9/17/2023 0 Comments Hadestown cast![]() ![]() ![]() Is that also another message of the show? That we have to find other places to live?Ī: I think some people think that. ![]() Q: The climate crisis is here and life on Earth will increasingly become more difficult. And if the people around you are saying, “This is a good thing, this will help build the ‘Star Trek’ universe,” you’re not necessarily asking a lot of questions like: Doesn’t that launchpad destroy an ecosystem in Texas (as happened after a recent SpaceX launch)? It’s complicated, and the people around you are shaping what you think. Because if we want to be any different in space, it means that we have to be different here on Earth. Which is why last year, before I attended that conference about the space economy, I said I wanted to talk about what it would mean to take Black feminism into space. And one of the points that many of us have been making is that we take our problems with us when we go to space. ![]() So I think part of the propaganda is that going to space is going to solve our problems. But for a lot of other people, they interpret it as: Going to space led to technology that made the world better. But I think everybody in the “Star Trek” family, and I would include myself, we don’t think trying to build the “Star Trek” future is the problem.įor me, it’s important that “Star Trek” is a socialist utopia. Because the way that they always talk about it is: This is how we’re going to bring “Star Trek” into reality.Īt the Star Trek Convention, William Shatner was talking about the grief he felt about global warming and human relations on the planet. I think the way that these things are pitched to actors - who genuinely have this valuable space ambassador social capital - is: You are doing something good for humanity. And I’m very attentive to the fact that the algorithm knows I’m a “Star Trek” fan, so that’s why they put Robert Picardo (who played the doctor hologram on “Star Trek: Voyager”) in those advertisements and he’s talking about how great it is that space commercialization is happening. Why he would host something like this, that gamifies the idea of life on Mars?Ī: So, the kind of targeted advertising I get on social media is for the Planetary Society. And that was true before he went to the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere, which is what I would call that Blue Origin flight.īut having seen him on stage afterward at the Star Trek Convention, he seemed genuinely changed by that experience. I think people accept that Shatner is a genuine spokesperson for the industry at this point. What’s your take on Shatner’s involvement? Last year, after being aboard Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space flight, he very famously said : “My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration instead, it felt like a funeral.”Ī: I think Shatner is understood to be a bona fide space expert, not in the technical sense, but in terms of his relationship to the cultural significance of space and even the industrial significance of going to space. Q: And it waves away any potential ethical questions about these real-world programs. And all these reality shows are just soap operas. But I grew up, like many grandchildren of Caribbeans, watching soap operas with my grandmother. So I think that part of my brain goes to work when I’m watching these shows. But I also have a secondary expertise in the social studies of science (Prescod-Weinstein is the author of the non-fiction book “The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred”). I had to pause and think about it, because I’m part of this collective called Particles for Justice and I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever brought it up during any of our hangouts.Īcademically, I am a particle physicist, I am a cosmologist, I do astrophysics. Q: Your expertise is in particle physics and astrophysics, so I’m wondering if you talk about reality TV with your science colleagues?Ī: I’m not sure I’ve ever tried to talk to any physicists about reality TV (laughs). I think on some level, there’s always a piece of me that’s chasing that experience, even though I know it’s no longer possible because people on these shows are so self-aware now. Q: What is it about reality TV that you find so compelling?Ī: I’m going to go way back and say I was 10 when I watched the first season of “The Real World” put people together in a home and filmed them - and it was people who had some kind of genuine ambition for their lives that wasn’t about being famous for being filmed all the time. Prescod-Weinstein and I talked further about the show’s life-in-space angle. I think “Stars on Mars” is too dull to be either informative or entertaining, but I’m curious about what it’s actually doing when we scratch beneath the surface. The "celebronauts” of "Stars on Mars," from left: Marshawn Lynch, Ronda Rousey, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Tom Schwartz, Richard Sherman, Ariel Winter and Lance Armstrong. ![]()
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