Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - The Milky Way: An Autobiography with Dr. Moiya McTier (#250)

Episode Date: August 16, 2022

Astrophysicist and folklorist Dr. Moiya McTier channels The Milky Way in this approachable and utterly fascinating autobiography of the titular galaxy, detailing what humans have discovered about everything from its formation to its eventual death, and what more there is to learn about this galaxy we call home. After a few billion years of bearing witness to life on Earth, of watching one hundred billion humans go about their day-to-day lives, of feeling unbelievably lonely, and of hearing its own story told by others, The Milky Way would like a chance to speak for itself. All one hundred billion stars and fifty undecillion tons of gas of it. It all began some thirteen billion years ago, when clouds of gas scattered through the universe's primordial plasma just could not keep their metaphorical hands off each other. They succumbed to their gravitational attraction, and the galaxy we know as the Milky Way was born. Since then, the galaxy has watched as dark energy pushed away its first friends, as humans mythologized its name and purpose, and as galactic archaeologists have worked to determine its true age (rude). The Milky Way has absorbed supermassive (an actual technical term) black holes, made enemies of a few galactic neighbors, and mourned the deaths of countless stars. Our home galaxy has even fallen in love. After all this time, the Milky Way finally feels that it's amassed enough experience for the juicy tell-all we've all been waiting for. Its fascinating autobiography recounts the history and future of the universe in accessible but scientific detail, presenting a summary of human astronomical knowledge thus far that is unquestionably out of this world. Get the book: https://amzn.to/3QsPfnT Find Moiya on Twitter: https://twitter.com/goastromo Find Moiya on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goastromo/ Find Moiya on Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@goastromo 📺 Watch my most popular videos:📺 Neil deGrasse Tyson https://youtu.be/1kxgK6J4S5Y Michio Kaku: https://youtu.be/3to9ymn-XKI Sir Roger Penrose: https://youtu.be/AMuqyAvX7Wo Jill Tarter https://youtu.be/O9K9OBd3vHk?sub_confirmation=1 Sara Seager Venus LIfe: https://youtu.be/QPsEDoOTU6k?sub_confirmation=1 Sabine Hossenfelder: https://youtu.be/sh98cwRkzAA Be my friend: 🏄‍♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 🔔 Subscribe https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 📝 Join my mailing list; just click here http://briankeating.com/mailing_list.php ✍️ Detailed Blog posts here: https://briankeating.com/blog.php 🎙️ Listen on audio-only platforms: https://briankeating.com/podcast.php Join Shortform through my link Shortform.com/impossible and you’ll receive 5 days of unlimited access and an additional 20% discounted annual subscription! Can you do me a favor? Please leave a rating and review of my Podcast! On Apple devices, click here, scroll down to the ratings and leave a 5 star rating and review The INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast https://apple.co/39UaHlB  On Spotify it’s here  on @audible_com it’s here and other ways to rate here: https://briankeating.com/podcast  Please join my mailing list; click here https://briankeating.com/list for your chance to win real space dust!! A production of http://imagination.ucsd.edu/ Support the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome, everybody, to what promises to be another phenomenal episode of The Into the Impossible podcast, featuring yours truly Dr. Brian Keating, the Chancellor's Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of California, San Diego. With such an August title, you might think I'm quite serious, buttoned up, professorial, even unctuous. But today, you will hear me laugh as never before when my friend and colleague, Dr. Moia McTeer, two-time guest on The Into the Impossible podcast, brings her irrevering. delightful, but brilliant insights to our podcast on the occasion of her phenomenal new book entitled The Milky Way, an autobiography of our galaxy. What the heck? How can a galaxy write an autobiography? Quite strange, right? Well, you're about to find out. Our galaxy is full of sass,

snark, and tell all details about its cosmic neighborhood, what it's comprised of, and even more where the universe is heading to in the distance. and future. Moa is a delightful intellect. She was on the podcast a couple of years ago. She is an astrophysicist with a PhD from the Columbia University in the city of New York, as well as an undergraduate degree in astronomy and folklore from a little university called Harvard in the upper northeast quadrant of the United States of America. We have a lot of international listeners. So this episode is about her new book, which I was delighted in honor to endorse on the back, along with past guest Stefan Alexander, past guest and future guest, Sean Carroll,

who's coming back on the show, talk about his new book called The Biggest Ideas in the Universe, and past guest Paul Sutter was also a guest on The Into the Impossible podcast. So anyway, these great intellects as well as yours truly have endorsed this book, and I do commend it to your attention. It's a delightful, easy-to-read, beach read for these waning dog days of summer. There's still plenty of time. And you might really enjoy listening to you. it on audio. So we'll have links to all that in the show notes below. And for now, I do want you to enjoy this unique perspective from a unique scientist, science communicator, a folklorist, and really an all-around polymath. And that is, of course, Dr. Moia McTeer, enjoy as we go

and listen to all the tawdry details of our Milkyways, sorted past, and even more kind of explosive future, perhaps, enjoy. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Open the pod bay doors, please help. Welcome. Everybody, I am so excited. I hope you're excited, too. Not every day we have a two-time guest on the podcast,

but we do have a two-time podcast guest, and that's Dr. Moia McTier, who is now a doctor, a real honest-to-goodness doctor, something that you might not have guessed as you were growing up with your story that we talked about in the first time you were on the podcast. And that episode is called Folklorist to the Stars. And we'll talk briefly about that.

But I want to introduce you to all to those of you who may not be familiar. Our audience has expanded like the galaxy. No, the galaxy is not expanding. But like the universe. The universe. Yes. Yeah. In the two years exactly since Moia was on.

She was a humble grad student. And now she's a renowned scientist, PhD, grader. graduate of the Columbia University in the city of New York City, I think is the full name. Right. You have to read the full thing. Legally. I went to Brown University, and Brown University is in Rhode Island, but that's not the name of the state. The name of the state is Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.

So that's got the longest name of any state. They'll probably get rid of plantations. That's not effective anymore. But you're on today because of this wonderful book, The Milky Way. and autobiography of our galaxy. This book is so great that the most famous, the best cosmologist in the world gave an encomium on the back.

And, of course, I'm thinking about Sean Carroll and Stefan Alexander and Chonda Prescott Weinstein, all friends of the show in one way or another. Paul Sutter rhymes with butter. I'll never make that mistake again. So Sean called it an entertaining introduction to some of the most profound features of our astrophysical neighborhood. Chonda called

it an exciting romp through the universe. Stefan Alexander said, an out of this world, work of genius. Wow, it's better than he said on my two books. I know. I was impressed when I saw that. And lastly, your humble host, Brian Keating, said, a deliciously hilarious and irresistible romp shimmering with astrophysical facts. Cutting-edge observation, McTier pens the autobiography that our galaxy deserves. And Moia, this is a phenomenal accomplishment. First of all, I hate it when you have a comedian go on Stephen Colbert. And then Colbert says, why are you so funny?

What makes you so funny? Because guaranteed the next thing I're going to say is hilariously unfunny. But you have this incredible wit and the galaxy has such a sharp tongue. Where did this come from? Where did this idea, first of all, come from? And I'll actually start with what were you never? supposed to do what we couldn't do last time because you didn't have a book of this caliber you had books of high caliber but and works in my calip but this is a published by a chet group and uh grand central

publishing but what i like to do is judge books by their covers because what else you can do so what's the that's the information you have first exactly right it's it's it's the first you know prior information so moya please tell us what is the meaning of the cover design and the subtitle of this wonderful new book. Yes. So this cover, I didn't design it. They had someone at the publisher do it. And they sent me two options originally. And when I saw this cover, which is like a pink nebula behind the words, the Milky Way, I was just in love. And I was like, that one. It has to be that one. It originally did not have the Andromeda constellation on it. And I asked them to add it in because in the book, you're attached to it, aren't you?

Aren't you a little bit attached to it? Yeah. Well, the Milky Way is certainly attached to the Andromeda Galaxy, and I just wanted to bring in that piece of romance to the book. But it's called an autobiography of our galaxy because it is written from the perspective of the Milky Way galaxy, telling its own story from its birth, that's in air quotes, all the way to its eventual demise, which would be the end of the universe. Right. And, but as an autobiography, what gave you that? Because that is such a unique. I've never, you know, read, I mean, there's books of folklore and kind of descriptions as you go through and we'll talk about in this conversation. But the idea for an autobiography of what we thought of until now as an inanimate object, where did that, how did that inspiration strike you? Really? I think it came from a place of insecurity. I think that it came from this place where I was very excited to get a deal to write a book.

but I didn't want to just put something out there that other people had done. And I was looking at books by people like you, by people like Stefan Alexander. And I was like, who am I to add my voice? Like what can I really add that is new? Not much, but the Milky Way can add a lot. And I thought that it would just be a fun way to learn about this and maybe a less intimidating narrator than a person like you or Dr. Alexander. Yeah.

Yeah, well, it's phenomenally successful. And it's one of those books that, you know, I think the real encomium I wanted to give is, it's the book I wish I could have written. Because actually, there are similarities in our books in that dust and gas play a huge role in the Milky Way and also in your book. And, of course, the dust and gas are the villains of my first book, losing the Nobel Prize, which is all about how dust obscured our glimpse of the birth of the union. universe. But what's so fascinating about this book is that you really give an astrophysicist,

I don't want to say I, but the insight of a, of a professional, but you do it in such a ways to be accessible without, I hate these two words, dumb down. How do you react when someone says, Moia, can you dumb it down? You're such a super Uber genius. Can you dumb it down for me? How do you react to that? You may not feel the same way as me. No, I think I do. I really hate it. Because just because someone doesn't know about the expansion of the universe or they don't know these cosmological facts, that doesn't mean they're dumb. That just means they haven't heard them before. They haven't learned it. Everyone has to learn something for the first time at some point, right?

So we don't have to dumb it down. We just have to translate it to what they already know. Exactly. And you do it in such an inviting, accessible way that I think it will appeal, you know, usually the worst advice you can give to an author is, you know, They ask, well, who is it for? And you say, oh, make it for everybody. No, no, no, that'll be nobody, except for your immediate family. But this really is accessible.

And the way that you do and kind of like start off or the pitch for the book is, you know, it all began 13 billion years ago. And clouds of gas scattered throughout the universe's primordial plasma just could not keep their metaphorical hands off of each other. They succumbed to the gravitational attraction in the galaxy. We knew it was born since then. So this is kind of steamy. We're keeping a PG-13. You know, my audience is young. and they name in the purpose,

Galactic archaeologists have worked to determine its true age, which is rude, according to Ms. How do you think of the Milky Way? Do you think of it as a gender or no? No. And it says several times, I'm using the pronoun it, because it says several times that galaxies don't care about gender.

They don't have any of our fleshy bits. They don't have any of our hormones. Like, they don't give a crap. So it is genderless. And I always like to ask, you know, from your perspective, after you having, you know, written, written this book in many works of folklore, do you learn something when you're doing it, or is it something that, you know,

you had so much knowledge being a PhD at one of the top universities in the galaxy, you know, that you have this insight for. And so you didn't really learn anything, but you know, you packaged it or whatever. Or did you learn something? Were there new facts about the galaxy, astrophysics, cosmology, black holes? What did you learn, if anything? Yeah, I learned a lot for this book. The outline was stuff that I already knew.

I have taken cosmology classes. I've taken galactic evolution classes. So I knew most of it. But some of the details in both the science and the folklore were new to me. The chapter near the end where I start talking about quantum field theory and how, because I had to explain quantum field theory and what the Higgs boson is to explain that potential ultimate fate of the universe. So I had to learn that. I have never taken a quantum glass. And that was really fun, actually. And then some of the folklore, I am not very strong on my East Asian folklore. And most of the Scandinavian, like Northern European folklore that I know is Norse and Germanic. So I got to read up on some Finnish myths and some like Eastern European, like Serbian myths, which was really fun. I love the illustrations. And there's so many, they're so whimsical in many ways.

But they're all for technical and they have a lot of, I always say red meat, but there's a lot of vegans that listen. So I'm going to say some white tofu. Is that okay? Yeah, some jackfruit. Some jackfruit, some tabulae, whatever you need. But I think that's, oh, I'm gluten-free. I don't want to deal with it. But some of the things in there were really evocative and actually took me back to my last voyage down to Chile, you know, South Pole.

there's not so many indigenous people that live there. There's some indigenous penguins that live on the continent, but besides that. So you'll get an exposure literally, figuratively to, you know, incredible astronomical information, but condense in a way that anybody can understand it. And again, it's a book I wish not only that I could have written, but that I could have read as a, you know, teenager, when I was just getting my first little telescope not far from New York City and looking up. And really just like looking at it, it's so overwhelming. And what I like about, about this book is that it uses this, this metaphorical vehicle of, of the galaxy as the protagonist in this hero's journey, or heroine's journey or, you know, androgynous journey throughout

the, and what's so fun about it is, um, is that you don't, you take on the whole universe, but it's, it's subtle, it sneaks up on you. Was that by design? In other words, you're using your districizing the universe into a galaxy as the fundamental unit, our home galaxy as this particular example. But you're teaching about everything from quantum fields to black holes, to exoplanets, to dust. Was that intentional or did that emerge during the course of the writing of the book? Absolutely intentional. One of the reasons I chose to write it from this perspective was because that when I think about

the universe, I picture it as a collection of galaxies. And I also know that galaxies are collections of stars, which are collections of atoms. But I like what you said, that galaxies. are kind of like the base unit. And as a galaxy, it's the midpoint. It can see these small human scales. It can watch us and it can kind of understand what we're like, but it also understands the universal scales.

And I thought that the Milky Way would be a nice translator for us to get to thinking on those larger than us scales that we need to think from, we need to think from that perspective if we're ever going to overcome all of our, human squabbles that we have. That's right. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save?

Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room. Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected.

When you want savings, not surprises. It Matters Where You Stay. Hilton, for the stay. And you take the grand picture. I found it very stoic. I had on Ryan Holiday last year, who's a famous stoic author, wrote, you know, The Obstacle is the Way and many other books on stoicism. And, you know, it's kind of, it kind of has these features of stoicism. There's this concept of momentum, you know, know, know, know that you're going to die, you know,

contemplate on that. And no, but know that you're going to live, I always add on to it. And I wanted to ask you, if that narrative concede in a good, Way is born of your biography. So I do want to read your biography, and in particular, the first sentence of your biography, which your publisher kindly sent me, Dr. Moyne McTeer as an astrophysicist, folklorist and science communicator based in New York City. After graduating from Harvard, that's in Massachusetts, I think. Yeah, maybe you've heard of it. I don't know of Brown and now I know of Columbia in the Ivy League. As the first person in the

school's history to study both astronomy and mythology. Moy earned her PhD in Ashford's Columbia University. She was selected as an NSF Foundation Research Fellow. She has consulted with companies like Disney and PBS on their fictional world, help design exhibits in the New York Hall of Science and given hundreds of talks about science around the globe, including features on MSNBC, NPR, and now this news. One I wanted to drill down on is, you know, to alleviate my, my, my, Jewish neuroses that I couldn't have written this book because I know nothing about folklore other than

than what you taught me two years ago. So in other words, did your training in folklore, which is so unique. Did that, you know, is that imbued throughout this book? In other words, could no one besides you have written this book, essentially, what vehicles, of any, come from folklore training? I think someone like Jureta Holbrook could have written this book. Maybe someone in the past, like Owen Gingrich could have written this book. There are archaeo astronomers around. So I don't think I have a 100% unique perspective, but yeah, there aren't many people who could have written this because I really did want the folklore to be a through line. I see folklore as, and maybe I've said this in our last interview, I see it as an early attempt at science. It was humankind's way of explaining the natural world around them.

And they did it with like gods and magical creatures. But at its root, these mythologies that people came up with were based on their observations. of the world, just like sciences today. So I wanted people to learn from this book that it's like a spectrum, you know? It started off as mythology. And then there was philosophy. And you had people in the 1600s talking about the ether of the universe. And now we can talk about dust and dark energy and dark matter in more scientific terms. But I wanted people to make that connection. Right. Yeah. And what fascinates me is that you do go on from the biggest scales to the smallest scales or the opposite, maybe in some sense. When I encountered, you know, I haven't had as much, you know, any training of it, as I said. But in the Chilean Atacama Desert, we do encounter at our observatory site what are called Atacaminos. These are natives of the Atacomacus desert, distant relatives, perhaps, of the Inca civilization. And the Attacomat desert is huge.

It's, you know, a thousand miles north to south. And it's literally the driest place on earth. half the time. But what was so fascinating to me, and maybe I'll fold in, I was there in 2019 when there was a total eclipse of the sun visible from Chile, not from the out-of-coma deserts, northern part with the Simons Observatories. Nevertheless, we had locals there that were kind of talking about their folklore. And what was so fascinating to me is the role, not that the Milky Way's luminous bits play in their mythology, but the dust, the dark, you know, dust clouds that kind of pervade the night sky.

And in fact, they have constellations that are dark, as I learned, actually writing in my first book and then meeting some of them throughout the last 10 years or so, and that they have things that they believe the stars are dead and effectively the or inanimate like a river. The Milky Way is depicted as a river, no offense to the protagonist of your book. Not at all.

That's okay. The Milky Way is all right with that. Because the river is what gives us life, right? So the Milky Way loves that in this mythology, and it's mentioned in the book, that the dark constellations are living animals that feed or like drink from the water of the Milky Way. I just love it because there's one there's one dust constellation, dark cloud constellation, called the llama, I think it is. And then there's a subconciliation called the umbilicus of the llama. So imagine like you go up to a bar in, you know, in 1300, you know, AD, and you're talking to some, some, you know, hot member of your preferred target audience. And you say, what's your sign?

And they say, I'm an ambilicus. Oh, wow. That's wonderful. I love that. If there's like an old Chilean astrology, the way we have astrology and horoscopes these days, it'd be like, oh, the ambilicus, like, you're really good at making connections and, like, nurturing people. Have you ever been asked these questions, Moa, like, oh, you're an astronomer. You're so smart. I'm a Pisces, you know, can you?

All the time. I get that all the time. So how do you react to it? I react by telling them, astrophysically speaking, there is no reason for that to be a thing. Historically, astrology was much more practical. It was about when will you plant your crops and when will you know that the, the nutrition you rely on every year is coming back. I mean, in Australia, the Aboriginal Australians used to look for a constellation that they said looked like an emu to kind of coincide

with when the Earth emus were laying their eggs and they would eat those eggs. So astrology used to be very practical. So I usually say, I don't know anything about astrology. Astronomy and astrology are different things these days. So I am not the expert you're looking for. to say that too, but it never dissuades people. So now I decided to have some fun with it. Oh, you're a Pisces. That lump on your backside. That's cute. I don't want to say, but have a church. Do you, do you know your sign? Do you like get into conversations with them about that? I do. I once had some fun with it. So I'm a, I'm a Virgo, but I went out with my, my soon-to-be wife on a date many, many years ago. And we encountered, you know, someone on the

street and and and uh and they were like oh i'll tell your horoscope or whatever and i said okay yeah i'm a i'm a i'm a pisces blah blah i'm gonna do this uh and they said oh well that's great and and and and uh here's what's going to happen to you and you know the irs is going to be content whatever they said and then i said i just want to double check Pisces are the ones that are born in in september right i said no no that's vergo oh the same things are going to happen to you like it didn't matter it didn't make any difference. And so anyway, so now I decide to do that. So there's so many things we can talk about. I mean, one thing that I get now is that I get introduced, you know, I'm a cosmologist. And then I have to say, despite the appearance, you know, I don't do hair and nails. But in the case

of cosmology comes from cosmos, which another Greek word, which means beauty or face. And one of the beautiful things of this book is that you're portraying the visceral sensations of how people reacted you know, to not just the original kind of, you know, indigenous cultures, whatever, but how people are reacting to modern scientific facts. So what did you, what's the most fascinating? I mean, if you have to pick, I mean, it's like picking your favorite kid if you have multiple kids. Right. Although I would say to my mom, who's your favorite?

There's four of us brothers. And she'd say, that's like asking me to choose my left hand or my right hand. I said, Mom, you want a left hand. Yeah, like you have a favorite hand. Let's be real. It's me. It's me. You're the left hand.

aspect? Is there a favorite aspect of your favorite galaxy or, you know, are all nooks and crannies equally delightful? A favorite physical part of a galaxy? I mean, I got to say the bulge. I, for a Milky Way type galaxy, a barred spiral galaxy that has a central bulge in the middle, I think that the bulge is where the most exciting stuff happens. And I am totally biased because that's where I did most of my PhD research. But that's where you get a dense enough collection of stars that stars can interact gravitationally fairly often. That's where, you know, if you're imagining a sci-fi universe where there's this federation of connected star systems, the bulge is where that would do really well because it's so easy to slingshot yourself from one system to another. Like I would love to

think that in the bulge of some galaxy somewhere, there's like an air. alien subway system of just getting slingshotted from one system to another. But the spiral arms are very pretty. I'll say that. But for me, it's the bulger. What about you? Well, I think what's what so fascinates me is the, you know, are the kind of the dusty bits, the parts that are both not only critical to the formation of the planets and eventually trickling down into the material that our parents and mother ate to nourish us while we were being gestated inside of her, not for billions of years, but, and we actually have the same material. The iron that flows through our blood, you know, is very similar to the iron that is in this

meteorite that I keep on my, I keep on my desk over here to remind me that we are, come from dust and to dust we shall return. So I would say, yeah, dust is, and it also provides a cautionary tale that, you know, we kind of overlook the dark parts of both ourselves, of society perhaps, but also we want to not be obscured by things that are trying to keep us down. Peering through that will sometimes give us the truest glimpse of truth, as they say. Oh, I love that. I'm with Gandhi. Gandhi said, yeah, Gandhi said that a person, we go through life, trampling dust under our feet,

but you should really be so humble to think that a little piece of dust could crush you. And of course, you know, that did happen to at least one cosmic experiment not too long ago. So, you know, last time we talked, we talked a little bit about your research. I do want to go into a little bit more detail on that. You mentioned a little bit about the bulge, but specifically inside the bulge. We talked a little bit last time about exoplanets, and they've been in the news a lot for obvious reasons. People suspect that there is life outside our home planet. I want to ask you, do you think?

I mean, we don't have evidence, but do you think that there is, that we're alone? I mean, is this great big, empty galaxy made for us in a sense, or is it just teeming with life that we have yet to observe our encounter? If I'm being responsible, I have to say, well, the evidence does not support it yet. But if I'm just being me, yes, it would be such a waste of space. I know I'm not the first person to say that, but it would be such a waste of space if we were the only ones here. And because I've studied exoplanets and the habitability of those planets, and because as a folklorist, my specialty is fictional world building, I can't help but think about the amazingly diverse types of life that would form on the equally diverse types of planets that we have in the universe. The planets range in size and the types of stars that they orbit, in the materials that they're made of, in the atmospheres they have. There's so many options.

So I think, yes, probably. And besides the Adromeda galaxy, which, you know, kind of dominates, what do you make of these galaxies that are kind of rogue that don't really quite fit into the mold of the typical galaxy? I'm thinking of these galaxies that recently may have been discovered that have no dark matter. In other words, all their gravitational force can be accounted by the luminous matter. What do you make of these or are satellite galaxies? What do you make of these little, are they just hangers on, you know, in the retinue of cosmic paparazzi? What do you make of these satellite dwarf galaxies that don't get much attention? Yeah.

The Milky Way certainly has strong feelings about these dwarf galaxies in the book, I slash the Milky Way. We talk mostly about Andromeda and the large and small Magellanic clouds, who are Larry and Sammy, respectively. And we also talk a lot about the Triangulum Galaxy, which is a. a satellite around Andromeda. And yeah, the Milky Way does kind of see these these dwarf satellites as hangers on. It complains that Larry, the large Magellanic cloud, is lazy and really bad at making decisions and it doesn't make as much as many stars as it should. But they also have these gravitational interactions. And you hinted at it earlier when you were reading the synopsis that gravity and gravitational attraction, I took kind of literally in this book so that if you have a

very strong gravitational attraction, it's almost like a marriage or like a hookup or a fling. But even if it doesn't get to that level, these galaxies are exchanging material, and that makes them close to each other. But these dark matterless galaxies, I think they're really interesting because we think that dark matter was really pivotal in creating our galaxy, that the mass of dark matter, which was massive so it could gravitationally attract things, but was cooler than the other matter around it, helped the material early on in the universe clump to form these mass pockets that eventually turned into galaxies. So I think it's just so interesting that there are some that don't have much dark matter that we can see. All right. What's your, what's the biggest misconception about our galaxy or other galaxies that you've encountered in your career? That everything is still. I have been shocked lately by how many people think that that things in space are still. And I think that it comes from, we talk about zero gravity existing in space. I think that that's a mistake that we've made because there's gravity everywhere in space. space and that gravity makes everything move. So I love telling people about how the, the sun moves

around the galaxy at something like 500,000 miles an hour. I love talking about how the Milky Way and Andromeda are moving towards each other at something like 100 kilometers per second. It's really fast. So I, yeah, we are moving all the time. That's a big misconception. Yeah. Yeah, I often get this question that presupposes knowledge about the galaxy that's wrong. So people say, because all the matter in the Milky Way is rotating around the black hole at the center, you know, it's kind of keeping us all together. Let's talk about black holes. They feature prominently. Oh, yes, they do. What is the Milky Way's relationship with the black hole? It's a star. We've had on Shep Dolman recently in the most recent announcement of the imaging of our own galaxies of Enverizon.

Talk about the black hole. What? What? What? does the black hole mean to the Milky Way? How does it react to so much attention going to it? Okay. First of all, I was so upset about the timing of that Event Horizon Telescope image. Like, you couldn't have put this out like six months earlier. What are you? Because it felt like that image came out just a few weeks after I submitted the final copy of the book. And I was like, oh, too bad. But in this book, the Milky Way has a very strong relationship with this super massive black hole. A-Star, which the Milky Way calls Sarge. And there's a joke in the book about how the name Sarge is not derived from Sagittarius A-Star.

It's actually a much older name derived from an old galactic language that means something like duty head. It's just like a very childish insult that the Milky Way is giving its black hole. Because in this book, black holes are the physical manifestation of a galaxy's essentially mental health struggles. And that's because I was writing this book throughout a pandemic where I was personally dealing with some of the worst mental health issues that I've ever had. And I know that a lot of other people were dealing with the same. So that's what the black hole represents. And throughout the book, the Milky Way has to reckon with its mental health struggles and figure out how to not let Sarge consume the Milky Way. Because we see examples out in space of black holes that get so massive.

They get so hot. They have such strong feedback winds that they actually quench the star formation in their home galaxies, essentially killing their galaxies. So there was this tension in the book where Sarge could kill the Milky Way, but the Milky Way had to figure out how to not let that happen. I wonder if we could pivot to something you said about the mental health issues. I know that you, you know, in our first conversation, we talked a little bit about that. We talked about, you know, what it's like to be a graduate student, how challenging that was and how at that time even you weren't planning to necessarily remain in the field of, you know, astronomical, you know, kind of pecking order that I call the academic hunger games, you know, postdoc, junior faculty, multiple postdocs, multiple faculty, tenure track, you know, etc. Did anything of that play a role? Because I know, like, you, when did you defend? You defended in 2021? Yeah, April 2021.

Okay, so it was in the middle of the pandemic. But even before that, you would talk candidly about some of the struggles that you just refer to. I wonder for those that haven't watched the first episode, but we'll consume that right after this episode. Can you recapitulate a little bit about that? What is it like being a student? I've had on five or so students. Actually, I've had on, you know, four or five students of color that are graduate students and, you know, some that are obviously, you know, advanced faculty and, you know, distinguished professors. But I want to ask, you know, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, were those struggles? And what advice would you give to somebody, you know, who just doesn't see the light at the end of the tunnel, whether that could be a pandemic or grad school's taken six and a half, seven years or whatever. My students at nine years. I'm just kidding. You'll be out, Nate, guys, girls, don't like. No, but seriously, what was, what were the struggles? And what advice do you have for people going through them? Yeah. So grad school was very tough for me. It was not the only thing that contributed to my mental health state, but it was a big, factor, especially during the pandemic. I would say that as when you're a grad student, you spend part of your time doing research early on in grad school. You spend a lot of time taking classes. And your your status in graduate school is kind of dependent on your advisor and the, the chair, and the people who make decisions in your department. And that in itself is really difficult. So grad students don't get paid well. Most grad students don't make a wage. that allows them to live in the area where they need to to get to the grad school.

Grad school and academia in general, it has this opaque hierarchical structure. There's the grad, there's, you know, like undergrad students and then grad students and postdocs and multiple levels of professors that you just mentioned. And there is that hierarchical structure, but it's not always clear how that structure is arranged and who has what privileges in their position. So as a grad student, you kind of are at the mercy of anyone else who is higher than you on that ladder. And there's also the added difficulty of academia being a difficult place to get jobs right now. There's no retirement age in academia.

So we are graduating more people with PhDs, but there aren't enough slots for them to work in. There aren't enough careers for them to have if they want to stick within academia. So that was really hard for me. I would say for advice to anyone who is going through that, one, I know it's difficult, but try not to compare yourself to other people. Who cares if it's taking you six or seven or eight years? My mom had, she got pregnant with me and had me when she was in her PhD program. It took her 15 years to finish her PhD.

So like, don't, don't compare yourself to other people because you don't know what type of journey they're on. You don't know where they started and you don't know what obstacles are in their way. They don't know what journey you're on. You don't know what journey you're on. You don't know what's coming next. So try not to compare yourself and try not to think of where you should be because there is no place where you should be right now except for where you are. That's great. Yeah. I mean, I always, you know, I'm elected to give advice, but because everyone has to go through journeys together and we'll in a few minutes go through, you know, advice to your former self, not necessarily as a grad student could be as a young person.

If I remember correctly, your mother also wanted to burden you with one of the most challenging names there could possibly be right. But it wasn't spelled the same way as my name as Brian. Right, right. So we avoided that fate, but homonymically, we could have. But yeah, I mean, I hate it what people give idea, you know, like, oh, what should you do? I don't know. What's worse when someone says, you know, gives you advice from this, you know, like, I know

everything or when they say my best advice just keep doing what you're doing that's not it's not advice it's not satisfying at all i think in some ways i'd rather you just say nothing because both of those pieces of advice kind of suck yeah exactly right what do you have a question what they say say nothing um so i want to talk about like a research because now you are you know you're i see you on tv i see you on ticot now you're you're trying to like get me into ticot i don't even know what doming is i don't know I have that review of the book was, I have not stopped thinking about that review since I read it. So we'll put a link to all of your social stuff. People could know what we're talking about.

But that was great. It inspired me that to like start a TikTok account. So when you're assessing where your career is now, are you, you know, feeling like you want to get back to the folklore side? Do you want to go more into the outreach? Do you want to become a puddle? did the science communicator, what aspects of research? Because I know you're so curious, you're so passionate. You'll always be a researcher and a scholar. But, you know, so where is next for you specifically after the, you know, the smash of this book? You know, it's kind of,

after it passes by in a couple of years. Yeah, great question. I love doing science communication across media platforms. It's, it's really hard for me to describe my job when I meet news. people. I'm like, oh, I'm a science communicator. And they say, oh, okay, what's that? And then I have to, I have to rattle off this list of like a podcast, a book, a YouTube show, blah, blah, blah. So I think I want to continue with that. I love being able to work on different projects that I can switch between when I get bored with one of them. Over the pandemic, I have been playing around with a self-diagnosis of ADHD and being able to jump from one thing to another is really helpful for my brain. But my ultimate goal is to, not ultimate, my next big goal, hopefully the book will help

with this, is to host my own TV show. I'm developing one now, have been for a couple of years, because the TV industry is really slow, even slower than publishing. Yes. But I would love to host a science comedy TV show. I basically just want to spend the rest of my life helping people understand the world around them better through science, while also doing my, my fictional world building thing, because that is just something that I really enjoy doing. I combine my astronomy and my folklore expertise by building new fictional worlds based on science. And that's, that's just fun. So I want to keep doing that. Yeah. Yeah. And they always say, you know, competitions for losers. You know, you should do something

that you have this unique advantage to do. We already talked about the book. this perspective that you alone can bring. Maybe these other folks that you mentioned. Yeah, and I don't know if Owen could, you know, can pen such a delightful romp, you know. You might know the folklore. Right. Okay. All right. But, yeah, the rest of it, I don't know if he has the richness of tone. But, you know, but you're doing something that you do have this unique set of skills that, you know, like Liam Neeson and you have a very specific set of skills. You have a very, that's right. You not mess with Dr. McTeer. So, and, and, and, you know, and, you you should do what fulfills. You do a podcast. You do, and we'll have links on the YouTube.

And the TV is great. Yeah, I guess the last question, you know, kind of in the career aspect before we turn, because I know you've got a hard break coming up. And I want to get to my fantastic four, thrilling, what formerly the thrilling three, but now the fantastic four. I want to ask you, you know, when you think about this, you know, delayed gratification in writing this book. I mean, you had just started talking, thinking about it back in 2020 when we did our first interview. You were still a student. You were thinking about defending your thesis. You're still writing. None of that's behind you.

Now you're talking about TV and this are all so well suited. How do you handle the delay of gratification? I think that was one of my challenges as a student, at least. Writing books, whatever, it takes as long as it takes. It's kind of hard to rush it, although the publishing industry, you know, there's still, like, I don't know about you, but I was swapping word files back. I mean, who does that? Yeah, my editor refused to use Google Doc.

So she was like, we are using Word. He was like, well, okay, the options were word or overleaf. So we just exchanged word documents because I don't think she would have known how to use the text. Yeah, I was going to say, yeah, if she could pick up later, I would like to like to know her. But having, you know, gone through this and now talking about TV, yeah, that's even more. And it's so fickle and it's so hard. I remember writing my first book, again, talking with Ryan Holiday.

I said, you know, well, he asked, like, he asked, what's your book competing against? I said, like, well, these great books by Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Brian Green and Lisa Randall. And he said, no, you idiot. It's competing against every squirrel video there is on YouTube. Right. I mean, that was before TikTok. I mean, that was before Tinder and all the other things. No, I'm just kidding.

I'm not on Tinder. My wife is going to. That's also not the best dating up. But anyway, I'm going to ask you, like, I know. I've heard like, I heard all these different, like, Instagram. is better for, I'm like, so thankful that I'm not dating. Like, you have no idea. Like, marriage cures. Marriage can cause a lot for ones for some people, not for me, thankfully, but, but it cures the need to go on. I feel great sympathy for people that are

searching for their best shirt, their, their intended one, as we say. But anyway, how do you handle delayed gratification with things like TV? It seems excruciate. I did an episode of Unexplained with William Shatner, and he didn't even show up, but I just reported it as if he's there. Yeah, how do you handle that? And it took like a year to come out. I know tell you when it's out. It's just like you have an IMDBPA.

How do you handle the delayed gratification? Yeah, I don't handle it well. I'm a very impatient person. I, I, oh, you can see it. It's like coming out. I have been so ready for the world to read this book for months. And I tried to like ease some of that pressure, like, release a little bit of the steam by going on Twitter. saying like, hey, give me a random page number and I'll show you a line from this book.

Like, I just wanted to get it out there. Um, so I think using social media to give tidbits has helped a lot, but mostly it's me. Um, most I have like jaw problems now because I'm clanging my teeth so much because I'm too impatient. Yeah, the pub day is going to be huge. We're going to release this on pub day. Have you ever rearranged your furniture and discovered the carpet underneath looks brand new while the rest of it looks well,

not so new, it's time for a carpet upgrade. At the Home Depot, we have stylish choices at simple prices from all the top brands. Best of all, we can install it for you, starting at only 49 cents per square foot. So all you have to do is pick your perfect floor. Start your carpet project today at the Home Depot, how doers get more done. Exclusions apply for licenses, see Home Depot.com slash license numbers. Hopefully, and just give it the attention that it so richly deserves. It's such a great book.

We're talking, Dr. Moyette-Mittier. the Milky Way, the autobiography that our galaxy deserves. We have just wonderful Encomium. Ryan North calls it a direct, fun, charming mix of the science, the folklore, and the history of our Milky Way galaxy. Kelly Wiener. In that full review, he then goes on to say, and because I am part of the galaxy, like, I deserve part of the credit, which I love. I know. Yeah, they always do limit the list.

the list of it, how much we can actually include. But yeah, Paul Sutter says McTeer's sharp wit and sharper intellect strike the perfect tone for this breezy tale on the history of our galaxy, truly the biggest tell-all story in the universe. And I'm so glad it comes out in August because it is a beach read. As I said, it's lovingly illustrated, so richly full of scientific content. It's a stealth vector to learn about the richest topics in science, not just in, you know, That's some narrow niche of astronomy. So now, Dr. McTeer, if you would indulge me in the remaining few minutes,

I would like to play a game. Now call The Fantastic. I am ready to get fantastic. Okay. And to do this, I'm even going to do something I haven't done yet. See this. Computer. Turn on the plug.

Ooh. See if that word. Boom. That's fancy. And I can even do this. You know that this podcast is into the impossible. and it's an owner of Arthur C. Clark's laws. We're going to get to that in just a second.

But the word podcast, that you have the podcast, the, was the, um, Ex-O-Lor. I'm like every, is it called the everything? Ex-O-Lore, yeah. Uh, so we'll have a link to that. Uh, so the word podcast comes from Sir Arthur C. Clark in terms of the, uh, 2001 in Space Odyssey when Dave says to how open the pod bay doors. So now I'm going to do that.

Computer, open the pod bay doors. I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that. Also, I'm not in the States. I love that. Good job. My computer is appealing a little bit. I'm going to turn on, I'm going to plug in my computer synthesized voice into a plug

that I'm going to tell it to turn off and I'm going to see if it will kill itself. Okay. Anyway, Moia, we have some questions here. And the first one involves your, you talk about the galaxy's demise, we'll get to that just a bit. But I want to ask you from the perspective of the Milky Way to answer these questions. So the first thing involves what's called in Hebrew an ethical will or a Zava-a. It's not material giving something to people in terms of money. I'm sure, you know, Harvard and Columbia will take all of the Milky Way's, you know, munificence. But I'm going to ask you, what wisdom would the Milky Way want to give

to future galaxies, generations down the line, after? after its untimely demise and a few billion years. Don't bother getting upset about an outcome. Don't bother getting upset about an inevitable outcome. A lot of the Milky Ways mental health struggles come from the fact that it is creating these stars. It falls in love with them. And then they eventually die. And it feels really bad that to continue living, it has to keep making these stars.

So if there is something that you can. can't change that will always be this way or like the outcome is inevitable, don't get stressed about it. Great. Okay. The next one, I want you to now look into your crystal ball billions of years more into the future, but really in harmony with Sir Arthur Clark's famous aphorism that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

What is the Milky Way most proud of that human beings have been able to discover a bad thing? it, about the universe, anything about astrology? What would the universe put on its monolith, so to speak, in terms of a way to have a little bit of swagger, which I know the Milky Way has? What is the most impressive accomplishment for you? For the Milky Way to do or that it thinks humans will do? Yeah. That humans have done to make the Milky Way proud of itself. The Milky Way will be proud when humans find out how to do faster than night travel.

That's what it's waiting for. It wants to see us interact with the rest of it and really get to learn what it's what it's all about. And like if there are aliens out there, which the Milky Way can neither confirm nor deny, it wants to see humans interact with them. Ah, okay. So next question is going to go backwards in time. And it harkens to Sir Arthur's third law, which states, the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way. past them into the impossible. That's the origin of the name of this podcast.

I'm the associate director of the Artsy-C. Clark Center for Human Imagination at UC San Diego. So I want to ask you as a young galaxy, what was mysterious about, you know, because there's no handbook for galaxies, right? How do the Milky Way know what to do? So what perplexed you in your early first billion years or so that now makes sense that you would give sort of as advice to your former self or other galaxies that are up and coming to try to, you know, adjust to the life and the universe that you've enjoyed. I love that.

I think early on, the Milky Way would have been a little confused that everyone was going away, like with the expansion of the universe. It would have been like, why are all my friends leaving? Do they not like me? And so I think the Milky Way would say to its younger self, like, no, it's not that they don't like you. There's just this force that's making them move away from you. You're fine. You're great.

Except for that lazy, except for that lazy Lenny and Sammy, right? They've always been by your side, right? We'll probably have to eat them one day. Okay, now I'm asking. Oh, man, that'll teach them to be lazy. I want to ask you, Moia, a perspective now. This is one of Arthur's laws as well.

And he said the following. He said, when a distinguished but elderly scientist says something is possible, they are almost certainly right. But when they say something is impossible, they are very probably wrong. Now I want to ask you, Moia, as you're a distinguished scientist, that has influenced hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people, what have you changed your mind on? What, if anything, have you been wrong about that you've changed your mind on either recently or throughout your career?

This might sound kind of meta, but I feel like I used to believe that I was a fixed state that I was, like this was my personality, this is who I am. I will not change. And I have learned that I can grow, that I can change, that anyone can learn and grow and change. And that's been really eye-opening. It's helped me a lot with the way that I interact with people and the way that I, like, judge myself. And it's helped me give myself a lot more grace. Oh, that's wonderful.

Well, Dr. Moim McTeer, author of this phenomenal book called The Milky Way, an autobiography of our galaxy. The Galaxy is for everybody. I want to thank you so much for spending so much of your time. I wish you all the best and great congratulations on another book. And we look forward to having you back as an ultra-rare third-time guest on The Into the Impossible podcast. Thank you. I would love to come back. And thanks so much for the kind words you said about the book.

It really, like, warms my heart. I did love it. And I listened to it and you all should either get, well, you should get all the copies, digital, Kindle, Audible, and also by the hardcover, which is richly illustrated, all them are. and you'll just like in my own voice. I like kind of put on an affect like a like a an upper class maybe type of royal person. That's how I envisioned that the Milky Way would talk. Just a little bit.

Yeah. Just a little bit of snark. Yeah, exactly. Love it. All right. Well, we love you on the show and we wish you a great rest of your summer. Great congratulations. Thank you again.

Take care. Thank you. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Well, that's a wrap on this episode of the Into The Impossible podcast with Moia McTier, who is a truly delightful intellect as you are no doubt now learning. And I thought it was a particularly appropriate for us to feature her in these waning days of summer here in the northern hemisphere, although I have a lot of listeners at the South Pole, at least one or two of them, and to have her on with her blend of wit and wisdom, and she really has this,

unique ability to to delight and to entertain and I do hope that you will stay tuned her career is going to be phenomenal and she will be appearing in stage screen and all other formats and that reminds me of an astro dad joke what kind of stars wear sunglasses give you a second there well the answer is what moya is going to be a movie star or a TV star and so she's delightful I hope you'll stay tuned for her I do ask you in these waning days of summer to do just two favors, two favors indeed, and that is to leave a rating and or a review of the podcast. So you can leave a rating, so many stars, speaking of stars, speaking of asterisms and constellations, you can leave a five-star review on any device,

Spotify, Apple, Audible, et cetera. There's only three reviews on Audible. So if you want to subscribe and leave a review on Audible, you can add 25% to the total count. And, but, But on Spotify, we've got several hundred. On Apple, we've got over 500 reviews around the world, but I'm trying to get to a thousand reviews by the end of this year. You can help me do it. That's all I ask for. And if you leave a written review, which you can only do on Apple Podcasts,

unlike you heathens on Google. I'm just kidding. I love Google devices too. But if you're listening on Apple device of any kind, computer or iPhone or iPad, you can leave a written review like TD Carroll did just this week where he or she wrote, Brian is awesome. I love his interviews. It's my favorite podcast, T.D. Carroll. I can't thank you enough. It's my favorite podcast, too.

As I mentioned in the opening, we're going to have Sean Carroll on. We have interviews coming up with folks like Neil Neal Ferguson, I think you pronounce it, on his book, Doom. We're going to talk about the science of existential doom. Bernardo Castro is coming on. Nick Bostrum is coming on. We have the greatest guest in the entire universe lined up. And I hope you will enjoy it. And leave me a review. You can also get a, get a free meteorite for me if you're one of the 100 lucky listeners who gets in on the contest only in the USA. I'm so sorry to my international listeners. I do have lots of them. But you can get that at briankeating.com slash list, and that's where my mailing list is. And if you're entered to win competition to win a meteorite. And if you don't win a meteorite, you may win a digital object like an NFT or an audiobook of my dialogue on the two world systems by Galileo. Gale. Gale. Anyway, this has been a delightful romp. There's many more to come

as the summer winds down. As my birthday season approaches, there's going to be a special birthday episode. There's going to be an Ask Me Anything episode. You can leave a feedback for me on my website. You can send me an email. Or you can leave your voice. I'd like to hear your voice and I will play it if you're so inclined. And that's using a little icon, microphone icon, provided by speakpipe and that's on my website for the podcast. So that's at briankeating.com slash podcast. And you can enjoy that as well as signing up for the podcast and my mailing list. So please do that. Ask me a question for my special Ask Me Anything. That'll be also taking questions on my YouTube channel, which you should also subscribe to Dr. Brian Keating on YouTube. Follow me on Twitter and Instagram, same handles. And I do all kinds of crazy giveaways, digital and analog. So I hope you'll do me that small little favor. Those two favors, the rating and review. You can do that right now as you're listening. And you can also do a favor right afterwards of signing up for my mailing list. So for now, I bid you, it do, to have a magical rest of your week, summer, and beyond and continue to stay tuned to the end of The Impossible Podcast for the greatest

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