Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Astrophysicist Moiya McTier, Folklorist of the Cosmos (#073)

Episode Date: September 9, 2020

  Moiya McTier is in the final year of her PhD in astrophysics at Columbia, but she is already a science communication star. With a background in folklore, she is an accomplished storyteller working to bring more science into science fiction. Moiya joins me on the INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE podcast to discuss her research on the Milky Way, her upcoming popular science book, and how her background influences her career choices. Subscribe to my mailing list to receive show notes for this episode: https://briankeating.com/mailing_list.php 00:00 Introduction 06:42 Combining science and folklore into science fiction. 14:10 Moiya explains her research on the Milky Way. 19:51 How a unique childhood encouraged creativity. 26:20 Can anyone be an effective science communicator? 33:14 World building is “the art of playing God.” 39:11 Equity and diversity in science and science fiction. 45:38 What ethical will does Moiya plan to leave behind? 47:49 What object or knowledge would Moiya put on her monolith? Moiya McTier is in her fifth year of a PhD program in astronomy at Columbia University. She studied astrophysics and folklore at Harvard. Her podcast, Exolore, fosters world building – bringing science into science fiction. She is an accomplished science communicator and public speaker. Listen to the Exolore podcast here: https://www.exolorepod.com/episodes Find Moiya on the web: https://www.moiyamctier.com and Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoAstroMo Question to pin in the comments: What is your favorite science fiction universe? Brian Keating’s most popular Youtube Videos: Eric Weinstein: https://youtu.be/YjsPb3kBGnk?sub_confirmation=1 Jim Simons: https://youtu.be/6fr8XOtbPqM?sub_confirmation=1 Noam Chomsky: https://youtu.be/Iaz6JIxDh6Y?sub_confirmation=1 Sabine Hossenfelder: https://youtu.be/V6dMM2-X6nk?sub_confirmation=1 Sarah Scoles: https://youtu.be/apVKobWigMw Stephen Wolfram: https://youtu.be/nSAemRxzmXM Brian Keating’s most popular Youtube Videos: Eric Weinstein: https://youtu.be/YjsPb3kBGnk?sub_confirmation=1 Jim Simons: https://youtu.be/6fr8XOtbPqM?sub_confirmation=1 Noam Chomsky:  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, everybody. Can you imagine growing up in a West Pennsylvania coal mining town without indoor plumbing, running water, access to high quality education, and yet still going on to one of the most competitive PhD programs in the world at a top Ivy League institution? Oh, by the way, that was after you decided to double major in folklore and astrophysics at a certain university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that begins with the letter H. You may have heard of it. Well, today's guest did just that. And she is pre-doctor. She'll be doctored next year, 2021. Moia McTeer, who is not only a top-notch astrophysicist studying how different worlds can exist around other planets in parts of our galaxy that are very different than our own local neighborhood out here on the disk of the galaxy,

as we inhabit, but also she explores the other worlds that could possibly exist in terms of science fiction or fantasy. She's in fact a published author. She was an author already before she started graduate school. And she's working on a book about what we call popular science, the science of the galactic processes that allow planets to form. And that book will be out next year. And that's Moia McTier. She's a young up-and-coming phenom. And I can't wait to see where her career goes. Certainly it's already gone out into our galaxy. And I suspect it'll be coming to a galaxy near you in a very short time. So please sit back, enjoy this video. Please leave a comment or a review on iTunes or here on YouTube, wherever you get this interview delivered to you. So I hope

you really enjoy this wonderful interview as much as I did. She's really just such a phenomenon to talk to, played around with a couple of new technology hacks and tricks and traps. Maybe we had a little too much trapping. But I hope you enjoy it. Again, leave a comment, leave a review on iTunes, or wherever you get this podcast, or on YouTube. Thanks so much. Enjoy the cosmic voyage. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguable from magic. Welcome, everybody. It's quite a thrill to have on my current guest today, Moia McTeer, who has a very traditional and very typical background for a astronomers. She grew up in a log cabin in a small Pennsylvania coal mining town without a conventional toilet or running water. So, you know, it just could happen to all of us. It's very typical.

She's very conventional, very representative. She's an amazing person, super accomplished. And what I love about her, gestalt, is that she is not only a right brain thinker, like many of us. I think it's the right brain. I don't know. Moia can correct me if I'm wrong. I never remember which brain I have and which one I don't. that probably means I'm one of the brains. But Moyetteer was really brought to my attention because of the work that she does both inside astronomy, inside fiction writing, and specifically science fiction writing, which we'll get to,

and through the work that she's done to increase diversity and representation in physics. And so it's a great deal of pleasure, brings me a great deal of pleasure to welcome Maya here. And I just pointed out to my wife that, just through perhaps a cosmic ray hitting your father or your mother at just the right time, we almost had the same name, Brian. Yeah.

Yes. Almost. So, Moia, is a graduate student, I think you're a fifth year. Are you a fifth year graduate student at Columbia? I am. Yeah, fifth and final. Fifth and final. I love that.

And we're playing around with a new setup today. So we got different camera angles. There's Moia from the left brain side. And we got it in the front too. So, Moia, it's such a thrill to have you here. We're going to talk about science. We're going to talk about your work. We're going to talk about the galaxy planets and what it's like to be an astronomer.

And I want to talk about your science fiction novel that I only had a chance to read a little bit of, but I found it very engrossing. And I actually want to start with if you're woken up in the middle of the night by some friendly alien who's come to visit you, perhaps back in your hometown, they've come for the coal because all alien spacecraft will run on coal. as I understand it. How do you describe yourself? You do so many different things. What is the mictier brand that you're cultivating? Yeah. So I describe myself as an astrophysicist and a folklorist,

and I try to combine them as often as possible. And I really do feel like with the two of those together, I can bring a lot to the table. That sounds so self-absorbed. But I feel like I can talk to anyone about their expertise as an astrophysicist and a folklorist, because I really understand both the sciences and the humanities and what it's like to study both of those. What is folklore? What does it mean to say folklore? I know, of course, what it means to

tell folk tales. I know about lore. I spend a lot of lore. What is folklore specifically? Yeah, that's a great question, because we spent so much time talking about that specifically when I was studying folklore in college. And it is related to anthropology and that it's really looking at the culture of different people. But it's slightly different from anthropology and that we are mostly focused on the stories that people tell and sometimes the physical artifacts that they'll leave behind if those artifacts were useful for telling stories or communicating. Which is why as a science communicator, I think being a folklorist is so helpful because folklore is, the stories that different people tell.

So it's myths, it's legends, it's religion, it's fairy tales, it's any sort of pedagogical, entertaining story that someone thousands of years ago would have told. And we're still creating folklore and myths today. So some of it could also be not fictional, right? I mean, as an anthropological study,

a lot of it could be nonfiction, correct? Yeah, we talked about folklore, the study of folklore as a science. when I was in college because it is, like you learn these things using the scientific method. You make hypotheses, you look for primary sources to test your hypotheses. So it's more observational than it is experimental because we can't go back in time and experiment on these different cultures. But it definitely is done in a scientifically rigorous way.

And what was the inspiration to write your book? I want to know what impelled a graduate student to write a book? So the science fiction book that I wrote was in my senior year of undergrad, actually. It was my senior thesis, and I had to write it because I studied both astrophysics and folklore in college. And I went to Harvard where you have to write a thesis that sits at the intersection of your two fields. Oh, let the record state that she do a double major. With the American state, she just dropped the H-bomb, the Harvard bomb.

I was wondering, I had a bet. How long will it take? No, no, no. It's actually integral to your story because it's part of your requirements to graduate with you at a double major, right? Yeah. And so I usually try not to drop it, but I think it is unusual in that they make you write this weird joint thesis. And I tried so many different things. I proposed so many different types of theses. And I had given up until I went to, I think it was probably a AAAS meeting in January. I don't remember which one. And I was sitting at a table at a random networking lunch,

and I was talking to a professor from Rutgers about this problem. I was like, I'm trying to do this weird double major, but no one will accept any of the theses I propose. And he was like, well, why don't you just write a science fiction novel? I went back to the heads of both departments, and I said, all right, what if I write a novel and I set it on a real exoplanet that I will research and the plot is based on ethnographic research that I'll do in Hawaii. So it was about the Hawaiian sovereignty movement and the 30 meter telescope conflict and they loved it

and they let me write it. And then I graduated, which was nice. That's right. That's the spoiler that we should have alerted to you actually did graduate despite all lots. You think that's something I can't imagine doing that. I had some idea for a fiction book in graduate school. I never wrote it. Maybe someday I will. But what you did is so, is so impressive that you actually had that. I wonder if after, you know, next year, would you go back in time and tell, you know, the, the, the moya to not do it or to do it? It just seems like it's such an amazing accomplishment to do it. But it also probably was a little bit scary and fearful to write an actual book at such a young age.

It was terrifying, but it wasn't the first book that I ever tried to write. I started writing my first fiction book when I was in middle school, and it was horrible. I remember it. It was about two siblings, like two sisters who, you know, I had probably just read The Chronicles of Narnia, and so it was about two siblings who, for some reason, had to go live with an aunt on some country estate, And they found that there were magical worlds behind the walls of this country home. It was absolutely terrible. And I never finished it.

But I always wanted to write a book, a fiction book. And so when that professor from Rutgers suggested it, I was like, yes, of course, that I definitely want to do this. I didn't get it published. But I made it available online for free. And just the fact that some people have read words that I've written is really. really exciting, even if, you know, it wasn't published. Yeah, it's a tremendous accomplishment. And, you know, it's one of these things that a lot of people go back later on in life

and then do publish it with either a traditional publisher or even self-publishing has become incredible. I mean, they found books that are fictional kind of fantasy books, you know, 50 shades of gray, for example. I mean, that was published, self-published. And then it was come, it came back. It was actually originated from, I think, a, takeoff on what's the, what's the vampire sci-fi with Kristen Stewart?

Twilight, yeah. So I think the woman who wrote 50 Shades of Grey was like writing fan fiction about Twilight online. And then all of a sudden she decided, well, I could actually write my own book and she self-published. And then now, of course, she sold 50 million copies. I actually know a friend who took her book, the 50 Shades of Grey book, and like just rearranged every adjective and made it new so it wasn't exactly plagiarizing and then they published a self-published book under a pseudonym. Wow. It's unbelievable. So don't ever give up the hope that you could actually publish it. There's it's it's a accomplishment is in the doing and the completing and I want to yeah kind of move towards the graduate school experience segue to that. Now as you see on the event horizon

coming up not too long from now graduation, where do you see yourself going? Do you see yourself going in creative? Do you see yourself going academia or continuing this unique hybrid model that you are so uniquely suited to carry out? I'm definitely going to try and keep on this unique path. I really love it. It's what brings me joy. And so I want to do science communication full time and bring in folklore as often as I can. So I'll continue hosting my own podcast. I'll continue giving talks. I'm writing a book, a non-fiction book this time. I'd like to host a TV show. So it's going to be a lot of, I guess, mostly freelance work,

but definitely not in academia strictly. At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light, and I was transported to another place. Pluto TV. Then I heard a voice. Come with me if you want to live. There were thousands of movies and shows,

and they were all free. The truth is our city. It's just so beautiful. On Pluto TV, free streaming of Terminator 2, Fringe Arrow, the 100, and the X-Files may cause excitement, loss of sleep, and sudden belief in extraterrestrials. No credit cards or alien encounters necessary. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. You feel like the creative outlets that you have, not to say that science has the kind of

pejorative sense that we are not creative as scientists, but do you feel like as a scientist you've improved your writing, maybe your critical thinking abilities, from the fact that you've developed this huge other brain muscle to mix metaphors? Yeah, absolutely. So I will say that I think scientists are some of the most creative people that exist because our job as scientists is to discover things that people don't already know. And that requires a lot of creativity. But I do think being a folklorist has helped me tremendously in both doing science and communicating it. Because my brand, And my specialty in folklore is fictional world building.

So I, and facts based fictional world building specifically. So I use different academic disciplines and combine them together to create realistic imaginary worlds. And that's so interdisciplinary. And it requires so many different pathways of my brain connecting where they otherwise probably wouldn't. And so I think that that's made my brain so much stronger than it was five years ago. And so switching to your research, I mentioned that I was reading your paper, which it came out just in March, just as the pandemic was setting in for real. And monthly notices, and the title of the paper is really, you know, kind of provocative in that it really has these action items of these traits of what's called copywriting, which is not the same as like copy editing. It's actually, you know, there's so-called, like, I think there's five U's that you're supposed to use, like urgent, useful, you know, basically actionable.

And your title of this paper is eight and ten stars in the Milky Way Bulls experience stellar encounters within a thousand astronomical units in a gig a year. Now, besides the title of your autobiographical movie, which I'm hoping you're going to make so walk us through that title. And then this really fascinating research that you led, this is your first author paper, and maybe we'll talk about what that means. to you. How does it compare to writing a book where you're the only author? But first, let's say, what is this paper about? And is there any connection in your, when you're writing a paper like this, you actually are thinking about what it would be like in these planets undergoing these complex interactions between the most powerful forces in nature? Mm-hmm. I love that you thought that that was a catchy title because I had a catchy title for it.

And then I think it was something, it was a joke on social distancing. My, my, my, my, advisor wanted to put in a joke like bald stars don't social distance or something like that. And then Eminraz came out, the monthly notices came out with this rule saying you can't have catchy titles anymore. And so I decided to just go with like a very straightforward, these are the facts. This is the outcome of the paper. So what I was doing with this paper was trying to figure out how common close stellar encounters are in the Milky Way bulge. I had just published a paper about the ability of a star. Let me start that over.

I had just published a paper about the relationship between a star's speed and its ability to host planets, but only in the solar neighborhood because I was working with Kepler data, which doesn't go very far out in the galaxy. And I found that there was no relationship. So fast stars are just as likely as slow stars to have planets. And then I remembered that stuff in the solar neighborhood moves pretty slowly and it's pretty boring out here, eight kiloparsecs from the galactic center. So I wanted to look in the Milky Way bulge and I simulated the orbits of a million stars over several orbital periods,

which for them can range anywhere from, you know, a few thousand years to like a billion years, depending on what its orbit is like. And I found that 80% of them have these close encounters. which can do so many bad things to the planets involved. It can rip away the planets from their host stars. It can destabilize the planet's orbits so that eventually maybe like a million years later the planet gets flung out of the system.

And I looked at that and I was immediately obsessed with trying to imagine what life would be like on one of those planets that got ripped away from its host star because they exist. We've seen rogue planets. there in the galaxy. These are planets that don't orbit a host star. So they're just kind of free floating out in the galaxy. And I wanted to know what life would be like on one of those. And so that's just one

example of how a finding from my research influenced a type of world building scenario that I wanted to flesh out. I love the artistry of it. I mean, here I'm showing on the shared screen. I don't know if you can see it. Some of the images of the orbits. And it really harkened back to like, you know, almost like crochet patterns or something like that. This is actual simulations of some of the million stars that you just randomly selected over this 10 million year period. But it's proof that it makes this, you call this an eccentric rosette orbits characteristic of the galactic bulge.

So these patterns would look different if they were farther out of the galactic bulge and say the solar system as? Absolutely. Yeah. So out here, the sun is in a part of the galaxy called the disk of the galaxy. and you can think of it kind of like a pancake. It's this really big pancake. And all of the stars like our sun are blueberries in that pancake.

And because it's so flat, it means gravity really only operates in one way, or for the most part, gravity operates in one way. So stars can move on nice, predictable, circular orbits. But the bulge is spherical. It's three-dimensional. And so gravity is acting in all of the different dimensions. and that makes the orbits there so much more chaotic, and they move on these weird shapes and at these weird times, and it's a lot harder to predict.

Yeah, so I find it just another kind of manifestation of the fact that you said, you know, scientists are not only creative, but there's kind of a stark beauty in science all its own in any kind of science. I mean, we're partial, obviously, to astronomy because it is, you know, the only science that we can do with the two telescopes that are built into our, skulls when we're born. But look, I mean, behind me is this ball of the milky of the universe as seen through microwave eyes that my colleagues and WMet made. That's also very beautiful. And I've

had people approach me and want to buy it for, you know, almost no price. Am I willing to sell it? In front of that is a Klein bottle, you know, it's a mathematical entity. And so all these things in math that I think I want to connect to your childhood, which you've spoken about quite candidly and how you were influenced both to obey the Fifth Commandment and to disobey the Fifth Commandment, which is to honor your mother and your father. So I want to take back. So children are naturally curious. You seem to be exceptionally curious. You grew up in this unique circumstance, as I was teasing about earlier in the Pennsylvania coal mining town, which was probably not easy for you, also as a person of color, which we'll get into. But specifically, what about your

childhood and specifically your mother encouraged you to be a scientist and then how did you end up letting her down and come to not be on speaking terms with your own mother? Oh, you've listened to the whole thing, didn't you? Um, yeah, so my mom when I was growing up was an adjunct English professor at a local college and I actually make more money now as a grad student than she did when I was growing up. So it's probably pretty obvious that she didn't want that life for me. And in her mind, the best way to ensure that I didn't have that life was for me to become a scientist or an engineer. We thought that those were the jobs that would make money. And so she basically groomed me to be a scientist.

I've said that before. But she would buy me things like microscopes and chemistry kits. and she encouraged me to go out in the woods because I lived in the middle of a forest. And so we would go on walks through the forest and she would point out the different plants to me and tell me what they could be used for. When we were in the car, she would give me algebra problems, but she never called them algebra problems because that would sound scary. So instead she called them X questions. And I would just have to solve for X in my head while we were driving in the car because when you live in a row. location, you are driving a lot. And so she really wanted me to be a scientist, and I was one of those

annoying kids in high school who was just so good at everything that I didn't know what I wanted to do. And then flash forward, I went to college. I stumbled around a lot. I took a physics class because I thought maybe I wanted to do physics, and I had a horrible experience. The professor in the class told me during office hours that I was struggling so much. and I was never going to make it as a physicist. So I finished that class because it was after the ad drop period. Like I couldn't drop the class anymore. But I decided to stop doing science.

And then I found folklore. I found folklore mythology because my dorm was across the street from the Falcon Myth Building. And they gave out tea and cookies and it was really sweet. And I had always loved reading fiction and reading about myths. So I decided to study that. And my mom freaked. She was like, this isn't what I want for you.

You're going to have a horrible life. You're never going to make any money. You realize that as a folklore major, you're going to have to read the Bible, right? Like, you don't want to read the Bible. And I was like, oh, mom, like, I'm fine. And we just got into this huge fight and then didn't talk for a couple months. But I was still like a teenager in a new city in college. I needed my mom.

So I decided to give science another chance. there was some pizza involved where I signed up for an astronomy class specifically because the professor gave us free pizza. And by the end of the semester, I was kind of hooked. And I didn't want to give either one of them up. So I declared both as a major. And then my mom talked to me again. So the condition was you had to at least have one major in the sciences. Right.

That's fantastic. So, yeah, many people, including myself, my mother, was, my first, you know, three-letter funding agency, not the NSF, but the MOM, you know, helping me buy my first telescope. And that's a critical thing. And I want to talk to you about that, especially since you are very much active in both communicating to young people, but also inspiring them and stoking curiosity in them. How do you make that of it that you must also simultaneously have skills to communicate to the children who you want to stoke. Also, you have to convince the adults.

They're the ones with the checkbooks, right? So how have you been able to do that so successfully? Is there a model, or is it just innate to who you are specifically? Well, usually I don't do a lot of work with kids. I usually focus on the adults because I want to help them become more critical thinkers so that they can mostly vote and make better vote. and make better voting decisions, but also so that if they have kids,

they recognize the importance of giving their children an introduction to STEM, not necessarily with the goal of making their kids scientists because we need artists and other people. We don't want a world where everyone is a scientist, but I think everyone should know how to think like one, at least. But I think when I am speaking to kids, and I do a lot of events where the audience is families, so it's adults and their children.

I think just being human, not being afraid to let my personality through is really helpful because it's one of the most intimidating things about science is that scientists feel robotic and unapproachable. That's how we've been represented in the media for so long. and seeing a real living example of a human who does science helps a lot. I don't think it's because of who I am. I think anyone who can talk about science as their fully expressed individual self is going to grab people's attention. So I spoke to Jan 11, who's a professor at Barnard that you might have not gotten to know

in up city, New York, uptown New York. and I had a conversation with her on the podcast in the spring. And I actually said something provocative, you know, and I want to get your take on it too, which is that, you know, should we not require scientists, since we are paid mostly by the public and taxpayer money, should we not require, like shouldn't everybody be able to be a moya McTeer? Like, in other words, didn't they spend some amount of time exercising whatever that brain, I keep forgetting which side of it is, but whatever side of the brain is. The left brain is supposed to be logical in the right side.

is supposed to be creative, but I feel like they've rolled that back and found that that's not true. Yeah, it's something about like politics left and right, but we're not going to get into that because this show is apolitical. But you're right. I'll probably forget that factoid you just told me before the end of the podcast. But what do you think about requiring? I mean, I studied quantum mechanics. You study stellar dynamics, radiative processes. That's required. You cannot graduate from a top university like Columbia and call yourself a PhD in astrophysics without it. But why do we say, communication, that's a soft skill. You know, you don't need to do that. Yeah, that's a great question. And I'm split on it, honestly. Because I do think that the most

important part of the scientific process is communicating what you've learned. But at the same time, I also know that everyone has their own pensions for skills. Not everyone's going to be comfortable with public communication. And I don't think we should force people to do something that's so outside of their comfort zone. And so that's why I think we should have more collaboration between people who are very hardcore science. I do the research. I don't necessarily feel comfortable telling people about it. And I'm not super skilled in telling people about it.

and people like me who are very comfortable talking about it. And honestly, I'm not the best researcher out there. Like, I do cool science, but I'm not the most passionate about astrophysics. And so I think that if we can get more collaboration between those types of people, that would be an awesome system. I guess just to push back, I don't usually push back at my guess, but you can handle yourself. So to push back, you know, Janice said something which, you know, at least in the experience she had, she said, you know,

not only would Columbia and Barnard not, like, give her special dispensation to write a fictional book about Alan Turing and Kurt Girdle, but they almost intimated that they would, she'd be punished in a sense for doing it. You know, where I am, it wasn't so much of a threat, but it was like the best you can hope for is you won't be punished. In other words, so just to push back a little bit,

like it wasn't easy for you to learn orbital celestial mechanics. Why should somebody who's not good at communicating, just, oh, let's give him or her a free pass. It's not really what they're supposed to do. You know, they can be, they don't have to be a good. I actually find the soft skills are paradoxically much more. I use communication. I use presentation.

I use persuasion. And what you do so well, and it's almost pred and natural in your case, is this storytelling. If you can tell a story, you have a career, no matter what your field is, even in astronomy. So why take it easy on our colleagues? You know, the old joke of, you know, how do you know a scientist is outgoing because he looks at your shoes when he talks to you instead of his own. Why do we give it, why do we give our fellow colleagues in all past? Why don't we say, look, just you studied quantum mechanics.

You got to study, you know, how to read a room and how to deliver a speech. Yeah. And this is something we've talked about at Columbia, actually, within the astronomy department. We've had a lot of conversations in the last year or so about restructuring the program. And one of the suggestions was having almost two tracks of the PhD, one for people who know for sure they want to stay in academia. It's their life's dream to become a research professor. And so they will do like the pure research stuff. And then another track for people who want to go into industry or want to go into science communication. And they want to learn the skills of doing

scientific research, but they don't want to completely ignore the soft skills, as they're usually called. And I think that that might be a way forward. Yeah, I totally agree with you. It's not fair to expect the more right-brained people to learn the left-brain stuff and not, you know, the other way around. Right. But. Because I almost feel like, you know, when I've heard it said, you know, you'll say something to somebody about something scientific, and they'll say, oh, don't ask me that. I'm not a math guy. But you never have someone to say, don't ask me to, like, spell a word or use proper grammar.

I'm not an English guy. It's like, we tend to, like, a whole scientist. And this touches back to what you said. And I've had this conversation on the podcast with Professor Jim Gates, who is the president elect of the American Physical Society. And he said, you know, one of the most pernicious, you know, myths about scientists is that they aren't, you know, human and that you can only be a scientist if you're like Einstein. And he says Einstein wasn't always Einstein, you know, he had a share of peccadillo's failings, blunders, if you will.

And so, you know, by holding scientists to this, you know, oh, it's okay, you just stay in your lane, I think we could do better. Because ultimately, if the public, you know, ever loses trust in science, and that's our next topic, I think it would be extremely detrimental, not just for science, certainly science, but also for society as a whole. So moving to that, one of your taglines is that you want to help people trust science and help scientists tell good stories. So the first part kind of intrigued me, and I wanted to, again, you know, very provocatively kind of tweak you in a sense, because you tell these wonderful fictional stories, which by definition are not true. Does that run the risk of undermining, you know, actual science? I was here, like, can't we just build a freaking work?

armhole and like take the garbage to the sun like are there is there a danger of fiction being more almost more influential than science fact yes absolutely we see it happening right now where people are either intentionally because they're malicious horrible people or because they just don't have the right information they're spreading out these lies about science you know things like whether or not masks work or how far apart you should be when you're social distancing. And I can only think of COVID examples right now because that's the life I'm living. What else is there? Yeah.

It's what we're steeped in. But people spread lies about science all the time. And those lies are often more believable than the fact because they're easier to digest or they're more convenient or they're what people actually want to believe. And so, yeah, fiction, when it's presented in a person, persuasive way is so dangerous. And that's why, that's mostly part of why I want to be a science communicator. It's why I want to tell people the facts in engaging and persuasive ways, hopefully so that I can

rise above that noise of all of the persuasive lies. Yeah, you've come up with an innovative title for that, which you call facts-based world building. First of all, Maya, can you tell us what does it mean to world build? I've only written nonfiction, but can you tell what does it mean to world build? And then how do you just differentiate science-based, fact-based world building from ordinary world building? So world building is something that's pretty common in a genre that is called speculative fiction. And fantasy and science fiction are both underneath that speck-fick umbrella, but there are other genres in there too. And so world building is the process of creating, imagining a new world to set your story in.

And it involves everything from creating an entire literary history to your world to creating entirely new biological species to inhabit your world and everything in between. And so world building is so fun. Neil Gaiman, my favorite author, calls world building the art of getting to play God. which is awesome. You get to play God and you don't have any of their responsibilities. And I talk specifically about facts-based world building because I know that different people have their own processes. I follow one person on Twitter who writes fiction and she makes her world building decisions by doing tarot card readings. So whenever she has to make a decision about what to include in her world, she draws a tarot card and is inspired in that way. And I,

I'm inspired by... I'm teaching quantum tarifford reading this year. I'm teaching quantum mechanics of tarifford. So very fast. Are you really? No, no, no. I talk crazy. I taught poetry for physicist.

I did teach that class. Nice. Yeah. Yeah, so back space world building. How does that couple in? Yeah. So I draw my inspiration from different academic disciplines, and I do it in the same order every single time.

I always start by imagining what the environment is. And then I start thinking, about the biology, which depends directly on the environment and also a lot of randomness. So I do environment, then biology, and then culture. And then I can go back and figure out how all three of those things have influenced each other. And so there's a bit of a cycle going on. But I like to actually talk to experts in other fields. When I was writing my senior thesis, that science fiction novel, I talked to my friends who were biology majors and psych majors and engineering majors.

And that really helped me make the world feel as realistic as it possibly could, given the constraints of both what the story was and what my skills at the time were. So if you're advising a young student, both as a graduate student in astronomy or say, you know, a mini-moya comes along who has both of these attributes, what would you say to him or her to, you know, kind of the words of wisdom to your younger self, so to speak, to capitalize on these strengths, assuming they have the ability to do both, how would you advise them to actually have a schedule, have a workflow? How would you do it? Like the logistics of everything. That's something I'm still trying to figure out, to be quite honest. Our follow-up podcast will have that the day after you defend.

Right. No, I think part of it is just being willing to set boundaries. When I started grad school, I knew I wanted to do a lot of science communication, and that has grown significantly over the last five years. But I was always very clear that I was going to give talks. I wasn't going to spend a hundred 100% of my time on research. So setting boundaries and knowing what your priorities are, I think that that's so valuable. And it's helped me carve out the time I need to do my psychom. You mentioned Neil Gaiman. Anyone else in the fictional space that's an influence or anybody you would like to promote? And then do you have corresponding influences in science? She built herself. She built her credit. And with Experian Boost, she could turn everyday bills into

FICO score points. That girl is you. Download the Experian app today. Results will vary. Not a lender's use credit information impacted by Experian boost. See Experian.com for details. Experian. I'm not sure about promotion because all of the people that I read are so famous. They're doing just fine. But I love Neil Gaiman for his world building. I love Tamora Pierce. I read a lot of Tamora Pierce when I was younger. She writes such strong, female characters and is able to weave together the different universes and like time periods. She, she wrote several different series, all of which were set in the same universe, but at different times. And I think that's really hard to do. And I really love Lainey Taylor for her writing style.

I think she has some of the most beautiful prose I've ever written. And she's really good at surprise genre bending. I would recommend reading the, Strange the Dreamer doology. So the first book is called Strange the Dreamer. The second book is called Muse of Nightmares. And the first book feels very fantasy-ish. And then the second book is like, surprise, we're more sci-fi now. I could talk about books and fiction forever.

So yeah, I have a lot of idols there. Very good. Yeah. So I'm showing on the shared screen, you not only kind of discuss this on your podcast, but you also have these worksheets, which are so. wonderful, tried to look through them and their ways to like start the creative juices flowing. And this is specific to the type of, you know, culture, the environment, the characters, etc. that you talked about. I think that's, I want to thank you for this.

Because so, and I'll conclude these in the show notes that I email out to that, to the audience later on. Yeah, it's really wonderful. And I just love seeing, you know, creative people just do their magic, turn them loose, give them what they need to succeed. And I want to turn now to another dimension that I think you will have an important perspective on, and that's diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEM. So you've spoken about some of your experiences as a person of color in science and academia. First of all, I want to know, is there also a challenge for that in the science fiction, science fantasy, you know, kind of model universe?

Are these things happening? Is there a reckoning occurring in that community as well? Absolutely. I mean, if you think of the top science fiction names, you're probably going to think of Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clark. Maybe you'll think Octavia Butler and Ursula K. Le Guin, but like you'd have to, those are for the most, for the biggest swath of the population, those are like deep cuts, you know? And so we are having a reckoning where people are trying to promote more diversity in fiction and in publishing and in game design. Wizards of the Coast just had a lot of bad publicity because of the way they were treating freelancers who were people of color. I've seen on Twitter a lot of editors who work at publishing houses specifically requesting submissions from writers of color and women and people who have been traditionally left out of these industries. So yeah, people are trying their hardest to make things more equitable. When you think about this, I had a conversation with Dr. Becky Smithhurst from the UK who runs a very popular YouTube channel this week.

And we almost were talking about the extra burden. In her case, she's obviously a white woman. But she was even saying, you know, there's almost like this external tax that people who are underrepresented minorities in science have to pay. And certainly, you know, according to so-called intersectional theory, you know, kind of the more of these different classes, that you have to navigate, it becomes even harder. I mean, is there, in your opinion, is there this extra burden? I know I've talked to my friends ranging from, you know, Jim Gates to Stefan Alexander, the current president of the National Society of Black Physicist.

Do you feel like there's an extra burden on you as a person of color, as a woman of color, in this field that is actually, you know, not something you signed up for? Yes. in so many different ways, I guess the two that come to mind immediately are mentoring and a lot of emotional labor that I get asked to do as a woman of color and as a black woman. So at any given time, I'm mentoring a handful of younger students who are looking for role models in the field that look like them and have similar experiences. And because there are so few of us in the field right now, there are fewer than a

100 black women with PhDs in any physics-related field. So because there are so few of us, we have to do more of the mentoring work than our colleagues do. And then the other thing that comes to mind is a phenomenon called stereotype threat, which is the psychological thing that happens. It affects you when you are under, when you're being examined. So if you're taking a test academic or if you're taking something like a driver's test, When you are reminded of negative stereotypes that your different identities have associated with them, you perform worse on those tasks. So women are stereotypically perceived to be worse drivers.

And so when women are reminded of their gender before a driving exam, they perform worse. They've done really amazing studies trying to carve out or like separate the different stereotypes associated with identity. And so I remember reading about this one experiment that they did with Asian women. So Asians are stereotypically good at math. Women are stereotypically bad at math. And so they did this experiment where they separated people taking this test. And they told one group, they reminded one group of Asian women about their Asian identity. And they performed really well on the test. And then they performed another group of Asian women about their gender identity. And they performed worst on the test. So stereotype threat is just something that's constantly in the back of your mind because you feel like you have to be a representative

of your entire identity group and that just puts so much pressure on you and it takes up a lot of headspace. Yeah. Yeah, I must feel like it's a tax and it's unfair. It's asymmetric. And then it's coupled with, you know, something that is also pernicious, which is feelings of guilt and regret, you know, if you don't supervise this one young, you know, African American girl who's and you know, you know, you must get that a lot. And you can't say yes. I mean, the power of saying no allows you to say yes to so many other opportunities. And you've had an amazing, amazing accomplishment, a series of accomplishments already.

And so, you know, it's just, and so I'm just doing the world building thought experiment, which is what I think of a lot of science fiction is so good at, you know, thinking about experiments that can't be done. But like, I was just like, how many books would she have written if she was a white man? But that was just, you know, not because you couldn't do it, but because you're so spread to so many different directions and you have so many allegiances. But, you know, one thing I do want to commend you on is that never in all the research that I've done, do I catch you saying like, oh, like, woe is me. Like, in fact, it's almost the opposite. Like, you have this irrepressible desire.

You're just going to succeed and win no matter what. Well, it's because you don't see all the crying behind the scenes. I'm there for you. If you ever need a zoom shoulder to cry on. So we only have a few minutes left, but I want to ask you a couple of rapid fire questions. And the first one is Pulitzer or Nobel Prize, which would you prefer? Oh, Pulitzer. Okay, great.

Next question is a question that I ask all my guests. And that is, you know, you're going to live to be 120 years old, we hope, maybe even longer. if, you know, certain advances can be made, including one of my kids is working on the never dying pill. So I'll let you know when that comes out. That's pretty good. Please do. But in the future, I want to ask you, what would you put in a will in sort of a document that summarizes what you've learned in terms of wisdom, in terms of ethics, in terms of the way to behave? Not material will, but what would you like to give over to, you know, people in the future about you, in terms of your wisdom and what you've accumulated so far ethically and morally on earth.

Well, I've only had like 25 years to gain this wisdom. So there's not much in the bank. But I think one thing I would want to make sure people know is that myths are humankind's earliest version of science. And that being an individual and like expressing yourself doesn't necessarily mean that you're not that you don't care about the common good or the community. I think when we when we talk about individualism versus a community oriented or a group oriented identity, we put them at odds and they don't have to be like you can you can be your unapologetic self and still care about the

good of the group. Right. And you should. Yes, exactly. That's the imperative aspect of it. Next, what object, if you've ever seen the movie 2001 of Space Odyssey, as I might assume that you have. Have you seen it? No. Oh, okay. Well, I've only seen that. People ask me, what do you think about?

I was actually asked by like a border guard once when I was coming into the United States. You know, like, oh, you say you're an astrophysicist, you know, like, what did you think of interstellar? I'm like, I hadn't seen it. And I was just like, well, the wormhole has certain quantum dynamical property. And the guy was just like, all right, forget it. You can go through. You're welcome. But there's a scene in it where these first, these, first, these.

Australopithecine kind of creatures come upon this monolith, this vast structure that has seemingly no purpose to them and they kind of like try to pit it with their bones or something. And then later on, these monoliths occur like ones on the surface of the moon. And they're meant to be like time capsules for the future that summarized this ancient civilization that no longer exists that's kind of guiding humanity, so to speak. But I want to ask you, if you had a monolith, a time capsule that's going to last for a billion years, what fact, what detail, what data would you want to put in it? Like, what is the most impressive or important thing that you've discovered and that you want the universe to know about?

I don't think there's anything I've done that that's that important or special. But having talked to enough anthropologists and archaeologists, I know one issue that we run into so often is people don't write down their daily stuff. And so a billion years from now, if there are still living creatures, no one today will have, like, they just won't have the information about what our daily lives are like. And so I feel like the best way to get that across is my Netflix list. Okay. Like my, because I couldn't put it on a CD-ROM, Moia. Come on. You got to put it on a CD-ROM. It's got to last a billion years.

I watch a lot of TV. We're going to need some high-tech data compresses. to get all the stuff that I watch. But I think watching something like Netflix is The Circle, which is all about social media use and social media experiments, but also things like New Girl, which show just like the average life of a very weird group of people, but you get a sense for what life is like in, you know, early 2010s, L.A. And I think that that is really valuable information to take to the future. Great.

Okay, Moia. Well, the last couple of things just involve the plug zone. You're familiar with the habitable zone, but now I want to plug you. And I want you to plug things in addition to your social media presence, which is only a force for good. You could be found at Go Astro Mo on Twitter. You have a podcast called the Exelor podcast. Am I pronouncing that right? Okay, great. And I just followed you. So now you've got 135 followers there and 10,300, 400 on your main channel. And you have all these wonderful worksheets. People can get in touch with you. You have a Patreon page, which we'll link to. You do so much. You give away so much amazing content. It's really been fascinating to kind of do a deep dive into the multiverse of moya and learn more about you. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you'd be eager to talk about in the last couple of minutes?

I'm writing a book right now, a non-fiction book about the history and evolution of the Milky Way, but I'm bringing in a little fictional twist. I'm telling it from the galaxy's perspective, like it's writing its own autobiography. Cool. Well, I hope when it's out, I can have you back on the podcast, and we can promote that. And any other chances that we can have to interact, I would be just delighted. Miami Mertier, soon to be pre-doctor and less than a year. Next time we talk, perhaps, you will be a PhD,

but I think you've already accomplished enough for multiple PhDs. Everything you need to do, I want to thank you so much for being on the Into the Impossible podcast. Thanks for having me. This has been a great time. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable for magic. If you enjoyed this episode of Into the Impossible, please subscribe, comment, share, rate, and review. For a chance to win a free copy of our most recent guest's newest book, send a screenshot of your review to info at imagine.ucsd.edu.

We appreciate hearing from you and are always open to your suggestions for future episodes. For more information, go to imagination.ucsd.edu. Find us on Twitter at Imagine UCSD. Watch us on YouTube, listen on iTunes. Into the Impossible is a production of the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination in the Division of Physical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. Eric Viri, Director, Brian Keating, co-director, Patrick Coleman, Associate Director, produced by Stuart Volko.