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- [00:02]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
Stephen Hawking was talking about how he used math to describe the universe and he was working on solving problems that Einstein hadn't worked out. And I was like, wait, you can get paid to do math? And the math describes the universe? This is like, win, win, win, win, win.
- [00:20]
Al Letson
Coming up on more to the story, a conversation I've been dying to have for years with theoretical physicists and and genius Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein. We're going to nerd out a little bit about the cosmos, our place in space and time, and which sci fi universe has the best mode of travel. Warp, hyperspeed, or the third option, which
- [00:40]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
is the mycelial network from Star Trek Discovery.
- [00:43]
Al Letson
So hold on tight as we boldly go.
- [00:54]
Freedom From Religion Foundation Announcer
This episode is brought to you by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Who should hold power in a democracy? The people or religion? As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, that's not just a history question. It's a question about our future. The founders created a government accountable to the people, not any religion. That's why the First Amendment protects your freedom to believe and or not believe. Those ideas helped create a country where people of all faiths and no faith can live together as equals. But that progress isn't guaranteed. Today, growing efforts blur the line between state and church in ways affecting our schools, our rights and our freedoms. The Freedom from Religion foundation works to protect the First Amendment because it protects you. Learn more at FFRF US Lite. That's FFRF US Light.
- [01:53]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.
- [02:13]
Al Letson
Ah, summer break. Time to kick back, relax and donate to our summer drive. Because the need for investigative journalism doesn't take a summer break. Our work is more important than ever and we need your support to keep at it. Independent nonprofit journalism is an antidote to authoritarianism. To say that three times fast, I'm not gonna do it, but you get the point. So please, before you head to the beach, head over to revealnews.orgsummer and donate today. Again, that's revealnews.orgsummer and thank you. This is more to the story. I'm Al Ledson. These days, there's so much news and noise coming at us, it's easy to forget. There's more that makes the world go round than the Latest headlines and scandals flashing on our news feeds. Sometimes I need to pull myself away from my phone and just look up. Like, literally look up at the sky, the stars, and see the universe, the vastness of it. I can't help but to wonder how we as humans fit into it all. My guest this week has pondered these questions and so much more. Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein is a theoretical physicist and a feminist theorist at the University of New Hampshire. Her. Her first book, the Disordered A Journey into Dark Matter, Space, Time and Dreams Deferred, was an inspiring read. Her latest book, the Edge of Space Particles, Poetry and the Cosmic Dream Boogie, is an even bigger ride, drawing on poetry and pop culture to explore the universe. Chanda, how are you today?
- [04:11]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
Feeling a little bit of pressure now, but otherwise good. I just took a photo of a giant mushroom in my neighborhood, which I'm very excited about.
- [04:19]
Al Letson
Nice. You should not feel any pressure. This is a no pressure zone. Please. What kind of mushroom was it?
- [04:26]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
I actually. I'm like, very ignorant of these things. Me too. So I had a plan to, like, look up, but it's like growing on a tree. And it's literally like the size of both of my palms put together like this. Wow. So it's really big.
- [04:41]
Al Letson
I know very little about mushrooms except that through Star Trek Discovery, I learned that mushrooms have a whole network that I can't remember.
- [04:56]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
The mycelial network.
- [04:57]
Al Letson
Mycelial network. The mycelial network, which was how they were traveling through space or at least was a new version of not warp travel, but I guess you could say warp travel.
- [05:11]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
Well, they were basically jumping from point to point. So it was a completely different.
- [05:15]
Al Letson
Yeah, it was completely new.
- [05:16]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
Yeah. And it was based on this idea. I don't know who first came up with it, but the scientist Paul Stamets is very strongly associated with research on mycelial networks. And so they named the engineer on Star Trek Discovery, Paul Stamets. It's like an homage to him.
- [05:32]
Al Letson
Yes, I genuinely loved Discovery. But like, the ideas, I don't know how to describe myself in the sense of, like, I am a science nerd in the sense that I love science. I do not understand it all that much. And I'm okay with not understanding. I like that there are theories that explain it and I want to learn about those theories. And I'm curious, like, what brought you to this work? How did you become interested in the stars and cosmology and all of that?
- [06:06]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
So I grew up in smoggy, light, polluted 1980s and 1990s Los Angeles. So having a relationship with the night sky wasn't really a thing. You could see the moon and maybe Venus occasionally, but, like, not a lot else. And at the same time, I was, like, super obsessed with math. I loved my times tables, I loved doing division. And by the time I was 10 years old, my teachers, and particularly my science teacher, Mr. Frank Wilson, was telling my mom, you should expose her to more. She seems to really like this physical science stuff. And so my mom read in the newspaper about a documentary about Stephen Hawking by Errol Morris called A Brief History of Time. And so, like, on a Saturday morning, she dragged me away from X Men cartoons and was like, we're going to see this documentary. And I was like, what do you mean we're going to see a documentary? Documentaries are boring. That's adult stuff. I don't want it. I vocally. And you've read a little bit about my mom, Margaret Prescod, she's an activist. So I vocally complain, as I was trained to do in my family.
- [07:12]
Al Letson
Yes.
- [07:13]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
And halfway through the documentary, Stephen Hawking was talking about how he used math to describe the universe, and he was working on solving problems that Einstein hadn't worked out. And I was like, wait, you can get paid to do math? And the math describes the universe? This is like, win, win, win, win, win. So I came out of the theater, I was like, mom, you have to get me the book. I have to have it right now. And she was like, I don't know. It's for adults. I don't want you to be discouraged. But clearly she told my Uncle Peter that I was excited about it because he bought me the book for my 11th birthday. And that was kind of how I got set on the, like, I want to physics, I want to do cosmology. I'm excited about black holes and all of particle physics. And that was how I got started.
- [07:57]
Al Letson
Yeah, how was reading that book at 11 years old?
- [08:02]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
You know, it took me, I think, a couple of years to get through it. Yeah, I remember I was still kind of reading it. I started high school, like, two and a half years after that, and I was. Or three. Three years after that, and I was still reading it. But I also remember, like, being on the school bus and, like, trying to explain the standard model of particles to people and trying to explain there are six different quarks, there are three different neutrinos, there are electrons, muons, and tau. And, like, you know, I will say I was lucky that I went to the kind of schools where people humored me.
- [08:34]
Al Letson
Yeah.
- [08:35]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
And people kind of tolerated it. And somewhere in there, you know, I. I was very lucky that because of the work, the political organizing that my parents do, they were early adopters of using the Internet for organizing work. And so I had access to the Internet at a fairly early stage. So I was hanging out on the web by myself as kind of this preteen. And so I was like, wait, I should find Stephen Hawking's email address, and I should just email him. And so I found the Cambridge University website, found the physics program's website, found his email address, and emailed him and said, how do you become a theoretical physicist? And one of his graduate students responded and was like, you know, this is. You go to a top college, and then you get a PhD and then you become a fellow at a university. And then, you know, that's. That's how you become a theoretical physicist. And so I was like, okay, that's my plan. And I immediately was like, okay, what do I need to do to go to college? I need to have enough financial aid. I researched which colleges had good financial aid programs and decided, okay, I'm going to go to Harvard or to Caltech because I'm going to need a full ride, and those schools can afford to give me a full ride. And so by the time I was 12, I had, like, a whole plan laid out, and I got tenure a few years ago and was kind of like, all right, that was the whole plan. I executed the whole thing. I mean, I'm an associate professor. I could push for full, which comes with a little bit of a pay bump and a slightly better title, but most people don't know the difference. Right. But I have tenure, so I was like, well, now what do I do? There was kind of an element of I didn't plan for beyond this one.
- [10:14]
Al Letson
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So have you started making the plan for beyond this one?
- [10:20]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
Yeah, I mean, I think the new book, the Edge of Spacetime Particles, Poetry and the Cosmic Dream Boogie, was actually, I started this book right as I got tenure. And so the book was a little bit of me trying to step back and take that big picture perspective. So part of it was, okay, there are things in physics that I never felt comfortable with that I want to get comfortable with. Like, I really hated Newtonian mechanics and thought it was kind of boring. And now I feel differently about it because I wrote myself into it. And so that was part of the Edge of Space Time was kind of that project of writing myself into things. And I think Maybe the project for me now is realizing that actually I can try my hand at different things and giving myself permission to be a little bit curious and a little bit unplanned. Some of that was also learning that lesson from writing, which is that writing my second book was very different from writing the first one.
- [11:16]
Al Letson
What I love about your work is it is the first time that I see my reflection in these big ideas of Red Hawking and Brian Greene and others. And they're great, but in reading those, it didn't connect to me as a black man living in America. And honestly, like at the time, I didn't even realize it. It was almost like they were explaining these big concepts about the cosmos or with Brian Greene with alternate realities and all of that stuff. But I was separate from it. And then reading your work, it feels like it puts me in it. We're all a part of this. Your work kind of embraces everyone. To partake in this, you know, wondrous thing of the universe that's around us. Can you talk to me a little bit about how you think about, you know, the inclusivity of both your work and the universe itself?
- [12:23]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
Yeah, you know, I think with the Disordered Cosmos, that book was really both a love note to the cosmos and also like a very critical love note to the physics and astronomy communities about what's broken, about how physics and astronomy are done and how that impacts people. And so it's like a very holistic look at the doing of particle cosmology. Right. And so I think they're talking about how our identity ends up as part of the story. Happened very naturally because that was actually part of the original plan of the book, was to talk about how the practice of science is shaped by identity and how people react to identity and, and what we would call ascribed identity. So race, gender, sexual orientation, gender presentation, like all of these things. One of the challenges I face is that the Disordered Cosmos was critically successful, which I really appreciate. And I particularly appreciate that I got readers who didn't usually pick up books about science and particularly didn't usually pick up books about physics and astronomy who were reading my book. I wrote with black readers in mind, and particularly black women readers and black and queer readers, because I wanted to say we deserve to have books that are written with us in mind. And in a way, I wrote to my 17 year old self. I read Carl Sagan's Cosmos, like over and over in college. And that was one of the ways that in difficult moments I found, okay, there is meaning in this stuff, even if I feel like I'm experiencing racism and sexism in the classroom. But there was something that Carl Sagan couldn't speak to because he was embodied differently from me. And so, in a sense, I was like, I can write the book that speaks to that aspect of it. And there was also an element. Carl Sagan published one last book before he died, basically on his deathbed called Billions and Billions. And it was basically like, thoughts on. I think the subtitle was Thoughts on the New Millennium, on the Brink of a New Millennium. And I thought of that book as my model for the disordered cosmos. The hard thing about this is that then going into the Edge of Space Time, I really felt, like, pressured, like, will people accept if I spend less time focused on that and more time focused on. For me, the Edge of Space Time is a much more intimate book because this is my brain. This is how I see the universe. These are the things that I'm passionate about in my quiet moments. And not so much my I'm shouting on social media about injustice moments. And I wasn't sure readers would accept that from me, particularly because, like, during editorial conversations, once editors know that a thing works, they just want you to keep doing it. Keep, like, take that hammer and nail and hit the same thing over and over again. But I think part of this was about, like, okay, if this is my brain, this is my black, queer, Jewish physicist brain. That means there's a lot of big crit wandering around. There's a lot of Langston Hughes wandering around. There's Missy Elliott wandering around. Like, when I think about symmetry, I think of, I put my thing down, flip it and reverse it, and then, like, Missy Elliott saying it backwards. And so there was also a piece of just like, I have to let myself be an integrated self on the page and hope that my reader accepts that.
- [15:50]
Al Letson
Coming up on more to the story.
- [15:51]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
They were slightly concerned that they were going to set off a nuclear chain reaction in the atmosphere and it would cause the atmosphere to go into nuclear fusion.
- [16:01]
Al Letson
And yet they still did it.
- [16:03]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
Yeah, they were like, chances seem low and the US Government really wants to test this. So fingers crossed.
- [16:13]
Al Letson
Like, what? But before we get to that, I just want to remind you to tell your friends about Reveal and more to the story. Spread the word. Give us a rating and review on your favorite podcast app. It all helps people discover our show because the reporting we do at Reveal is important now more than ever. Thanks for helping. More with Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein in just a moment.
- [16:51]
Freedom From Religion Foundation Announcer
This episode is brought to you by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Quick question. Who should hold power in a democracy? The people or religion? As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, that's not just a history question. It's a question about our future. The founders created a government accountable to the people, not any religion. That's why the First Amendment protects your freedom to believe or not believe. Those ideas helped create a country where people of all faiths and no faith can live together as equals. But that progress isn't guaranteed. Today. Growing efforts blur the line between state and church in ways affecting our schools, our rights and our freedoms. The Freedom From Religion foundation works to protect the First Amendment because it protects you. Learn more at FFRF US Lite. That's FFRF US ligt this episode of More to the Story is sponsored by Earthjustice. As the nation's leading environmental law organization, Earthjustice has more than 200 full time lawyers who fight for your right to a healthy environment. Without enforcement, environmental laws are just words on paper. That's why Earthjustice steps in to hold polluters accountable when the government won't. Earthjustice uses the law to protect our health, our communities, and our planet. They win, and they do it free of charge. Go to earthjustice.org today. Earthjustice. Because the Earth needs a good lawyer.
- [18:25]
Al Letson
This is more to the story. I'm Al Edson and I'm talking with the brilliant Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein. So this may sound really elementary, but I'm just gonna throw a couple terms to you and I would love to get your definition and thought about them. So one, like, what do we mean when we say the word space? What is that?
- [18:53]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
I think space has a lot of different meanings, right? And this is actually like one of the reasons that coming at it from a physics perspective can be a little bit challenging because you kind of have to work through your assumptions. Like, I'm sitting here in my home office and so one way of defining the space that I'm in is to the boundaries that contain it. So I have a floor, I have a ceiling, I have walls on all sides and a door. And so the space that I am in is contained by these boundaries. But then I'm looking at my hand and I'm moving my hand back and forth and my hand is moving through space. And is it grabbing space? No, I'm not moving space by pulling my hand. Right. So I'm totally not answering your question. And I think that's because it's actually a very Hard thing, like, is space just an abstract notion that we use? Like, we lay down coordinates on a map so that I can say this is where my finger is at time A. Now I've taken a second and I've moved my finger to point B at time B. And so am I defining space so that I can know the difference between A and B. Right. And space is where things happen. And so actually, one of the ways I try and frame this for the reader is through the Afrofuturist film Space is the Place, which I name. I call one of the chapters in my book, Space. Time is the place. But I think you can think of space as the site of motion happening, of things occurring in the universe. You can also think of space as everything that the universe is. Right. It's actually, it turns out that. That we have, like, an abstract way of thinking about it in mathematical terms, but when you try and translate that into, like, spoken language and, and a concept, it gets thorny quickly.
- [20:48]
Al Letson
Yes.
- [20:49]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
Yeah, that wasn't a short answer. But that's like. I think that that's. That's part of what's fun about it is, like, you get to kind of go around in these, like, what are the different things that we think space is?
- [20:59]
Al Letson
Yeah. So the idea of space, time, like that is taking two concepts and marrying it into one. Am I right in that?
- [21:12]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
Yeah. So I went and kind of did a deep dig into how have people thought about, like, Newton's laws, for example. So Isaac Newton is kind of credited as being the first person in the contemporary world to formalize thinking about space and time. And it turns out that a millennium before him, there were these Zhao Kingdom philosophers, I think more than a millennium, who had already started to think through these questions of what is space and what is time? And actually what is the difference between space and time? And they were using these metaphors. So the one that I made sure to put in the book is an ox is not a horse. And so they were trying to make the point because if you think about it, we have a concept of length and time. And we have a concept of length and space.
- [22:01]
Al Letson
Sure.
- [22:02]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
Right. And we also say things like, you know, I'm a 20 minute drive away. And that is a statement about distance. It is also a statement about time. And so they were very concerned with, okay, but clearly time has a different feeling for us than space. Like, space is where, like, we move our arms around. We don't think of ourselves as moving our arms around in time, even though we are actually doing that. And so the conclusion that they came to was an ox is not a horse. So one of them is space and one of them is time. And they are sort of similar, but when you look at them, you can see they're different. We fast forward to Einstein thinking about relativity, and Einstein comes to the conclusion that the speed of light being constant, which means that, like, if you're in a car holding a light and driving at 90 miles per hour, and I'm standing at the side of the road, we will both agree on the speed of the light and it will not be light plus 90 miles per hour. That it turns out that you can't actually think of space and time as separate. And so, like, the ox and the horse are in relation with each other.
- [23:11]
Al Letson
Right. So of all the science fiction ways to move through space, forgive me if I get this wrong, but, like, there's a Star Trek way of, like, creating a bubble around the ship and it moves through space pretty quickly. Then there is the Star wars way of, like, going into hyperspace, which I guess basically takes you out of space time and then brings you back in. What do you think would be the most likely way that we will be able to move through space at greater speeds than we're currently moving at?
- [23:49]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
Wait, so are you asking about my sense of what might happen in reality, or are you asking about what my favorite science fiction rendering is?
- [23:58]
Al Letson
Ooh, both.
- [24:00]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
Okay, so I will just say for my science fiction rendering, I choose the third option, which is the mycelial network from Star Trek Discovery.
- [24:07]
Al Letson
Okay, you like that one?
- [24:08]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
I like that one because it uses. And I talk about this in the Edge of Space Time in the chapter on quantum gravity. Right. I actually talk a little bit about the storyline, a beautiful gay love story that kind of takes place inside of the. The mycelial network. And Anthony Rapp and Wilson Cruz, I just have to give the two of them credit for, like, just. I'm putting that out there. Just beautiful performances from both of them. And one of the things I like about the mycelial network is that it lives in a kind of version of subspace. So, like, tiny little dimensions that are kind of wrapped up and that we don't see on the scales that we live on. And we do in physics, have some concepts that kind of run in this direction. So I use this in the book to talk about a theory for the merger of quantum mechanics with gravity called Kalusa Klein theory, which does involve these, like, very small extra dimensions that are wrapped up. Now, the question would be like, okay, so this means that the ship would basically have to shrink travel in the network and then get big again. And it doesn't make sense physically, but I think it is something that feels to me, like, plausible in a way. I mean, I do think, like, sometimes there are things, like, it can be a little bit challenging when a film is trying really hard to be scientifically accurate, and then they do something like, very. So I will say I actually really loved a lot about Project Hail Mary, even if I'm not a huge fan of its author or his views about Star Trek. But there were things that I was like, okay, but how did you get the ship close to the speed of light? How did you get to the next star system that quickly? Because they were actually so attentive to other things in the physics that I was like, I need you guys to at least explain to me how this is plausible. And actually, I just went over that scene, like, ten times a few days ago. So it's very, very fresh in my brain. I do think that the Star wars way is a little bit similar to the mycelial network, because I think the mycelial network and hyperspace are kind of conceptually similar, which is that, like, you have extra dimensions that you go into the warp bubble. Okay, can I. Let me just tell you the thing that stresses me out about the warp bubble.
- [26:33]
Al Letson
Please.
- [26:34]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
There are asteroids and comets and other stars. And yes, space is mostly empty, but it's not completely empty. And, like, you cannot travel in a straight line, especially if you're trying to go to places where there is stuff without running into something. And even a collision with, like, a tiny, tiny little atom would probably just do incredible damage to the Enterprise. And this is something that I just wish. Maybe there's an episode where this comes up and I just didn't notice it. They needed to have something that was like. And it burns off anything in the path. But then, okay, if you're burning things off in the path, then, like, what if you accidentally burn off another ship? Or, like.
- [27:21]
Al Letson
So I read somewhere where someone was talking about this and they were saying that, like, it's just impossible because in order to create that bubble, you would have so much energy in the front of the bubble that by the time you end at a planet, that energy would be enough to destroy the entire planet. So you would travel across the cosmos to visit a planet and then destroy it when you got there.
- [27:47]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
I mean, there's definitely this piece. My spouse often complains about this, which is that you cannot go to war right outside the Atmosphere of a planet. And at times the writers are very sloppy about this.
- [27:58]
Al Letson
Oh, yeah.
- [27:59]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
And it's like, I mean, and there's like some real world precedent for that. I'm thinking about the first time that scientists tested a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific, which was like a God awful thing for them to do because they did not have permission from the indigenous peoples who lived in that region or really like any democratic permission from the rest of planet Earth to be like, we will, you know, radiate this part of the planet. But also, when you read histories of, of that time and the hydrogen bomb experiment, they were slightly concerned that they were going to set off a nuclear chain reaction in the atmosphere and it would burn the entire. It would cause the atmosphere to go into nuclear fusion.
- [28:50]
Al Letson
And yet they still did it.
- [28:52]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
Yeah.
- [28:53]
Al Letson
The Pacific is the chosen proving ground for the United States H bomb experiment.
- [28:58]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
They were like, chances seem low. And the US government really wants to test this. So fingers crossed.
- [29:07]
Al Letson
Like, what?
- [29:09]
Freedom From Religion Foundation Announcer
In less than a minute, you will
- [29:11]
Al Letson
see the most powerful explosion ever witnessed by human eyes.
- [29:15]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
And you're just like, you guys, that wasn't just all of humanity at risk. That was the possibility of all life on Earth. Just like if you burn the atmosphere and there's no atmosphere, I just like, I can't imagine having the spine to. To do something. The ego, really? Not the spine. The ego.
- [29:37]
Al Letson
The ego. The ego, absolutely.
- [29:38]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
Three, two, one. And it's the same with warping outside of a planet's atmosphere.
- [29:47]
Al Letson
Yeah. Yes. On social media, you are very outspoken about social justice and the way you envision the world. And I think a lot of that comes from what you were raised in, like your parents planted in you. And your mom has been an activist. She's got her own radio show. Right. Does she still have that?
- [30:12]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
She's now retired from doing Sojourner Truth with Margaret Prescott. But she did Sojourner Truth with Margaret Prescott on the Pacifica Network for a couple of decades. Yeah.
- [30:21]
Al Letson
Yeah, for a good little bit. And your father is an activist as well, right?
- [30:26]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
Yeah, my dad, Sam Weinstein, he was a union man for a really long time, and he's now back home in doing grassroots organizing, mostly Jewish organizing in support of Palestinian liberation. But I was raised in a labor organizing household, in a grassroots feminist organizing household. My stepmother was a labor lawyer who worked with the Teamsters. So it's just, it's in the family and on my dad's side. My dad's stepfather, C.L.R. james, was a Marxist revolutionary writer, and his mother, Selma James, is a world Known feminist, organizer and advocate for wages for housework and head of the global women's strike. So yeah, there's a lot of like organizing lineage. On my mom's side. I'm like a third generation teacher, so. And my grandmother was at the march on. My mom's mom was at the march on Washington.
- [31:29]
Al Letson
Yes. So you get it, honest?
- [31:32]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
Yes, I get it. Honest. I think like I'm actually in a way kind of like the family weirdo because I became a physicist. Yes,
- [31:41]
Al Letson
but yes, you became a physicist, but I very much view you as an activist as well. I think you are genius with all the stuff that you talk about with the stars and space and all of that. But I also think what's genius about it is how you connect it to the struggle of everyday people and advocating for your beliefs, all of that, it all works together. So I don't think you're the weirdo. All that being said, I would ask, as an American living in this time that we are in right now, how do you define patriotism today?
- [32:26]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
Oh, this is a tough one for me because I don't think I really have a relationship to patriotism or at least not a positive one. But I think our current ecological circumstances teach us that patriotism conceptually, politically, socially and from a futurist perspective has very limited value because our ecosystems don't actually have borders. And the ecological impacts of things like bombing Iran and bombing Gaza and
- [33:00]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
just
- [33:00]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
like an hour of a fighter jet in the air, the amount of fuel it uses and the emissions that comes out of it, that is a problem for everybody on planet Earth, regardless of where they are. And so I really think we will gain a lot from understanding ourselves as citizens of Earth. And I think that citizens from a cosmic perspective, I actually think that that's one of the things the cosmic perspective offers us is the opportunity to recognize that these social constructs are just that, social constructs and that they don't necessarily serve our long term survival.
- [33:40]
Al Letson
Yeah, that's an excellent answer. Chanda, thank you so much for coming onto the show. Like I said, I'm a huge fan and it has been such an honor to talk to you.
- [33:51]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
Thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed myself.
- [33:59]
Al Letson
That was Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein. Her latest book is called the Edge of Space Particles, Poetry and the Cosmic Dream boogie. With America's 250th anniversary coming up, we also asked you, our listeners, for your thoughts on patriotism. Be sure to check out the reveal episode. Has America lived up to its founding promise? We'll put a link to that episode and Chanda's books in the show notes. Lastly, to keep up with everything we're doing here, sign up for our free newsletter by going to revealnews.org newsletter. We'll send you the latest from our newsroom in a weekly email. That's revealnews.org newsletter. This episode was produced by members of the Justice Society Josh, Sam Byrne and Carl McGurk Allison. They had help from Joni Binder, edited by Taki Telenides theme music and engineering helped by Fernando My man Yo Aruda and Jay Breezy. Mr. Jim Briggs, I'm Al Letson and you know, let's do this again next week. This is more to the story.
- [35:19]
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- [35:51]
Dr. Chanda Prescott Weinstein
from PRX.