That experience, kate is a poet, essayist, former lace are physicist whose science journalism has appeared in major publications around the world. She has taught write agent numerous universities and that eye and ear towards expressive writinger very much in evidence in her new become. Its beautifully written book. And beth a pleasure to read and a totally absorbing account of her many months of its layings in nasas simulation of a march mission, pitched 8,000 feed up the hawaiian volcano. We instant planned it wasnt Plan Evidence this way but published now in a time when the whole world is sheltering in place because of the coronavirus pandemic, her booker tells us a great deal but the effects, physical, mental, social, even spiritual, of forced isolation. Kate, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for that beautiful suppose ducks, too. Its a pleasure. Its great to meet you. Congratulations on your book. Tell us about these analogs that nasa cooks up and develops to prepare astronauts for missions to mars or elsewhere. Hough did they come to be . How did they decide to do Something Like this . Sure. Well, okay. Going to space was kind of mix indicated thing and you complicated thing and you really want to practice as well as you can on earth before you send astronauts out on space adventures. So in early day from mercury, gemini, apollo, nasa was looking for ways to train astronauts oh do thing in zero g. And we of the boy yancy lab, astronauts in space suits in a giant pool. That it is Simulation Training astronauts for how to fix things on the International Space station. The idea of going to the moon for a long time, which is what some people are talking about and then going to mars, thats not just about figuring out how to fix summon oexterior of the space thats. Theyve entails challenges and largely psychological. Oft course there are huge technological challenges but real if youre on a mission to mars, youre two and a half years away from earth and that sort of isolation is something that thats never occurred in human history. So far away for that long. And so these simulations looks at the ways that groups of people, astronautlike subjects, come together and how they work as a team and then the challenges they end counter as their isolated from earth. I imagine that entails psychology of people and figuring out if they have the coping strategy that you would need to be youre in a piece of metal in a can really flying around outer space. So, did you makes me want to ask you, how were you chosen . What were the character characteristics you have, kate, you survived the whole thing. What were the characteristics in you that they saw would work as being a guinea pig in this experiment. Well to be clear our mission was only fours long and they theyve done a yearlong project and that is a different beast. Was on the first mission. Know they were looking for astronautlike people so you had to qualify in term odd educational experience, background, and i have a science background, and then some aspect of personality. Ken benson this lead of the mission, says that nasa was looking for people with thick skin, long fuse and an optimistic outlook and there were 700 people who applied and based on real estate mays, the resumes, the high seas project, broke that down to 150 highly qualified candidates and then from there, like, roughly 30 candidates they interviewed over skype. So its actually a little bit like what we are doing now. So theres a video interview. And then nine of us that were brought to ithaca because it would as joint project with Cornell University and the university of hawaii. To do a food study. And so that was like the main push of the high seas the first study to study astronaut food and the way they get bored eating the same food over and over again. That is one of the major aspects of the mission so they product to us cornel and in a test kitchen they set us up and saw how he work together. Something about that made the difference. But all nine people who were brought in would have been great on the mission. So, at a certain point you get people who are really interested and you meet them and you just kind of feel like its someone you ask yourself a question, someone i would want to spend four months with . Thats what it was bowed. At the same time as you make 0 clear in the become its like make believe. Youre all pretending to be on this mission. Are there moments where you say and you goof off and say were just kidding here or did you maintain that sort of fantasy the whole time you wore on it . Four months is a long time to suspend reality. Right. Well, okay. So we had a another love lot of things helping us believe we werent oregon earth. One of those was the fact that our communication was delayed by 20 minutes each way. So, we couldnt have phone calls home. There was in realtime internet. Certainly no social media, which is a blessing really, and but at the same time that really made us feel disconnected. So things like that, that worked to instill in us the isolation. Not necessarily that we were on mars, because we had a window you can look out and see the lights on the telescope on the other volcano, and on a clear day you could actually see maui, which was nice. That was a nice thing. But there are other aspects of the isolation, too. We had to wear space suits when we left the tome, and so youre never really outside. You neverfest that feeling of being outside. In terms of like actually believing your on mars that was hard are for me to do but in terms of feeling isolated or cut off or separated from earth that was kind of always there. Tell us but that physical space, that geodesic dome, very forbidding looking dome and trying to make it like a home for yourselves, i tell us about what it was like physically. Physically, there was actually a lot more space than you might presume. You walk in and theres this gray blue carpet and work stations, a table, you had a kitchen that was kind of like a normal kitchen. We had a breadmaker, microwave, a little tiny refrigerator, really the kitchen is what made it feel quite a lot like home and the fact we had a dining table we ate at every day. Where we slept at night was a mess anyone level up above and our veterans were bedrooms were oversized closets, not very large and they were stacked like pie pieces, like wedge of a pie. The rooms, our personal space and our rooms wasnt very large, but the common space was quite large and expansive because that dome feeling. It gave you an airy feel. Your food, you at three times a day. Did you sit together as a family might and. Food is so important in isolation and i think were seeing that now, that so many people are breads in quarantine and so many Beautiful Creations my friends are making and posting on instagram, and our main purpose on the study was to look at food and how much the main question was, might it be better to include at least some stable ingredients, some options so use cue create a novel meal, novel dish once you land on mars and have access to gravity again. You can make a stir sky or make a cake. Right now, astronauts on the iss only really have food that comes in pouches that you just add water and heat. Youre allowed to do more creative things. For us we decided to eat every meal together and not every crew did that but one of the other aspects of mars mission is theres going to be high crew autonomy. Its not like Mission Control where the schedule is given, dictated by houston and then sent to the astronauts every day. It would be more like an antarctic expedition where that expedition crew is actually in charge of helping go there not checking back in with home all the time. Thats a function of the delay and the system. For our crew we got together and decided a lot of our own rules like how we would split up chores, if we would eat meals together, where we would work and try to make sure we werent inadvertently self isolating within the isolation because that can lead to problems of crew cohesion and just social problems on the crew. We decided to eat every meal together. I dont know if that was the best decision but thats what we ended up doing one of the questions from twitter s actually from florida they ask, i suppose its because all of you have to be fit to some degree. I imagine you are exercising even inside the geodesic dome. The question is, what sort of protein were you eating . Were these planned meals where you are trying to get as much protein . Was a plant based . Was it meat base . It was an omnivore menu for the most part. We alternated where we ate preprepared meals and then days we would cook up something from our shelfstable stores. That meant we were dipping into like canned foods like the kind you would take on a camping trip. We had chilis, soups, other kinds. Some have meat, some didnt. Everyone on the crew ate meat but we didnt have a super meat heavy diet, i dont recall. It was always available. Freezedried beef, freezedried ham, chicken, all those sorts of things. We definitely ate those. We had all the freezedried vegetables you could rehydrate too. It was all there. Were you doing physical exercising while youre in there . Absolutely. One of the experiment sweeper dissipated in was an experiment to look at exercise shirts because you cant really do laundry in space. You wear your clothes until they become too much for you to bear and then toss them. Nasa is pretty interested in the longevity of the clothes they sent up. We wore these workout shirts and we couldnt bear them anymore we retired them. But for that study were required to work out for 45 minutes a day at least five days a week. So i in particular and a bunch of other decided to do a p90 x workout it was great we worked out and we ate to supplement all those calories we took all those calories back in. And when i left i was in amazing shape. Not only was it four months of working up to four months of working out at altitude, 8000 feet. I had never been so fit in my life. It was actually pretty great. [inaudible] workout, and eat, absolutely. One of the things that tickled me in the book was your mention antimicrobial socks. My First Impression was, why antimicrobial socks . I understand if youre only showering one so for eight minutes, why antimicrobial socks . How does that get decided on . Is related in some ways to the exercise shirts because some of the exercise shirts had nanotechnology, some coding that was supposed to be antimicrobial to keep the stink away. Socks in particular. Those things get stinky. You really dont want to have to bring up a ton of socks. The ones that we investigated a aantimicrobial substance. Because of close quarters . Yes. You want to be considerate of your crewmates. [laughter] how about privacy issues . How did that work out . You cant get away really, these people are in your lives, five other people in your life and you cant get rid of them. How about the privacy issue . We all got pretty close. We are all aware of that. And pretty respectful. If someone is in the room with the door closed you, leave them alone. We spent so much time together so when you are by yourself there wasnt a need to continue to be social. We really just respected everyone. You just have to. One of the examples is space and shared space, theres only a few shelves in the shower so i think early on one person had a number of toiletries in the shower and took up more space than one person should take up as another person that knows that and said actually it makes more sense we bring things to the shower every time then instead of claiming the shelf space. That was fine. No ones feelings were hurt and the problem was solved. Its, like on that level to see how we can be respectful of each other. For four months its manageable. I can imagine. There are such talented and isolated i think how small things can become annoying how personal little human habits. He mentioned the sound of somebody chewing or somebody clearing their throat all the time. I have a daughter who clears her throat all the time in the middle of the night can be if youre in the same room it can get annoying. How would that work . You really start to notice those things. You notice them. You either let go of them or you hold onto them. Those are two options and you have a third option i guess to talk about them and engage in some sort of discussion to figure out how to make it better which can become located. Maybe sometimes more complicated than letting things go. We didnt have too many incidences. As a writer i noticed the Little Things. I found myself getting a little annoyed. Having worked hard to let it go. There were a few instances where i still remember thinking the stories i tell my friends, how the crewmate was sitting across from me at the table and tapped my shin gently with her slipper not realizing she was doing it. I would tuck my legs further and further under my chair but somehow she always found my shin. That was something i had decided to never talk about but evidently all these years later i still think about it. We talked about it since and she laughs. She said i wish you wouldve told me. In the end it actually wasnt that big of a deal. Its funny to realize im still thinking about it. I think when we come out of this situation we are all in right now we will all remember those Little Things that really made the isolation challenging or just memorable. Like this is a feature of this isolation for all of us. So if youre a writer, as you are, you notice Little Things. Thats what writers do. You are the crew writer so you with taking those things down all the time. I imagine you are more detail oriented than most. Its a bit of an occupational hazard to be prone to noticing the Little Things. Whereas other people might more easily been able to let things go, i would notice and record and then maybe think about it again a few more times. It was a bit of a challenge. Also apart from being a writer you are a person of science. You follow science for your whole career. You devoted yourself to science. And as i mentioned earlier, you are a abbefore you started to do the writing. Within this whole challenge of isolation and the cycle of social impact, living in that small enclosed space with other people, you are also doing problemsolving. You are doing scientific experiments. Tell us a little bit about that. Absolutely. All of us who were on this mission had a scientific background. It was a really nice commonality because we were conducting experiments and we were part of the experiment ourselves. We all understood the importance of Data Collection and just the burden of all the surveys we had to fill out. It was part of the science. When i say burden, it wasnt super burdensome, whats the most interesting thing to me about this experience one of the most interesting things to me about the experience is that it was a science experiment but focused so heavily on the domestic. Usually looking at the great big grand questions outside but this is looking at six people looking together, it was this amazing combination of how you do science look at science and be a part of science but then this unexpected domestic experiment because so much of the conversation we been talking about is just like what a lot of people are experiencing now in their homes. During this isolation we were forcing isolation and asking questions about it. That was very interesting. Actually a lot of it reminded me of my grad school experience. It was pretty isolating. I work very closely with two other graduate students and we worked in a basement labor lab and did not see a lot of daylight. Big differences are that when you are a physicist, you are able to control a lot of the experiments. You know you only have that one variable youre looking at and in our case because it was a social experiment, there are so many variables. They are difficult to control. That was something we were always aware of knowing that on the other end the Data Analysis would reveal some of the truths of what we were all experiencing. And we can identify with you because being at home in a pandemic youre doing problemsolving yourself. Innovating so you can get things done. Absolutely. That brings up a great point. Youre living a life that is so different. In the first weeks when we moved into that mars space, the mars space, it was a whole new world for us. We had to figure out what this home was how we would live in it, how we would communicate, how we would get what we needed and how we were going to abit was destabilizing, it was unsettling. Where do you live now . Im in new york city and washington a how is life are you now . Are you having flashbacks of your experience cannot you get out at all . I definitely have flashbacks. In the early weeks i went out and grocery shop and learned a lot about the food we have a mission. I wanted to make meals that reminded me of mars and actually some of the snacks because it was such an interesting time. It was an overall very positive experience for me so there is something about the uncertainty of isolation now that was made a little bit less uncertain by getting the food i was familiar with in that situation. New york right now is interesting it feels like its waking up again at this stage of the pandemic and you can hear an Ice Cream Truck outside my window perhaps. People are out and about and taking care of business here. In the early days and like mid to late march it was abnew york, this neighborhood in particular, it felt like a ghost town. I felt a little haunted. Things are a little bit different now. There are more people around. I can imagine. Theres a question on facebook that relates to a question i was going to ask anyway. The question says, what can you tell us about your sequestered life . Does it make you a better person . My question would have been, how did mars change you . How did the experience of sequestering and isolating and thinking up, pretending, that you are in a very faraway place. With people for a very long time. How did that change your own psychological makeup. Did you come out of it changed in any way. I came out of it i think about the first few days when we were outside. I do feel every breeze on my skin. Im surprised by it. It takes a couple days for me to not notice the breeze on my skin. The sun on my face. That something that you dont think about all the time. I in particular and prone to sunburns so i was very careful when i came out to use a ton of sunscreen and then i found crewmates in hawaii they were getting some color back and i wasnt so finally i just said, im just gonna stand here for five minutes and i burn. I was so sensitive to the sun. In addition to that loud noises frightened me. I just hadnt had a lot of unexpected things happen. I was at a beer garden with a friend there was a dog that barked and the pigeon that flew away and it was a little bit terrifying. Of course i realize now i realized what was happening. But that hadnt occurred in many months. In that way when i first came out it was changed but i think overall i started thinking about things a little differently. I really did appreciate nature more. I always like to hike and swim and camp but i truly like in a way that i hadnt before i saw the majesties of this planet. Just thinking about earth versus mars and where you want to live this is a pretty sweet spot. It really came to appreciate that and i love spending time in nature these days. And Little Things too i became aware of how little water you actually need to bathe or wash dishes. I became aware of my body and the way that it uses resources. In this mission youre always aware of calories in and calories out. An astronaut you can potentially plug an astronaut in some ways to the Mechanized System of spaceflight. You have engineered through designing transfer vehicles and what he did with the person . We have to turn them into ab in some ways i became aware of my input and output more than i have before. Realizing that all of us and were all on this planet. Theres 8 billion of us on this planet. Kate, what do you hope at the end of the reading of this book. Anybody that picks this book up what you hope they take away from your story, from your essays. I ask a lot of questions in the book. So i guess i do hope that a reader might come away asking their own questions or asking different kinds of questions they might have otherwise by like what it is to think about Space Exploration and what is it to live on . You do learn a lot about science in this book and you learn a lot about the human animals and you learn a lot about social relations psychological stress and all of that but mainly as i said before, its a beautiful read, kate. Congratulations for your book called once upon a time i lived on mars published by st. Martins. I wish you every success. Thank you so much and thank you for this conversation it was really nice. Thank you for joining me. Lexi was a pleasure. Heres a look at books being published this week former georgia gubernatorial candidate and Georgia House minority leader Stacey Abrams shares her ideas on Voter Suppression in our time is now in superpower interrupted bloomberg super columnist mike abin the wall street journals bob davis and lynn lynn way exam it current tensions between the u. S. And china in a book superpower of showdown also being published this week in shields of the Republic Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow ab explores the United States security alliances and in the deficit myths, Stony Brook University economics professor and former advisor to the Bernie Sanders president ial campaign Stephanie Kelton offers her thoughts on the new economic model called modern monetary theory. Look for these titles and bookstores this coming week and watch for many of the authors in the near future on booktv on cspan2. Good evening everyone, my name is Kevin Butterfield im the director of the library in mount vernon and coming to you from my home welcome you to a conversation with