For The Wild - Dr. CHANDA PRESCOD-WEINSTEIN on the Night Sky and Liberation Discourse ⧸228

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00:01:40.580 Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. Today I'm speaking with Dr. Chanda

00:01:48.000 Prescod-Weinstein. The night sky can be part of our liberation discourse and not just part of

00:01:57.180 our fears about what technology is doing to us. Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is an assistant

00:02:05.180 professor of physics and core faculty in women's and gender studies at the University of New 0.98

00:02:11.120 Hampshire, USA. Her work on particle physics and cosmology focuses especially on the dark

00:02:17.720 matter problem, and she is a topical convener for the 2021 Snowmass Particle Physics Community

00:02:24.580 Planning Process. In addition, Dr. Prescott Weinstein is a Black feminist theorist of science, 1.00

00:02:32.100 technology, and society studies, and she is an executive committee member of the American

00:02:37.820 Physical Society Forum on the History of Physics. She is the recipient of the APS 2021

00:02:44.260 Edward A. Bouchot Award for Contributions to Particle Cosmology Research and Co-Founding

00:02:50.660 Particles for Justice. Dr. Prescod Weinstein's book, The Disordered Cosmos, A Journey into Dark

00:02:57.460 Matter, Space, Time, and Dreams Deferred, will be published in the U.S. and Canada on March 9th, 2021.

00:03:04.420 one. Thank you so much for joining us today to speak to a topic that we have yet to cover on

00:03:15.480 for the wild. So I am really excited. Thank you for having me on. I'm excited.

00:03:21.680 As big as a question as this is, I'd like to begin by situating listeners in the disorder

00:03:28.060 of the universe. So to start us off, I wonder if you can share how physics or cosmology

00:03:34.300 can help give us some perspective as we think about our relationship with the timescale of

00:03:39.880 the universe? I think one of the kind of intersections of cosmology and philosophy

00:03:46.040 maybe is to think about not just what was our history. So you're kind of starting with

00:03:52.820 the inflationary era, which is 10 to the minus 43 seconds after whatever started our bubble of

00:04:00.360 space time. Sometimes we call this the Big Bang, but we're not really sure what happened. So that's

00:04:06.380 a period when space time expanded really rapidly. And so space time grew very quickly. And it

00:04:14.020 happened in less than a second. So it's a very short time frame, very dramatic change to the

00:04:19.000 universe. And then in the time since then, space time has just been expanding. So that's all of

00:04:24.560 our, that's our past, that's our history. One of the questions that we can ask is also what will

00:04:29.820 be the future of space-time. So that's not something that I have personally done a lot

00:04:34.420 of research on. I definitely point people to Katie Mack's, the end of everything, if they're

00:04:39.140 interested in these kinds of questions. But it is really a very different time scale that,

00:04:44.480 as I mentioned, the inflationary era happened during a very short fraction of a second.

00:04:49.880 And then, since then, there have been something like around 14 billion years. And in the future,

00:04:58.100 the universe will look different from the way that it looks now. And so there really are just

00:05:03.800 these very different timescales involved in the different types of scientific questions that we

00:05:11.040 can ask, depending on what period of time we're interested in, that you have to concern yourself

00:05:16.720 with very, very short timescales or extremely long ones. And when you say the universe would

00:05:24.120 look very different or will look very different what does that mean if you could describe that a

00:05:29.760 bit for us yeah so one hypothesis is that eventually the stars that exist now will burn out

00:05:38.020 they'll burn all of their hydrogen and some of them will supernova some of them will turn into

00:05:42.920 what we erroneously call planetary nebulae and this is like a historical term because people

00:05:48.860 used to think that they were planets but they're actually just like remnants of stars so they're

00:05:53.700 kind of like the grave of a star or something like that and um so the thought is that because

00:06:00.640 of the expansion of space-time fewer and fewer next generation stars will be born because um so

00:06:07.900 much stuff is going to be pulled apart and so one potential uh long-term future for the universe is

00:06:16.160 that the universe does get darker that there's less light traveling through it there's less

00:06:22.020 light being produced. So that's certainly one outcome. Again, it's not something that I think

00:06:27.560 about a lot, because I think there are so many questions with the history that I can't even

00:06:31.580 worry about the future yet. Yeah, what initially drew me to your work was your focus on early

00:06:38.460 universe cosmology. So I'm wondering if you could share a bit about your focus here and what we know

00:06:45.820 about the potential beginning of the universe, and how theoretical cosmology is really a form

00:06:51.840 of storytelling? Yeah, I like to think of what I do as storytelling using math. So I think there

00:07:00.500 are a lot of different ways to tell stories about the universe and they do different things for us.

00:07:06.940 So I subscribe to the Sylvia Winter School of Thought that we are a biocultural species

00:07:12.320 where storytelling is embedded in who we are as a species. And so the different types of

00:07:19.160 storytelling that we do, I think, do different things. And, you know, I am not at the school

00:07:25.680 of scientists who thinks that one particular form of storytelling is superior to the others.

00:07:30.360 As a Jew, I think that the storytelling we do in my synagogue is actually really important for

00:07:34.980 helping me think about my values. And I actually think that, you know, the mathematical stories

00:07:39.660 we tell don't necessarily help us think about our values. And actually, sometimes when we try and do

00:07:44.120 that mathematical storytelling without thinking about values, it gets us into trouble. So,

00:07:49.160 I think one of the things that's really tantalizing about doing theoretical cosmology is that we can use all of this physics that we've basically developed just from looking at the night sky and just from doing experiments here on Earth.

00:08:03.360 And we can actually put together a coherent story that is self-consistent with all of

00:08:11.000 the observations that we see that gives us the story from, again, 10 to the minus 43

00:08:15.580 seconds.

00:08:16.660 So, you know, a decimal point with over 40 zeros after it, that we can tell a story from

00:08:22.740 that point in time to the point where we are now.

00:08:25.380 And there are certainly holes in it, but actually we have a pretty good coherent story that

00:08:31.060 has, relatively speaking, very few holes in it. Before we delve into the disordered cosmos and

00:08:40.740 the fusion of work you unfurl, I'd like to sort of introduce listeners to this fusion

00:08:46.360 through your thought around dark matter. I understand that things like galaxies, stars,

00:08:53.240 planets, humans, and trees make up about 5% of the matter in our universe, whereas 85% of

00:09:00.980 matter in the universe is considered intangible dark matter. So can you share what the fascination

00:09:07.980 is with dark matter for listeners who are newer to astrophysics before we get into the terminology?

00:09:16.360 Why is dark matter fascinating to us? I think probably I answered this question like very

00:09:21.780 differently from someone who doesn't actually do research in the field, right? But for me,

00:09:25.880 it's such an incredible thing that actually the universe is mostly stuff that we can't see so

00:09:33.060 we're used to thinking of the universe in terms of what we can see and really this whole paradigm

00:09:39.320 that most of the matter in the universe is transparent to light that light seems to go

00:09:44.980 right through it so we call it dark matter for for reasons that you say we'll discuss in a moment

00:09:50.760 But it's incredible that actually the universe is mostly what we can't see, not mostly what we can see. It's a complete reversal, I think, of our entire intuition about what's going on when we look at the sky.

00:10:04.740 yeah that brings up so much about what we can and can't see and the power or belief that we put into

00:10:17.860 what you know both of those uh or that binary and um in the disorder cosmos you examine the

00:10:27.540 naming of dark matter and how it is often incorrectly framed as something foreboding

00:10:32.960 and unknown, when in fact, this matter is vital to all that exists. So can you share why the term

00:10:40.860 dark matter is a misnomer, and how this example can serve as a primer to some of the larger work

00:10:47.340 you're interrogating when it comes to the colonial legacy of really all academic fields?

00:10:54.840 So as I just mentioned, light goes through it. So it's not dark, it doesn't absorb light the way

00:11:01.680 that objects that have a dark color tend to and you know it's simply really the absence of anything

00:11:11.900 impeding light in some sense so if I were to have like a bunch of dark matter in my hands if it was

00:11:18.620 possible to put dark matter in my hands I would feel like weighed down like it would feel like I

00:11:24.540 was holding something that had some weight associated with it because it has mass but I

00:11:30.480 would still be able to see my hands because light would go through the dark matter. It would bounce

00:11:36.040 off my hands into my eyes just the way that it would if the dark matter wasn't there. Maybe the

00:11:40.960 dark matter would disturb the light a little bit. But what we know so far about dark matter is that

00:11:45.520 for the most part, it doesn't have interactions with light. If it does have interactions with

00:11:49.840 light, they're very minimal. So when we're thinking about why is dark matter called dark

00:11:55.360 matter. I want people to really unpack what is the history of the context in which this term arose

00:12:01.900 and what were the associations that people in that time period had with dark, in particular

00:12:07.300 in Europe? How is the word dark being used and circulated socially? And sort of the larger point

00:12:14.780 here is that all of these questions of how we name things are always social questions. They're

00:12:20.400 not being handed down to us on a mount on a tablet from you know some higher being or something like

00:12:28.840 that these are decisions being made by people and their cultural context informs what seems normal

00:12:35.800 to them that is such a good point really important for us to interrogate where language comes from

00:12:46.920 and how that shapes the way we understand things yeah i studied theology in undergrad and

00:12:55.780 just learning about the context behind so much of the bible for instance was really

00:13:03.960 eye-opening and um so i i can see how the time in which this was created influenced

00:13:14.260 how it's been replicated in academia over this time and um yeah in the past couple years

00:13:26.320 there's been a huge effort by both private companies and the government to begin developing

00:13:32.300 plans and technology to colonize space as a new frontier instead of extending dominion

00:13:39.440 across oceans, many are now looking to reach above. And in terms of colonial processes, I

00:13:46.960 think back to previous conversations I've had, where indigenous folks are acutely aware of what

00:13:54.340 the future implications are of colonial processes. How the water is poisoned, the land degraded, etc.

00:14:01.480 But it doesn't matter at all to those who are doing the colonizing, even though they too will

00:14:07.280 be impacted. You also write about this potential reality in terms of space colonization. And so I

00:14:14.360 wonder if I could ask you how you're thinking about future preclusions in terms of the universe.

00:14:22.720 You know, I'm always a little bit worried about us humans deciding to go off and do something

00:14:31.400 that we still don't do well but doing it in a new location and you know it's a little bit like

00:14:38.640 putting someone on the freeway when they're still not comfortable driving on the street

00:14:43.800 and I definitely think that we as a species still haven't really figured out how to be cool

00:14:52.300 and like literally cool with planet earth and so I have genuine concerns about the push to

00:15:00.020 go beyond earth and start thinking about settlements and i keep saying we here but

00:15:04.820 of course like it's actually like a very small subset of the population that is thinking about

00:15:11.000 using resources to go beyond earth while a larger percentage of the population i think is trying to

00:15:17.560 survive the consequences of those kinds of behaviors here on earth um and and are even

00:15:25.380 you know, trying to save Earth from those consequences. So of course, like the rock

00:15:30.200 that is Earth will survive. But the question is whether it will still be habitable for our

00:15:34.700 species in the way that it has been for the last several thousand years. I think that we really

00:15:41.520 have to worry about that now, right? We're facing global warming. So what does it mean in the middle

00:15:47.080 of a crisis and I purposefully say man-made crisis like global warming to say yeah now

00:15:55.620 seems like a really good time to planet half and see what happens if we try and you know

00:16:01.320 shape an environment on a different planet like we can even live in harmony with an environment

00:16:06.880 that's already ideal for our existence how much worse does that get when we start doing

00:16:12.300 things like planetscaping that's such a good point and in your book you know there's this

00:16:21.780 part about really asking who profits who will perish from these expeditions and

00:16:30.100 will these missions exacerbate inequalities on earth and yeah i think to

00:16:38.900 push forward with this space exploration with no critical analysis of how we have treated the earth

00:16:48.080 is crazy i mean it's so short-sighted and it's really what's the word i'm looking for

00:16:55.560 just the hubris the ego behind that i think there's some yeah yeah if you want to riff off that

00:17:03.560 Yeah, I think the hubris is exactly right, which we often hear technology discussed in terms as a kind of savior, like technology always makes life better, technology always makes the world better.

00:17:20.140 But technology is also the reason that we're in this situation with global warming.

00:17:24.140 So obviously, as a physicist, I'm not a Luddite.

00:17:27.420 I'm a total gadget geek, personally, I really like gadgets, I'm really into that kind of stuff.

00:17:33.560 But I do think that there has to be careful thought put into, you know, again, what are our values around what we do with our scientific knowledge?

00:17:45.180 What are our values around the kinds of technologies we develop and deploy?

00:17:50.000 And are they sustainable?

00:17:51.680 Like, we just need to start asking different questions of our technologies.

00:17:57.520 We need to make different demands of our technologies.

00:18:00.460 And I think that we're not there yet.

00:18:03.560 So, so certainly, you know, I'm, when we talk about hubris, I'm just thinking about the fact

00:18:10.060 that like global warming is a technological advancement. Is it a good thing for humanity?

00:18:14.580 No. So when we valorize technological advancement as always being a positive, I think there's a

00:18:22.780 kind of hubris in disrespecting the earth and in thinking against all evidence that we can always

00:18:30.740 have total control of the situations that we get ourselves into. And so I think that we need to

00:18:36.800 do much better. And again, I'm saying we, but there's still really just a small subset of the

00:18:42.380 population that has the power to make all of these decisions pretty much on behalf of everyone else.

00:18:47.920 And so part of what needs to change is how power to make these kinds of decisions for humanity

00:18:54.420 is distributed. Like right now, we have a few people in government, really, not just in the

00:19:02.000 United States, but also, for example, China's been in the news recently, because of their moon

00:19:06.180 mission, that there needs to be some really careful thought about even, for example, what it

00:19:11.380 means. And people are talking about mining the moon, what does it mean to mine the moon and

00:19:16.780 potentially change what we see when we look at the moon what does it mean for us as a species

00:19:24.540 that has evolved with a particular relationship to a night sky that looks a particular way

00:19:31.580 to suddenly and pretty drastically over a short time scale relative to our time our evolutionary

00:19:38.220 time drastically change that um so i think there's a kind of hubris and thinking that like we know

00:19:44.600 what impact that will have on us as a species. And then the hubris of the very few people who

00:19:50.520 are in a position to decide whether to do these kinds of projects or not, thinking that it's okay

00:19:56.100 to make those decisions on behalf of the rest of humanity. Yes, I'm with you. And there's

00:20:06.220 so many potential impacts you know also spiritual impacts let alone physical impacts to the earth

00:20:15.580 like thinking about mining the moon gosh I just am like wow is this where some of us are going

00:20:23.760 in our minds like this mental poison that I think has infected so many of us at this point this

00:20:32.720 I think about the word we to go an Algonquin term that Ariel Durange brought up in I think

00:20:38.960 one or two of the interviews I've done with her from a few years ago just what it takes for

00:20:43.880 somebody to have the hubris and not care about the implications of making huge decisions on

00:20:53.580 behalf of everyone like you were saying it's really like a psychological uh gosh yeah I could

00:21:00.820 really get lost in that wormhole. But just to continue with this topic, I'm thinking about

00:21:07.820 how visually our night sky is changing with the addition of more and more satellites. And

00:21:13.380 I know this topic is a bit on the periphery of what you study, so I hope you don't mind me

00:21:18.440 bringing it up. But just the absurdity of it just feels worth underscoring as we talk about

00:21:24.180 space colonization, which is that now our satellites are causing a tremendous amount

00:21:29.660 of space junk or debris, and many are worried about the potential of a Kessler syndrome,

00:21:35.680 which is being described as an ecological tipping point for certain orbits.

00:21:41.260 And yeah, just wanting listeners to think about the hubris that got us to the point

00:21:46.280 where we've managed to litter parts of the universe that we will never physically exist

00:21:51.360 in, and what that says about allowing private companies to sort of run wild in the pursuit

00:21:57.480 of development and advancement.

00:21:59.660 Yeah, again, I mean, we know that companies, you know, quote, running wild in pursuit of development and advancement. We know what that looks like here on Earth. We've been through that. We've actually run that experiment already, right?

00:22:14.300 and so people might say okay but like you know we don't have to worry about that happening in space

00:22:20.720 except of course we do even in the astronomy community we're now having to deal with the

00:22:25.820 fallout from these satellites that Elon Musk has decided to launch that ostensibly the official

00:22:35.140 claim is that they're launching these satellites they can give internet to rural areas but I don't

00:22:40.580 believe for a second that they do anything out of the goodness of their hearts right and i i i'm not

00:22:46.420 sure why i should believe that that's the only reason they're launching these satellites but

00:22:50.680 what we're dealing with in the astronomy community is that they're actually getting into our images

00:22:54.440 so now our ground-based telescopes aren't as useful as they were and it's incredible that just again

00:23:01.500 a really small group of people got to make that decision on behalf of all of humanity about what

00:23:07.140 our night sky would look like, about what kinds of images that we could even take with our

00:23:11.540 telescopes. And so now we actually have to divert resources to creating computational pipelines that

00:23:18.140 will take these satellites out of our images. And it won't be perfect. And so actually our ability

00:23:25.920 to see the night sky, to actually see the universe with clarity has already been diminished just in

00:23:31.220 the last couple of years and this is only going to get worse jeff bezos's company has also been

00:23:38.180 given permission to launch these kinds of satellites we're literally just gonna fill

00:23:43.340 our sky with you know what i think about is it's like buying lots of little plastic trinkets and

00:23:49.860 filling your house with lots of little plastic trinkets because like they're shiny and like

00:23:56.960 you know we feel like they do something for us but we don't ask what it does to us or certainly

00:24:05.500 the people who are doing this don't seem to care about what it does to the rest of us that they're

00:24:10.120 doing this I feel there isn't good enough government regulation around this and I worry a lot

00:24:17.740 about people I'm you know going out and they're gonna mine this asteroid and they're gonna be on

00:24:23.540 the moon doing this and mars doing that and i actually am really grateful to the people who

00:24:29.240 made the show the expanse because i think it provides actually like a painfully realistic

00:24:35.100 vision of what our future could be like if you know those of us who are thinking about this

00:24:41.960 don't urge more movement building to resist to resist that kind of future and of course like

00:24:48.520 there's you know an incredible irony that the expanse is exclusively available on amazon

00:24:53.240 on but that really tells us like in some sense like how all of these things are kind of tied

00:24:58.780 together but also the same people are controlling what kinds of critique we see and when it's no

00:25:06.620 longer valuable for us to have access to critical storytelling like the expanse maybe we just don't

00:25:14.600 see it anymore because like jeff bezos decides he doesn't want us to see it that's a real thing

00:25:20.460 that we have to think about now.

00:25:50.460 I don't need your love

00:25:55.460 Through wind and fall

00:26:02.260 I have traveled on

00:26:08.460 Turn when you hear me go

00:26:15.460 Take my hand for the fall

00:26:22.080 I ran so far

00:26:28.700 To catch you on

00:26:34.400 But me

00:26:36.460 Oof

00:26:39.040 Oh wow

00:26:42.000 Yeah that just really

00:26:44.080 it's scary yeah yeah thank you so much for making those connections for us and I remember a few

00:26:55.460 weeks ago or maybe a month ago now I was outside it was a beautiful clear winter evening and the

00:27:06.400 stars were bright and yeah it was just one of those nights that was so phenomenal and all of a

00:27:12.800 sudden I see this line of satellites and I felt so I don't what's the word like well impacted for

00:27:24.820 sure but like wait a minute how can and I I believe they were the Elon Musk um internet

00:27:31.360 satellites I forgot the name of that project but I want to say Starlink Starlink yes yes and so

00:27:37.960 I was like, what the hell? Like, what am I looking at? How did they get permission

00:27:43.760 to litter everybody's night sky? I mean, this is crazy to literally change

00:27:50.380 what we see when we look up to the sky. I mean, I know I'm not speaking very clearly about this

00:28:00.480 because it's it was actually quite emotional for me to feel so impacted by this and also

00:28:07.620 not exploited but yeah just like wait how did you get into this space and like space and this space

00:28:17.080 in our sky this is really insane and so I I'm so happy we talked about this because it's been

00:28:22.620 something on my mind and I really did feel this heartbreak and also a sense of um we may never

00:28:31.020 come back from this in my lifetime like if this is just the beginning our whole sky is going to

00:28:38.900 be gridded our whole planet will literally be encapsulated by a grid of satellites and what

00:28:44.800 does that say about our relationship to this earth I mean it was really shocking so anyways I

00:28:52.360 thank you for hearing my process a little bit about that because I haven't been able to express

00:28:59.600 the fear and the pain of seeing that but yeah and I'm just thinking about tying this into our

00:29:08.280 conversation on colonial legacy and also the sort of current day militarism that's really rampant

00:29:15.520 in certain sectors of astronomy. And in The Disordered Cosmos, you speak about this history

00:29:22.340 and how astronomy has been funded throughout the ages. In the 18th century, it was proposed as a

00:29:28.720 tool that would make the slave trade and global economy more efficient. And so now I'm wondering

00:29:34.540 if you could share a bit about the sort of underbelly of it in terms of the military-industrial

00:29:40.740 complex? Yeah, I mean, I feel like people, people can like read sort of my critiques of science

00:29:49.420 and think like walk away thinking that I just like really hate science and, and all of that.

00:29:54.680 But I am still actually like a science most of my day job is, you know, I spend the day doing

00:30:01.560 science, like when we're done with this recording, I will go back to doing scientific work.

00:30:05.940 I think my call is really for us to be more honest about how science has been used and

00:30:15.440 I think that you know just tying this into the way that you felt and having your experience

00:30:22.740 of the night sky disrupted by these artificial objects that you know again just a few people

00:30:28.320 got to make the decision to launch into the sky on behalf of everyone else that there have been

00:30:34.180 incidents like that throughout history, where a few people have decided to use our scientific

00:30:38.720 knowledge to negatively impact other people's experiences and to decide, you know what,

00:30:44.860 actually, it's okay for me to negatively impact your experience because I'm profiting from it,

00:30:50.500 right? We can't change that habit if we won't talk about the fact that it exists.

00:30:56.900 We can't change the fact that this is a tendency of the scientific community,

00:31:00.760 unless we talk about the fact that it's a tendency of the scientific community so you can't address

00:31:05.940 a problem if you won't admit that there is one and that's really what I'm calling people's attention

00:31:11.600 to is that we need to pay attention to the way that slavery and science were sometimes entangled

00:31:19.260 with one another the way that science benefited from slavery on expeditions the way that it was

00:31:26.460 used, astronomical knowledge was used to make ships more efficient in taking kidnapped people

00:31:34.500 to enslavement and then taking the goods that enslaved people were forced to produce

00:31:41.500 back to Europe and distributing them. Similarly, to be honest about the way that astronomy has

00:31:49.620 benefited from American colonialism in Hawaii for over 100 years now that colonialism has been

00:31:57.800 there. And that for really like over at this point, I guess like 60 years or so that professional

00:32:04.900 astronomers have been capitalizing on that by building on Hawaiian land. We have no way of

00:32:10.360 knowing if the Hawaiian ruling family would have been okay with the kind of building that has

00:32:19.100 happened on Mount Achaia. Some astronomers like to argue that that would have been fine because

00:32:24.560 one time the king allowed a telescope that was easy to carry away to be placed up there. But

00:32:31.640 it's very different, you know, your telescope, it's very different if I take a telescope in my

00:32:36.420 backyard versus if I decide to build an observatory in my backyard, right? Like one, I don't need the

00:32:42.040 city's permission to do and the other I do need the city's permission to do. They're fundamentally

00:32:47.560 different phenomena. And we can't really confront what that says about the history

00:32:53.560 of the scientific community if we won't talk about it. Absolutely.

00:33:01.140 In Disordered Cosmos, you explore the future reality that science doesn't have to be inherently

00:33:08.380 colonial, or in the interest of commodification and imperialism. And I'd like to delve into this

00:33:16.680 a little bit deeper because I know a lot of folks have argued that science is fundamentally

00:33:21.760 colonial. And what it does is colonize those who enter into the field. But I think there is

00:33:28.660 beauty and importance in us knowing the world around us. And for many, that does come in the

00:33:34.600 form of academic pursuit and understanding. And so the call to reclaim this space and thought

00:33:41.340 is so vital. So I'm wondering, what do alternative ways of being in science look like? And how is

00:33:49.560 this also really a conversation about reclaiming heritage and forms of literacy that have been

00:33:55.840 negated? The word science has so many different meanings, right? Sometimes when we say science,

00:34:03.060 we mean the scientific community. Sometimes we're referring to a collection of facts that are widely

00:34:08.960 accepted by people who are members of that professional community. Sometimes we're talking

00:34:14.900 about specific techniques. So I think that there are things in there that should be,

00:34:20.880 I don't know if salvaged is the right word, but certainly I am a fan of empiricism. I think it

00:34:27.220 can help us. As I said earlier, it can help us tell stories about the universe. I think,

00:34:31.860 you know, as I said, we're, we're a storytelling species, right? So that part we need to hang on

00:34:38.700 to you and we need to acknowledge that actually it's something that people have done in different

00:34:42.800 communities around the world for a while and that you know there are different astronomical systems

00:34:49.100 in different communities and if we're interested in pursuing kind of like this mathematical tale

00:34:55.800 that there's something like really beautiful about that but then we have to really rethink

00:35:01.100 like what are the conditions in which we do these things why does particle physics or cosmology

00:35:06.320 receive funding where does the funding come from like who are we dependent on increasingly we're

00:35:12.320 dependent on private foundations and while i've had i've received money from a private foundation

00:35:18.780 and i've had like a really great relationship with the folks at that foundation at the end of the day

00:35:24.040 i i truly think that this should be a public mission and that the the funding should come from

00:35:29.820 from the public from shared resources where the community has made the decision together that

00:35:36.180 this is something that we value and we want to send people off to think about these questions

00:35:40.800 and bring back their findings. So I don't think that there is a simple conversation to be had

00:35:47.280 here where science is all good or science is all bad. I think science is a social phenomenon and

00:35:54.560 it's made up of people and what science ends up doing reflects who we are and what we end up doing.

00:36:01.140 so the conversation we have to have is about what are our values around using science what are our

00:36:07.160 values as scientists and how are we going to enact those in our lives and what impact do they have

00:36:14.480 on other people absolutely and also there is something that you know i was thinking about

00:36:22.840 with this scientific endeavor and reclaiming curiosity and um it almost feels like reclaiming

00:36:32.240 curiosity and the prophet well hi yeah i i mean i know what i'm saying it's so simple but it's just

00:36:43.120 not coming out but um yeah i mean i think you're right that like we just need to rethink what we

00:36:49.260 do with our own curiosity. There really is like, I agree with you, like, it really is just that

00:36:56.220 simple, which is like, sure, it's great to be curious. But also, if you're curious, be aware

00:37:03.300 that your curiosity can lead you into complicated, moral and ethical places. And if we don't have a

00:37:13.280 strong framework that gives people um like guidance on how to handle themselves in these

00:37:19.200 situations the bad things can happen right it's it's like having a framework that's actually

00:37:27.600 intersectional and holds people accountable so that the curiosity doesn't spin off into these

00:37:35.160 horrific hubris projects and that's interesting because it seems like the

00:37:41.720 field of science or at least I don't know of a type of intersectional framework in which people

00:37:49.140 have to work underneath like a yeah an agreement that if you're receiving funding and if you're

00:37:57.720 in this academic field and you're invited in there's certain moral and ethical and honestly

00:38:04.620 spiritual understandings of how the curiosity is funneled through but I mean I and it's hard to say

00:38:12.620 because I'm sure that there could be a lot of rebuttal to what I just said um and if you have

00:38:17.240 any please do um share that with me but yeah I think this is a really important it's just important

00:38:26.140 well I think one of the things that we're thinking about is whose curiosity matters right I keep

00:38:32.520 banging on about how there's a small group of people who are making decisions for everybody

00:38:36.220 else. So why is it that one person who started a startup like 20 years ago and had good stock

00:38:47.560 options or whatever is suddenly allowed to make all of these decisions for the rest of the planet?

00:38:53.140 And why isn't the curiosity of someone who wasn't in a position to access the same resources

00:39:00.380 equally valuable. It's fine for Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos to be curious as people. I encourage

00:39:08.900 curiosity in everyone. What becomes problematic is when some people have more power to pursue

00:39:14.560 that curiosity and exercise control over other people's curiosity in a completely undemocratic

00:39:21.860 way. Yeah. And I'm just thinking about the word curiosity and imagination and so much of what we

00:39:29.180 talk about on the podcast is being able to imagine another world being able to imagine

00:39:35.940 a culture beyond capitalism for instance and if the people who are actually funded and supported

00:39:45.480 are curious about extraction then that's what we're going to get because the folks who are

00:39:52.000 really pushing the imagination towards a more equitable world like that isn't what's being

00:39:59.240 uplifted and supported by the dominant culture and so we can really see how things unfold and

00:40:06.260 whose curiosity gets supported versus not and why that is and at the end of your book you speak

00:40:13.080 about the politics of suffering and the way that feeds into a lack of imagination and these topics

00:40:20.840 of radical imagination, joy, and just a simple call to revere our humanity are still as sentient

00:40:29.720 as ever. So can you speak a bit to the reality that we have everything to gain when we release

00:40:37.160 white supremacy and start to inhabit mental, spiritual, and emotional states that have been

00:40:44.920 historically disavowed in the Western educational setting.

00:40:49.380 I mean, I guess I would say I agree with you that we have everything to gain when we relinquish

00:40:56.420 the social boundaries and power relations that are set up to disempower some in favor of empowering

00:41:05.480 others. And I do think that there will be some people who will experience it as a loss because

00:41:12.140 if you have too much power relative to other people, then some of that power is going to be

00:41:16.960 taken away from you. My hope is that people will be able to appreciate that that means that other

00:41:26.060 people can live better and that there is less suffering and that that's important. Whether or

00:41:31.920 not it feels like a personal gain or not, that actually we need to move away from everything

00:41:36.920 needing to feel like a personal gain in order to be important, right? So I definitely think that

00:41:45.160 that's one element of this. And then I agree that people need to feel fortified in their own

00:41:52.100 cultural context. And we need to get away from narratives that tell us that Western society is

00:41:57.520 the most valuable society. And when I say Western society, of course, there are lots of people in

00:42:02.600 western society who aren't white but western society is really kind of a proxy for like 0.68

00:42:09.000 socially dominated by people who can exist comfortably in the tent of whiteness or people

00:42:15.940 who can exist in the tent of whiteness in some way right i'm that there's something really

00:42:21.560 damaging about telling people that their ancestors weren't enough and i the logical conclusion of it

00:42:29.040 is kind of horrifying which is that you do occasionally run into people walking around

00:42:32.800 saying well i'm you know it's good that my ancestors were enslaved because otherwise i

00:42:38.520 would be backwards right like that's kind of that's always the implication whether people

00:42:44.420 are comfortable with articulating that or not which is that colonialism was necessary to civilize

00:42:50.640 us. And so I think if we can get out of this mental framing of things as we needed to be

00:43:04.580 civilized, that our ancestors needed to be civilized, that we can actually really start

00:43:09.580 to learn more about ourselves as a species and learn more about our world and how to live

00:43:14.980 cooperatively with the ecosystems

00:43:18.260 that we find ourselves in.

00:43:20.460 One thing that I found really compelling

00:43:22.000 is I was learning from Kanaka Maioli,

00:43:24.440 native Hawaiians,

00:43:26.380 during their struggle,

00:43:28.360 during the height of their struggle

00:43:29.840 around Mount Akeia

00:43:31.900 and the 30 meter telescope

00:43:33.260 a few years ago

00:43:34.800 was the cultural context for them

00:43:38.540 is that the land is like a family member.

00:43:44.980 And I just keep thinking over and over again, what if this was a value that had shaped

00:43:51.120 people's reaction to what we now call industrialization?

00:43:58.080 What if it had been a key piece that the land has to be treated like a family member, that

00:44:02.780 it has to be treated like it is living and breathing and requires respect?

00:44:07.100 Would we be in the same global warming mess?

00:44:10.280 I think the answer is no.

00:44:11.560 and that really raises questions about our understandings um of technology in a western

00:44:17.260 context which is that like actually maybe i am i western technologists don't actually know how to

00:44:24.240 use the technology in a sustainable way and that's a scientific fault in some sense it's almost like

00:44:30.580 you don't know how to turn it on in a way that optimizes it because i'm not sure destroying the

00:44:35.800 earth is optimizing.

00:45:05.800 The fire in my heart shines as bright as the moon.

00:45:15.800 Yes, the fire in my heart shines as bright as the moon.

00:45:23.800 The coals are stars and bowls

00:45:31.300 The coals are stars and bowls

00:45:37.400 The coals are stars and bowls

00:45:42.740 And the fire in my heart

00:45:49.200 Shines as bright as the moon

00:45:53.160 yes the fire in my heart shines bright

00:46:02.600 yeah and i want to talk a bit about accessibility in terms of our right to the sky you know humans

00:46:14.940 have always turned to the heavens for both practical matters like direction orientation

00:46:19.800 as well as philosophical matters making sense of the world communicating with the divine

00:46:25.520 and imagining what exists beyond our reach and lately i really think about how our right to know

00:46:34.200 the land our cosmologies etc is one of the strongest ways to be in right relationship

00:46:40.780 with the universe really but this can't be oversimplified you know there are so many

00:46:46.200 structures that feed into this, it's your basic needs being met. It's a network of relationship

00:46:52.780 and so on. And I wonder if you could elaborate on this a bit further and how this understanding

00:46:59.260 of comprehensive accessibility feeds into your work. Yeah. So certainly one of the core themes

00:47:06.620 running through the book is the right to know and love the night sky. And as we've discussed

00:47:13.580 in this conversation, we've ranged over a variety of ways that people engage with the night sky.

00:47:20.240 Even you talked about your experience of wanting to just look up and having it disrupted.

00:47:25.720 And, you know, maybe there's a limit to the framework of the liberal Western framework of

00:47:31.920 rights as kind of our analytic standpoint. But I do think at the end of the day that that

00:47:38.960 encompasses a lot of different things. What do you need to be able to see the night sky?

00:47:44.000 Well, maybe you need to be able to get away from a light polluted city.

00:47:47.420 Do you have the resources to go out into the countryside?

00:47:50.280 And do you have the resources means do you have access to the transportation?

00:47:54.040 Do you have the time off?

00:47:55.720 Is it safe for you?

00:47:57.260 Do you have enough food and water?

00:47:59.200 Are you able to take food and water with you?

00:48:01.360 Do you have the kinds of resources to plan your meals ahead like that?

00:48:04.760 There are so many different things that need to be lined up so that people can just simply

00:48:10.640 have that moment with the sky.

00:48:12.400 including is the sky visible right but i actually think thinking in those terms of our relationship

00:48:20.540 to the sky i agree with you like whether or not you believe on the supernatural that our

00:48:25.580 relationship with that is on some level divine and certainly philosophical and we need to be

00:48:32.480 really careful about how we strip ourselves of some aspect of our humanity if we disrupt that

00:48:41.140 relationship in very dramatic ways, which is something that has been happening, particularly 0.72

00:48:47.180 to people who are indigenous, especially over the last five centuries, whether those people

00:48:55.540 are indigenous Africans who were kidnapped and brought to the Americas to be enslaved,

00:49:01.040 or whether those are indigenous people who were in the Americas, whose land was being

00:49:06.960 colonized and the enslaved were being forced to work it, right? Even just talking in that kind

00:49:12.880 of North and South American context, we have had our relationship with the sky disrupted by

00:49:21.100 colonialism and slavery. And I want to encourage people to reclaim that and also to acknowledge

00:49:28.320 that enslaved people must have been looking at the sky too. And we know that they were because 0.99

00:49:32.860 some of them reported using the North Star to get themselves to freedom. It's widely believed

00:49:37.440 that Harriet Tubman was one of those people and that she potentially used that to both liberate

00:49:44.240 herself and as an underground railroad conductor to go back and liberate others. So the night sky

00:49:50.040 can be part of our liberation discourse and not just part of our fears about what technology is

00:49:58.540 doing to us wow that was so beautiful and relieving to hear yeah it makes me think about

00:50:09.140 what we were talking about at the beginning of the conversation

00:50:12.580 how theoretical cosmology is really a form of storytelling and I'm wondering if there's

00:50:20.420 any stories that come to mind for you? I don't know that that represent

00:50:27.440 maybe a liberatory path or I don't know, just something that you'd like to share

00:50:35.220 about connecting the storytelling element. I guess I will just say that for me seeing

00:50:42.100 the Milky Way, like the full Milky Way from Chile in the Atacama Desert, which I know has its own

00:50:48.780 history, complexity with the colonial government and what has happened with the Atacameño people

00:50:57.120 there. It was a magical moment. I really like, I'm not a supernatural believer. I don't believe

00:51:03.540 in magic, but it felt like a magical moment. And it was also in that moment that I realized that

00:51:10.300 I had been denied that experience because of the resources I had access to, because of the way that

00:51:16.660 light pollution has shaped our environments here in the United States and I think that it just

00:51:23.500 made me really think deeply about like what is it I want for other members of the black community

00:51:28.400 what do I want for black children and I want for black children to have that sky because

00:51:35.360 so Chile is in the southern hemisphere and so the sky is a little bit different than what I expect

00:51:40.880 my ancestors in Africa looked at in the northern hemisphere. But my ancestors saw a sky like that.

00:51:46.760 And I realized that I had never understood what the world looked like to them. And I had never

00:51:52.960 thought about what the world looked like to them. I never thought about the fact that there's no way

00:51:57.040 you could see a sky like that and not think about it. Whereas growing up in Los Angeles, you can see

00:52:02.920 the sky and be like, okay, it's not very impressive. It has a moon, maybe Venus is hanging around.

00:52:08.140 maybe you can see like one or two stars right but you're not really being like whoa that must

00:52:15.120 have really shaped the way people saw everything in their world but when you see the milky way for

00:52:20.800 the first time you realize that this has shaped so many people's lives for so many generations

00:52:27.180 behind you and that we are just woefully disconnected from that experience and I think

00:52:35.000 part of reclaiming ourselves away from the damage that enslavement has done to us is to have that

00:52:42.940 experience of seeing what our ancestors saw i was so beautiful and chanda as we come to a close

00:52:52.520 i want to linger on what you just brought up a little bit longer and in the disordered cosmos

00:53:00.720 it begins and ends with the question of freedom and where we're going and you point out that

00:53:07.140 cosmology in itself requires multi-generational patience and i think our conversation has

00:53:13.720 alluded to this multi-generation patience in many forms and genealogies but i'd like to

00:53:20.600 end by asking you as you dream into the future what does this course of thought like in terms

00:53:28.060 of scientific thought physics or even universal literacy look like i mean i i want us to think

00:53:38.720 again about what resources do people need to get to the point of being able to see a sky like that

00:53:45.720 so what health care do people need what wages for housework do poor moms need what schooling

00:53:55.660 free a racist, patriarchal violence do children need? What do we need to create the conditions

00:54:05.000 where people feel liberated from the everyday concerns that tend to take up space unnecessarily

00:54:13.260 from them, worrying about where their medication is going to come from, where their food is going

00:54:17.580 to come from, whether they're going to remain housed. All of these things feed into giving

00:54:22.480 people the conditions where they can just look up at the night sky and enjoy themselves enjoy it

00:54:29.120 well thank you for stating that dream and i think a lot of people are holding that as well and

00:54:40.700 yeah thank you so much for such a expansive conversation and if there's anything that

00:54:49.400 you would like to mention before we close, if there's anything that any topics we weren't able

00:54:55.980 to cover. I really love hearing you speak and just thinking about all the things that we've

00:55:03.240 been talking about. No, I think that was a great conversation. And thank you so much for having me

00:55:08.480 on the show.

00:55:19.400 Thank you for listening to For the Wild podcast.

00:55:22.040 The music you heard today was by Harrison Foster, Amara, and Jenna V. Veronica.

00:55:28.460 For the Wild is created by Ayanna Young, Erica Ekrem, Francesca Glaspell, and Melanie Younger.

For The Wild - March 31, 2021

Dr. CHANDA PRESCOD-WEINSTEIN on the Night Sky and Liberation Discourse ⧸228

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