scientist - was dreamed up by scientists! It’d be one thing if we admitted we were as stupid (and smart) as everyone else. But nooooo.

*We’re* supposed to be smart. *We’re* supposed to be innovative. *We* couldn’t have messed up the whole system. Not us. Could we have?

Kept giving funding to the same people over and over? Excluded women, excluded minorities? Underpaid casuals, shafted students, experimented on people, tortured animals? Rendered the whole public interest science thing kinda optional?

Ah-b-b-b! [holds up index finger as if shushing] They must have done that stuff for a reason. They know what they’re doing. Trust them! Scientists made these rules! Not just anyone. Not business people or artists or… [shudders] tradies.

We are [steps forward and thrusts chest out] scientists. We are smart and we do smart things!

Like the publishing system.

[Audience howls with laughter]

Boy, who thought up that one? Hand out the Nobel Prize, right there - it’s over!

[Pretends to be scientist and then publisher in turn]

S: Well, we’d like to share our findings. They’re markers of the ever-expanding shore of knowledge, and the ever-receding sea of ignorance. They’re fascinating, insightful, sometimes bizarre and often quite useful - you can even make money from them!

P: [Knowingly] You don’t say…

S: I feel that a small payment for this precious knowledge might be in order.

P: I agree.

S: [Surprised] Oh, good.

P: A grand’ll do.

S: Oh wow, thanks!

P: From you to me.

S: Oh.

P: Five grand if you want anyone other than your friends to read it.

S: Goodness me.

P: Speaking of your friends, we’d love it if they proofread your stories before we print ‘em.

S: Of course, but that’s not proofreading, that’s peer review, one of the bedrocks of science. I myself sometimes spend hours going through a new paper, making sure it is technically sound, relevant and so on.

P: You can do that for free.

S: What?

P: Do that for us for free.

S: Oh, well - I don’t know, that seems like -

P: Excellent value.

S: [glumly, but then upbeat] At least once the science has made it into journals, it will be available for every man, woman and child to read and enjoy.

P: Subscription fees. Eyewatering subscription fees.

S: [crestfallen] Is there anything else you’d like while you’re here?

Yeah, us scientists - you do not want to face us in a negotiating stand-off, y’hear?

You know who we’re *really* good at negotiating with? Ourselves! I negotiate with myself all the time, and you better believe I win each time.

I’ll definitely take a lunch break today. Deal.

Gee, it’d be good to finish this off but it’s almost lunch time. Shall I just work through lunch? Deal.

Definitely got enough on my plate right now - no more projects, ok? Deal.

Wow, did you see who just invited me to work on something? That is so flattering, and a really cool topic. Let’s do it, ok? Deal.

Definitely going to read a paper a week this year. Deal.

I really should get that email inbox down to zero. Those papers can wait, can’t they? Deal.

So anyway, I’m a fire scientist.

[Crowd whoops and hollers]

Thank you, thank you. As you can see, we’ve just about got everything *under control*, thank you very much.

Look, I can see why a lot of climate scientists moved into psychology, and Kenny G tribute bands. It’s hard, raising the alarm bell and being ignored by society.

If they’d just listen to us fire scientists, they’d know, it’s pretty simple.

Do more prescribed burning and keep the fuel loads down! [Holds up hand to imaginary earpiece] Hold that - do less prescribed burning, if they’d just listen to us and do *less* prescribed burning, avoid all those unintended side effects. [Holds up hand to imaginary earpiece again] Sorry, if they’d just listen to us and get a handle on fires before they get big, none of us would be in this mess! [Hand up again] Sorry, I mean if they’d just stop trying to put out every fire before it gets big, this whole landscape wouldn’t be such a tinderbox! [Hand up] Hang on, I’m getting more - if they’d just set some hard and fast rules, people wouldn’t have to figure everything out on their own! And [Hand up] - and if they’d just decentralise things and put more power in the hands of the people, we’d finally get something done! [Hand up] Risk management. [Hand up] Indigenous approaches to fire. [Hand up] Technological fixes. [Hand up] Community-based approaches. [Hand up] Pyrobanking? [Quizzical look comes over face]

A nature-based financial market where you get credits for fires that don’t start? [Now angry] Who the hell is this? PWC? How did you get my number? What do you mean the Minister liked the idea???

[Pretends to rip out earpiece and throw it away] My God, I can’t take it any more, there’s too many voices!!

Like I said, I really just don’t understand why people don’t listen to us fire scientists…

Pingelap Atoll you’ve been amazing, thank you *so* much!! Good night!

[End credits]

*I probably wouldn’t hold a stand-up show in Pingelap Atoll in real life, but it seemed like a cool place after reading that Oliver Sacks book.