How can academics and specialist in arcane forms of knowledge take their subject matter and present it to general audiences in a way that’s interesting, without completely caving in to the twin temptations of dumbing down and/or drowning that audience in way too much data because finally someone seemed to be willing to listen?

It can be done.

But to do it successfully requires thinking about the nature of expertise.  The whole point is that you (the academic or subject-matter expert) know a whole lot more than the average person.  That’s the inevitable result of all the work and time you’ve put in becoming an expert.

Several things naturally happen as you acquire that expertise.

You learn the controversies of the field.  I studied rhetoric in graduate school, and related areas like linguistics.  In that field, for example, one of the perennial topics of debate was the Whorfian Hypothesis.  If you want to get a good argument going on that subject, assemble a random group of linguistic philosophers, throw Whorf into the middle, and stand back.  They can go for hours.

You learn the numbers.  Every field has a set of stats, assumptions, and numbers that at least in some part define it.  Over the period of time that it takes to acquire expertise, you will naturally absorb a great deal of stats that will acquire deep meaning for you, because they signal certain verities in your field.  You can recite those numbers, and argue them forever, because they are the scaffolding that holds up your passion.

You learn the players.  Every field has established experts that achieve the kind of recognition that will get you a drink at an industry conference, but not that kind that will get you stopped in the street by a horde of people wanting an autograph.  If your field doesn’t have any stars on the Hollywood walk of fame, then it’s a safe bet that you will never have to register in a hotel under an assumed name in order to avoid the paparazzi.  Part of developing expertise in any field is learning who those secret stars are, what they stand for, and what they argue about with the other top players.

And of course, you learn the jargon.  Debating those controversies, talking about the numbers, and learning the thinking of the top players all involve getting up to speed with a certain vocabulary and being able to think in it.  It’s a shorthand that actually saves time, so that you don’t have to repeat the obvious every time you want to push the field forward.

Here’s the issue.  None of those things is even remotely interesting to a general audience.  You’re too deep into the field to remember, but the interests of a general audience are so primitive by your standards that they don’t speak your language, they don’t understand your numbers, they don’t hold their breath over what you find controversial, and they don’t recognize the stars in your sky.

So you need to start, not with your expertise, but with your beginner’s mind.  What got you into the field in the first place?  What was the first ah-ha that stopped you cold and made you say, “I could spend the rest of my working life thinking, talking, and writing about this subject because – that.”

For me, it was the insight that every communication (of the face-to-face kind) was two conversations, the content and the body language.  And most of the tensions and challenges and issues in communications revolve around the interplay between those two conversations.  Not all, but a huge chunk of them.

So that’s the insight I always go back to when I’m talking to audiences about communications of any kind.  It’s my job to persuade that audience of the power of that insight.  And to tie the issues the audience has to that insight.  And to craft convincing examples and case studies illustrating that insight.

In a speech, fundamentally, you only get to say one thing that the audience will remember.  So make it graspable, essential, and foundational.

That’s how you begin to talk about your expertise in a way that’s interesting to a general audience.