Science Friday - Teaching in a Pandemic, Inheriting Stress, Book Club. Oct 23, 2020, Part 2

Episode Date: October 23, 2020

Even In A Pandemic, Science Class Is In Session This academic year, school campuses across the United States look very different. Instead of crowded hallways and bustling classrooms, students are spaced six feet apart, sometimes behind plastic barriers, while others are at home on camera in a video call. Since some states do not weigh in on school operations, communities witnessed a myriad of learning approaches, such as fully virtual, fully in-person, or a mixture of both. All are subject to change as COVID-19 rates fluctuate throughout regions. For instance, on October 1, all New York City public schools reopened and shifted 500,000 students to in-person class. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, October 21, Boston Public Schools announced that it suspended all in-person learning as numbers of COVID-19 cases rose in the region. Teachers, students, parents, caregivers, and staff have all felt the stress and uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic. The situation is academically, mentally, and emotionally overwhelming. While the pandemic has presented many challenges in learning, STEAM educators are adapting. They are coming up with creative solutions to continue to meet the needs of all students, like holding outdoor biology classes, dissecting flowers at home, and even delivering materials and devices to students who need them.   STEAM educators Rabiah Harris, Josa Rivas, and Rick Erickson join Ira for a roundtable discussion on how the pandemic has impacted school this academic year.  Can Trauma Today Affect Future Children? We typically think of a traumatic event as a sudden thing—something that has a beginning and an end. Stress and trauma can of course have lasting psychological effects—and, in some cases, physical effects such as elevated blood pressure or premature aging. But now researchers are considering whether stress to an organism can be somehow transmitted to that animal’s future offspring, via epigenetic changes that modify how genetic code is expressed in the young. Bianca Jones Marlin is a neuroscientist studying such changes. In one study, she found that if researchers trained mice to associate the smell of almonds with an electric shock, the offspring of the mice tended to be afraid of an almond smell—even if they were raised separately, by foster parents that had no experience with the odor. Jones Marlin joins Ira to talk about her research, and her experience as a young researcher starting her own lab in the neurosciences. Making Peace With The End Of Your Species Welcome to week four of the Science Friday Book Club’s reading of ‘New Suns’! Our last short story assignment is ‘The Shadow We Cast Through Time’ by Indian writer Indrapramit Das. On a far-off planet, a human colony has been cut off from the rest of space: but they’ve also encountered other life, a fungus-like organism that infects and distorts human bodies into horned “demon”-like creatures. And as one human woman, Surya, approaches her death at their hands willingly, she makes a discovery that speaks of a new future for both species. Author Indrapramit Das joins SciFri producer Christie Taylor and Journal of Science Fiction managing editor Aisha Matthews to talk about creating new worlds, and the “modern mythology” of writing science fiction and fantasy. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. A bit later in the hour, checking in with science educators about how they're teaching students during the pandemic, and the book club continues. But first, you don't need me to tell you that these are stressful times, and that stress is taking a toll on many of us. But can trauma today have effects on generations still to come? Researchers are looking into if and how traumatic experiences, experiences might cause epigenetic changes. Now, those are changes in how genes are turned on and off in an animal's offspring. Joining me now is one of those researchers, Bianca Jones Marlin, a neuroscientist and Simon's postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University. Dr. Marlin is an incoming assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience, and she will be opening her lab at Columbia University's Zuckerman Institute in 2021. And she's the subject. one of our episodes of our breakthrough video series. You can watch all of those at breakthroughfilms.org. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you for having me. Let's start with some

basics if we can. We're taught that genes are the way that information passes from one generation to another, and traits are either nature or nurture. But this sounds as if it's somewhere in between. Can you walk us through what's going on here? Yes, so our genes don't change. Our genes are information coming from our parents that are passed down to us. However, epigenetic markers means epi-above genetics are genes. There are markers around our genes that say whether or not they'll be turned on or turned off, whether or not they'll be read, whether or not they'll be what we call expressed. And this is really the essence of bringing in that communication and that experience from our parents.

Biology has a setup to adapt to our surroundings, and that's a huge learning component, the nurture component. But what about preparing us for an experience that we haven't come to yet? That's what parents are really good for. They teach their offspring to navigate the world and to live in the environment. And it seems like biology has set parents up to inform their offspring about how to navigate the environment without even having to ever meet them. When you say they're set them up, do you mean they're passing genetic changes to their

offspring? By setting them up, they're passing these epidermis. genetic markers, potentially down to their offspring. And we say potentially because a lot of work still has to be done to really find out what exactly is happening and what's the mechanism. But what we do see is the phenotype, which is the actual expression of these changes. And this is not just what we're seeing in the lab. This comes from research observed, for example, during the Dutch hunger winter after World War II. The Netherlands were starved of food. and those children and grandchildren of those that were starved during the Dutch hunger winter

suffered from metabolic issues. It was as if their bodies were prepared to live in a land where there wasn't enough food, although they had plenty of food. And this manifested as diabetes and hypertension, which is high blood pressure, and even in some cases schizophrenia. So it's as if the parents said, if you were to be born in a place of starvation, we're going to prepare you for that.

And that's an excellent component of parenthood because you don't have to meet your grandchild and prepare them. But what happens when the situation changes? And it doesn't become a positive trait, but a negative trait. And that's really what we're interested in studying. And how is the mechanism passed from the parent to the child? Oh, that's a great question. And that's really what our research is focusing on. How can a memory or something that occurs in the brain and offense be passed on to sex cells like sperm and egg?

And moreover, how is that even maintained when implantation takes place and a new organism grows? And then again, for a third generation, these are the excellent questions and we haven't found out the answer yet, but that's what we're looking for. You know, it sounds almost like Lamarck, you know, was right. Was he? You're definitely in dangerous territory. People are really, really against Lamarckian inheritance. By Lamarckian inheritance, an example is the giraffe was wandering in the savannah. a branch had a high, tasty treat. And so in order to get that treat,

the giraffe wished that its neck grew longer, and it stretched and stretched its neck, and it became longer. And that became a mark that was passed down to their generations. And now, based on what we know, as science has progressed, we know that that's not the case. And people usually put Lamarckian inheritance. You can tell them a little bit defensive of Lamarck

against Darwinian inheritance. But we have to give credit where credit's due because Darwin came well after Lamarck, and Darwin used Lamarck's work to build upon his work. And we're doing exactly that. We're using the excellent data that has been collected already to build upon that. Darwin said that you're just a lucky giraffe

when you're born with a tall neck. You get to get all the treats at the top of the trees, and then all of your short-neck cousins die, and you get to populate the giraffe world. And so we're really looking at these two very stressed-out dichotomies, but there are bridges in between, and we're seeing the phenotypes, we're seeing the ramifications of that.

So it really is just figuring out what the mechanism is. Is there this ability for traumatic effects to be inherited? If that's true, as you say it is, can we fix it? Ideally, it would not serve us well to say, we found a way that a body holds a fence, and you can pass those offenses on for generations, so everyone's angry. But in order to understand what's happening so that we can fix it,

we first have to understand what's going on. And so as cool as that question is, I want to do the due diligence of saying, I can't jump to that conclusion until I figure out what's happening beforehand. And that can help lead us in the direction of figuring out how to fix this and how to remedy when our environment does change. And our epigenetic markers say that we have to interact with the environment in a certain way, but it's not beneficial to us. Well, let me put it in just the opposite context. What if we live in an environment that's happy and healthy and very, you know, giving to us. Can we pass those changes that, those epigenetic changes that might happen there also to our kids? I wish you could join our research team.

You're asking all the excellent questions. And once again, it's, that's a question that we want to answer. And it would be so cool to see that positive traits can be passed down. But we also want to be careful with the way we're saying positive and negative. Because based on what biology is doing, it's not negative, for example, someone who's an offspring of someone who was starved to respond to the environment by saying, I'm going to take in food and hold that food in, so therefore I may be more likely to be obese or have diabetes or have hypertension. That's not necessarily negative. It could be positive if the environment was still poor. And so the positive component really just has to do with what's important.

I was watching the breakthrough films that profiles you. And you seem to have had a very interesting childhood that sort of influenced the direction you're taking in your research. Yes, I only realized in retrospect my interest in a parental behavior and maternal behavior in how trauma can be passed down is so strong in my scientific heart. I had the blessed opportunity to grow up in a really dynamic home. My biological parents were foster parents. So I had foster brothers and sisters and adopted siblings. And being able to grow up in the same home and have the nurture component be very similar, and yet the nature component be so different, as well as a prior experience component, really, I think, motivates my research.

And by that, I mean, although we ate the same food and slept in the same rooms and went to the same schools, my siblings went through traumatic experiences that caused them to be in foster care. It's very rare that you'll be in foster care for, you know, coming from a happy household. And my siblings really had to sit with a lot of ghosts of their past of either things that happened to them or even happened to their parents. And it was so hard to navigate being a high school, a junior high school student when you're sitting on all of that trauma and offense to your being. And so I really do think it motivates why I think the work is so important that I'm doing now.

You're early in your research career. Do you have any advice for other people who might not be sure of their career path yet? I do. I think my main piece of advice, and I say this with hesitancy because I don't want to sound hand-wavy, but I really think it's proven correct. And I think it's follow your interest. And I know it sounds very loose. It's not an actual, like, make sure your resume is, the margin is 1.5. And it's, science is a lot of work. We spend a lot of time in lab. We spend a lot of time in deep, dark dungeons and basements of microscopes. And if you're not enjoying the end goal, then it can be really hard. Science is going to be hard regardless. But at least there's a light at the end of the tunnel that

you think the work that you're doing is interesting and you believe in it. And so finding work that you believe in that you will stand for and that you are willing to put your time and energy too makes it more enjoyable and therefore makes for better science. If I had a blank check in my back pocket, which I don't have yet. Oh, no. What would you do with the money? What, How would you spend it? Oh, I'm excited to answer. I want to make sure I answer clearly just in case anyone listening does have a blank check that they want to make sure that it's a good answer.

And so I think the brain definitely interacts with something called neuromodulators. These are chemicals that are released from the brain and from the body. They're endogenous to us, which means they come from our body. And they really help aid in learning. They really strengthen synapses and they're particular to the environment. So one of my favorite ones happens to be oxytocin. It's released during eye contact, hugs, soft touch, orgasms with love, breastfeeding with a child. And it helps to create bonds.

I would love to see when neuromodulators are released while we're looking at the brain in real time. So when a mother's interacting with her child, but when the mother's interacting with a child and a stressful counterpart comes in, maybe she's in an abusive relationship, how these neuromodulators are working in the brain at the same time, which is very hard. hard to do because we always focus on one neuromodulator to see how it's changing the brain. And so ideally, the blank check would look like this. I can image the whole brain. I can look at different neuromodulators. It'd all be tagged in different color. So I can see how where neuromodulators were released from, where they're targeting, what they're doing,

all in an experience. So we're not just parsing out the animal smelt this or the rat smelt that and it looked at this and it heard this. We're seeing all these things in concert and how it's changing all the areas of the brain. Because we as scientists can only do so much to look into one particular part of the brain, but the brain is working in concert and so much is going on that we can't see. Having the ability to look at how neurochemicals, neuromodulators are working at the same time would give us so much insight into how we navigate our world. So that's my blank check request, if it could be a request. Well, I wish you a great success in your career and whatever you're doing over there at Columbia. Thank you for taking time to be with us today. Thank you, Ira.

Dr. Bianca Jones, Marlon, is a neuroscientist and Simon's postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University. She is the subject of one episode of our breakthrough video series, terrific series, and this season we gave you short portraits of women in science who were trekking on volcanoes, looking for ancient birds, hunting for distant galaxies, and a lot more. You can watch all of those at breakthroughfilms.org. We're going to take a break when we come back, checking in with science teachers to see how they're adapting their classrooms to the pandemic times.

Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I am I, Refledo. Remember last spring when the pandemic first hit in schools were woefully unprepared to transition so quickly into online learning? Some teachers had only one week to prepare to teach their entire curriculum virtually, and there was frustration experienced all around. You remember that? Well, you know teachers. They're also students of their craft. And as this new school year began

this fall, they had prepared, planned, and learned from their experiences this past spring. So what were the take-home lessons from that first experience? How has the new school year been going for STEM educators? Well, joining me now to fill us in, are my guys? guests. Jose Rivas is an engineering and AP science teacher at Lenox, Math, Science and Technology Academy. That's a charter school in L.A. County. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you, Erin. Nice to be here. Nice to have you. Dr. Rabia Harris is the seventh grade science teacher and science department chair at Jefferson Middle School Academy. That's a public school in Southwest D.C. Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks for having me. Nice to have you, too. Let me begin with you, Jose. What is

different about teaching this fall versus last spring when you were thrust into this situation? Well, so my classes are very hands-on. We're we build stuff, we're designing, we're breaking things apart. So that's been the biggest change, you know, trying to capture that same excitement of breaking things and putting them together and coming up with new ideas and using, you know, really advanced equipment. We have welders. We have 3D printers. You know, right now it's coming up with, you know, alternatives, virtual alternatives, though, that the students can still get that sense, you know, and still get some of that design work. So we're doing a lot of design work now versus prototyping. We could do virtual prototyping. So, you know, we're doing what we can with

the resources that are available. Rabia, you teach seventh grade, which is, I imagine, very heavy into science. What's different about how you're teaching now? I would say, Similarly, we don't do quite as much prototyping as I don't teach engineering anymore, but I used to as Jose does. But we also did a lot of things hands-on in class. And so there has been a big adjustment. But I think that the lessons I learned in the spring have really helped me to do better this fall because I still have my students working in groups.

I still have them doing tasks together. And I even sent them home with the materials for next quarter. So I'm really excited about them getting to do some hands-on things even though we're apart. I'm glad to pick that up because when I picture remote learning, I imagine that instead of the students sitting in a classroom listening to their teacher for six hours, they would be just sitting in on a Zoom call like we're doing with their classmates listening to the teacher for six hours. But that's not what's happening, you say.

No, not in my class. So I have my students 80 minutes two times a week and I speak four different sets of students. So my students come in. We do like a fun icebreaker. Like yesterday, I asked them if they are Team Apple Cider, Team Apple Juice. And then we got to talk about we had to do now just with what we were doing. But then they immediately go into a task where they work together, even having their own small mini calls or just talking on a discussion board. And I sort of monitor and go around to different rooms, in a sense, breakout rooms to see them. And then we come back together and they get to prison out. And then I do like a short little thing. And then they go do some asynchronous work, and I stay on the call for students who need help. Do you think there is something different about teaching STEM, science, technology, engineering, math, remotely versus another subject, English, literature, whatever, Jose? Oh, yeah. So the one thing that always fascinated me about science and engineering is this idea of community and building consensus. So you collect all these data points, you create these models,

you create these prototypes. And there's discussion and there's community and there's building. And, you know, trying to bring that into the virtual world is unique. You know, and it's possible to do, you know, if you have the right relationship building, if you have the right strategies in there. So, you know, a lot of social, emotional learning strategies that you include in there. You also include trauma-informed teaching strategies to bring the students out and contribute and still have that sense of community.

Social emotional learning. What does that mean? Yeah, that's a great question. So it's about, you know, the students self-regulating, you know, both academically and emotionally, giving student choice, giving them opportunities to express their thoughts. You know, and this is all embedded within science. And so when my students went from last school year, you know, we had these experience in in the classroom. So when we transferred over to distance learning, we were able to keep that

same dynamic, even though we were, you know, outside in our own homes. So that social, emotional learning part helped them continue to, you know, monitor their emotions and create smart goals and continue that process. How do you keep science learning fresh and different every day? Do you find that a challenge as you teach remotely? I do sometimes find it a challenge, but it was a challenge that I wanted to have in the classroom too. This is my 16th year teaching, and I think that sometimes my mom's been teaching for 52 years. So I think that you definitely can get to a point where you're like, I've done this before,

I can do it this way. And so in some ways, virtual help to like reinvigorate that. That's a challenge that I really love to have. Even though it is something that I have to do, I feel really excited to do it. And you said you do something called Phenomena First Learning. What is that? And is it compatible with remote learning? I think it is.

You just have to think about it differently. Students learn about the phenomena first. That helps them to really want to investigate more. So it helps them to want to be the driver of what's going on. Like, why are those tree roots growing that way? And I think that it can happen in a virtual space. I definitely thought of a phenomenon initially at something that they're actually physically doing, like looking at and doing in the classroom, but it doesn't have to be that way.

And I think that sometimes for things that I did have in that way, units that did start out, like you had to physically touch something, I might just have to think about them differently now, but it's not impossible. And I think my biggest thing is just making sure that I don't ever think that it's impossible, that like, oh, we can't ever do science the way we did it before. because that's not true. Can you use stuff that's found in the house versus what you would normally find in the classroom or have to bring in the classroom?

I mean, is there sort of an advantage to some kind of projects that you can do them at home, Rabia? Yes, I think there definitely are. Like I said, we're doing the human body. So right now, your body is a part of what we're learning about. But we're also about to do plants. So I did send them home with seeds. They just came to school to pick up seeds and soil and little pots,

and they'll get to design their own experiments, which a lot of my students, haven't had the experience doing. One of my kids even said, I've never grown a plant, Ms. Harris. I don't know if this is going to work. And I was like, but the point is that we're going to try and that it's okay if it doesn't work out perfectly. Rabia, did you have any expectations for how remote learning was going to go that have changed once you actually started doing it?

I tried to not have as many expectations. I knew that Internet could be something. I actually had a fire at my house in April, so I ended up being in temporary housing, so I ended up not having like Wi-Fi. And I know that my students have gone through similar things for lots of reasons. So I even have an expectation that says, if you're not in the headspace for learning today, let me know so we can work something else out. Because I think at the end of the day, there is still a pandemic. I am asking them to be online. The school district has asked them to be online, but other things that could be happening that are more important than that at the moment.

And if they just let me know, I can help them, like, work through what I'm asking of them so that they don't feel overburdened by this too. Let me turn the question about home education around and say, have you learned anything during this home stay where the kids were at home that you would take back to the physical classroom with you when you get back there, Jose? Yeah. So it's been interesting in terms of like my engineering design classes where, you know, before it was just, you know, we have these hours during school time, you know, and now I have students like they'll send me like a Zoom invite at 7 p.m. Hey, Mr. Rivas, we want to go over this design with you. Are you busy right now? You know, we want to talk. You know, and that's something that, you know, didn't happen before. And I like that, you know, that they're into. to what they're doing and they want to talk. And yeah, definitely if I'm available, I will jump in. And that's something, you know, that I want to take back, especially like, you know, if they have homework questions, right, or they have project questions.

They know that I'm available and, you know, understanding how to use Zoom and learning the Zoom system, we have that opportunity now to just continue the conversation within reason, obviously, because, you know, teachers need to break too. But it's nice to have that additional flexibility. so I'm definitely going to take that back. Let me ask both of you this question, and I'm sure I'll be asking it of many teachers. And that is, I've heard from teachers saying that they are just getting burned out by this teaching kids at home.

And I've heard a statistic that says maybe one in three teachers are not going to go back to school full time. What do you say to this, Rabia? That's definitely possible. There's a lot to think about and thinking about ways. for self-care and trying to turn off and not leaving, you know, your device on to answer questions. Because a lot in the spring, I was answering emails at 1130 phone calls at midnight because that's when kids were up and they were trying to get their work done. And I felt like I had to be there for them. So I think that one of my biggest things that my friends and I talk about is like

turning off, like saying like, okay, after 6 o'clock or 7 o'clock, I'm done for today, taking the time on the weekend to do things for us because I think that it can really feel, because you're home and you're on the same device, you're on all day at school, you don't really get that separation of like traveling home. You don't get that separation of taking a moment. So I think that the biggest thing is working in that time, but the reality of it is that it is a lot for a lot of teachers. And I think that school districts have to be ready for that

or ready to think about the things they can do to help teachers cope in the midst of all of this. I'm Ira Flato, and this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios, talking with STEM educators about the return to remote learning. I know many schools started out fully remote at the beginning of the school year, hoping to move to a hybrid in-person model after a few months. But with COVID cases spiking now in most states, it seems like remote learning is going to continue throughout the fall. And one state where COVID is running rampant is Wisconsin. Over the past week, there have been on average about 3,400 new cases per day, according to the New York Times. Joining now the discussion is Rick Erickson, chemistry and physics teacher at Bayfield High School in Bayfield, Wisconsin. Welcome to Science Friday.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Rick, I know you teach in Wisconsin, one of the worst states experienced COVID spikes right now. What's happened to your school's plans to go back to school learning? We had a plan in place that identifies a fully virtual model, a couple of different hybrid models, depending on how much we have to socially distance, and then hopefully at some point to return to full face-to-face, which I really don't see happening in the near future.

And I think, you know, the recent spikes in Wisconsin have really challenged our thinking because I think what we're starting to see, and I hear this not just in Wisconsin, but in many places, we're starting to see a lot of COVID-Fatts. And so it's happening, these spikes are happening at the time where people are also getting tired of dealing with the issue. And so, you know, there's even, even though we were leveled off for a while, there was talk then of going back into the hybrid model. And already there's the question, you know, what are the metrics that determine whether we go back or not? But there's also the drive from home about, you know, people who want their kids in school and the challenges that are faced at home. And so we understand those challenges. is. And so we started making the move to look at the hybrid model, and we're still looking at that.

But now with the spike, everybody's taking a step back and reevaluating. And again, it's that question of what are the bottom line metrics that determine when we move into those phases. Well, let me bring that up a little bit more because I know the indigenous communities across the U.S. are being hit pretty heavily. Did that factor into your school's consideration of whether to to school this fall? Absolutely. You know, a lot of our families are multi-generational families, and so there's higher risk in those families. And with that really played a big role in our determining to go back fully virtual. We're the only school in the area that went fully virtual at the beginning of the year. Otherwise, most schools went back either in a hybrid or a lot of them

went back five days face-to-face full-time. And so we definitely, the makeup of our community, had to play a big role in our decision to go virtual. That's the Anishanabe. Correct. That's correct. I know you've been teaching for 37 years, and I'm sure you've had to update your materials over the years, right? But this must be totally different for you during COVID-19 to adapt your curriculum. I mean, that's a good point. And I think you're going to hear this from most teachers. We adapt our curriculum every day and every year. I mean, that's what keeps us, that's what keeps us invigorated, right? It's the science, science not only changes, but there are so many different ways you can approach the way you teach science. And so we're always changing. But there is no question that this has been the biggest challenge in my career. Without a doubt, the biggest challenge is not having the kids in the classroom. And you're going to hear this from other teachers as well. It's the connections with kids that matter.

And it's the relationships that you build. And doing that remotely and virtually is so much harder. It's not that you can't do it. But it's those interactions in the hallways and the interactions when they come into your classroom and as they walk into the building and all those little pieces that build that relationship. And so that's been the biggest challenge without a doubt is how do you bridge that in a virtual setting? One final question for you, Jose. What's the one thing that's going well for you that you'd want to share with other teachers?

There's a lot of things that are working. You know, it's been interesting, you know, interacting with the families on Zoom since we're doing distance learning. And it's been interesting because I've had parent conferences during Zoom meetings. And, you know, I've had discussions with parents, you know, and, you know, the kids get shy. Well, you know, we'll do a breakout room. We could talk really quick. So that's been an interesting, you know, a connection that's been very valuable and making

those connections. Even though we're distance learning, I've always liked making connections with families and understanding where my students are coming from and all the different things that they're dealing with. And, you know, right now with everything that's going on, I have more of an opportunity to do that, which helps with everything else that I'm doing. doing with you know getting the motivated to do my you know the different projects uh you know like everyone say we you know we're making kits and and having them pick it up and go take do the experiments at

home so it gives them that extra motivation and that understanding that you know we care as teachers so it helps with everything else so yeah that's you know i guess that's the big secret is building relationships and by building relationships students will gravitate to you know do the things that you want them to do and learn science and learn engineering. Jose Rivas is an engineering and AP science teacher at Lenox Math Science and Technology Academy, a charter school in L.A. County. And Dr. Rabea Harris is the 7th grade science teacher and science department chair at Jefferson Middle School Academy, a public school, and Southwest District of Columbia. And Rick Erickson is the chemistry and physics teacher at Bayfield High School in

Bayfield, Wisconsin. This segment was an excerpt from a longer Zoom conversation with even more STEM educators, and you can watch that video up on our website at ScienceFriday.com slash Remote Learning. After the break, we're going to another planet, meeting some aliens and considering what it means to be human with the SciFRI Book Club. Stay with us. This is Science Friday.

I'm Ira Flato. The SciFry Book Club has been going places this month, from a world where the dead persist as ghostly shimmers to a future where salesmen aggressively push you to upgrade your home. And as we continue to read the collection New Sun, speculative fiction by people of color, edited by Nisi Shawl, we continue by asking questions like,

what makes us human? And how should we treat new life we encounter? sci-fi producer Christy Taylor has more on this week's story assignment. In the story, the shadow we cast through time, Indian writer Indra Dasz asks us to imagine a human colony on another planet. The wormhole that took them here has collapsed, and so this group of humans is now alone on a new world. But they're not exactly alone. Another life form is there, too. A fungi-like organism that infects other life, including humans, who become these very different-looking creatures that in this story,

we call demons. This story is also a story about accepting death. The main character, Surya, is on her way to the home of these so-called demons to turn herself over to them, as all human elders do when they feel it is their time. But as she does, she learns that the true future of her species may be to combine or hybridize with these demons. Here to talk more about this story with me is Aisha Matthews, managing editor of the Journal of Science Fiction and Director of Literary Programming for the Museum.

of science fiction's Escape Velocity Conference. Hey, Ayesha, it's been a minute. Hi, Christy. Good to be back. So, Ayesha, we have a story here about encountering aliens, humans establishing outposts in space, and what it means to adapt to loss. What do you make of this story? What did you like? So as a Butler scholar, I immediately kind of picked up on the Butlerian influences.

Octavia Butler. Particularly reminiscent of the Owen Collie and her, and her. genesis series. For me, at least personally, I really was interested in the look at symbiosis and hybridity, which I think are some of Octavia Butler's most interesting and kind of compelling tropes that she introduces in her work. And I think this story also, in many other ways of interest, kind of aligns with the stories we've discussed so far in terms of there's kind of that element of the ghost story memory of the cultural past and the legacy of the past. And so all of those things, I think, are kind of coalescing for me in this story in a less conventional

cultural futurism, one that I'm very excited to talk a little further about. Yeah. And just as sort of a like going back into how it feels like the other stories, it's also just kind of creepy. Like, I really love the imagery. It's very dark. There's a lot of space and symbolization. about outer space and a lot of, you know, we get to these very kind of eldritch fungal structures too. Like it's another story that feels really perfect for Halloween season slash spooky season. Definitely. So I wanted to bring in author Indra Das, who is the author of this story. He is the author of many short stories as well as the book The Devowers, which is about werewolves in India. And he joins us from Kolkata. Welcome, Indra. Hi, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Yeah, thanks for joining us. And, Indra, the first question I have for you, you just as the author of this story that we're talking about is what inspired it. Where did it come from for you? There's a very specific place that came from, and that's a drawing that I did quite a while before I wrote the story. It was just a portrait of an androgynous figure with kind of these dark obsidian horns or antlers growing out of their head. So I just kind of, for whatever reason, I remembered that image that I had drawn, and I kind of started with that. I usually do that. I don't plan my stories very much. It usually starts from a particular idea or image, and then I just kind of explore once I can create a scene.

So I wrote about an observer watching a figure like the one that I had drawn, and eventually it kind of expanded, and I, came to discover what this figure was and, you know, and the world grew from there. And that figure was the demon that we're trying to picture. We're supposed to sort of picture when we see this alien, quote unquote. Yeah. At first I was thinking of the demon as a specific figure that didn't come from hybridization, that it was just going to be a humanoid species with horns. And so it might have been a fantasy even, but then I found this more interesting.

to kind of have them be these revenants almost. One of the things I really love about this story is that we see the colonists, the humans, adapting to the alien, to the other. In some stories we have about humans colonizing other planets, there's often this point in the story where there's mass violence or the threat of mass violence, a you versus me situation.

And this one, it's like the humans encountered this alien species and pretty much immediately said, okay, we're just going to live with this being part of the planet we're on. And they've incorporated the alien into their culture in a lot of ways, as opposed to trying to impose. Was that a deliberate choice you were making, Indra, in flipping the script again? Absolutely. Yeah, it was definitely a deliberate choice, because the story is very much a response to the idea of space colonization,

which is, of course, inherently weighed down by the real world notion of colonialism, which has done absolutely nothing good for the world. So a lot of first contact stories are from that viewpoint of trying to kind of conflict, of settling somewhere and dominating the land. And I very specifically wanted this story not to be like that, even though the alien life form is dangerous and it can kill humans. But, you know, that's the same as so many life forms on our planet. So I wanted to explore what it might be like to be a human settlement

that isn't acting in a colonial fashion and is trying to live in similar ways to indigenous tribes, you know, trying to live with an ecosystem and in balance with it, even though it's enormously difficult because they're outside as they don't belong in this ecosystem. But because of fantasy and science fiction, we can make them belong in a different way, whereas the ecosystem absorbs them. One thing I found really interesting in that vein, one of the few kind of directly colonial ideas that I saw was kind of at the very beginning talking about the history of how the demons came to be. And I think the quote is, this child knew no fear. So they ventured out into this strange city drunk on freedom on finding their own world to name and gift with the blessing of human witness. And so to me, it reminded me of kind of the Christian Genesis story in many ways, but tied to the later idea that many other planets might consider this place a hellscape because it has these demons.

So it almost seems like the Western hubris of the idea of going out and naming and conquers. is what created this demon race or helped them manifest physically in the world anyway. You know, they are portrayed as the foil as evil. And yet, at the same time, these humans are interested in continuing to live with them. So I think that's like an interesting unresolved tension there. I want to just jump in before you answer that, because I also really love that opening story. And there was another line in there that sort of plays to that, which is you cannot be good in a world that has seen no evil. And there is this back and forth about morality and what it means to be

good and human or deserving of personhood, I guess. Yeah, it's a theme I'm very interested in how humans formulate morality in relation to their animal existence and the fact that violence is a part of nature, but how human beings create good and evil by doing things that no other animals do and also being aware of what they're doing in a way that no other animal, as far as we know, is aware of. And the fact that we're capable of such atrocity, but also so concerned with whether or not we are good. I think that's one of the essential reasons that we even have storytelling. You know, it's to constantly try and reckon with what we are and, you know, how we differ from other animals.

These demons are really representations of that kind of fear of our own violence, of our own mortality. So yeah, very much a theme that I love exploring. To your point about the kind of technology and rejecting the more violent means of extracting resources and participating in life kind of brought me back to the techno-spiritualist theme of a lot of these stories and new sons. And it was interesting to me, like, clearly these humans used to procreate through gestation pods, through some kind of artificial insemination or artificial, you know, ex-vivo womb, so to speak.

And then they have these machines that can print meat. But then at the same time, you know, the ship is considered their dragon spirit. So I wondered kind of to what extent the tension between these highly advanced technologies that we obviously don't. have and these human cosmologies of older imaginings of things like having a, you know, a clan spirit and things like that, kind of how that tension is meant to resolve with this environmental concern. Yeah, I love folklore and mythology and all its forms, so I love imagining how advanced societies, what their mythology will look like. And particularly in this story, as you you mentioned, the folklore kind of harkens back to something older.

And I felt that was appropriate because this is a small settlement in an incredibly dangerous wilderness. So it reminded me of exploring the wild when you have nothing, even though they do have very advanced technologies. They're encroached on all sides by life that they don't truly understand and that can kill them very easily. So I assume that that would make them revert to this kind of folkloric mythology. And I think mythology is something we will always be drawn back to when. I mean, we're at a very kind of strange, advanced but deeply kind of broken stage in human history where we have a lot of advanced technology, but we simply do not seem to have the means to fix what we've done. to our planet and to deal with it.

But to come back to mythology. I mean, you know, even, and every time we will always come back to folklore mythology, even on this kind of hypercapitalized framework of pop culture, of global pop culture, you know, we have superhero movies. They're a modern mythology. We have, you were talking about the dragon spirit. We have people constantly trying to kind of create an analog to that kind of thing where they will say they have a petronus or they will use the racist spirit animal thing.

And regardless, the fact is that we are always drawn to mythology because it is the original fantastical fiction. Just a reminder that this is Science Friday, and I'm Christy Taylor, talking to author Indra Das and Journal of Science Fiction Managing Editor Aisha Matthews about encountering aliens on another world. Harking back to how pop culture is modern mythology, which I really love that, I really love that phrasing, if mythology is something that we learn and take lessons from, are there things you hope people especially harken onto in reading your particular work, Indra? I mean, I wouldn't want to be too prescriptive when it comes to the way people read my work. I mean, obviously I would

hope that they wouldn't come away with hatred. That's the main thing, you know, like that. That is the essential thing. I mean, I hope people see the stories as a means to think about mortality and the way people relate to each other and the way humanity exists in its own context and the way we should be emphasizing how we can, as you mentioned, Aisha, changes a massive, massive part of all my stories. And I think that is essentially what I want people to come away with, that we have to change, that we absolutely have to break our systems down and rebuild them if we are to get anywhere, if we're to survive ourselves.

I think I have one last question, which has nothing to do with any of this, but is just the aliens that we're dealing with here are a colonial lifeform. They are fungus-like. I personally love fungal life forms as a sort of feature of science fiction. What drove you to pick fungus as, you know, the kingdom from which, you know, this alien lifeform sprang? I'm not sure when it took that direction. I don't think it was very conscious, but I have always been aware of the cordyceps fungus, which kind of takes over life forms and they grow these antlers.

So that was definitely an influence in terms of the aesthetics of this life form. And then the exomycelial filaments and fibers, that just came to me when I was thinking about these structures and it felt like a cool way to bring in this hag hair element of this structure that is part of their folklore now. So it was just a cool visual. And then spores are, of course, very convenient. as a science-fictional storytelling device because that way you can reach across distances

and have life forms affect other life forms. But yeah, fungi are very cool. And they're also kind of thematically appropriate for this story because they thrive on death and decay. And, you know, it is a story about death. One last thing I wanted to say, I feel like I would be remiss not to mention the beauty of your prose. There were so many times where I would like, I want to be. on this like embroidered on a throw pillow in my living room, the way you talk about the universe and the darkness of the universe.

And it's seen, there's a beauty to it that is often, I think, our human fear of death and of the unknown and the vastness of space is what we're used to hearing in the language. So even in the midst of these terrifying things, to hear it described so beautifully. And as a clear part of the human continuum kind of puts humanity into a much larger spectrum of existence in a way that I think a lot of science fiction's tried to do, but to varying levels of success. So I really enjoyed this story. Thank you. Seconded.

Thanks. Well, I think on that note, we are out of time. Thank you both. Aisha Matthews is managing editor of the Journal of Science Fiction and Director of Literary Programming for the Museum of Science Fictions, Escape Velocity Conference. And Indra Das is a speculative fiction author of many short stories and the novel The Devourers. Thank you. Thanks, Christy. Thank you again for having me. It was lovely to chat. You can go to our website to read an excerpt of the shadow we cast through time, as well as access our online community, weekly discussion questions, and our newsletter. And join us on Monday for a Zoom for a live conversation with New Suns editor Nisi Shawl. We're going to talk about what science fiction has to do with now and dig deeper into some of the

questions you may have had well reading. All that information, is on our website, Science Friday.com slash book club. For Science Friday, I'm Christy Taylor. Thanks, Christy. Oh, and don't forget that live Zoom taping with New Suns editor, Nisi Shaw,

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