Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / The SF Universe of Mary Robinette Kowal's "The Calculating Stars"

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The SF Universe of Mary Robinette Kowal's "The Calculating Stars" · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, or hey, I have an idea for a new
0:11
Speaker 1: science institute. Look nice, I guess you're going to call
0:14
Speaker 1: it the White Sun Institute. No, no, no, I'm going
0:16
Speaker 1: to call it the End of the World Research Institute.
0:20
Speaker 1: What you want to study new ways to kill everyone?
0:25
Speaker 1: There's plenty of people doing that already. I want to
0:27
Speaker 1: study the ways science can help in a disaster. Oh
0:31
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool. But wait, what if science is what
0:34
Speaker 1: causes the disaster? We'll have a department for that. Also, Yeah,
0:37
Speaker 1: who's going to lead that department? Professor Bruce willis, of
0:41
Speaker 1: course the professor of saving the world. We have him
0:45
Speaker 1: on standby. Whereas Bruce Willis when you need him. He's
0:47
Speaker 1: at the End of the World Research Institute. The coronavirus.
0:52
Speaker 1: Like all celebrities seem to do, Oh no, no, cut cut,
1:14
Speaker 1: I am more hammad cartoonists and the creator of PhD coms. Hi.
1:18
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel Whitson. I'm a particle physicist and I'm not
1:21
Speaker 1: actively working towards the end of actively but you're hoping
1:24
Speaker 1: inadvertedly or what's your what's your motivation here? I'm not
1:28
Speaker 1: hoping for the end of the world. I'm not trying
1:30
Speaker 1: to facilitate the end of the world. I'm not trying
1:32
Speaker 1: to speed the end times. I just want to get
1:34
Speaker 1: it out side. Bivalent about the end of the world,
1:37
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, if it comes, it wasn't because I
1:39
Speaker 1: made it happen. I'm not saying I won't be at fault,
1:42
Speaker 1: but should have put more funding into science. That's right,
1:46
Speaker 1: Maybe particle physics would have saved the world. Well. Welcome
1:49
Speaker 1: to our podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a
1:51
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio, in which we take you
1:54
Speaker 1: away from the concerns and worries of the every day
1:57
Speaker 1: and travel out into the universe and think about all
2:00
Speaker 1: the crazy, amazing, beautiful, terrifying, extreme, and gorgeous things out there. Yeah,
2:06
Speaker 1: because you know, we are living in pretty interesting times,
2:08
Speaker 1: and we figured what better way to get us all
2:10
Speaker 1: through this than to think about the larger universe, the
2:14
Speaker 1: fast costumes out there that make us seem like insignificant
2:17
Speaker 1: little things. That's right. And usually on this podcast we
2:20
Speaker 1: pick a topic in science. It's at the sort of
2:22
Speaker 1: the forefront in the brains of scientists. Things people are
2:25
Speaker 1: wondering about, a problem, they're trying to crack, a question,
2:29
Speaker 1: that scientists are currently asking, and we share it with
2:32
Speaker 1: you because, in our opinion, the universe belongs to all
2:35
Speaker 1: of us, and wondering about the universe is a common
2:38
Speaker 1: human experience. That's why we are all in this together.
2:40
Speaker 1: And we're also all made of the same stuff. Right,
2:44
Speaker 1: That's right, me, You, lava and hamsters were basically all
2:48
Speaker 1: the same thing. And space bananas. Don't forget the banannas.
2:51
Speaker 1: I'm not including space banana is in that category. Now,
2:53
Speaker 1: that's in a separate different categories like dark matter. We
2:56
Speaker 1: don't know. I've never had one, so I can decide
2:59
Speaker 1: with Maybe I'll love space bananas. Maybe space bananas will
3:02
Speaker 1: bring me into the fold of the Church of the
3:05
Speaker 1: Maybe they turn into dark matter, just like real bananas.
3:08
Speaker 1: Real bananas do turn into a form of dark matter.
3:11
Speaker 1: That's true. But now we like to talk about the universe,
3:13
Speaker 1: all the things in it, and also all of the
3:15
Speaker 1: ideas that are out there about science and how science
3:18
Speaker 1: can impact society, and how it can help society, and
3:23
Speaker 1: how might it even affect if something happens to humanity.
3:27
Speaker 1: That's right, and we like to think optimistically on this podcast.
3:29
Speaker 1: We'd like to think that science is one of humanity's
3:32
Speaker 1: greatest inventions. It's pulled us out of lots of scrapes,
3:35
Speaker 1: it's provided quality of life, it's brought you this podcast,
3:39
Speaker 1: and so we hope that in some crazy end of
3:41
Speaker 1: the world scenario, scientists will pull together and bring us
3:45
Speaker 1: all through. And it's even cooler when this great invention
3:48
Speaker 1: of humanity meets another great invention of humanity, which is
3:51
Speaker 1: the arts and writing and creative that's right, and that's
3:54
Speaker 1: why on this podcast we've been doing a series of
3:56
Speaker 1: episodes about the physics of science fiction universe versus. I've
4:00
Speaker 1: been reading science fiction and talking to authors about how
4:03
Speaker 1: they constructed their universe, how much physics they put into it,
4:06
Speaker 1: how it reflects on our universe, and how it reflects
4:09
Speaker 1: on the human experience. So you can look back through
4:11
Speaker 1: our archive and find a couple of great book reviews
4:14
Speaker 1: and author interviews that we've done with several pretty well
4:17
Speaker 1: known and award winning recent science fiction novels. And so today,
4:21
Speaker 1: um the program, we are doing another of these series
4:24
Speaker 1: where we talk about a book that recently won the
4:27
Speaker 1: Hugo and the Nebula awards, right, which are like the
4:29
Speaker 1: I Guess, the Oscars and Emmy's of Science Fiction Writing Writing. Yeah,
4:33
Speaker 1: it's more like the Golden Globes and the Oscars. It's
4:35
Speaker 1: pretty impressive to even be nominated for one of these,
4:38
Speaker 1: to win one of these, to win both of them
4:41
Speaker 1: in the same year is really a monumental agency. And
4:44
Speaker 1: which one is hosted by Ricky Gervais if you can
4:48
Speaker 1: believe it. The hosts are even nerdier for these awards.
4:51
Speaker 1: So what do they do? They dress up? Is there
4:54
Speaker 1: like a ceremony with the taxes and stuff? Um? I
4:58
Speaker 1: think they cosplay. I'm not sure. Oh nice, I've never been.
5:02
Speaker 1: I've never been one of these, and I don't think
5:03
Speaker 1: they're broadcast on TV. Somebody writes a book about that.
5:07
Speaker 1: But a lot of these books are wonderful. But we're
5:09
Speaker 1: not choosing these books because they want awards. We just
5:12
Speaker 1: for the books we've chosen that are wonderful. We'd like
5:14
Speaker 1: to mention that, hey, these authors have some deserved acclaim.
5:17
Speaker 1: And for today's episode, I thought it would be fun
5:19
Speaker 1: to talk about a dystopian science fiction novel, one in
5:23
Speaker 1: which science comes to the rescue and saves humanity. Yeah,
5:26
Speaker 1: because Daniel, you're a big fan of science fiction, and
5:29
Speaker 1: we are living in interesting times and how did how
5:32
Speaker 1: did you peec these two things together? And is it
5:34
Speaker 1: really fiction? At this point? It is fascinating. I started
5:37
Speaker 1: reading this book and I made plans to read this book,
5:40
Speaker 1: which is all about how science might rescue humanity in
5:43
Speaker 1: the face of a huge catastrophe, well before this pandemic started,
5:47
Speaker 1: and now it's sort of increasingly relevant and you'll hear
5:50
Speaker 1: about I had a pretty fascinating conversation with the author
5:53
Speaker 1: about how the current pandemic impacts her thinking about science
5:57
Speaker 1: and technology and it's interfacing with government and people and
6:01
Speaker 1: how people feel about this stuff. It's a it's an
6:03
Speaker 1: important topic. Let's dive into it. So to be on
6:06
Speaker 1: the program, we'll be asking the question can science save
6:15
Speaker 1: humanity from a crisis? The science Fitching Universe of Mary
6:18
Speaker 1: Robin and Cole and her book The Calculating Stars. So
6:22
Speaker 1: this is a pretty recent book, right. It came out
6:25
Speaker 1: in two thousand eighteen, two thousand nineteen, Yeah, it came
6:27
Speaker 1: out around then, and it's in a series of books
6:30
Speaker 1: about the Lady Astronauts, and it's all about women becoming
6:34
Speaker 1: astronauts and being on the forefront of exploration, and it's fascinating.
6:37
Speaker 1: It's a novel she wrote. It's a prequel to a
6:40
Speaker 1: short story she wrote called The Lady Astronaut many years ago,
6:44
Speaker 1: which was also wonderful, and she liked this universe she
6:47
Speaker 1: created so much, and now she's written a series of
6:49
Speaker 1: books as a prequel to that short story. So there's
6:53
Speaker 1: The Calculating Stars, then there's The Faded Sky, and she
6:56
Speaker 1: has a new book coming out next year in this trilogy.
6:59
Speaker 1: And she has a pretty interesting history for a science
7:02
Speaker 1: fiction author. She used to be a puppeteer for Jim Henson. Yeah, yeah,
7:07
Speaker 1: and now she's like officially on the Sesame Street Hall
7:09
Speaker 1: of Fame. So she is really an artist, you know,
7:12
Speaker 1: comes from a creative background. She's not one of these
7:15
Speaker 1: science fiction authors that was once a scientist and then
7:18
Speaker 1: transitioned into writing. She's always been on the creative, sort
7:22
Speaker 1: of the non Mathew, you know, artistic inspired side of things.
7:26
Speaker 1: But I asked her about that. You'll hear her answer.
7:28
Speaker 1: She feels like being a puppeteer and being a science
7:30
Speaker 1: fiction author sort of draw from the same inspiration. Really,
7:33
Speaker 1: I guess you're using your imagination and coming up with
7:36
Speaker 1: the voices and characters. Is that kind of what she meant. Yeah,
7:38
Speaker 1: all sciences really just make believe. So you guys just
7:41
Speaker 1: sit in meetings moving your hands, going blah blah blah
7:43
Speaker 1: blah blah. Yeah, and this is a really fascinating book.
7:46
Speaker 1: It's different from a lot of the other stuff that
7:47
Speaker 1: I read, which tends to be like far future science fiction,
7:51
Speaker 1: space opera, crazy technology, alternative universe physics. This one is
7:56
Speaker 1: placed in our universe, and it's sort of alternative history
7:59
Speaker 1: science fiction. It's like going back in time to do
8:02
Speaker 1: science fiction. So it's it's pretty fascinating, and she takes
8:05
Speaker 1: a very different approach to writing and to incorporating the
8:09
Speaker 1: science into the story than almost anything else I've right, Yeah,
8:11
Speaker 1: you told me that. It's very realistic about the science,
8:13
Speaker 1: sort of like the Martian, you know, where they really
8:16
Speaker 1: sort of don't invent or do anything magical. They just
8:20
Speaker 1: try to work with what we have right now. Yeah.
8:22
Speaker 1: One thing about being a scientist is that you never
8:24
Speaker 1: really know what's going on. You have limited information, and
8:28
Speaker 1: from that you're trying to figure out what's going on,
8:30
Speaker 1: what should I do? How do I gather the next
8:32
Speaker 1: piece of information? And you rarely see that in science
8:35
Speaker 1: fiction in science fiction, it's usually something happens and then
8:38
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the scientists have some like awesome
8:40
Speaker 1: heads of display with graphics and visuals that shows you
8:42
Speaker 1: exactly what's going on. And she really got the process
8:46
Speaker 1: part of this, that the experience of not knowing and
8:49
Speaker 1: how do you figure it out and those little trickles
8:52
Speaker 1: of discovery, you know, coming in to change your opinion
8:55
Speaker 1: about what might be happening. She really nailed it. And
8:58
Speaker 1: that's so impressive, especially for somebody who hasn't actually done it.
9:01
Speaker 1: I mean, she doesn't have a science back interesting and
9:03
Speaker 1: you're telling me that it has sort of an interesting
9:05
Speaker 1: theme or undercurrent about how governments and societies and scientists
9:10
Speaker 1: can work together or how they react to a natural
9:14
Speaker 1: disaster or like a global crisis. Yeah, absolutely, it's I
9:18
Speaker 1: think people will find it very relevant for today. It
9:21
Speaker 1: touches on themes of like when the scientists say there's
9:24
Speaker 1: a huge disaster coming, how do they get the government
9:27
Speaker 1: to listen? Like if you look at your window and
9:29
Speaker 1: you don't see the world on fire, but the scientists
9:32
Speaker 1: are telling you it's going to be on fire in
9:33
Speaker 1: a week, we better act now, how do you get
9:35
Speaker 1: the government to believe you. So there's a lot of
9:38
Speaker 1: really interesting stuff in there that people might have thought,
9:41
Speaker 1: oh this is really relevant, or its analogy to like
9:43
Speaker 1: climate change, but now it's much more an analogy to
9:46
Speaker 1: what we're facing today. Well, but the scenario is a
9:49
Speaker 1: little bit different, right, So it's not a pandemic, it's
9:52
Speaker 1: not a virus or anything like that. It's sort of
9:54
Speaker 1: a little bit more science and spacey. Um, So step
9:57
Speaker 1: us through this book, Daniel. First of all, before we
9:59
Speaker 1: get get to the interview, Now, what's the basic idea
10:02
Speaker 1: of the book and and when is it set. So
10:05
Speaker 1: it's set on Earth in our universe in around the
10:08
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. So you know, modern technology doesn't exist. We
10:12
Speaker 1: don't have tiny computers and all that stuff, but it
10:14
Speaker 1: but it was our world when we were in the
10:16
Speaker 1: in the fifties. It's not like an alternate ninet fifties
10:19
Speaker 1: where they had hoverboards. It's like the same nineties. It's
10:22
Speaker 1: the same nineteen fifties, but then it diverges, you know,
10:24
Speaker 1: it's an alternative history starting from our nineteen fifties. We
10:28
Speaker 1: still beat the Nazis, right, we still beat the Nazis,
10:32
Speaker 1: But sometime in the nineteen fifties, an enormous meteorite hits
10:36
Speaker 1: the Earth and basically wipes out d C in a flash.
10:40
Speaker 1: What of all places on Earth DC gets hit? I'm
10:45
Speaker 1: not sure if you mean that it's like, hey, nice
10:47
Speaker 1: choice meteorite, or like, oh no, I guess I mean
10:51
Speaker 1: nice choice there. What's the one place it can hit
10:55
Speaker 1: that would cause the maximum amount of chaos? And the
10:58
Speaker 1: story takes place from the point of view of a
11:01
Speaker 1: young woman who's gifted mathematically and she's a pilot. And
11:05
Speaker 1: one of the things I like about the book is
11:06
Speaker 1: that when you start out, you don't know what's happened.
11:08
Speaker 1: It's just she's out with her friends and she ex
11:11
Speaker 1: sees this huge thing in the sky. She doesn't know
11:13
Speaker 1: are we being attacked by the Russians or has a
11:16
Speaker 1: meteorite hit? And she's piecing it together bit by bit
11:19
Speaker 1: exactly the way that she would And you know, she
11:22
Speaker 1: doesn't know if her parents have survived. And this this
11:25
Speaker 1: experience of not knowing what's going on and piecing it together,
11:28
Speaker 1: he's really really well done because this is pre twitter, right,
11:32
Speaker 1: how did anybody learn any get any information? You have
11:36
Speaker 1: to like good thing you stand and um. You know,
11:39
Speaker 1: of course as immediate impact, which is DC has gone,
11:42
Speaker 1: our government has decimated all that stuff you have to
11:45
Speaker 1: react to. But like, how much time did people have
11:47
Speaker 1: to to react to this? No time at all. There
11:49
Speaker 1: was no warning, We had no idea what was happening.
11:51
Speaker 1: It was just all of a sudden boom. All right, well,
11:54
Speaker 1: we'll talk about the plausibility of the scenario. But but
11:58
Speaker 1: then that's not all. It gets worse. Yeah, it seems
12:01
Speaker 1: immediately to just be a big disaster, like, Okay, d
12:04
Speaker 1: C is gone, we have a lot of rebuilding to do.
12:06
Speaker 1: But this scientist chief figures out pretty quickly that there's
12:10
Speaker 1: longer term consequences to this, that what it's going to
12:13
Speaker 1: happen is that it's going to create a big greenhouse effect.
12:16
Speaker 1: It's going to heat up the entire earth, and it's
12:19
Speaker 1: going to make the Earth uninhabitable in a few years,
12:22
Speaker 1: kind of like what happened to the dinosaurs. Like you know,
12:25
Speaker 1: it wasn't the impact that killed the dinosaurs, but like
12:27
Speaker 1: the dust cloud kind of you have the longer term
12:30
Speaker 1: effects there. And we'll talk about the details of the science.
12:33
Speaker 1: But when you have a big impact like that, you
12:35
Speaker 1: can either throw up a bunch of dust and ash
12:38
Speaker 1: and create like an impact winter, right, because you're blocking
12:42
Speaker 1: out the sun and the Earth goes into an ice age.
12:44
Speaker 1: Or you can create a greenhouse effect, which can be
12:48
Speaker 1: a runaway effect, so you can basically turn the Earth
12:50
Speaker 1: into an oven. And either way, it's not either way
12:53
Speaker 1: meteors or not good. I wouldn't recommend ordering a meteor
12:56
Speaker 1: for delivery, even if it's a no contact de la.
13:00
Speaker 1: Even then, and as a reaction, Earth has to scramble
13:04
Speaker 1: and they have to develop space technology and basically start
13:08
Speaker 1: to colonize Mars because they realize Earth is no longer
13:11
Speaker 1: going to be a place we can live. In the fifties,
13:16
Speaker 1: we didn't get to the moon until nineteen sixty nine, right,
13:19
Speaker 1: that's right. Wow, So this was like way accelerating, and
13:22
Speaker 1: that was in response to what felt like a disaster
13:24
Speaker 1: at the time, right, which is like the Russians are
13:26
Speaker 1: beating us in the space race. And so a lot
13:29
Speaker 1: of this is about how humanity makes its priorities. You know.
13:33
Speaker 1: It makes the point that if we had to do this,
13:35
Speaker 1: could we how would we do this? If we just
13:38
Speaker 1: you know, gun to our head against the wall, had
13:41
Speaker 1: to do this or die. Could we put this together,
13:43
Speaker 1: could we pull it out? What was this before like
13:46
Speaker 1: the Cold War really kicked in, or because you know,
13:49
Speaker 1: we just want the war. I'm putting myself in the time,
13:53
Speaker 1: so we just want the ward second World War. But
13:55
Speaker 1: this is before kind of the Cold War started kind
13:59
Speaker 1: of being a big and one angle in her book
14:01
Speaker 1: is the humanity sort of pulls together and these national
14:05
Speaker 1: boundaries start to be less important because it's a human
14:08
Speaker 1: problem and we're all going to solve it in scientists
14:10
Speaker 1: from the around the world are all working together, and
14:13
Speaker 1: it's sort of inspiring in that way. And I really
14:16
Speaker 1: hope that in the event of a huge disaster that
14:19
Speaker 1: scientists do pull together and work on this. And frankly,
14:22
Speaker 1: I've seen in the news that people are working together
14:24
Speaker 1: in labs right now around the world sharing information about
14:28
Speaker 1: this virus and trying to make a vaccine. And so
14:30
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a little weird to read about it
14:33
Speaker 1: in the book. When I was first reading, I thought
14:34
Speaker 1: this is a little idealistic, But you know, now I
14:36
Speaker 1: kind of see it happening in reality, not on the
14:39
Speaker 1: same scale, of course, that science does respond in this
14:42
Speaker 1: human way, in this personal way to pull together. When
14:45
Speaker 1: you first read it, you thought it was a little
14:47
Speaker 1: kind of sickly sweet, maybe like unrealistic that people would
14:50
Speaker 1: actually pull together. But now, in in such a times,
14:54
Speaker 1: I wonder if you're you're looking for signs of the opposite,
14:57
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, I mean I wouldn't have of science.
15:00
Speaker 1: I just thought, like, you know, that's on the positive
15:03
Speaker 1: edge of the potential outcomes, you know, And I admired
15:06
Speaker 1: that sort of idealism. And I have to actually asked
15:09
Speaker 1: her about this in the interview you'll hear her reaction.
15:11
Speaker 1: But that's sort of the angle of it. All right, cool, Well,
15:13
Speaker 1: let's get into the science of it of a sign
15:15
Speaker 1: the signs of a meteor hitting the Earth, and then
15:17
Speaker 1: let's get into the interview with science fiction author Mary
15:21
Speaker 1: Robinette coal But first let's take a quick break. All right.
15:37
Speaker 1: We're talking about Mary Robinette Cole's science fiction novel The
15:40
Speaker 1: Calculating Stars, which is about a meteor hitting the Earth
15:44
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties and it just so happens to
15:46
Speaker 1: hit the White House, does it? Does it hit the
15:50
Speaker 1: White House directly? Kind of like in Independence Day, like
15:53
Speaker 1: like there's a shot at the White house and then
15:55
Speaker 1: the meter hits right on it or is it in
15:57
Speaker 1: the suburbs. No, it actually hits in the water in
16:00
Speaker 1: the bay near the coast, and which is much more devastating.
16:05
Speaker 1: And she thought really carefully about the science. I was
16:07
Speaker 1: really impressed, especially for somebody without a science background. She
16:11
Speaker 1: really thought about what would happen if it hit on land,
16:13
Speaker 1: or if it's in the deep water, or if it
16:15
Speaker 1: hit in the shallow water, and you get different outcomes,
16:18
Speaker 1: and actually the most devastating is a shallow water impact.
16:22
Speaker 1: I think that's why she put the meteor there. Why
16:24
Speaker 1: because it creates an explosion and a tsunami at the
16:26
Speaker 1: same time. Yes, and it throws a lot of water
16:29
Speaker 1: into the atmosphere. And I'm guessing that's part of the plot.
16:33
Speaker 1: That is part of the plot, my friend. All right, well,
16:38
Speaker 1: let's talk about a meteor hitting. And we've talked about
16:40
Speaker 1: meteors hitting and how there's a group at NASA that
16:45
Speaker 1: whose only job it is to look at for meteors
16:47
Speaker 1: hitting the Earth. But this was back in the nineteen fifties, right,
16:50
Speaker 1: because back then we didn't have the we weren't looking
16:53
Speaker 1: out for a meteor's where we we were not. And
16:55
Speaker 1: this is a really fascinating topic, especially to place historically,
16:58
Speaker 1: because you're right in the fifty we weren't looking at all,
17:01
Speaker 1: and we totally could have been blindsided by meteor. Like
17:05
Speaker 1: we might have noticed it, you know, as it approached
17:08
Speaker 1: a few days in advance, because we had telescopes and
17:11
Speaker 1: people were looking. But you basically have to get lucky
17:14
Speaker 1: and spotted. Nobody was on purpose looking for this thing.
17:17
Speaker 1: People were too busy doing the hula hoops and going
17:20
Speaker 1: around in er and going to the diner, and then
17:23
Speaker 1: suddenly it had to be luck for you to look
17:25
Speaker 1: up and see a meteor coming at you. Yeah, and
17:28
Speaker 1: we didn't have the sort of telescopes we have now
17:30
Speaker 1: and the budget for science and all that stuff. You know,
17:33
Speaker 1: America had just emerged from World War Two and it's
17:35
Speaker 1: about to enter this era of investing in science and
17:39
Speaker 1: universities and academics. So we just didn't have the technology,
17:43
Speaker 1: and even later decades later, we still hadn't really done it.
17:46
Speaker 1: It wasn't until Shoemaker Levy in the nineties, which is
17:50
Speaker 1: a comment that hit Jupiter with fantastic fireballs the size
17:54
Speaker 1: of the Earth, that people woke up and thought a
17:57
Speaker 1: whole lot of second there could be something out there
18:00
Speaker 1: that's going to hit us, we better look more carefully. Really,
18:03
Speaker 1: that was the first time in the eighties that people
18:05
Speaker 1: started taking this seriously. It was in the nineties, and
18:07
Speaker 1: so really only in the last twenty or thirty years
18:10
Speaker 1: has NASA made a serious, dedicated effort to map the
18:13
Speaker 1: Solar System for anything that might hit us. Interesting, huh.
18:18
Speaker 1: I didn't know it was that recent. Yeah, And and
18:20
Speaker 1: that is actually a moment that I got drawn into science.
18:23
Speaker 1: I was working on a science project that summer where
18:26
Speaker 1: we had a super fast, high resolution camera and we
18:29
Speaker 1: saw this comment come into the Solar System and break
18:31
Speaker 1: into pieces and then slamm in the Jupiter one by one.
18:34
Speaker 1: And so we hooked up this awesome camera to a
18:36
Speaker 1: telescope and I watched those things hit Jupiter in real time.
18:40
Speaker 1: It took these high resolution, high speed videos of the impacts.
18:44
Speaker 1: It was pretty exhilarating. Yeah. Really wow, And so you
18:47
Speaker 1: said I'm going into particle physics. At the time, I
18:50
Speaker 1: actually wanted to be an astronomer um. But it turns
18:52
Speaker 1: out that you don't get climactic collisions like this very often,
18:56
Speaker 1: which is you know, a good thing and a bad thing,
18:58
Speaker 1: depending on your angle you like, I mean ten to
19:00
Speaker 1: the twenty three collisions per second. This is not enough
19:04
Speaker 1: one every hundred years anymore. So there's a few angles
19:08
Speaker 1: on this one. Is it's totally true that in the
19:11
Speaker 1: fifties we could have been blindsided by a big meteor, right,
19:14
Speaker 1: totally plausible. Today, however, we have mapped out most of
19:18
Speaker 1: the stuff in the Solar system, so we know where
19:21
Speaker 1: most of the big rocks are. In fact, we're pretty
19:24
Speaker 1: sure we know where all of the big rocks are,
19:26
Speaker 1: all the planet killers or the extinction event rocks. Pretty
19:30
Speaker 1: sure we've seen those. We know where they are. We've
19:33
Speaker 1: seen them for long enough to map out their trajectory
19:36
Speaker 1: and predict where they're going to be in the next
19:37
Speaker 1: couple of hundred years. So we have a little bit
19:41
Speaker 1: of an elite time. But in the book, how big
19:43
Speaker 1: was this mediaor was it like a how big relative
19:46
Speaker 1: to Manhattan? That's that seems to be the standard scale
19:50
Speaker 1: she avoids telling us in the book, And I tried
19:54
Speaker 1: to ask her about this in the interview, and she
19:57
Speaker 1: said that she very purposely didn't put the numbers in.
20:01
Speaker 1: Why is it such a why? Why is it missing. Well,
20:03
Speaker 1: I think she didn't feel confident about her calculations. Remember
20:06
Speaker 1: she's not a science person, and she didn't want to
20:08
Speaker 1: put details in there she wasn't sure of so she
20:11
Speaker 1: left herself some fuzz room. Interesting. But then as an
20:15
Speaker 1: extra wrinkle, she made her character super curious about the
20:18
Speaker 1: size of the meteor that it hit, but never actually
20:21
Speaker 1: told us the answer. They don't know what they don't know.
20:25
Speaker 1: I'm curious, you're curious. The character was curious. The author
20:28
Speaker 1: didn't tell anybody, and on Earth you'll never know the
20:31
Speaker 1: answer because there is no answer, all right. So then
20:35
Speaker 1: it hits the Earth and it obliterates DC. So I
20:39
Speaker 1: guess all of our politicians and representatives they're gone. Yeah.
20:42
Speaker 1: But I want to say one more thing about the
20:43
Speaker 1: chances of this happening, which is you should feel comfortable
20:46
Speaker 1: that NASA and the people around the world have trapped
20:50
Speaker 1: most of the asteroids which could potentially hit the planet,
20:53
Speaker 1: and they're not going to hit us in the next
20:54
Speaker 1: couple of hundred years. So relax. That's fine, but relaxed.
20:59
Speaker 1: You have more serious things to worry about, like toilet paper.
21:03
Speaker 1: But there is a big question mark because one of
21:06
Speaker 1: the most dangerous things that could hit the Earth is
21:08
Speaker 1: not actually an asteroid. It's a comet like the one
21:11
Speaker 1: that hit Jupiter. And comets move much faster and they're
21:15
Speaker 1: harder to predict because they can have like hundreds or
21:17
Speaker 1: thousands of years long orbits around the Sun. Meaning there
21:20
Speaker 1: could be one out there, really far away we haven't seen,
21:23
Speaker 1: and it could be headed on a collision course towards
21:26
Speaker 1: Earth and we wouldn't get a lot of lead time
21:27
Speaker 1: before it actually hit us. I think we talked about
21:30
Speaker 1: this in a previous episode, But do you do you
21:32
Speaker 1: think maybe there's a young gradsuit in Jupiter with a
21:35
Speaker 1: telescope going, oh, man, I hope that meteor hits there.
21:38
Speaker 1: I've been waiting for this, all right, So the meter
21:42
Speaker 1: hits and it obliterates. At Washington, d C. We have
21:45
Speaker 1: all of our politicians, I guess we're they were all
21:47
Speaker 1: in town at the same time. Yeah, all except for one.
21:50
Speaker 1: So like the you know, one cabinet member ends up
21:52
Speaker 1: being president designated survivor. Yes, exactly interesting and then um so,
21:57
Speaker 1: and then it creates a huge I guess whole and
21:59
Speaker 1: where DC used to be or near where DC used
22:01
Speaker 1: to be. But you're saying that the real plot twist
22:04
Speaker 1: is what happens after the meteor hits. Yeah, because it
22:07
Speaker 1: lands in the water, it shoots up a huge amount
22:10
Speaker 1: of water into the atmosphere, which becomes vapor and stays
22:14
Speaker 1: up there as gas and vapor and basically creates a
22:18
Speaker 1: new blanket around the Earth. And so then when you
22:21
Speaker 1: get is a big greenhouse. So that cloud like basically clouds,
22:24
Speaker 1: basically a lot of very high altitude clouds, high altitude clouds,
22:29
Speaker 1: like they turn into ice crystals, I guess, yeah, And
22:32
Speaker 1: so they stay up in the atmosphere and this water
22:34
Speaker 1: vapor actually acts like a big blanket around the Earth,
22:38
Speaker 1: and so it's transparent to a lot of the Sun's
22:41
Speaker 1: energy going in but not going out, and so it
22:45
Speaker 1: the Earth sort of gradually heats up because of the
22:48
Speaker 1: infrared rays can't get out. Is that the idea they
22:51
Speaker 1: can get in But now some you know transmission when
22:53
Speaker 1: you enter the atmosphere and you shift to lower free
22:55
Speaker 1: your absorbed and shift to a different frequency. But the
22:57
Speaker 1: point is that it creates a greenhouse effect, and then
23:00
Speaker 1: the Earth is heating up. And they figure this out
23:02
Speaker 1: in the book pretty quickly, like things are gonna cool
23:04
Speaker 1: off quickly, and then they're gonna start heating up, and
23:07
Speaker 1: then the oceans will boil, which would make more more
23:12
Speaker 1: of these clouds. Yeah, and as it gets hotter, exactly,
23:15
Speaker 1: you get more water vapor released, and you get more
23:18
Speaker 1: of these clouds. And you know, as a fascinating aside,
23:21
Speaker 1: there's a really interesting theory that this is exactly what
23:24
Speaker 1: happened to Venus. That Venus used to be a lot
23:27
Speaker 1: like Earth, used water, with water oceans um on the
23:31
Speaker 1: surface at you know, basically the same temperature as Earth.
23:35
Speaker 1: It must have even looked like Earth from space, but
23:38
Speaker 1: it might have been hit by a huge meteor which
23:41
Speaker 1: created this runaway greenhouse effect. Now it's hot and totally uninhabitable.
23:45
Speaker 1: And how much time did they have in the book
23:47
Speaker 1: before the oceans boiled. Not a whole lot of time.
23:50
Speaker 1: You know. It's not the kind of thing that's gonna
23:51
Speaker 1: happen tomorrow or next week or next year. It's going
23:54
Speaker 1: to sort of gradually increase. So in five years it
23:58
Speaker 1: will be too hot to live comfortably. End years would
24:00
Speaker 1: be very difficult to grow anything. And then as the
24:03
Speaker 1: years go on, the oceans will heat up and heat up,
24:06
Speaker 1: and so I think, you know, they have order ten years,
24:09
Speaker 1: decades kinds of things, but not a lot of time
24:11
Speaker 1: to build a huge space infrastructure. Interesting, and so then
24:14
Speaker 1: what they have to do then is figure out how
24:16
Speaker 1: to get off of Earth and colonize like the Moon
24:20
Speaker 1: and Mars, what's their planet. That's precisely the plan is
24:23
Speaker 1: um start building space infrastructure, build rockets, you know, get
24:27
Speaker 1: astronauts up there, start practicing on the Moon. But eventually
24:30
Speaker 1: the goal is to build colonies on Mars. And what
24:34
Speaker 1: would they eat? Yeah, that's my continent. It's it's really
24:38
Speaker 1: tricky and you know, if you go to Mars we
24:40
Speaker 1: talked about this on the podcast once you have two
24:42
Speaker 1: basic options. One is like build a lot of bubbles
24:45
Speaker 1: that you can live inside, or try to terraform the
24:49
Speaker 1: whole planet. But terraforming is very very hard. Wow. And
24:53
Speaker 1: so what did they do well in this first book?
24:55
Speaker 1: There don't get there yet, so it's you know, sort
24:57
Speaker 1: of series. Oh, it's just a teaser. So the first
25:03
Speaker 1: book is just about how this they set up, the
25:05
Speaker 1: problem and how what they start doing and the development
25:08
Speaker 1: of the space industry and astronaut training. And there's a
25:11
Speaker 1: fascinating side story there about how in these times of crisis,
25:14
Speaker 1: the opportunities for like large social change, and so the
25:18
Speaker 1: main character, who's a woman, pushes herself forward to become
25:21
Speaker 1: an astronaut. So she sort of breaks this barrier and
25:23
Speaker 1: is the first lady astronaut. Interesting, and so most of
25:26
Speaker 1: the rest of the book is about how they developed
25:28
Speaker 1: this technology and how they slowly build towards taking people
25:31
Speaker 1: into space. And then you know, the rest of the trilogy,
25:34
Speaker 1: which I haven't yet had a chance to read, explores
25:36
Speaker 1: in more detail actually colonizing the moon and Mars. Oh man,
25:40
Speaker 1: it's kind of sad. That's what it takes. That's what
25:42
Speaker 1: it would have taken in the fifties for women to
25:45
Speaker 1: become astronauts. Yeah, meteor hitting the water just the right spot. Yeah,
25:49
Speaker 1: And it's really well written from that point of view. Also,
25:51
Speaker 1: there's a lot of these issues of that are that
25:54
Speaker 1: sort of resonate with similar themes and like hidden figures.
25:57
Speaker 1: You know, people having the skills, wanting to contribute to
26:00
Speaker 1: an important problem, but being left on the sidelines because
26:03
Speaker 1: of their gender, or because of their race, or because
26:05
Speaker 1: of their background. And so from that point of view,
26:08
Speaker 1: it's also sort of inspiring in this novel, that they
26:10
Speaker 1: overcome that and the humanity in the end, let's our
26:13
Speaker 1: best step forward, regardless of their background and how they
26:16
Speaker 1: look and contribute to this problem that we were all facing. Interesting,
26:19
Speaker 1: So it said the Hollywood pitch would be Hidden Figures
26:22
Speaker 1: meets Armageddon for deep impact, depending on you know, which
26:28
Speaker 1: flavor of asteroid movie like. Yeah, I think they work
26:30
Speaker 1: nicely together. I think before Hidden Figures came out, people
26:33
Speaker 1: didn't really even understand that the concept of a computer
26:36
Speaker 1: in the fifties was a person somebody who's doing computations
26:40
Speaker 1: that were necessary to solve these hard problems. Before we
26:43
Speaker 1: had minturization of technology that we had these computers you
26:46
Speaker 1: could use on board. So I think that actually helps
26:49
Speaker 1: people understand sort of the context and the tone the
26:51
Speaker 1: cultural situation that this book takes place. Wow, it sounds
26:55
Speaker 1: pretty cool, pretty fascinating, pretty a proposed to our times today.
26:58
Speaker 1: And so, Daniel, you got a chance to talk to
27:00
Speaker 1: Mary Robin and Cole about her book and what she
27:04
Speaker 1: was thinking when she wrote it, and about some of
27:06
Speaker 1: the signs in it, right, and about puppets and about
27:08
Speaker 1: puppets all right, And so here is Daniel's interview with
27:13
Speaker 1: Mary Robin and Cole the author of the science fiction
27:15
Speaker 1: novel The Calculating Stars. First, thanks very much for joining
27:19
Speaker 1: us today on the podcast. Would you mind introducing yourself
27:22
Speaker 1: for our listeners. My name is Mary Robin at Coal.
27:25
Speaker 1: I write science fiction and fantasy. I'm also an audiobook
27:28
Speaker 1: narrator and a professional puppeteer. Well, it's not that often
27:31
Speaker 1: you made a science fiction author who's also a puppeteer.
27:34
Speaker 1: How did those two careers intersect? Um? They're both all
27:38
Speaker 1: about theater of the possible. Um, anything is possible when
27:42
Speaker 1: you step into puppetry or science fiction, So they're both also,
27:46
Speaker 1: I think, places that tend to naturally explore what if
27:49
Speaker 1: an imagination? Well that's wonderful. I'd like our listeners to
27:54
Speaker 1: get a chance to get to know you a little bit,
27:55
Speaker 1: to hear how you think about science fiction and the universe.
27:58
Speaker 1: So let me ask you a couple of sort of
28:00
Speaker 1: standard science fiction questions just to get acquainted. And the
28:04
Speaker 1: first is a classic question. I'm sure you've heard about
28:06
Speaker 1: science fiction philosophy, which is about teleporters. Are you in
28:10
Speaker 1: the camp that believes that when you step into a
28:12
Speaker 1: Star Trek style teleporter that it actually moves you from
28:16
Speaker 1: one location to another or in the camp to think
28:20
Speaker 1: that it disassembles you, in effect killing you and recreating
28:24
Speaker 1: a clone of you somewhere else. Um extentially, I think
28:29
Speaker 1: that it moves you from one point to another mechanically,
28:32
Speaker 1: I think it disassembles you and reassembles a clonic effront.
28:36
Speaker 1: I see. And so would you be willing, given that understanding,
28:40
Speaker 1: to step into a Star Trek style teleporter knowing you'd
28:43
Speaker 1: be disassembled? Absolutely? I mean, it's it is a faster
28:47
Speaker 1: version of what we do with on a regular basis,
28:51
Speaker 1: with our actual bodies. These cells that are in my
28:53
Speaker 1: body right now are not the cells that were in
28:55
Speaker 1: it seven years ago. For the most part. You know,
28:58
Speaker 1: we're constantly replenishing your ship selves and changing things. It's
29:01
Speaker 1: a ship of theseus. Question, right, at what point do
29:04
Speaker 1: we does it stop being me? And the answer is
29:08
Speaker 1: doesn't except to some philosophers who like to argue about things.
29:12
Speaker 1: So it's it's the same thing. It's just of sped
29:17
Speaker 1: up process. That said, you know, possibility for copying errors again,
29:22
Speaker 1: a thing that can happen with a natural body, not
29:26
Speaker 1: on the sped up timeline. All right, So then while
29:29
Speaker 1: we're talking about science fiction technology. What bit of technology
29:33
Speaker 1: that you see in science fiction would you like to
29:35
Speaker 1: see become reality? I mean a teleporter. Uh yeah. Um.
29:43
Speaker 1: One of these things I will say that is becoming
29:45
Speaker 1: incredibly apparent to me with the you know, shelter in place, sparkling, isolation, distance,
29:54
Speaker 1: socializing of life, and a pandemic is how much time
29:59
Speaker 1: I actually do spend in transit. That's a lot of
30:03
Speaker 1: time I'm getting back, so and and people that I
30:06
Speaker 1: would like to be able to visit and see. Uh
30:08
Speaker 1: and resource allocations suddenly becomes much easier if you don't
30:12
Speaker 1: have to if you if you aren't dealing with perishability
30:15
Speaker 1: to the same degree. Uh so. So teleportation and time travel,
30:19
Speaker 1: those are the two that I would very much like
30:21
Speaker 1: to have. All Right, it sounds like it would solve
30:24
Speaker 1: some logistical problems for you. Oh yeah, yeah, a lot
30:28
Speaker 1: wonderful personally, I'd like to write a book in the
30:32
Speaker 1: future and then travel back in time to deliver to
30:34
Speaker 1: me here today, like instant book writing. Yeah yeah. So
30:39
Speaker 1: then let's talk about your book, The Calculating Stars. First
30:42
Speaker 1: of all, congratulations on the success and on all of
30:45
Speaker 1: the awards. Very well. Deserved. Thank you very much. That
30:48
Speaker 1: was an exciting time. I really enjoyed reading it, And
30:52
Speaker 1: something that really resonated with me in the book were
30:55
Speaker 1: the sort of scientific moments of June. Like there's a
30:59
Speaker 1: scene in the book where they first see these pictures
31:02
Speaker 1: from the moon and you can feel the scientists like
31:06
Speaker 1: at the edge of their seat, like, I want to
31:08
Speaker 1: see it in the photograph, what does that look like?
31:10
Speaker 1: And you know, as a scientist, you know, I've had
31:13
Speaker 1: a few of those moments in my career when you're
31:15
Speaker 1: opening the data from the experiment, when you're asking the
31:18
Speaker 1: universe a question and it has to respond like you've
31:21
Speaker 1: cornered it and forced it to reveal something. So congrats
31:25
Speaker 1: on writing that so effectively. But I have to ask,
31:27
Speaker 1: how did you do that? I mean, your background is
31:30
Speaker 1: not as a scientist, unless I've misunderstood, No, it's very
31:33
Speaker 1: definitely not. How did you capture that so well? Did
31:36
Speaker 1: you spend a bunch of time with NASA folks. The
31:39
Speaker 1: sense of wonder is the universal thing. You know that,
31:42
Speaker 1: and it's the object of the wonder shifts. But having
31:46
Speaker 1: that sense of wonder, having that sense of discovery and
31:49
Speaker 1: joy from that, that's something that I think that everybody
31:52
Speaker 1: can experience and probably has experienced at some point in
31:55
Speaker 1: their life. So for me it's easy to do is
32:00
Speaker 1: with seeing the moon because I am not a scientist,
32:03
Speaker 1: but I'm a huge space nerd. I remember my mom
32:07
Speaker 1: talked me into a college level astronomy class when I
32:11
Speaker 1: was in middle school, mostly so that I could go
32:15
Speaker 1: and do the astronomy labs, uh and use the telescopes,
32:19
Speaker 1: because you know, it was when it was fantastic. It
32:22
Speaker 1: is a it's been a lifelong interest. The thing that
32:27
Speaker 1: I like about writing science fiction is that it gives
32:30
Speaker 1: me a socially acceptable way to indulge my natural curiosity,
32:34
Speaker 1: so I'm able to ask people. And then the other
32:37
Speaker 1: thing that I would say is that in addition to
32:40
Speaker 1: bringing my own curiosity and joy and interest in this,
32:44
Speaker 1: I read a lot of autobiographies and memoirs and nonfiction
32:51
Speaker 1: where there are interviews or discussions with people who are
32:55
Speaker 1: scientists and seeing seeing the specific things that trigger their
33:01
Speaker 1: point of joy, that the things that they are excited about.
33:04
Speaker 1: Like I just got to talk to someone who's a
33:07
Speaker 1: geologist specializing in mars um and I asked her, you know,
33:11
Speaker 1: would you go to Mars, and she's like the opportunity
33:13
Speaker 1: to be able to actually touch the things that I've
33:17
Speaker 1: spent my entire career studying. And you could hear her
33:21
Speaker 1: just over the phone. Her entire expression just lit up
33:25
Speaker 1: at that possibility. And and as a writer, I get
33:28
Speaker 1: to create those moments basically by extrapolating from my own
33:33
Speaker 1: experience and mapping it onto the points that someone else
33:36
Speaker 1: notices and loves. Well, I think you really nailed it.
33:40
Speaker 1: I was impressed. Thanks. And there's something else to me
33:43
Speaker 1: that was very unusual to find in science fiction, but
33:45
Speaker 1: I liked in my experience. Science, real science is about wondering,
33:50
Speaker 1: and it's about curiosity, of course, but the process of
33:53
Speaker 1: it is not always so exciting the every day. It's
33:56
Speaker 1: not like I'm discovering a new particle before lunch and
34:00
Speaker 1: revealing a secret of the universe, you know, with my coffee.
34:04
Speaker 1: It's a slow, painstaking process there. And the thing that
34:07
Speaker 1: I really respect about the depiction in your book is
34:10
Speaker 1: that you describe that process like they're trying to figure
34:13
Speaker 1: out what happened and they don't know anything. Their clue
34:16
Speaker 1: is and it takes a while to figure it out,
34:18
Speaker 1: And oh, my gosh, this asteroid might be an extinction event.
34:21
Speaker 1: You know, the realizations come slowly, they're not always at once.
34:26
Speaker 1: You capture that cluelessness, the frustration, the difficulty. So tell
34:30
Speaker 1: me why did you decide to make this science process
34:33
Speaker 1: so integral to the story. You know, it really drives
34:36
Speaker 1: the plot in a way I haven't seen in other
34:38
Speaker 1: science fiction. I think that for me, the reason, well,
34:43
Speaker 1: there's two reasons. Um. One is that I find it
34:47
Speaker 1: inherently interesting. We we do see a lot of stories
34:50
Speaker 1: of the loan Savior. But when you anyone who is
34:56
Speaker 1: interested in space at all knows that, you know, the
35:00
Speaker 1: astronauts are out there getting all of the the credit
35:02
Speaker 1: and the glory, but they are supported by this enormous,
35:08
Speaker 1: enormous body of people who are all experts in their field,
35:13
Speaker 1: doing top level work as a group. Um and and
35:17
Speaker 1: at the there at the end of this long, long,
35:20
Speaker 1: long problem solving thing. But again, I come like, I'm
35:24
Speaker 1: from a theater background, and it's very similar in a
35:27
Speaker 1: lot of ways that when you go to see a show,
35:30
Speaker 1: when you go to see a movie, there's the movie star,
35:32
Speaker 1: there's the lead on stage who gets all of the glory,
35:36
Speaker 1: but they're supported by all of these other people, and
35:39
Speaker 1: hours and hours and hours of work of human labor
35:43
Speaker 1: leading up to that, the rehearsals and all of these things,
35:45
Speaker 1: and we tend to not celebrate and valorize all of
35:49
Speaker 1: that effort, which which is that's where all of the
35:53
Speaker 1: conflict is. Like by the time you get to the
35:55
Speaker 1: final product, everything's been solved, you know, and an actual
36:00
Speaker 1: base walk when you're watching it, you know, should be
36:03
Speaker 1: boring because there should be nothing that goes wrong. Like
36:06
Speaker 1: that's that's what you're you're aiming for. My my understanding
36:10
Speaker 1: from the people who have done it is that it's
36:12
Speaker 1: not actually boring so much as very very focused. But
36:19
Speaker 1: but it is digging into the how do we do
36:22
Speaker 1: these things and and the iterations that I find interesting.
36:25
Speaker 1: I've also always been interested in process, Like I would
36:29
Speaker 1: if you offer me the opportunity to see to go
36:32
Speaker 1: to watch a rehearsal of a show or watch the
36:34
Speaker 1: finished show, I'm going to pick the rehearsal every time. Well,
36:37
Speaker 1: I think you got the behind the scenes stuff pretty accurate.
36:40
Speaker 1: I mean, I see a lot of science fiction movies
36:42
Speaker 1: with the scientists get like one piece of data and
36:45
Speaker 1: then dot dot dot they have some amazing idea, complete
36:48
Speaker 1: with fancy graphics five seconds later and it's just all
36:51
Speaker 1: figured out. And to me, that's like where most of
36:54
Speaker 1: the science is. It's in that dot dot dot part,
36:56
Speaker 1: and it's slow and it's painful, but that's what makes
36:58
Speaker 1: it science is the gradual realization. Now, having said that, um, I,
37:06
Speaker 1: having having complimented me on that and said that, I
37:08
Speaker 1: will also say that the other thing that I do
37:10
Speaker 1: in this is I very specifically treat mathematics like a
37:15
Speaker 1: magic system. I established what it is that Alma, my
37:19
Speaker 1: main character, can do with math. I show you a
37:22
Speaker 1: couple of hints of her doing the math. There is
37:25
Speaker 1: not a single point on that in that book where
37:27
Speaker 1: there is a complete equation, and there is not a
37:31
Speaker 1: single point where she goes from start to finish on
37:34
Speaker 1: solving a math thing. Because math is not my happy place.
37:38
Speaker 1: And basically I figured out that once I, once I
37:42
Speaker 1: explained to people that Alma can do math in her
37:44
Speaker 1: head and she's very good at it, that they would
37:46
Speaker 1: just believe me that she could do that that level
37:49
Speaker 1: of mathematics in her head, and then I didn't have
37:52
Speaker 1: to do it. I just had to know that it
37:54
Speaker 1: was possible to be done mathematically, and it turns out
37:58
Speaker 1: that you can represent almost any thing mathematically. Well, it
38:01
Speaker 1: seems like you did some of the math behind the
38:03
Speaker 1: statements in the book to make sure they are plausible.
38:05
Speaker 1: So I totally bought it. I did not. I know,
38:08
Speaker 1: it seems like it. I did not do any of
38:10
Speaker 1: the math in the book. I cribbed it from Werner
38:14
Speaker 1: von Brown's Mars, a Technical Tale, which is he describes
38:18
Speaker 1: as a novel, and it is certainly fiction, but it
38:22
Speaker 1: also has these tables of appentices in the back. You
38:24
Speaker 1: wrote it in the nine to try to convince people,
38:27
Speaker 1: use fiction to convince people to go to to Mars.
38:30
Speaker 1: So I cribbed his there. I think there's more appendixes
38:34
Speaker 1: than there is actual novel, so I cribbed from that.
38:37
Speaker 1: And then I also had a science consultant, Stephen Grenade,
38:42
Speaker 1: who did most of the rest of the math. And
38:44
Speaker 1: then I had a bunch of other people, but most
38:46
Speaker 1: of the actual math and there comes from those two sources.
38:49
Speaker 1: And I'm just like we played mad lips basically, I
38:52
Speaker 1: would say, and then Elma did bracket math bracket, Well,
38:57
Speaker 1: I think that we need to examine the brack it
39:00
Speaker 1: fancy mass phrase. Bracket. That's wonderful. Hand climate. It's so
39:07
Speaker 1: much easier. I wish I could do sions that way.
39:12
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. So,
39:27
Speaker 1: in my reading of the book, the story essentially revolves
39:30
Speaker 1: around how humanity responds to a mega crisis, how that
39:34
Speaker 1: creates opportunities to upend the social order. Is that a
39:38
Speaker 1: fair description? So then let me ask you what gave
39:41
Speaker 1: you the idea to use this concept like a meteorite
39:44
Speaker 1: hitting the Earth. Did you start from that particular science
39:47
Speaker 1: concept and then think about what would happen? Or did
39:50
Speaker 1: you have this story you wanted to tell and we're
39:52
Speaker 1: looking for this sort of mad lib science moment that
39:55
Speaker 1: would allow you to tell that story. Um, it's a mix.
39:59
Speaker 1: This particular novel was a little odd from my usual
40:03
Speaker 1: process in that I had written two stories in this universe.
40:07
Speaker 1: One of them is The Lady Astronaut of Mars, which
40:11
Speaker 1: is set about forty years along the timeline from where
40:16
Speaker 1: Calculating Stars is forty years down the down the line.
40:19
Speaker 1: So Calculating Stars is a prequel to this and the
40:22
Speaker 1: backstory for that. And in this other short story that
40:26
Speaker 1: I have called we interrupt this broadcast. Is that a
40:28
Speaker 1: meteor head hit d C and that caused everyone to
40:31
Speaker 1: get off the planet very fast. So I had this
40:34
Speaker 1: this initial thing, but I also had this future of
40:40
Speaker 1: international cooperation, which meant that when I went back to
40:44
Speaker 1: build out the novel, that that I knew that I
40:47
Speaker 1: was building towards a hopeful future. The reason that I
40:51
Speaker 1: wanted it to be a meteor strike in the Lady
40:55
Speaker 1: Astronaut of Mars versus nuclear bomb or anything like that,
40:59
Speaker 1: any of the other catastrophic things, was that I wanted
41:02
Speaker 1: something that was absolutely that that could not be blamed
41:06
Speaker 1: on a single person, you know, it couldn't be blamed
41:08
Speaker 1: on another country that it was you know, it was
41:11
Speaker 1: an act of God, because I think that we reacted
41:14
Speaker 1: differently to those, uh than we do to something that
41:18
Speaker 1: you know, we're a foreign government. If it had been
41:21
Speaker 1: someone doing something catastrophic, there would have been you know,
41:24
Speaker 1: reprisals and all of those other potential things that would
41:28
Speaker 1: have distracted people. But we do react to to natural
41:31
Speaker 1: disasters or even like not tre Dame when when that
41:35
Speaker 1: caught on fire, there was you know, global morning for
41:39
Speaker 1: something that didn't affect the majority of people who were
41:43
Speaker 1: witnessing it. The wildfires in Australia. The way we react
41:49
Speaker 1: to that is very different than the way we react
41:53
Speaker 1: to to other things that are equal equal number of
41:57
Speaker 1: lives lost, sorry more lives austin Syria, but we react
42:01
Speaker 1: we react differently to conflict than we do to disaster.
42:06
Speaker 1: So I wanted something in the sense that the science
42:08
Speaker 1: community sort of pulling together and treating it like a
42:11
Speaker 1: humanity wide problem. Yeah, yeah, I mean just looking at
42:15
Speaker 1: the way people are different communities are reacting to the
42:18
Speaker 1: pandemic that we're in right now. So one of the
42:21
Speaker 1: things that I do with the kind of fiction that
42:24
Speaker 1: I write, I often I look at historical examples and
42:29
Speaker 1: patterns from that, and there are there are patterns, one
42:32
Speaker 1: of which is that in the initial moment of the shock,
42:36
Speaker 1: the moment right after everyone does pull together, there's like
42:41
Speaker 1: a natural instinct for most people. And they've actually done
42:45
Speaker 1: studies on this, but the instinct for most people is
42:47
Speaker 1: to help, and then the urge to continue helping depends
42:52
Speaker 1: on who is setting the tone at the top, and
42:56
Speaker 1: and you you see different patterns for for how that
43:00
Speaker 1: plays out. Looking at history. One of the things that
43:03
Speaker 1: I think is is really lovely looking at the way
43:07
Speaker 1: Italy is handling and they're they're being hit incredibly hard.
43:10
Speaker 1: But one of the things that they're doing is, you know,
43:13
Speaker 1: they're they're leaning out the windows and singing together. Um.
43:17
Speaker 1: And then I believe it's six pm. All of the
43:20
Speaker 1: church bell's toll and everyone leans out the window and
43:23
Speaker 1: collapse and applaudse the medical professionals who are working, because
43:27
Speaker 1: they want them to know how appreciative and supportive they are.
43:30
Speaker 1: And that's that's lovely, lovely the United States, I understand
43:34
Speaker 1: that our cell sales of guns and Emma are up,
43:37
Speaker 1: and we are hoarding toilet paper. Let's talk for a
43:40
Speaker 1: minute about the problem that they're solving in your novel.
43:43
Speaker 1: A meteorite strikes the Earth and there's a giant impact.
43:46
Speaker 1: So how do you rate the chances that humanity is
43:49
Speaker 1: actually going to face this kind of scenario? I mean,
43:52
Speaker 1: you're asking me to tell you numbers. Well, I mean,
43:56
Speaker 1: is this something that you think is a reasonable thing
44:00
Speaker 1: for us to worry about? Yeah? Yeah, I mean we do, um,
44:03
Speaker 1: And at the same time, we don't because when it
44:05
Speaker 1: hits us, we won't see it coming. But there's there
44:09
Speaker 1: are a lot of earth as had been hit before,
44:11
Speaker 1: we will be hit again. It's just it's a matter
44:14
Speaker 1: of time, you know. We think things hit Earth every
44:18
Speaker 1: day of different sizes. It's just a matter of time
44:22
Speaker 1: before something hits us. That's a problem. And about the
44:24
Speaker 1: impact itself, Like in your book, you had the impact
44:27
Speaker 1: or strike essentially in the water. You create this enormous
44:31
Speaker 1: tsunami and it throws up a lot of stuff into
44:34
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, which stimulates climate change. How important was it
44:37
Speaker 1: to you to like get the sort of physics right
44:40
Speaker 1: of that part. I mean, did you speak to science
44:42
Speaker 1: consultants about the details of how it's going to affect
44:45
Speaker 1: the hurricane season and impact the greenhouse effect? Yeah, so
44:49
Speaker 1: I talked green greenhouse effect the I talked to a
44:52
Speaker 1: couple of different people about that. But Purdue University also
44:55
Speaker 1: has an impact simulator where you can say, this is
44:59
Speaker 1: where my thing has hit, this is where I'm standing,
45:01
Speaker 1: and it will tell you when the shock wave will hit.
45:04
Speaker 1: When you'll you can say, you know what the angle
45:07
Speaker 1: of impact, the content size of the meteorite. So it
45:14
Speaker 1: was important to me to get it right in principle.
45:17
Speaker 1: I am also extraordinarily careful to never tell you how
45:22
Speaker 1: big that meteor was, or the angle of entry, or
45:25
Speaker 1: the speed with which it was going, because there are
45:27
Speaker 1: so many variables in how this plays out. We know
45:33
Speaker 1: that a water impact behaves differently than a land impact.
45:37
Speaker 1: The worst case scenario is a shallow water impact, because
45:41
Speaker 1: then you get, which is what I've done, dropped it
45:44
Speaker 1: into the bay. My original plan was to drop it
45:46
Speaker 1: on d C. And then I talked to an astronomer
45:49
Speaker 1: who Lucy and Walkowitz. She's an astronomer at Adler Planetarium,
45:53
Speaker 1: and we sat down with coffee and she told me
45:55
Speaker 1: about the greenhouse effect that can happen, the runaway greenhouse
45:59
Speaker 1: effect that can happen with a water strike and a
46:01
Speaker 1: shallow water strike. And then she shared with you her
46:05
Speaker 1: nightmare scenario scenario. Yeah, all of the all of the
46:09
Speaker 1: novels where they save the Earth by driving the meteor
46:12
Speaker 1: into into the ocean. Um. Some of those, sure, Okay,
46:16
Speaker 1: that's gonna be better. Some of those, actually, it's just
46:19
Speaker 1: it's just a lingering. It just delays the problem. But basically,
46:23
Speaker 1: what happens is that when a meteor comes through the atmosphere,
46:28
Speaker 1: even before it hits the ground, it's tearing a hole
46:31
Speaker 1: through the atmosphere because of the speed that it's traveling
46:34
Speaker 1: when it hits the ground. When it becomes a meteorite,
46:37
Speaker 1: it ejects all of the material it hits through that
46:40
Speaker 1: hole into the upper atmosphere. Some of it alt goes
46:44
Speaker 1: past that, but depending on size, so it ejects it
46:47
Speaker 1: into the upper atmosphere. Now, normally what happens when water
46:51
Speaker 1: leaves the Earth is that it precipitates back out, but
46:55
Speaker 1: when it gets ejected into the upper atmosphere, it does
46:57
Speaker 1: not precipitate out. You'll have um that will but a
47:01
Speaker 1: lot of it and it again, it depends on the
47:03
Speaker 1: scale of the meteorite that you carefully do not define,
47:06
Speaker 1: but a lot of it hangs out and functions as
47:08
Speaker 1: the greenhouse gas, and you can get a runaway greenhouse
47:11
Speaker 1: effect where the earth heats up, which causes water to evaporate,
47:15
Speaker 1: which becomes more of a greenhouse gas, which you know
47:18
Speaker 1: this cycle. There's some speculation, well you become Venus, but
47:22
Speaker 1: there is speculation that Venus was earthlike until it was
47:26
Speaker 1: struck by a meteorite. Yeah. I love that image of
47:29
Speaker 1: like two earthlike planets. Essentially for billions of years side
47:33
Speaker 1: by side, and then Venus destroyed fairly recently on cosmological
47:38
Speaker 1: exactly so, and there are other things that can cause
47:41
Speaker 1: a runaway greenhouse effect, which is one of the like
47:44
Speaker 1: there there are scenarios, there's modeling out there, like it's
47:48
Speaker 1: it's a it's not an immediate common case scenario, but
47:52
Speaker 1: there there is a scenario in which we don't get
47:55
Speaker 1: you know, we have taken no ameliorating efforts to deal
47:59
Speaker 1: with the green effect, and we do wind up with
48:01
Speaker 1: a runaway greenhouse. Like it is possible actually to to
48:04
Speaker 1: trigger that a runaway greenhouse effect, which terrifying. But again
48:08
Speaker 1: that's that's an outlier scenario, but it's it's a possible one. Right. Well,
48:11
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of the science of these impacts.
48:14
Speaker 1: I love that. And I was really curious, like, how
48:16
Speaker 1: big is this thing that hit the earth in your novel?
48:19
Speaker 1: What's the angle of entry? And I noticed that your
48:21
Speaker 1: character was also very curious, which just stimulated my curiosity
48:25
Speaker 1: even more so. Frankly, it's a little bit of torture
48:28
Speaker 1: that you didn't tell us. Well, so I can, um,
48:30
Speaker 1: I can tell you if you're going to marry Robin
48:32
Speaker 1: at coal dot com, there's a Lady Astronaut ft a
48:36
Speaker 1: Q and on that you can open up the Purdue
48:40
Speaker 1: Impact Generator and I tell you the parameters that I
48:44
Speaker 1: used to figure out when the shock wave would hit
48:48
Speaker 1: Alma and Nathaniel, so you can you can take a
48:51
Speaker 1: look at that. I have never run those through a
48:55
Speaker 1: climatologist to see whether or not it would um cause
48:59
Speaker 1: the runaway greenhouse effect because mostly because when I was
49:02
Speaker 1: writing it, I didn't have anyone available to do that.
49:05
Speaker 1: I tried to find a couple of different people who
49:07
Speaker 1: could do that math for me. Strangely, it's work, and
49:09
Speaker 1: it's difficult to find someone. UM that's very specialized, very
49:13
Speaker 1: very specialized, and it takes a computer doing a lot
49:16
Speaker 1: of calculations. So which is why I decided not to
49:20
Speaker 1: include that information in the novel, because I couldn't stand
49:23
Speaker 1: behind it. What I try to do with the novels
49:26
Speaker 1: is anything that I put in there, I try to
49:29
Speaker 1: have as accurate as possible. UM. Anything my character interacts
49:33
Speaker 1: with directly, I try to have accurate. If they don't,
49:37
Speaker 1: then I'm willing to hand wave past it. UM And
49:40
Speaker 1: if it's not a plot point, so I know that
49:42
Speaker 1: a meteorite hit that was large enough to cause these effects,
49:47
Speaker 1: and I figured out a meteorite that was big enough
49:50
Speaker 1: to cause parts of some of them. But I did
49:53
Speaker 1: not go all the way into figuring out to linking
49:56
Speaker 1: the two different effects. It's like, I need the runaway
49:59
Speaker 1: greenhouse effect and I need them to be able to escape,
50:02
Speaker 1: and I need Washington, d c. To have disappeared. So
50:05
Speaker 1: I have those two things. I don't know if they
50:07
Speaker 1: actually played together. We hand, we've passed that. Why Alma
50:11
Speaker 1: mutters all of those equations instead of saying the entire
50:14
Speaker 1: thing out loud, it's magic. Well, I'm impressed by how
50:18
Speaker 1: this society responds to the catastrophe in your novel and
50:21
Speaker 1: also the efforts to colonize Mars. And I think it's
50:24
Speaker 1: especially fascinating that you said it's sort of you know,
50:26
Speaker 1: fifty sixty seventy years ago, which makes their efforts to
50:30
Speaker 1: get to Mars so much more difficult, But not for
50:33
Speaker 1: this novel. You must have thought about, like how Mars
50:36
Speaker 1: colonization would happen now, How different do you think it
50:39
Speaker 1: would be to colonize Mars now as opposed to the
50:42
Speaker 1: setting of your novel? Oh, we have so many pieces
50:45
Speaker 1: of technology that they don't have. So because because of
50:50
Speaker 1: when I have it's set um, they don't have miniaturization
50:54
Speaker 1: of computers. As soon as you have that, everything changes
50:58
Speaker 1: like a lot, a lot the fact, and without miniaturization
51:02
Speaker 1: of computers, you you don't get three D printing that
51:05
Speaker 1: you you know, you you don't get institution resource development
51:09
Speaker 1: through three D printing. We we have that now. So
51:14
Speaker 1: the things that we can do, we are our ability
51:17
Speaker 1: to do self guided craft are much greater than they
51:22
Speaker 1: had in the fifties. So like what I think that
51:26
Speaker 1: colonization now or I should say human exploration and settlement
51:31
Speaker 1: or human habitation I'm trying not to use the word
51:33
Speaker 1: colonization actually, but human habitation of Mars. I think that
51:39
Speaker 1: what we'll do is we'll send out you know, the
51:42
Speaker 1: of the plans that I've seen, the one that seems
51:44
Speaker 1: to make the most sense is to send out ships
51:47
Speaker 1: unscrewed ships before to set up an advanced base, uh
51:52
Speaker 1: and then and then get feed on the ground. Um.
51:54
Speaker 1: The thing about having humans on the ground is that
51:58
Speaker 1: we can respond more quickly, to be a more responsive
52:03
Speaker 1: A good example of this is the insight lander that
52:07
Speaker 1: has been dealing the past year with a stuck probe,
52:11
Speaker 1: and the reason that it's taking so long to resolve
52:13
Speaker 1: that is because they have to get all of the
52:17
Speaker 1: information from Mars, do tests here on Earth, transmit the
52:23
Speaker 1: information from that test program it, transmit that to Mars,
52:28
Speaker 1: get the information back, go do other tests here on
52:31
Speaker 1: Earth before they make another decision, and if you have
52:33
Speaker 1: someone on the ground, they can go, oh yeah, let
52:37
Speaker 1: me see, Uh I can I can juggle that without
52:40
Speaker 1: without breaking anything, because you've got an immediate feedback loop
52:43
Speaker 1: of judgment. But with that that delay, you don't you
52:46
Speaker 1: don't get that immediate feedback loop, and you don't have
52:48
Speaker 1: anyone who can improvise. Humans can improvise. Um, we can.
52:53
Speaker 1: You know, we are. We are a multi purpose tool.
52:55
Speaker 1: It's super amazing that we live in this moment of
52:58
Speaker 1: history where a hundred years ago, if we'd been hit
53:01
Speaker 1: by meteor, we basically have no chance of getting off
53:04
Speaker 1: the planet. Right. But now we're in ten years or
53:07
Speaker 1: fifty years or a hundred years, we're pretty well equipped.
53:11
Speaker 1: Now you set your novel right at that point where
53:14
Speaker 1: humanity has like a chance. Maybe it's not totally hopeless,
53:18
Speaker 1: but it's still really difficult. It's it's a fascinating moment,
53:21
Speaker 1: so historically in technological yeah, it's fun. Well, and it's
53:25
Speaker 1: interesting to me that you know how early we had
53:28
Speaker 1: been thinking about going to the moon in the Mark
53:31
Speaker 1: and Mars. It's it's something that I think of I
53:35
Speaker 1: think most people think of it in the modern era
53:38
Speaker 1: as something that kind of spontaneously arose with Sputnik and
53:43
Speaker 1: the V two rocket, which horrendous destruction in World War
53:47
Speaker 1: Two originated because of a rocketry club. Like the technology
53:52
Speaker 1: from that is descended from a rocketry club in Germany,
53:56
Speaker 1: and they were trying to get off the planet, you know,
53:58
Speaker 1: they just wanted to get into space for frenzies. Well,
54:01
Speaker 1: thank you very much for talking to us. Do you
54:03
Speaker 1: want to tell our listeners a little bit about any
54:06
Speaker 1: upcoming project? Sure? Um, So the next thing you can
54:12
Speaker 1: preorder it. It will be delivered magically to your home
54:15
Speaker 1: so you never have to leave. Is um The Relentless Moon,
54:19
Speaker 1: which is the third volume in the Lady Astronauts Universe.
54:24
Speaker 1: You can read it as a standalone, but basically we're
54:27
Speaker 1: on the Moon and people who are pushing back. It
54:31
Speaker 1: takes for people who have read calculating stars and Faded Sky.
54:35
Speaker 1: It takes place concurrently with Faded Sky. Um, so it's
54:38
Speaker 1: what's happening on Earth while the rest of the team
54:40
Speaker 1: is well, there's a team on the way to Mars.
54:42
Speaker 1: So it's about the pushback. It's about the terrorists who
54:45
Speaker 1: who decide that they're going to take matters in their
54:47
Speaker 1: own hands and stop things. And I had planned on
54:50
Speaker 1: this being a surprise thing in the novel, but I
54:55
Speaker 1: have a polio outbreak on the moon, so quarantine the Moon.
55:00
Speaker 1: There's a lot of stuff that's hitting home, Like there's
55:02
Speaker 1: some research that I've done. It's making me super uncomfortable. Wow, alright,
55:06
Speaker 1: that's a little bit unexpectedly on the news. Yeah, all right,
55:11
Speaker 1: thanks very much for answering our nitpicky science questions and
55:14
Speaker 1: for talking to us about the universe that you created
55:17
Speaker 1: in your novel. Thank you so much. All Right, that
55:19
Speaker 1: was pretty interesting, Daniel. She seems like a very optimistic person,
55:23
Speaker 1: which is great, which is I think maybe what we
55:25
Speaker 1: need these days. Yeah, for somebody who's thinking about the
55:27
Speaker 1: end of the world, it's nice that she's idealistic about
55:30
Speaker 1: how people will come together in a crisis and how
55:33
Speaker 1: science might actually save humanity. Yeah, and you guys talked
55:35
Speaker 1: even about how about today, about this pandemic and how
55:39
Speaker 1: science is playing a role in it. Yeah. She had
55:41
Speaker 1: some pretty insightful and interesting thoughts about how people feel
55:44
Speaker 1: about dystopian fiction in these times, and also about how
55:48
Speaker 1: this current pandemic is affecting people and uh, and how
55:51
Speaker 1: a lot of people are living in very difficult situations
55:54
Speaker 1: before this pandemic, and so it sort of makes us
55:57
Speaker 1: all think about the human experience and how people are
56:00
Speaker 1: living today. But I was also really impressed with how
56:03
Speaker 1: detailed she got about about the science. You know, she
56:06
Speaker 1: not only did a great job of modeling the fun
56:09
Speaker 1: science moments and the process of doing science, she like
56:12
Speaker 1: actually ran simulations about what would happen if you hit
56:16
Speaker 1: this kind of media or that kind of media, and
56:17
Speaker 1: where should you land it? And that was pretty impressive.
56:20
Speaker 1: She thought really carefully about the science. Why are you
56:22
Speaker 1: so impressed, Daniel? You don't think people out there can
56:25
Speaker 1: do these kinds of things. No, I just I'm just
56:28
Speaker 1: happy when science fiction authors take the science seriously and
56:31
Speaker 1: want to make it real, and and in this book
56:34
Speaker 1: she really accomplishes that. And it's important, especially for her
56:36
Speaker 1: book because the science, the process of the science is
56:39
Speaker 1: so important. And she mentioned in the interview an impact
56:43
Speaker 1: simulator she used on Perdue University's website where you can say,
56:46
Speaker 1: what if this impact hit in this location, how much
56:49
Speaker 1: energy would be deposited and how long would it take
56:52
Speaker 1: to get to me? So if you're interested, you can
56:54
Speaker 1: go look up that simulator and run a bunch of
56:56
Speaker 1: end of the world scenarios yourself. We all need a
57:00
Speaker 1: little distraction these days. Yes, all right, Well, it sounds
57:03
Speaker 1: like she has a pretty positive view about humanity coming together,
57:06
Speaker 1: which is great. And hopefully a meter will not strike
57:10
Speaker 1: us now at this moment in time in d C.
57:14
Speaker 1: Right now, that's right. Let's hope everybody out there stays
57:16
Speaker 1: safe and healthy. Um, but it's fun to think about
57:20
Speaker 1: other universes where humans are facing more difficult problems and
57:23
Speaker 1: solving them. Yea, And to get us to think about
57:25
Speaker 1: all the difficulties that other people are. You're having an
57:28
Speaker 1: our universe, so stay safe, but I also help out
57:32
Speaker 1: your neighbor and look out for each other. That's right.
57:33
Speaker 1: And if you're enjoying this series about the science fiction
57:36
Speaker 1: universes created by these authors, let us know and send
57:39
Speaker 1: us a message about the books you'd like us to
57:41
Speaker 1: talk about. We hope you enjoyed that, see you next time.
57:52
Speaker 1: If you still have a question after listening to all
57:54
Speaker 1: these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd love to
57:57
Speaker 1: hear from you. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter,
58:00
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's one Word, or
58:03
Speaker 1: email us at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
58:07
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
58:10
Speaker 1: the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio. For
58:13
Speaker 1: more podcast from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
58:16
Speaker 1: Radio Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
58:26
Speaker 1: Yeah