Transcripts For CSPAN2 An 20240705

Im lonnie stonitsch, the executive director of fan. And im honored to welcome you to tonights conversation between dr. Moiya mctier and dr. Chanda prescodweinstein. Then celebrating its 40th Anniversary Season this year. Can you believe that . And we are honored to have the robust support of dozens of schools, nonprofits, corporations, families and individuals from across the country. We are joyfully and deeply committed to our vision of an informed and Compassionate Community and. We achieve that by presenting fresh ideas that elevate minds, expand hearts, and make the world a better place. We have hundreds of videos of past events archived on our youtube channel, so please be sure to subscribe to get updates when new recordings are posted for some introductions. Moiya mctier is an astrophysicist folklorist and science communicator based in new york city. After graduating from harvard as the first person in the schools history to study both astronomy and mythology, dr. Mcteer earned her ph. D. In astrophysics at columbia university, where she was selected as a National Science Foundation Research fellow. Dr. Mcteer has consulted with Companies Like disney pbs on their fictional worlds, helped design exhibits for the New York Hall of science and given hundreds talks about science around the globe. To combine her unique set of expertise, she hosts and produce explorer podcast that fictional world building through the lens of science. For conversatner tonight is chanda prescodweinstein. An assistant professor of physics and astronomy and core faculty in womens and gender studies at the university of new. Her research and theoretical physics focuses on cosmology, neutron stars and dark matter. She additionally does research in black feminist science, technology and society studies. She is also a columnist for new scientist and physics and nature recognized her as one of ten people who shapes science in 2020. And essence has recognized her as one of 15 black women for paving the way in stem and breaking barriers. Her first book, the disordered cosmos a journey into dark matter and dreams deferred, won the 2021 Los Angeles Times book prize in the science and technology category, and was named the best book of 2021 by publishers weekly, Smithsonian Magazine and kirkus. And now lets welcome dr. Moiya mctier and dr. Chanda prescodweinstein. Hi, maria. How are you doing . Im good. Im excited to be here with you. Dr. Chanda prescodweinstein, i see your book behind you. I use that as inspiration in part for my book. So thanks for being here with me. Thank you for my book. We are here to talk about the milky way. This really fascinating, exciting autobiography of our galaxy. I am so. I have questions for you. I want to remind the audience that there is a q a box. You put your questions in there and well be will be getting to some audience questions later. So please, as you think of it, write it down so that you dont forget it. Put it in the q a box, which i will be looking at occasionally. I am. So were just going to jump right in. You dont want to do a reading or anything like that, right i dont have a copy to read from. So you could do it in. Yeah. Im going to share it again. Im showing for you and for both windows at the same time. Okay heres this beautiful cover. I am. Okay. So the book is called the milky way an autobiography of our galaxy. So im wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what the concept of the book is. And im interested how you arrived at this. So start by telling us about the concept. And then i have a couple of follow ups that. Yeah, of course. So the whole book is written from the perspective of the galaxy. I wanted to make that very clear with the cover. So its autobiography by the milky way. But the point of this is to tell you the story. Our galaxy from its birth. 13 plus billion years ago, all the way to how it might die when. The universe eventually ends and trillions of years. And its also meant to tell story of our human understand of the milky way from the myths that we used to tell about the night sky. The way that we understand it with telescopes now. And that whole journey is being told from the perspective of the milky way, who is upset that humans have stopped telling its stories, relying on it for practical purposes like our ancestors used to. So for last 300 years, the milky way been like young humans. Whats up . We used to be buds. Like, why are ignoring me now . So that that is what the book does. And i came up with this concept soon after. I was approached by a agent in 2019. He, if i was interested in, writing a book and i was like, oh heck yeah, dude, ive always wanted to write a book. And it made sense to write a book about the milky way because i was in my couple of years of a ph. D. At the time researching the milky way. And so i it seems strategic to write a book about that. And for the perspective twist, there are a few reasons for that. One, i didnt want to just be another human astronomer tacking on their own book space like people have done that before. Second, i had just read the raven tower by and leckie, which is a really great book written from the perspective of a god in this world, except that god is a rock. So i was in the mindset of thinking of weird perspect actives from beings that we typically think of as inanimate and. Yeah, i think thats how it came about. So, you know, when i, i knew we would see a book from you at some point, right . And to give a little bit of context about, this i first heard about moria when i first heard about you, when you were finishing your two theses as, an undergraduate. So you wrote i am and this was like one of the quirks of doing honors degree at harvard, right, is you had to write thesis that covers both topics. And so you wrote senior thesis. Heres why that was combined. Oh, it was. That was combined. Okay. So the one that i remember is that you had to bring folklore, mythology and, exo planets, which is what you have been doing, research on into conversation with each other. And so you wrote a Science Fiction novel. If i remember correctly, but thats which i think i wrote to you and asked you a copy of it, which i still. Yeah. And so actually think like initially i thought the first book we were going to see from you be with some edited version of that, but definitely i thought the first Popular Science book we would see was on exeter planets. I wondered if you could talk about, you know, the the emphasis, the milky way and how you arrived at your research coming out of you. You are part of a generation that has come of age with exoplanets being like the big exciting things. Actually, one of my questions was why a galaxy and an exoplanet . Thats a great question. Yeah i have never lived in a world where didnt know about exoplanets. The first exoplanet was discovered three years before i was born. So it it was something that i studied in college. But was i was hesitant to study it in college because my undergrad advisor worked on exoplanets and i didnt want to fall into the trap of just doing whatever my did. So i tried out lots of Different Research topics star formation, galaxy evolution, black holes. I didnt instrumentation, project or i had to build an instrument to, detect the cosmic microwave background. And then i realized i am not very good working with my hands and building things. Lets go back to the data stuff and then my senior thesis in college studying an exoplanet and trying to characterize it and bringing in the folklore element, going to hawaii and doing some very brief, brief research on the 30 Meter Telescope conflict. There were hawaiians who were protecting and demonstrating on monaco, which is a Sacred Mountain in hawaii where astronomers are trying to build a massive telescope. So i went and i talked to them. You can see that in the book. Its called lying words, and its available on my website and i never got it published. But then when i got to grad school, the question that i really wanted to answer was rooted in my Exoplanet Research as in exoplanets. Do you think about the circumstellar habitable zone or goldilocks zone . This is the place where planets are just the right distance from star to have liquid water. And i was wondering, is there Something Like that on a galactic . Is there a galactic habitable zone . So thats what i studied in my ph. D. And to get there, i started by researching more exoplanet. I did a really fun project trying to figure out a way to detect mountains on exoplanets, which is hard because planets are tiny and very away. And then im moved into stars and stellar evolution and stellar motion around the galaxy. So i learned about the chemicals, the chemical that stars produce over the course of their lifetimes and how different stars do that in different ways. And i learned how stars move around the galaxy and how that affects the planets that live around them. Spoiler alert fast stars just as likely to have planets around them as slow. Thats something i found in my research. And then i combined of that to say in the milky way galaxy, we would to find habitable planets. And those are planets that meet the conditions for life like us. Right. Theres a huge caveat there. But yeah, it was always kind of galaxies, my brain. But thinking about the smaller components of galaxies and how they work together, im really bad at making decisions. I didnt want to choose between planets and galaxies and. I think ive found a way to do that in my dissertation for my ph. D. Program but when it came to writing this book, i wanted something big. I wanted i wanted a larger than life story to tell. And planets are cool, but our planet is only four and a half billion years old, nowhere near as old as the milky way. So i needed it to be bigger and longer. So you came into this as something of an expert on the milky way. And im wondering if in the process of writing the book, there was something that you learned about the milky that we played unexpected for you, like you were like, i should have known that. Thats amazing. Were there things that you learned along the way or did you feel like you came into it . Kind of knew exactly what the whole thing was . Oh, no, i. I learned things. Absolutely. I learned a lot of myths. I didnt want to put the classical greek roman myths that a lot of people hear about in this book. So i learned a lot folklore for it. And i might know a lot about the galaxy. But that doesnt mean i know everything about the universe so especially in the later chapters, the book where it zooms out from the milky way itself and starts talking about dark matter and dark energy and the fate of the universe. And it gets into quantum theory and particle physics that is stuff that i am not super strong in. So i read i read your book, the disordered cosmos, to me, with my dark matter stuff. I read katie, max, the end of everything. Help me with my end of the universe stuff. And there were some milky way specific things that i learned, like i didnt know much about the merger history of the milky way. I knew a lot about how the milky way is now and how, you know, things stars, gas and dust are distributed it now. But the past is very different picture. And so one thing that i learned specifically was the Gaia Enceladus merger. This is a smaller galaxy that merged with the milky way billions of years ago and now we can see parts of it that are left over in our galaxy. But astronomers have had to find really creative ways to identify the parts that are from guy enceladus. And the way that i wrapped that into the book, because this whole thing is a narrative arc. Its the milky way telling its own story is that in the past, the the milky way had to fight gaia and as a way to get andromedas attention, because the milky way has been hard core, crushing on andromeda for billions of years and andromeda very attracted to the milky way after it defeated guidance all of this and now the the remnant one of the remnants of gaia and solidus we call it the gaia sausage. And theres theres a line in the book where the milky way says, like, oh, thats such a suitably. Like mean name or something that you gave this this interleukin galaxies. Oh, yeah, the galaxies. Very sassy as i have written it. And so i guess that would be, you know, one of the really creative that you made here, obviously, is speaking is speaking not from your voice as a scientist and as as a public science communicator. Right. But speaking as the galaxy, kind of talking a public science communicator in scientist. I am. And so im wondering what are what things does the galaxy think that dont agree with . Like, what are the controversial views of the milky way . That we all need to be really clear . You dont agree . Thank you for asking this. There are a lot of them. The galaxy mentions several humans throughout book. One of them is Albert Einstein. The galaxy just really does not like Albert Einstein because einstein popularized as black holes for the public. And in this book, black holes the physical manifestation of a galaxys Mental Health struggles. So depression, anxiety, all those intrusive saying no one likes you and youre not good enough. Thats all coming from black holes. So that is that is another thing that the galaxy that you find in this book that i dont particularly agree with because i have nothing against black holes. But thats just how worked in the narrative. So the milky way, like Albert Einstein, the way thinks that this the saying we have of you have the same number of hours in the day as beyonce because she gets so much time. The milky way is like im so much more productive than beyonce. She has nothing on me. The milky way loves julianne drewes, and im lukewarm. Andrews but yeah, a lot of the human opinions, the milky way and i dont share, okay, why does the milky way love Julie Andrews so much . I feel like you need to impact that a little bit. I think its because needed a way to start a chapter about the the big bang and the origin of the universe. And i wanted to start it at the very so i wanted to quote Julie Andrews and it made so that for the milky way to know that quote and remember it and use it would probably mean that it likes her. So a lot of these opinions were kind of just for the sake of easy at some points. Okay. Very no, i think another question, you know, just coming back to this, the things that you learned along the way. Okay. So youre in an elevator with someone and like what makes the milky way more interesting than andromeda . Im like, whats your whats your elevator speech answer . Like, whats the most awesome thing about the milky way that youre just like, i want to point this about the milky way. Like, maybe youre their agent for the day or Something Like that. Actually, if im speaking for the milky way, think that it would say its not more interesting than andromeda. Andromeda is perhaps the one galaxy, but the milky way looks up to you and holds in high esteem the other galaxies in our local group, like the small and large Magellanic Clouds and triangulum, which is this satellite galaxy around andromeda, the milky way does not have very high opinions of those. So one thing that makes the milky way special in our neighborhood of galaxies is that its so massive. It is maybe the exception of andromeda, the most massive galaxy in our group of about 50 that weve found. Its it keeps going and forth as we learn more as we gain more data about milky way and andromeda, both of them, we used to think the milky way was more massive and then we thought andromeda was more massive. And now i the consensus is that the way is more massive. But andromeda has more stars, which is interesting. Like why . Why are the formation of these different galaxies dissimilar and like whats whats going on there . So yeah, the milky way is just the biggest, strongest galaxy. If you think of gravitational influence as like stranger than the milky ways the biggest, strongest galaxy we have. And that it sounds like the milky way is working for its relationship with masculinity there. And and, you know, working out like do i have to be the biggest one . And i should say . Yeah. For for the audience that andromeda is our nearest neighbor, major galaxy, as opposed to one of these satellites like the ones you were talking about earlier thats orbiting the the milky way. And i just want to remind the audience that were talking science and there are going to be things that your leg i want to know more about that or i didnt quite follow it we these are the kinds of questions that you were allowed to ask in a q a. So youre just i just want to remind this is your opportunity to ask a real live astrophys this agent for the milky way. Im questions about the milky way and i think maybe about exoplanets, too. You might be able to get away with. Some questions in there. Can i go back to your point about the milky way dealing with its masculinity . Because thats a great. So this the way in this book has a very strong personality that i think might be a bit polarizing. And if you stick with it, if you make it through the whole book, the milky way does soften a bit. It becomes more humble you can see it learning to like not look down so much on humans. And part of that comes from love of andromeda. And theres even line in there when its talking about the mass difference between the milky way and andromeda and the milky way says for i dont care who is more massive, it doesnt matter here. Im not worried about dominating andromeda. So yeah, it definitely does. Deal with its masculinity in that way, although i dont assign any gender to these galaxies. Yes. Yeah, i, i think that that there theres a lot to unpack there and i want to really encourage. Its its novel in a way and dont mean novel in kind of like a superficial way but like we seen anything like that kind of writing or text. And i think that that makes it a really exciting approach to communicating. And, and so this kind of, you know, part of what interests me about this approach to science communication, which i know more broadly, is something that youre super passionate about, is that it kind of brings Popular Science like general audience and, hard science, writing, tradition into conversation and with cosmic storytelling that is more oriented, right . And so thats, thats a clearly a natural connection for you to draw. But i was actually wondering, and maybe this is going back a little bit to the first question i have, you know, as you thought about, writing the text like this, did you treat it like an experiment of those to ways of storytelling, the cosmos into conversation. Was there a specific motivation of i want to see if i can do like mythology and write a general science book at the same time . Or is that just something that kind happened as part of the process . That is something ive been doing since even before i started the book in college, since i studied both astronomy and folklore. I started thinking the intersection then and that has just evolved over the last ten years. So i that there are cultural traditions around the world do kind of personify different aspects of nature. And i have grown up hearing those stories and internalizing those stories. So for me it didnt feel like a stretch to imagine the cosmos going through their own stories in the same way that we humans do, because cultures have been telling this like that for thousands of years. I like thinking of it as an experiment, though i do think that if there was any sort experiment element in it, it was an experiment of how to create a character that i cant relate to all because ive been telling stories, ive been to write stories with characters in them since i was a little kid. Like i said at the beginning, wanted to write a book, but all of those characters were human or they were like mythical figures like werewolves or fairies or something that are very common in fiction and. It was really fun to make a character out of something that people dont of nowadays as sentient. Im so this kind of brings me you know as as a writer, im always very interested in how the project happens and so im very interested in who are you . So, so let me back up and actually just say i find it really interesting that you wanted to write from when that im already forgetting the words, but basically you cant maybe not someone you would to have dinner with. Right. Im like, maybe someone you might want to interview, but not someone that like, youre going to go and chill with for, like, periods of time. Right. And so thats the voice that kind of cheers. And so then i guess my question is, is like, what audience did you have mind for this voice and how do you wanting the audience to read the book when this is like maybe a bit of a character that im a little bit like i dont know jane austens we only do not and sometimes its kind of hard to load, but honestly the very compelling. So how did you think about your audience as you were working through that,. This is maybe one of my weakest points as a writer in that i, i didnt have audience in mind. And when people asked, who is this for . I was like anyone whos interested space because i just wanted to write book. I just wrote the that i wanted to see and that i wanted to challenge myself to. So i, i wasnt thinking about audience and if i had been thinking about an audience and if i had been more strategic with, the tone of the book i would not have written it in this sassy, snarky, jerky tone. So i dont i mean, it sounds like you have an audience that you wanted to write way maybe yourself still Young Lawyers to other other to other folks like you and that and i am you know im about what that process of developing like did you just sit down and you were like. Well i like chocolate so is the milky way has to be like how did you how did you craft you got that specifically because character is sort of in relation to you it sounds like. Yeah you can absolutely see a lot of influence both you can see things if you know me really well you can see things in this book that match my personality and you can see where i tried to the opposite way. But i will ill try answer your previous question again. So i guess the audience that i had in mind were people who feel very distant from space, people who might be intimidated by space people who feel afraid of space because thought that by personifying the milky way and getting them to have almost this like conversation with the milky way as a character that it might get them to realize its not as intimidating as i think it is space while is big doesnt pose any sort of threat to me and its also something that im a part of the milky way says over and over in this book you are a part of me i am not separate you because thats what something i really want people to get about space and then like crafting that the different personality quirks of the milky oh so overall the arc that the galaxy goes through from being this very angry kind of depressed very superior being to feeling more confident in itself and seeing the value in the people around it, even the tiny humans who are deep inside its belly. I, i wanted all of those quirks to be inspired by the science. So i sat down and i thought if i were a being that was 13 plus billion years old and when i was born, i had all of these other galaxies much closer to me and were partying and we were friends. Everything is great. And then the universe expanded and all of a sudden i only have tiny annoying alien galaxies left and also i spend all of my time making stars falling in love with them and then watching them die. Id be pretty messed up to. I wouldnt have. A lot of Mental Health struggles to maybe if i had not been writing this book during the pandemic when i myself was going through of my worst Mental Health ever. This wouldnt be what the book looks like. But i was writing it in pandemic and maybe another audience that i thought i could reach once i worked through organization of the book was people who were struggling with their own Mental Health, as i know so many people have over the last couple of years, i think that that is really powerful and i think connects to the question of i know people often ask, you know, what is what should my relationship to the cosmos be . And actually, im just going to point to theres theres one question in the q a box, but the asking, how did you study astrophysics being utterly overwhelmed about small. We are in comparison to the rest of it space i am and does personifying the milky way somehow make it more manageable so im wondering if you can say a little bit about you what is our psychological relationship with the cosmos and how to use your your text contributing to that conversation or helping people that relationship who theres a lot here so historically humans have had a very close relationship to space. So many cultures around the world put their their gods and their origin in sky. They they saw the constellations and even even the changing weather patterns as the will of their gods. So you can see this in a lot of different cultures. Greek, egyptian norse. So many and and some even said that we could influence space. Theres a myth in the book that i heard for the first time a couple of years ago, and i had include it because i always think about its a myth from the khoisan people of Southern Africa and they say that at the beginning of time sky was dark, there were no stars to light any anything. But there was a young girl who was dancing a fire one night and needed to get home to eat dinner. This is just one version of the story. But she didnt know how to. Get home. There wasnt any light to to illuminate her path. So she took from the fire and threw them up into the sky. And that created the path of the milky way that we see. So some some cultures said that we could influence space and i think the biggest way that humans have connected to space throughout is very practical we used it to keep time. We used it to navigate, we used it to kind of enforce our own cultural identities and and establish cultural that we could use to make ourselves feel safe in our own communities. And now with industrialization with light air pollution with modern technology, we have lost that practice all connection. And as people are on average, less religious now than they used to be. Weve also lost lot of that spiritual, cultural connection to space. So i was hoping that by personifying the milky by turning it into a story like this, other people might tap back into the human to tell stories about space and to connect with it on a deeper level. Maybe relate to it as something thats almost human the way that our ancestors did when they said their gods lived in the sky at the end of the book, im not going to give too much away, but the end of the book, the milky way says it wants humans to start telling about it again. So i hope that with this book people will learn about the milky way. Well learn about space and well be so in love with it because the milky way is so that they cant help but imagine other stories for it or look up the stories our ancestors have told told. So before i go back to my questions, i actually think that there is a great follow up here that im going to kind of pull from the audience. So theres a question as to whether other galaxies are jealous of the milky ways monopoly on celestial order and there, i guess, my version of that question is, you said that the milky way once people to tell it story again does it want people tell their galaxy stories or does it want them all to be about the way is a great question it only wants about the milky way it might want love stories about the milky way and andromeda if you want to write some romance fanfic about the milky way and andromeda, our galaxy would be very pleased. But no, it doesnt care. About other galaxies getting representation. One one thing i wish i had done more in this book though it wouldnt have served the primary goal of being a Popular Science book was Digging Deeper into. The like, galactic culture and what the other galaxies are out there doing because only hear about them through the milky ways. But whos to say that . Another galaxy out there hasnt written its own autobiography for whatever life forms may or may not live in it, maybe the milky got this idea from another and is just copycatting so so i guess following up i the audience questions are starting to get good. I like them better than my own questions in some cases. So im just going to id follow up and im just going to say that i to know that this one comes from a star trek fan. I is are there topics or discussions within space and astronomy that you feel get too much attention or topics that arent looked at or fully appreciated like colonizing mars and guess . I think theres the question for you and then i guess i wonder what the milky way might say if the milky way were available for for to join us in this conversation. Yeah. I mean, the milky way is here we are the milky. So we are pretty share points. I yeah your point about colonizing mars. I think that that is talked about way too often and too because theres a way talk about exploration space travel without immediately defaulting to colonization and extraction and gross. Stuff like that. So yeah, i think that gets too airtime. No, if anything, i think Everything Else just doesnt get enough airtime. The milky way would probably say we humans are too obsessed. The search for alien life. It would because mentions that. But what we really want to know is are there aliens is there some sort of Federation Like in star that we could join or . Is there faster than light travel and the milky way thinks that we are so silly for spending lot of energy thinking about that because we should be spending our energy just learning more about the milky way and context in the universe and along the way as we gain that knowledge, would probably also Gain Knowledge about exoplanets and other aliens species if theyre out there. But yeah, it thinks we have too much of a focus on that, especially since and this goes back to the to mars colonizing thing the way knows and i know and chad i think you know that we are not ready for that we live on a planet that we evolved to to live like this ecosystem whats right for us and there arent other ecosystems anywhere nearby that are good for us. I think the milky way knows that if we really tried take a bunch of humans and put them else in space, that we could reach, we would die we would not want and well for us. So yeah, thats what the milky way thinks. You know, i think in relation to that im just going to share with you a maybe controversial opinion that recently come to, which is that i no longer believe that jupiter and saturn are planets. I think that they are maybe just old stars. Yeah. So lets talk about i mean, you know, is that like does the galaxy . Its like, oh, my god, the humans are Like Fighting about predatory guns or the. Is that like a serious i really been thinking about this. Im like, why is the of the planet just because its orbiting the sun its just a failed star. Yeah yeah. The milky way does not care how we specifically categorize things. Planets, stars versus moons but it has one snarky remark about the plutos demotion to a dwarf planet. But it, of course, brings back to like, i dont care that you call it a dwarf planet, but would you all get so upset if the milky way were suddenly demoted to a dwarf galaxy. I dont think so so. Why . Why are you hearing so much about planet . Its just because its in your essentially. Was the other part of that question. There were two so were too focused on wrong. I mean i guess ill start build stars in your interview am i going too far in announcing saturn and jupiter are field stars because theyre like their gas. Yeah you just have like these gas. I mean its like a star where fusion failed theyre all but yeah if you added more gas and got it more massive got pressure in the middle it would fuze us so i dont think its unfair to call them failed stars i think its these are all different words that you can use to describe the same thing theyre you know, coming again as as a writer. Im always interested in process. Im interested in technique. And so i am even as this is a very, very novel approach to communicating with human about the wonders of the milky way and beyond im im sure it presented you as a writer to come to a more serious point of view as a but there were things that made some of the communication challenging where you had to just smooth and navigate boundaries because you were doing this first person thing with something that actually sentient. As far as we know. And so im wondering, what was your biggest frustration as you were working through that like what was the part that you really had to fight with or yeah, okay. This is a great question. The milky way knows pretty much everything. It knows all the stuff about space. It knows what dark matter is and how its distributed around its own body because it can feel it. It knows where other galaxies are and what look like it knows. If there are aliens out there. But i didnt know that and i didnt want to say anything false or in this book. So i had to pretend to be an essentially omniscient figure without without seeing everything or giving you the facts. So the way i got around that in this book is that the milky way just loves to watch humans struggle to learn. It loves watching us do research it, loves it, mentions like it loves when astronomers get really nervous and start biting all their nails. I actually sent a copy of the book to one of my best friends who is an astronomer who studies star formation. She, she its her nails a lot. And so she sent me a picture of that page with it with that paragraph circled and was like, add me next time. But, but yeah, it was. So what i ended up doing was saying that the milky way promised when it started project that it wouldnt tell humans anything, that humans didnt already know. So i that i managed it. But then theres this whole chapter at the end where the milky way is hinting at it secrets. These are the things that it that it refuses to tell. But it did tell us how astronomers are actively trying to solve those questions and those big secrets are what is dark matter, what is dark energy . Are there aliens . It doesnt tell. So it hints at it. Okay, but what is dark matter . I would like to know if i am not the all knowing galaxy. I dont know. But i when writing the dark matter chapter, i. I love that graph that you have in your book of overlapping bubbles of the various hypotheses of what dark matter could be. And it mentions some of them it mentions wimps or weakly interacting massive particles. It mentions axion and says that it prefers when they were called piglets. They remember watching your talk when you came to speak at columbia and you showed graph and i was like piglets, a better name than axion so. Yeah. So the milky way shares that opinion. But yeah. What is dark matter . I dont know. I know, man. Thats kind of rough because, like, while i appreciate it, but my argument that its the great a missed opportunity im that thats catching on but i dont know i want a shady character like the milky getting my when that person is on your team you want to be on that team like theyre theyre tough questions theyre not is great i mean the way has some character but i still think i would always want on my Team Excellent okay but thats to know im so im also curious about you know what was your writing process like because you were already working on this by the time you got to the point of writing your dissertation and your dissertation. So did you navigate you youre still doing your research youre also writing out the most significant document of your life. So far. And youre also starting to work on this project thats radically different, doing research in some substantive ways and definitely the style of writing is very different. How did you kind of manage that . And i mean, this is like a really like maybe big question, but like what tools did you use . Like, im im im dependent on scribner for my book project. Im like, how did how did you make that work time wise and tool wise, etc. . So i, i was strategic in choosing topic of this. So i was writing dissertation and a book both about and that meant that i didnt have to do extra research for it, which really nice. Im kind of Old School Everything that i planned for this book lives in yellow legal pads that i have as a stack in my room at home. So i, i was this scheduling was really important for this i usually wrote like three or four chapters at a time to send them, to my editor. And so there would be moments of, of frenzied book writing where i would write like four chapters in, in a month, dedicating a week to each chapter. And then i would have long stretches of time when i wasnt working on the book at all because was waiting for my editors comments. And so in those times i could work on the research and the dissertation and then i defended last april. So after that i could just work on the book and leading into the fall. Of 2021, i got to do most of the editing. So i split it up and worked on both of them at the same time so that i could compartmentalize. Am i so im curious about doing that work during the pandemic. Obviously you werent doing a lot of moving around, which maybe makes it easier to use. Kind of the notebooks that that that youve been using. I am. You know, my impression that youre moving forward, your plan is to focus exclusively on doing Science Community action and engaging the public on science. So youre probably going to be more mobile there going forward. Do you think that thats stem is going to continue working for you or are you starting to think about other ways that you going to approach it as as you become more vocal . I mean real science at the same time. Oh now i know its okay. Oh i mean i really like the feel of writing something down by just not to write the actual text by hand but i love outlining by hand because i can arrows and move things and reorder things in a way that you cant really when youre youre typing. Or at least i havent found a good to do that. So i do think ill probably continue to to use the yellow legal pads i like the idea of one day having a shelf on my bookcase thats just like i know legal pads from all the books ive written and yeah i think that i write from beginning to end like i wrote this from the first chapter through to the last chapter in order and before started working on every chapter i would write a very barebones outline of here are the major points that i want to be in this chapter. And then i would expand on each of those major points on yellow legal pad with reference is that i wanted to be sure to include and then i had like the notes app on my phone i could every time i was out and i had a thought of something i wanted to in a specific chapter. I had a note that was it was called book thoughts and i would just write whatever i wanted and then incorporate that when i got back home or that the disorder was a lot more disordered in terms and the writing process. Yeah i definitely there were points at which i was like, actually, this chapter is here together. And that was something. So that thats really interesting. Hear that . It was a very different process. So the y saw me, there was some rearranging the chapters. So there are alternate to almost alternating science and myth chapters in the book and in the beginning of the book in the first half, i was very clear on what i wanted the order to be. But in the end it was less clear to me. So those ended up rearranged a few times. Specifically, if you have the book now or when you get it specifically the crush and constellation in chapters swapped like five times before i sent the final copy to my editor. So i think the last question that i really had and then i will entirely focus on that, on the audience is is this part a larger series like do you think that maybe you will come back and do an actual planet or an extra solar or planetary system . Is that on deck . Its not. Not a possibility. I have i have a couple ideas, books that i could write. Next. One of them is is similar. This autobiography format. But ive already done this, so i dont want to do that again. I, i have the idea to write almost like a of age story for a proto on because a proton can be anything. And so i have this idea for a story about a young proton that is trying to figure out what it wants to and in that way i can talk more about the small stuff but i didnt get to talk about in this book because in the words of the milky way, why would i care about a neutrino theyre too tiny for me to bother with. So thats one idea. And then to kind of get a little bit away space which, which has been important to me for my Mental Health. After i finished my ph. D. , i have an idea for a book is an epistolary novel. Its written in the form of letters between the nine greek muses, as they are telling each other about the ways theyve influenced humanity at our major like moments of learning. Maybe, maybe i would love to write a book from perspective of a planet or star, but i think the proton, you know, and those things come first. The part of me that likes to teach solar astrophysics x is immediately like, okay, so theres going to be a whole new neutron discussion in the proton, right . Is like, what are the things because neutrons and protons are made of cork. Yes it could actually just decided actually wants to be a neutron right. And i think that theyre the thing to decide. Yeah. And there are so many like amazing real world connect that i can make with that. I was really important to me to make it clear that this galaxy does not have a gender even though so many people who read it end up assigning it a gender, often using she pronouns, but but it was really important to me to bring that in and it was really important for me to insert some of my beliefs like the the gwc naming controversy, the milky way firmly believes that the name of gwc should be changed. This this telescope we Just Launched into space last christmas and it firmly believes we have not paid enough to the work of women and people of color and queer folks because we have human prejudices. So i think be really fun in a proton book could turn into a neutron to bring in like trans stories gender stories and then like really connect it to the queer experience here on earth. So actually thats a great bridge because one of the early questions was about the discovery made with the just wonderful space so far. And have they changed your thinking since the writing of the book and i was thinking about thats one of the hard things about doing science right is that the knowledge is so. And in fact we did get that deep field image that maybe radically changed our understanding of galaxy formation, right . So maybe you can more about like what its like to have a book come out on a topic thats literally like hot in the sky. Yeah it was so frustrating, so i did manage to download the galaxy. I did manage to jwt launch before the book final version had to be and so i got i got that which was nice. But there are so many other things we. Definitely didnt have the images by the time i submitted the book so so that that needs to be updated at some point but stuff like the picture we just took of sagittarius as a star, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. We that image came out maybe month after i submitted the final of the book and i was like, really . You could have just done that a month. You couldnt have analyzed your data just a little bit faster because there is a line in the book about how we took we took a picture of m87 a black hole, but ha, you havent gotten mine yet. And then a month later we did so yeah, it is kind of scary actually to put out a book about a topic is like you said, dynamic and changing. And i know that there are things in that book right now that are wrong but i just have to just have to live with that. It will not be my book. It will not be my last act of science communication. And i can continue to evolve with the story. Science evolves so its frustrating, but im going to get over it. So im one of the audience questions, which i will condense a little bit and i but one of the things that they said is while listening to you and gibbons getting curious, they started to think about these questions. I, i have black feminism and and im so the question is, can or should we build kinship with the milky way or other space entities. Is that something youve thought about is that a framing that i would engage with you . Oh, my god, i love that. Yes, im engaged. Consider me engaged. I you can. Theres a foreword of the book that is the only part written from my perspective, except for one note. Later in the book. And in that i see that when i was a kid, i talk to the moon and sun as if they were my celestial parents. And so i had a connection space in that way i felt kinship with space in way. But since i learned more about astronomy and how that whole we are star stuff, flow is is totally true. Then all of the elements, most of the elements in our bodies, the carbon, the nitrogen, the oxygen they were created in the course stars. So we, we are literally a part of space and i think if more people recognize that and started nurturing their relationship with space and developing a kinship with it. Yeah thats thats one thing i wanted people to get from this book, kind of like a small of whats the overview effect that astronomy that astronauts talk about when they come back from space, when you can see of earth through one tiny window and you cant see borders, you cant see the little human squabbles that. We have little. But that is a really valuable perspective i think it can make us less of a jerk and so yeah develop a relationship space and that can look a lot of different ways. So whatever that means to you i think yeah. Find that kinship with the night sky or the day sky. The sun is part of space. Do i . Although a reminder, dont look directly at the sun. Definitely have the right equipment for that. So were starting run low on time unfortunately. So i just want to point out that there is a question the moon wants to know if have considered making an animated film. I will just give you that and i will also say that there is some encouragement from a queer or trans teenager who wants your book about queer coded hadrons and. They are so excited about the idea. And so i was wondering if also if there are any reading suggestions that want to offer for a teenager who has that perspective and, that orientation for us as queer people, and what books. Might you put in their hands at this point in time if theyre excited about that intercept . If like queer science, yours, yours, the disordered cosmos. Aside from that know its not a place to question, but actually your book is so good for that. I dont know many other books have done done what you did by combining these the science and the social justice. So yeah, i highly recommend disordered cosmos. I dont have any other book recommendations for an animated movie. Im very open to it. If any of you work at an Animation Studio and could offer me money for that . Please get in touch. Well then maybe let me follow up that very quickly and then i will i will let lani how have you done . I am as as a queer person going back to your teenage saw what books with you what books did speak to you at that point in time maybe thats another way of putting that question. Yeah i until two years ago exclusively read fantasy books so ill give those recommendations anything by n. K. Jemison i think is is really gorgeous beautiful worldbuilding beautiful storytelling gets into that identity of being like a black woman, sometimes a queer person in stories. I love her. I love to more pierce. I love lady taylor there. This one book called kingdom of dragons maybe. And this is a tangential connection, but in that book, the king of dragons is just a job title. You can you can be a woman and still be. And i think that was like a trans formative perspective shift for me. Awesome. Well, thank for this incredible conversation. You milky way an autobiography of our galaxy is just an incredible, exciting text and im so happy now that when people ask for another book by a black astronomer that i have describing people patterns, among other things, there are so many ways this is exciting. So thank you again. Thank you so head right there after about david. Hes New York Times best selling author of dreamland which is a book about the science of sleep, the king and queen of malibu. About that area of california. Went from a sleepy small town to a place for celebrities a