What is creativity? (featuring Dr. Moiya McTier)

Daniel and Kelly interview Dr. Moiya McTier about how we define and measure creativity, and the impacts of the modern world on creative pursuits. Check out her new book, Mothers of Invention. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• 0:00Daniel Whiteson?

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• 5:59Kelly Weinersmith?

  On today's show, we're interviewing Dr. Moya McTier about her latest book, Mothers of Invention. We're going to talk about how one defines creativity, how science studies creativity, and more. And frankly, I'm finding the pressure of creating a creative introduction to an episode about creativity overwhelming, so let's just move on to the main episode. Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Creative Universe.

• 6:35Daniel Whiteson?

  Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist who thinks about aliens, and I have no idea where my ideas come from.

• 6:44Kelly Weinersmith?

  Hi, I'm Kelly Weiner-Smith. I study parasites and space, and when I am struggling to be creative, I read more. And that is my secret to getting the creativity juice back.

• 6:56Daniel Whiteson?

  Hmm, for me, it's pacing.

• 6:58Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh.

• 6:59Daniel Whiteson?

  I get off my computer, I stop reading, and I just walk either the hallways here, or do a loop around campus, and inevitably, my brain bumps into something, and I'm like, ooh, I gotta write that down. That's a good idea.

• 7:11Kelly Weinersmith?

  And then you see Daniel sprinting across campus to get back to his computer. I go on goat walks too sometimes, and that helps also.

• 7:17Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah, you think the goats are an important part of your creativity?

• 7:20Kelly Weinersmith?

  You know, I was listening to this great podcast by Russ Roberts called Econ Talk, and he had an expert on who studies creativity, and for the life of me, I can't remember their name, but he was saying that the trick is to do something that does not involve the thing you're doing at all.

• 7:35Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah.

• 7:36Kelly Weinersmith?

  Like, completely distract yourself, but the back, like, part of your mind is still working the problem while you're distracting yourself with something else.

• 7:44Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah.

• 7:45Kelly Weinersmith?

  And so, I do feel like when I come back after a walk with the goats, I'm paying attention to how silly they are, and how cute my goats are, and please stop eating that, my hair is not a snack, get off my back. And like, all that stuff distracts me, and when I come back, I feel like I'm like, ready to tackle the problem again.

• 8:00Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah. It's mysterious, it's amazing, and as far as I've experienced, it's still not automatable. Every few months, I do the experiment where I give the latest chatbot, like, here's my last five papers. Think about my approach to physics. Come up with an idea for another project. And not once have they generated anything useful, or interesting, or at all creative. It's all derivative nonsense. So far, we'll see if that changes.

• 8:29Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, almost once a month, Zach and I will ask the various AI programs, like, okay, create a Saturday morning breakfast cereal comic.

• 8:37Daniel Whiteson?

  Oh, no.

• 8:38Kelly Weinersmith?

  And show us what you come up with. And for a while, they were just like, it was just absolute gibberish, and no, the panels didn't connect to each other in any clear way. It was just like, what is going on? But it's been getting better over time. And now, every once in a while, it will get something where you're like, I get, I understand the joke you were trying to make.

• 8:55Daniel Whiteson?

  Okay.

• 8:56Kelly Weinersmith?

  And you had the right characters saying the right things. You didn't like jumble the characters. But I would still say that, you know, Zach is much funnier than Claude. So, I'm still Team Zach. But that might change.

• 9:08Daniel Whiteson?

  Well, this sounds like a good topic for an MSNBC comic.

• 9:11Kelly Weinersmith?

  Sure.

• 9:12Daniel Whiteson?

  A meta-comic about the comic.

• 9:15Kelly Weinersmith?

  I do feel like science is creative in a way that AI hasn't quite captured yet. And I think one of the things I miss about when I used to do science much more regularly was designing experiments. Like, I think my favorite experiment to design with Scott Egan, who we had on the show to talk about what is a species, was when we were essentially trying to figure out, like, what would it be like to be a wasp living inside of a stem? And how do we test how the manipulation that we were studying, like, how it would benefit it? And so like, that exercise of what is the wasp experiencing? And what would the wasp's life be like? And how can we manipulate what the wasp experiences to try to actually get a handle on the answers to our questions? Like, I don't know, that

• 10:00Kelly Weinersmith?

  was, that was fun. And I thought we came up with creative ways to test different hypotheses that we had to see which one was correct. And I don't know, that was like, I'm not a good painter. When I try knitting, I look angry. And but like, this kind of creativity, I really enjoy.

• 10:18Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah, I thought a little bit about what creativity means in science. And for me, part of it is coming up with a new idea that's exciting. Like, I know I've succeeded when I have a new project that when you mention it to people, they're like, oh, wow, that's cool. I wonder the answer to that. You know, something that excites the curiosity in the audience, in the customers. And, you know, sometimes I think of science as a creative art. Sometimes I think of it like entrepreneurial, you know, you're like running a little business. You know, you have a limited set of resources and you need to produce, in this case, a product, which is science that people are excited about and want to consume. And you

• 11:02Daniel Whiteson?

  can't just like, be totally blue sky about it. You got to be practical, like, what tools do we actually have? What problems can we solve in a reasonable amount of time? It's such a funny blend of like creativity and entrepreneurialness. And then just, you know, like, hard work.

• 11:17Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's one of the nice things about science, I think, is that there's so many different, like, it's so multifaceted. And you got to kind of juggle all of those things at once. And it's hard, but then it's almost, it's like a puzzle. If you can figure out the way to like, answer an interesting question on the budget you have, while training five new graduate students so that they're learning something too. It's like, woo. Like, at the end, it feels like there should be, you know, confetti coming from the ceiling, like, you did the thing. But of course, that's not, that's not how it works.

• 11:42Daniel Whiteson?

  And the amazing part is that we don't get trained in most of those skills at all, right? Managing budgets, mentorship, teaching, all of this stuff. Anyway, so you got to be creative on the fly. But neither you nor I are an expert in the topic of creativity. So Kelly, you invited somebody on the show who is?

• 12:00Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh, my gosh, she's amazing. So today, we have Moya McTiern. She wrote a whole book about creativity, how it's changed over time. This concept of like, the lone geniuses is something she dug into also. We didn't get to talk about that during the episode, but that's another cool thing that she deals with in the book. And, you know, she talks about the current moment and how things like the internet and social media and AI are impacting creativity. And what, if anything, we need to do about that. And so, let's stop hearing me talk about Moya's book, and let's go ahead and bring her on the show.

• 12:29Daniel Whiteson?

  Yay.

• 12:29Kelly Weinersmith?

  Dr. Moya McTiern grew up in a cabin in the woods with no running water, no TV, and no heating. She went on to become the first Harvard graduate to double major in astrophysics and mythology, and the first black woman to graduate from Columbia University's astronomy PhD program. She's a podcast host, does creative consulting, writes sci fi, and has published two pop sci books, the most recent of which, Mothers of Invention, we will be talking about today. Welcome to the show, Moya. We're so excited to have you. Thanks, Kelly. Thanks, Danielle. It's so nice to be here. How you doing? Awesome.

• 13:03Daniel Whiteson?

  I'm really intrigued by your background. I had a good friend in college who studied physics and classics. And it was, I think, because he was torn between the two topics. Is that what happened for you? Or did you feel like they come from the same core curiosity?

• 13:18Kelly Weinersmith?

  No, that's exactly what happened to me. I'm very stubborn and very bad at making decisions. So when I fell in love with both of these departments, I refused to let either of them go. And then they let me study both of them. It actually wasn't on the pre-approved list of double majors. But I told them I could write a science fiction novel that was set on a real exoplanet that I studied. And they were like, oh, yeah, that sounds interesting. Go do that. I love that they embraced that, though. And they weren't like, no, no, that breaks the rules. Because I feel like sometimes there are very silly rules that will not get broken, you know, for any reason. And so, yay. Yeah, especially at these old places. But I think it worked to my advantage that the astro and mythology departments were two of the smallest departments at the school. So they just couldn't afford to lose bodies.

• 14:04Kelly Weinersmith?

  I guess that's good. Yeah.

• 14:06Daniel Whiteson?

  And I bet both of those trainings are useful when it comes to the most important thing in science, which is naming stuff, right?

• 14:13Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yes.

• 14:14Daniel Whiteson?

  Understanding mythology in context, right? And then like, understanding the science that's going on out there. Like, if you had been in charge, would we have a better categorization of stuff in the solar system? Not all this crazy, like planets and dwarf planets and centaurs and insanity?

• 14:28Kelly Weinersmith?

  No, we'd still have all of that stuff. We might even have weirder stuff if I was in charge. Wait, what about, isn't it Neptune or Jupiter? The rings are called like, A, B, C, D, and E, or something like that? Like, very uncreative? Am I misremembering? Saturn's rings are, are lettered, and they are not in alphabetical order from the center, if I recall correctly. It's really frustrating.

• 14:52Daniel Whiteson?

  It's like the buildings at MIT. Let's give them numbers, but then not have that be useful.

• 14:59Kelly Weinersmith?

  All right. Well, let's focus. So we've gotten to some examples where there wasn't a lot of creativity, the naming of the rings, for example. But so, you wrote this amazing book about creativity. So how do you personally define creativity? Oh, I am personally kind of agnostic. I like people to use their own idea of what creativity can be. But broadly speaking, and scientifically speaking, when you're testing this, according to psychologists, creativity is the ability to divergently think, and to come up with novel and useful ideas. And that's a modern definition. That is not

• 15:40Kelly Weinersmith?

  what people throughout history have considered creativity, or that's not the bounds of art that people have always agreed on. But I think that's useful. Divergent thinking is vague enough that we can all understand it without being too boxed in.

• 15:53Daniel Whiteson?

  Wow, it's intriguing that you added useful ideas. So for example, somebody who just like, comes up with clever jokes that end up in web comics online. Would that be, you know, not creative?

• 16:05Kelly Weinersmith?

  Is that a burn there? No, I think that useful can, you know, be a lot of different things. So there are definitely people who can read your web comics and get joy from those. And that is useful. I'm not talking about, like, completely practical, hard usefulness, hard utility. Yeah. So I was trying to figure out, like, what is an example of something that isn't creative? And I think that I, you know, first of all, I would feel bad telling someone that they are not creative in their work. And so I think that I tend to have a particularly expansive definition of creativity, because I don't want to like, exclude anyone. And so I was thinking, you know, like, my first job, when I was 16, was I was a bagger at

• 16:49Kelly Weinersmith?

  Kroger's in Perrysburg, Ohio. And I feel like I was thinking of creative ways to like, efficiently do my job in different ways than other people. And so I guess I feel like I can almost imagine any job being creative, if you are like, coming at it creatively. But what do you think? Are there jobs that are not creative? Hmm. I don't know if I could think of any task that I would say is inherently not creative. But you can do any task in a not creative way. You can be derivative. You can just be rote. And you can be formulaic. So I think that I've read books before where I was like, this plot doesn't feel like it's doing anything new. It doesn't feel like

• 17:32Kelly Weinersmith?

  the author was trying to experiment or have fun with this. They were just following a formula. And to me, that's not creative.

• 17:40Daniel Whiteson?

  I think, Kelly, your example is a good one, because there's an opportunity there for you to make decisions, right? And you could, for example, like, I don't like this guy. I'm going to put his ice cream next to his, you know, rotisserie chicken or whatever. But my first job was at McDonald's. And one of the things that I found so mind numbing about it was that there was absolutely no room for decision making at all. Like, you press the fryer button, and then it dings at you, and you take the fries out. And I felt like completely trapped by the fact that I was essentially just like a robot following instructions. And I know it's designed that way. So you get your fries exactly the same way, no matter who's pressing the button. But it was frustrating to me precisely because there's absolutely no room there for personality.

• 18:22Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. And part of divergent thinking is, is the choices you have to make. So if the more choices that are removed from a situation, the less opportunity for creativity there will be. So you mentioned that the definition of creativity has changed over time. Can you give us some examples of how people used to sort of perceive what counted as creativity or not? Would love to. The ancient Greeks only considered poetry a creative art form.

• 18:46Daniel Whiteson?

  What?

• 18:47Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yes. What about all of their amazing statues and stuff? I know. I know. To them, those were considered crafts. They were techni. And crafts like sculpting, painting, cooking, architecture, they were done according to rules that existed before. So you weren't creating anything from scratch. You were just discovering something that already existed. And poetry was special. It had its own word, poiesis, meant to make. And the idea was that poets are actually kind of synthesizing something new that hasn't existed before. Although that changed, the ancient Romans then added that visual arts can be creative. And then, in the medieval Christian

• 19:30Kelly Weinersmith?

  period, we kind of regressed to saying, actually, nothing a human makes can be creative, because the only being who can create is God.

• 19:38Daniel Whiteson?

  Oh, wow.

• 19:39Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay. Yes. And then in the Enlightenment period, people start to insert themselves into creativity again.

• 19:46Daniel Whiteson?

  So the ancient Greeks might have said web comics are the only people being creative today.

• 19:51Kelly Weinersmith?

  If your comics are poetic, yes. But the drawings wouldn't have been considered creative.

• 19:59Daniel Whiteson?

  All right, let's, let's not make this too specific. Yeah.

• 20:01Kelly Weinersmith?

  We should stop picking on Zach. Yeah, because Zach, Zach isn't here.

• 20:05Daniel Whiteson?

  I never mentioned him. I don't know what you're talking about. But on your comment, like, does that mean that they didn't think philosophy was creative? Like, exploring the universe and having ideas that was like a craft?

• 20:16Kelly Weinersmith?

  That was a craft. That was, you were discovering truths about the universe, or truths were being whispered into your ear. And this is- Really, the the whole inspiration, the core of my latest book, Mothers of Invention. Thousands of years ago, the idea of a genius was external to the person. It was a guide, a tutelary spirit, if you will. And they whispered inspiration into your ear. They breathed it in. That's why inspiration has the root inspire, to breathe in. What?

• 20:49Daniel Whiteson?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 20:49Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yes. And then, much later.

• 20:52Daniel Whiteson?

  That's so obvious now that I think about it.

• 20:54Kelly Weinersmith?

  We started saying, instead of that person has a genius, we said, that person is a genius. So we absorbed the the genius or the muse into ourself. Huh.

• 21:05Daniel Whiteson?

  Why do you think that historically, we saw it so differently? Do you think people imagined that all their good creative ideas came externally? Because they couldn't account for where they came from?

• 21:14Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, I think they were still trying to figure it out. There it was a more mystical time back then. A lot of explanations for the natural world were magical. We explained eclipses and weather patterns and and the seasons with God. So why not also explain what's going on in our brains with mystical beings as well?

• 21:36Daniel Whiteson?

  Well, then, zooming forward to modern times, do we have any idea where ideas come from? You know, like, I think a lot of people struggle with this. Like, sometimes you sit down, you're like, OK, time for me to be creative. And, you know, either it happens or it doesn't.

• 21:49Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah.

• 21:50Daniel Whiteson?

  So I'd love to blame somebody else for my dull periods. Do we have any understanding with modern science about how creativity happens?

• 21:58Kelly Weinersmith?

  A little bit. We have a better understanding than Plato did, for sure. We have done some experiments. My favorite was actually done twice, once in 2008, and then again in the 2020s, I think, 2025. Both of these tests were done with jazz musicians, putting them inside FMRI machines and having them play music from memory, music from from paper and music improvised.

• 22:24Daniel Whiteson?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 22:25Kelly Weinersmith?

  And seeing what parts of their brain lit up during each of those activities. And in 2008, they found that there were some parts, like the prefrontal cortex, that are lighting up when you're being creative, when you're improvising, which is like the most creative you can be as as a jazz musician, for sure. But in the 2020s, when they did this same study again, they were emphasizing networks of the brain more than individual parts of the brain. I guess the field had advanced in those intervening years. And what we've found in the more recent study was that three networks in the brain are very active when the jazz musicians were improvising. One was the default mode network, which made sense to a lot of people.

• 23:10Kelly Weinersmith?

  The default mode network is what some people describe as like your back burner thinking. It's parts of the brain that are working when you're not paying attention to that particular thing. Then the salience network was also lighting up when the musicians were improvising, which is the exact opposite of the default mode network. It's the parts of your brain that are paying attention to what's in front of you right now. What is salient to your focus? And then the third network was the executive network, like decision making about what you should do based on the stimuli you're receiving. And people, I think, were shocked a little bit that those three modes of the brain were working at once, because it doesn't seem like they should be able to.

• 23:55Kelly Weinersmith?

  But really, that is a long winded way of saying, we know a little bit more, but just enough to have more questions. Science. Science. Yeah. Yeah, there are things that we've found that can help you be more creative, that can kickstart some creative thinking and divergent processes. My favorite is almost falling asleep.

• 24:17Daniel Whiteson?

  What?

• 24:17Kelly Weinersmith?

  Go on. Apparently, right before you enter a deeper sleep, you're in a state called a hypnagogic state. OK. Where I don't know how it works, but studies have shown that when you wake people up right before they completely fall asleep and give them a creative task after that, they will do better on that creative task. And Salvador Dali, who was a complicated person, but a very creative artist, he used to start taking a nap with a nail or something metallic in his hand, so that when he drifted off, it would fall and make a noise. And he would be awoken from that hypnagogic state, and then he could come up with his ideas.

• 24:57Daniel Whiteson?

  That explains all of his paintings well.

• 25:00Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah. I think all of my creative work would be angry if.

• 25:05Kelly Weinersmith?

  Well, no, because I don't like being woken up. If I was like, oh, I just fell asleep and then I woke myself up again. I'd be like, here's another angry poem about how the world is unfair. But is there? Is there a link between creativity and intelligence? Or are these totally different things? There's kind of a link, but they are distinct. We have found that people with high creativity scores can have low IQ scores and vice versa. We've also seen on mass that our IQ scores as a society are increasing. This is called the Flynn effect, where every generation seems to be doing better on IQ tests than the generation before.

• 25:48Kelly Weinersmith?

  At the same time, our scores on creativity tests are decreasing. Oh. Steadily. Yeah. How do you measure that?

• 25:56Daniel Whiteson?

  Yes.

• 25:57Kelly Weinersmith?

  The creativity part? Yeah. I'm so glad you asked. I love thinking about creativity tests. Right now, the gold standard for creativity tests is really a barrage of different tests that are called the the Torrance tests, named for, I think his name is Paul Ellis Torrance. He was a psychology researcher in the 60s and 70s. And some of these tests are written, some of these tests are verbal. You might have to finish a story, like, what happened when the cow jumped over the moon? Or you might have to answer a weird hypothetical, like, if humans had a third arm, where would it be? How would we use it? Or you might have to do some drawings.

• 26:41Kelly Weinersmith?

  So one of the common tests is that you get a bunch of boxes that all have the same incomplete shape in it, and you have to complete that shape in as many ways as possible in in some kind of time limit. And all of these tests are meant to see how quickly can you come up with an idea that is statistically different from an idea that an average person would come up with in that scenario?

• 27:06Daniel Whiteson?

  I get that all these tests are a way to quantify something, which is very, very fuzzy.

• 27:12Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah.

• 27:13Daniel Whiteson?

  And I could be convinced that they're somehow correlated with something like creativity. But I always find it frustrating that we use that to measure and like define creativity the same way like the IQ test is testing something, but it's not really intelligence, right? There's cultural factors, et cetera. So what are we really measuring with these tests?

• 27:33Kelly Weinersmith?

  That's a great question. Yeah. In the Torrance test, I like that it's so many different types of tests that you can get a more holistic view. But really, you know, what if a person isn't comfortable in that testing environment? What if a person doesn't have that cultural knowledge of something in that test? One of the other tests that they give is something called an alternative uses test, where you would ask, how many ways could a person use a brick? That was the original format of the test. But eventually, Torrance realized that he was giving this test to children, and they didn't have that much experience with bricks. So he changed it to a tin can.

• 28:13Kelly Weinersmith?

  So there really is a lot of, like, you have to be aware of the cultural knowledge that people will have. There are other tests that are more language based, but none of these tests are perfect.

• 28:26Daniel Whiteson?

  Like, if you're testing Kelly, you'd have to know that you have to get her angry to be creative, right?

• 28:32Kelly Weinersmith?

  Well, I was gonna say, my concern with that creativity test is that, like, I don't do anything well on the fly. And so like, I I like to imagine that I write creatively, but it takes me a long time to get that chapter done. And like, if I'm on the spot, I don't know that you'd be measuring my creativity in the most, I don't know, effective or efficient way, but.

• 28:51Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah, it's like if somebody said, OK, let's measure your funniness, be funny.

• 28:55Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah.

• 28:55Daniel Whiteson?

  You'd be like, oh.

• 28:56Kelly Weinersmith?

  So true. I agree with you. I don't do well with time tests either. I think they try to get around that by having the test take a long time. So one of the big landmark creativity studies happened in the late 50s. And it was something like.

• 29:13Speaker 06

  Over 100 architects gathered on the UC Berkeley campus to get this barrage of psych tests done. And the fact that they were there for the whole weekend meant that they might not have felt that same time pressure. Also meant that you could do multiple tests to get a kind of average score for a person.

• 29:32Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay.

• 29:32Speaker 06

  Cool.

• 29:33Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah. So creativity is fuzzy, but it's also deeply human. What was it about this topic that made you decide, I want to dig into this?

• 29:42Speaker 06

  I have spent almost my entire life around creative people. My mom's a writer, and some of my favorite friends are comedians, musicians. And I have seen them struggle lately. I have struggled as a creative writer and as a person trying to sell comedy shows. And I wanted to dig to the bottom of that. I had seen that we are in the era of reboots. I think I started noticing that in like 2018, 2019, and it really annoyed me. But once I realized that it's hard to find good art and hard to make good art, I had to write something about it.

• 30:21Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah.

• 30:22Kelly Weinersmith?

  I would love to dig into that more. So let's take a break. And when we get back, we will talk more about how the internet is impacting creativity.

• 30:39Speaker 06

  Hey, I'm Niall Rogers, producer, songwriter, guitarist, and co-founder of the group Chic. A great song has a way of defining a moment, a moment of joy, heartbreak, or anything in between. This fall, I'll be driving across the country, dropping in on some of the coolest, most fascinating artists working today. We'll go deep into their lives and careers and hear what it was like before the moment that made them. From hitmakers like Miguel. That last year, finishing that record was the hardest experience of my life, regardless of how everyone else buys into this. I believe in this, and I'm gonna push.

• 31:24Speaker 06

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• 32:07Speaker 06

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• 32:59Speaker 05

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• 34:08Speaker 04

  She'd throw things, wander, and started hoarding. Mom's Alzheimer's was already so hard. But then we found out she had agitation that may happen with dementia due to Alzheimer's disease. And that was a different kind of difficult. So we asked her doctor for more help.

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  I'm glad I asked for help.

• 35:01Speaker 06

  Ask your loved one's doctor about Rexulti.

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• 36:16Kelly Weinersmith?

  And we're back. And so, Moya, you were saying that you've noticed that we're in the era of reboots, and that, like, you know, being a person who's online, creativity is maybe changing over time. Could you dig in a little bit more and talk about what you think is causing that change?

• 36:33Speaker 06

  There's so much, a whole book's worth. Yes. So I argue in the book that we have entered this new phase of human imagination that I call the age of celebrity. And this is different from every phase of human imagination we've experienced before, according to this Irish philosopher of imagination named Richard Kearney. In this age of celebrity, the point of art is no longer primarily to express something, but to redirect attention back to the creator so that the creator can make more stuff and make their fame even brighter.

• 37:10Speaker 06

  That leads to the era of reboots. The majority of movies and TV shows made today are original IP, but the majority of the popular movies and TV shows made today, like an overwhelming, like 75%, those are based on pre-existing intellectual property. That's a problem.

• 37:30Daniel Whiteson?

  Wow.

• 37:30Speaker 06

  We see the same faces in media over and over again. I just saw The Odyssey last week, and I enjoyed it, but it did take me out of the experience to see Matt Damon or Anne Hathaway, because I know that they are Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway. But the studios want those big names because that's who's going to bring the audience. It's not about the art anymore. It's about whose name is on the billing.

• 37:55Daniel Whiteson?

  And spell it out for us. Why is it a problem that we are recycling ideas and names and faces?

• 38:02Speaker 06

  It's less exciting. It's not making us work our creative muscles anymore. And it's leaving an entire swath of independent artists undiscovered. There used to be much more of a practice of apprenticeship and of bringing people up the ladder behind you when you made it in media. There were pipelines for getting undiscovered comedians their own TV shows. They would work the comedy club circuit, and then they would get like a five-minute slot on someone's late-night show. And that would work up to being a correspondent, and then they would eventually get At their own show, that type of pipeline doesn't exist anymore because the studios are incentivized

• 38:43Speaker 06

  to keep pouring money into the famous people and not incentivized to use their resources to bring others up.

• 38:50Kelly Weinersmith?

  Do you have any thoughts on how we got here? Because like, I can imagine, like, having new people on your show is a chance to be able to say like, oh, I'm the one who discovered, you know, this new amazing comedian or something like, why, why are we not doing that anymore? How, yeah, how did we get here?

• 39:06Speaker 06

  Hmm. I will trace it back to Nielsen ratings. It goes farther than that. It's a bigger problem. But right now, I'll trace it back to Nielsen ratings. In 1950, the Nielsen company switched from monitoring radio activity primarily, they continued to do that, but they started monitoring TV activity. So they sent these devices around that could monitor what channels different TVs are tuned into so they can get statistics for what shows are popular. And eventually, those statistics got so good and so granular that you could see when are people turning off a particular show. So you can see like, which actors are really popular,

• 39:46Speaker 06

  which types of tropes are really popular. And eventually, there became an overabundance of data in a creative space so that business people are making decisions based on what the algorithm says people will like, which is kind of the antithesis to creativity, which is where you're experimenting and you're just trying to see what people will like instead of defining it ahead of time.

• 40:12Daniel Whiteson?

  It's the problem with turning something fuzzy into something numerical, right? The metric then becomes the target.

• 40:19Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 40:19Daniel Whiteson?

  But let me take the other side of that argument, just for the other side of the argument. Like, if that's what people want, if that's what people like, and the data says people like Matt Damon, then if I'm a business person, why shouldn't I give people what they want instead of, you know, risking money on five brand new folks who might be terrible?

• 40:37Speaker 06

  Hmm. To that, I would say, what, like 100, 150 years ago, people wanted faster horses. They didn't want cars. People don't necessarily know what they want if they aren't exposed to it. But if you just keep putting the same thing in front of their faces, then all of a sudden, they feel like they need that thing. We need to be exposed to new ideas, new faces, new people, new perspectives. That's part of growing, and that's part of fostering creativity.

• 41:05Daniel Whiteson?

  Wow, that's a great, that's a great analogy. I love that.

• 41:09Kelly Weinersmith?

  So to express the Wiener Smith's sort of grumpy opinion about how things are changing. So, you know, we've alluded to the fact that my husband is a web cartoonist. And when he started doing web cartooning, you know, I remember he would be up till like, 2:00 AM, putting out a new comic every day. And he like, it was, it was brutal. It was really hard. And every day, he like, tries to read a new book, or at least every couple of days to get new ideas. He works really hard at what he does. And when he started, it was pretty easy to connect with an audience. But now, over time, on the different social media platforms that he has to be on now, because people expect to go to like Reddit to see all of their comics in one place, instead of going to Zach's website, all of

• 41:50Kelly Weinersmith?

  these different places now have algorithms that you need to maximize. And then places like Facebook will change their algorithm. And now Zach's like, I can't reach my audience at all anymore. And so, so many of the different people in this community are spending a lot of time optimizing algorithms to make sure that people see their art. And that takes time away from doing the art. And I, I feel like that's also selecting for a different community. Because Zach is talking about like, I don't really enjoy doing comics anymore because I don't want to figure out what the algorithm wants. I want to like, make a joke about population ethics, because that's what I'm reading right now. But maybe that's not what the algorithm's gonna want. And I, yeah, how do you think the algorithms are sort of playing into all of this?

• 42:32Speaker 06

  Oh, majorly, in a similar way to the Nielsen ratings. It's data being used to make something fuzzy into something clear. I like how you put that, Daniel. But the algorithms, they play into the age of celebrity heavily, because they will direct attention to what's already getting attention. It's like gravity out in the universe. Once you have some attention, it's easier for you to get more. And that leads to influencers, that leads to content creators who are, are not, they're not artists. That, I think that that's derivative. When we get people following trends, when we get people doing like the same dances over and over again, when they're not really adding anything new to it.

• 43:15Daniel Whiteson?

  Can we talk about that phrase, content creator? That takes like, all of the joy and the art out of, you know, this process for me. Like, I mean, you're like, extruding content or something like, ugh, it's such a terrible phrase.

• 43:29Speaker 06

  It is. It's like sweat, and you're just sweating it out.

• 43:32Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah, I feel like some device in a factory, and there's just like, a tube of content, you know, being extruded from me. It's like, ugh, anyway.

• 43:40Kelly Weinersmith?

  But I feel like it's an apt comparison, though. Like, or like, it's an apt phrase. Because I mean, I remember when my kids were young, and we started like, watching stuff on YouTube, it would be like, an unboxing video. It's like, you're not doing anything creative, you're just opening a toy. But then, on the other hand, like, you know, trying to see things both ways. And one of the things I really liked about your book is that it made me sit back later and think like, well, what is creativity? And what is the problem with giving, like, my daughter what she, she wanted to see these unboxing videos, even though it made me like, angry. It's like, you should not be enjoying this. Yeah, what is the problem with their, yeah, I can't remember where I was gonna go with this. I've just gotten angry and forgotten.

• 44:21Speaker 06

  Oh, no, did you wake up from a nap?

• 44:25Speaker 06

  Look, I, I am not gonna sit here and say that all of those types of videos, the, the dance trends, the unboxings, the get ready with me's, I don't think it's bad that they exist. Like, we can have things in our society that are entertainment, but aren't creative and aren't artistic. That's fine. The issue is when people get a lot of attention and praise and adoration for doing those things that are not creative. When we start idolizing an individual for like, who they are and not what they do, then we leave ourselves vulnerable to a lot of the terrible things that are happening in society right now,

• 45:08Speaker 06

  where we're letting people do bad things just because we like who they are or what they've maybe done in the past.

• 45:16Daniel Whiteson?

  And I think you're making another argument also, which is that even if what you want to do is appeal to the audience to give Kelly's daughter the most satisfying YouTube experience or whatever, the best way to do that is not to double down on what you think is the risk minimizing IP, but to fund exploration of that artistic space. Because in the end, that will yield transformational new creativity that invents like, whole new forms of art and whole new stories that in the end, will make Kelly's daughter happier.

• 45:47Speaker 06

  Yes. Yeah. And it's not that that stuff doesn't exist. It, it's out there, absolutely. It's just way harder to find. And the algorithms make it even harder.

• 45:56Daniel Whiteson?

  And I think we're facing exactly the same problem in science. You know, it's harder and harder to get like, crazy ideas funded because budgets are shrinking and funding agencies very understandably are like, well, do I give my million dollars to this big group at MIT that's pumping out science reliably? Or do I spread it out to a bunch of crazy groups with insane ideas, one of which might revolutionize science, but you know, they could also just turn into nothing. And so, you know, they get more and more conservative, and we starve out the fringe ideas and the new directions.

• 46:28Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, one of the chapters in the book is about the invention of the internet, which started as ARPANET, which was a collection, a network of research computers at civilian research institutions, so they could share resources. And the idea there, for a while at least, was that they should be able to just research what was interesting to them.

• 46:48Daniel Whiteson?

  Yes.

• 46:48Speaker 06

  And then we will find an application for it later. And that was beautiful.

• 46:53Daniel Whiteson?

  Give the nerds money. Exactly.

• 46:55Speaker 06

  Please.

• 46:57Daniel Whiteson?

  I say with no skin in the game at all.

• 47:02Kelly Weinersmith?

  I feel like there was so much optimism when the internet started, that has kind of gone away lately. Yeah, seems like the internet is no longer a great place for creativity. But how, how do you think AI is going to further impact things?

• 47:16Speaker 06

  Hmm, deep sigh.

• 47:17Daniel Whiteson?

  Ooh, heavy sigh.

• 47:21Speaker 06

  Look, I have spent the last, I think, two or three years working with a group that's trying to get regulations passed for generative AI specifically.

• 47:28Kelly Weinersmith?

  Great.

• 47:29Speaker 06

  So that we can protect artists' rights. And everything that I have done with this campaign has been about maximizing people's choice. I want people to be able to choose how much they engage with AI as creators of art and as enjoyers of art. The issue now is that it's being pushed on people. It's not labeled, so people have to use their own discernment to figure out if something they're seeing is AI. But we're not trained to do that. Like, there was, there's never been any reason throughout human history that we've had to look that closely at the uncanny valley to see if it's in, in our part of, of the hills or, or something. And really, the only time we've had to do that

• 48:12Speaker 06

  is in monster stories about shapeshifters and people who steal your face and voice. And yet, we're freely giving over our faces and our voices and our critical thinking, our writing skills, to this thing that our ancestors would have seen as a monster. It makes me really sad. I don't want to use it at all, and I don't want it to touch my work, but I know it has.

• 48:38Daniel Whiteson?

  How has it touched your work?

• 48:39Speaker 06

  Oh, I know that my books have been scraped for data training. Yeah. If I were a teacher, I would see it in the classrooms. If I were a music producer, I would I would see it in some of the beats that I've been getting because I talk to artists and I see that there is a huge range of opinions. Some are willing to run with it. I've heard some people describe generative AI right now without regulations as the wild, wild west and you should just run and use AI to make as many beats as possible, to make as much money as possible. That broke my heart when I heard like an old school hip hop producer say that. But I also have talked to many artists who don't want to use it or are thinking very

• 49:23Speaker 06

  critically about how they use it and making sure that they're using it as a tool and not as a crutch or a replacement. Because there are creative ways to use it, not for me, not in my work that I've done right now, but other people. And like, that's the beauty of art, right? That we continue to expand what has been done before.

• 49:43Daniel Whiteson?

  I was going to push back on that a little bit, just for the sake of argument.

• 49:46Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 49:46Daniel Whiteson?

  Like, I understand if you say, hey, ChatGPT, write me a new hit song. You know, there's no creativity there. But if you use it as a tool to allow you to do things you haven't done before, allow you imagine new directions you could go in, you might see it as an extension of a series of tools that have been given to artists. You know, other tools that have changed the way music happens, you know, resampling and many tracks and technology, definitely opened up new areas of creativity. But crucially, because they haven't given up that core guidance, right? That they're still the person being creative. And I mean, I'm basically just speaking from my experience in science, that I see people

• 50:27Daniel Whiteson?

  using AI as a tool, but then I also see other people just like, you know, giving over their entire program to AI.

• 50:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's happening everywhere.

• 50:37Kelly Weinersmith?

  Do you have any advice for like, what the heck do we do? Like, how do we, how do we get out of this situation? Because it feels like, you know, there's fewer ways to be creative or there's fewer ways to make a living being creative, you know, with the internet and with AI. Solve the problem, Moya.

• 50:56Speaker 06

  Okay, okay, here's the secret sauce. No, I think that it's one of those problems that we have to chip at incrementally, starting on an individual scale and then growing up from there. A lot of individual people have just accepted that they're not creative, have just accepted that it's not a part of their lives. We need to nip that in the bud right now. Everyone can be creative and this is a skill that you can practice. So I'd say everyone should practice small creativity every day. It doesn't have to be like, go out and paint a whole mural. You don't have to be Daniel's daughter, painting walls out here, but you can cook a new recipe. You can do your hair in a new way or try something new with your makeup, try a new outfit.

• 51:40Speaker 06

  Like, there are so many ways to express and I wish we just actively did that more. And once we're doing that on an individual level, we'll start to appreciate it in others more. So then we'll see that societal change.

• 51:55Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, I like that. Let's take a break. And when we get back, we will talk about the amazing creative act that was you writing Mothers of Invention, because I thought you had a really creative way of bringing all of this information to the reader.

• 52:17Speaker 06

  Hey, I'm Niall Rogers, producer, songwriter, guitarist and co-founder of the group Sheik. A great song has a way of defining a moment, a moment of joy, heartbreak, or anything in between. This fall, I'll be driving across the country, dropping in on some of the coolest, most fascinating artists working today. We'll go deep into their lives and careers and hear what it was like before the moment that made them. From hitmakers like Miguel. That last year, finishing that record was the hardest experience of my life, regardless of how everyone else buys into this. I believe in this and I'm gonna push.

• 53:02Speaker 06

  To rising stars like Alex Warren. You know, a song is a story and the verse is setting the scene. And for me, at least, it's allowing me to be personal and vulnerable with the audience, whether it's about my wife and I'm being vulnerable about her, or it's about, you know, my parents and I'm being vulnerable to them. And it's almost like a cinematic piece in a way where each song tells that beautiful story. It's gonna be one hell of a trip. Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 53:36Kelly Weinersmith?

  This is Jonas Knox from Two Pros and a Cup of Joe. Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability and it starts with a great deal on an off-road, ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures and style in between. Built on a reputation for quality and reliability, Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 54:12Speaker 05

  The biggest game of the season, right here, right now.

• 54:16Speaker 06

  Starts Saturday's draw. It's Big Noon Saturday on Fox. And here we go. It all starts at 10 Eastern with Big Noon Kickoff, live with an epic pregame. The crowd, the atmosphere, this is what makes it special. Then it's America's number one game. What a hit. The best pregame, the best announcers, the biggest games. Down the sideline, touchdown. It's Big Noon Saturday, noon Eastern on Fox.

• 54:42Kelly Weinersmith?

  This is Hoda Kotb from Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb. Halloween has a funny way of making you buy things you'd never normally buy. A 10-foot skeleton? Sure. A full-size fog machine? Why not? Three bags of candy that somehow become six bags of candy? It happens. Which brings me to the Chase Freedom Flex Card, the savvy decision that will earn you more cash back on the everyday purchases, plus the extraordinary Halloween tricks and treats. With Freedom Flex, you earn even more treats on your Halloween and everyday needs. You get 5% cash back on popular rotating quarterly categories, 3% on dining and drug stores, and 1% on all other purchases. More ways to earn, more ways to get rewarded.

• 55:25Kelly Weinersmith?

  That's no tricks, all treats. More ways to earn, more ways to get rewarded. So sign up for the Chase Freedom Flex Card. Learn more at chase.com/getflex. This is a paid collaboration with Chase Freedom Flex. Cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank, N A member FDIC. Subject to credit approval. Offer subject to change. Terms apply.

• 55:52Speaker 04

  She'd throw things, wander, and started hoarding. Mom's Alzheimer's was already so hard, but then we found out she had agitation that may happen with dementia due to Alzheimer's disease. And that was a different kind of difficult. So we asked her doctor for more help.

• 56:07Kelly Weinersmith?

  Seeing symptoms like these in a loved one? It could be time to ask their doctor about Rexulti, Rexiprazole 2mg, the first FDA-approved treatment for this condition. Rexulti is proven to reduce agitation symptoms. Rexulti should not be used as an as-needed treatment. Elderly people with dementia-related psychosis have increased risk of death or stroke. Report fever, stiff muscles and confusion, which can be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent. High blood sugar can lead to coma or death. Weight gain, increased cholesterol, unusual urges, dizziness on standing, falls, seizures, trouble swallowing, or sleepiness may occur. Learn more about these and other side effects at rexulti.com. Tap ad for PI.

• 56:42Speaker 04

  I'm glad I asked for help.

• 56:44Kelly Weinersmith?

  Ask your loved one's doctor about Rexulti.

• 56:49Speaker 04

  911, what's your emergency? Please help us, they're everywhere.

• 56:54Speaker 06

  We think they're murder warrants. 911 Nashville returns.

• 56:59Kelly Weinersmith?

  What's a homicide detective doing here?

• 57:01Speaker 06

  Three bodies on the ground. With emergencies of biblical proportions. Hell, since swarms upon you and upon your people. That's one of the plagues of the Bible. And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville. Brian Philippi joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 57:18Speaker 04

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• 57:58Kelly Weinersmith?

  And we're back. And the questions today were motivated by Moya's new amazing book, Mothers of Invention. And I tried writing fiction once and it nearly killed me. I was like, I am not good at this, even, even if I wake myself up from sleep, I'm not good at it. But you managed to combine a really like informative, pop-sai book in like the, this jacket of a fictional environment. So like, tell me about the, the process, how you decided to go about writing the book in this like super creative, amazing way.

• 58:32Speaker 06

  Thank you. Yeah, this is kind of my thing now. My first book was written from the point of view of the Milky Way galaxy. And from there, how can you get bigger than that? Obviously by going to the gods. And so I, I told you before that I was seeing, we're in the era of reboots. I was seeing this creativity crisis, as some are calling it. And I was remembering a TED Talk that I absolutely loved as a high schooler by Elizabeth Gilbert called Your Elusive Creative Genius. And all of that made me really want to write something from the perspective of the muses. Because who better to talk about creativity and inspiration than the goddesses of that? And it was the biggest creative challenge I've ever given myself.

• 59:16Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh, wow.

• 59:17Speaker 06

  Because I wanted all of the muses to feel like distinct characters. I know that character work is a weakness of mine in fiction. So I used this book to practice that and give them each distinct voices and personalities and writing styles, all while making sure that it was in service to teaching people information, teaching people about the history of these inventions. I cover eight different inventions. And combining that, kind of braiding it together with commentary on creativity. So it was, I saw it as kind of like a three-dimensional puzzle coming to. Together in in my brain. I don't know if that's a helpful image.

• 59:58Kelly Weinersmith?

  It is. Yes.

• 59:59Speaker 06

  OK. OK, good.

• 1:00:01Kelly Weinersmith?

  And how did you pick those eight topics? Because there's so many topics you could have picked. Yeah. How did you pick the eight?

• 1:00:07Speaker 06

  Oh, there are notebooks full of my thoughts on this, for sure. I wanted to make sure that each of the inventions made sense for the muse that inspired it, but wasn't too obvious. So I have Orania, the muse of astronomy, helping us with the invention of the telescope. That was obvious. But I also have Palimnia, the muse of sacred poetry, helping with the invention of electricity, or like the harnessing of electricity. That one was unexpected because the muse of sacred poetry, you know, maybe she would do something with the church, maybe she would do something with organized religion. But I wanted to flip that on its head and turn her into like a power hungry spymaster.

• 1:00:49Speaker 06

  And she's trying to get control of electricity so she can overthrow Zeus on his throne on Olympus. And so it really was just like looking at these muses as characters and figuring out what would they have the most fun, inspiring among humanity, that I can then flip into this useful narrative. And it almost like arranging an astronomical observation, like all of the constraints kind of fell into place and led me to this list of eight.

• 1:01:21Kelly Weinersmith?

  Awesome.

• 1:01:21Daniel Whiteson?

  Wow.

• 1:01:22Kelly Weinersmith?

  And I liked the way at the beginning of the book, you dealt with the fact that this is a pop sci book with fiction, and you sort of explained how you dealt with that. But can you, yeah, can you tell us about that now? Like, how did you deal with the fact that you were like layering on, you know, an imaginary world while telling pop sci? Did that make it more challenging? Or yeah, how did you deal with that?

• 1:01:44Speaker 06

  I think that's just how my brain works. I have spent so long thinking about the myths that humans have told about the night sky and how that is actually a cover for true science. So my brain kind of understands that translation very well.

• 1:02:02Daniel Whiteson?

  Wait, back up. Hold on. How is astrology and the mythology of the night sky a cover for true science?

• 1:02:10Speaker 06

  Because it's based on real observations. You know, people were telling myths about the the star Sirius coming above the the horizon at a particular time, like in the summer, and using that to predict when the Nile River would flood in ancient Egypt. And that's real science. But they explained that with a story of their goddess Isis going on a trip around the world to try and recover the body parts of her husband, Osiris. And the reason the Nile is flooding is because she is that star, and she's coming above the horizon weeping because she misses her husband, and that causes the floods. And so it's, I've gotten very good at at kind of seeing the truth behind all of the

• 1:02:53Speaker 06

  fiction, to the point where that might just be how my brain sees information now. And so it was really easy to put this fictional filter over it. And my favorite chapter to write was the final chapter on the invention of the internet, because I present it as an epic fantasy story of this queen engaging in this epic war against obscuro. Obscuro is this evil figure who's trying to steal people's legacy. And the the queen, Calliope, is trying to give people a way to make their legacies permanent through writing, through publishing, and through the internet. So the the battle is the battle of internet null.

• 1:03:35Speaker 06

  And there are war unicorns, and Ares intervenes. And it sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud. But this is how real stories in ancient times, real deeds, were mythologized and exaggerated to the point where they became myths. Like Hercules' 12 labors were probably firstly done by multiple different people. But they were much more mundane. You know, the labor of him killing a river monster probably actually started as a human figure diverting a stream so that it didn't flood a city. And then that turned into a hero killing a water monster. So I just like thinking about those translations.

• 1:04:15Kelly Weinersmith?

  Totally.

• 1:04:16Daniel Whiteson?

  And I love how you did this in this untraditional way, which in the end makes an argument about how creativity links what we typically think of as creative things like creative writing, as well as science, right? Effectively, you're making an argument that there is creativity in science. And I mean, that's the way I think about it. I think of like theoretical physicists and science fiction authors as like, you know, different parts of the same spectrum, not like different in kind. Is that something that was intentional in your work?

• 1:04:45Speaker 06

  100%. Yes. I wanted people to expand their ideas of what creativity could be, because a lot of people don't consider science creative. But that's just because they don't know how science is done. So I wanted to show them some of the process behind a lot of these inventions and how it was actually made, so they could see the creativity in it.

• 1:05:06Kelly Weinersmith?

  Awesome. So one of the things that I love about writing a book, especially when it's on a bunch of different topics, is that often there's a topic where you expected the story to go one way. And then when you dive into the research, you're like, what? This isn't what I had expected at all. This isn't like, my understanding of this was clearly superficial. Was there like a chapter where you were, where you were doing the research and you were like, that's, this is not going where I thought it was gonna go?

• 1:05:32Speaker 06

  I feel like almost every chapter was like that. There is a chapter in the book about the invention of jazz music, which if you had asked me like three years ago, hey, Moya, what kind of music do you like? My standard answer was, oh, I'll listen to pretty much everything, but I don't like Christmas music or jazz.

• 1:05:49Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:51Speaker 06

  And then I decided to write a whole chapter on it. And now I have a much deeper appreciation for it. And I did not expect that going in. Also, on the electricity chapter, I started that thinking, oh, this is going to be a story about Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison, because those are the two names that I've heard throughout my entire life in this story. I had no idea who George Westinghouse was before I started researching this. So that was a fun extra character that I got to spend time with.

• 1:06:19Kelly Weinersmith?

  Excellent. So are you starting on a new book?

• 1:06:22Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:06:23Kelly Weinersmith?

  Can you

• 1:06:24Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:06:24Kelly Weinersmith?

  tell us about it?

• 1:06:26Speaker 06

  I'm starting on a new book, and I'm going to try to adapt Mothers of Invention into a TV show. So I'm working on a screenplay for that right now. But the next book, I've known about this for years, I think since 2022, I'm going to call it Cosmophobia. It's going to be about people who are afraid of space. And I'll interview psychologists and daredevils, people who have been to space, hopefully. And the whole structure of the book will be a kind of classic dialogue, à la Plato or Aristotle. And it'll be between the universe and a person who is afraid of it, a conversation about really what fear is and what we can do with it.

• 1:07:06Kelly Weinersmith?

  I don't think that I've encountered this category of people who are afraid of space, or what is, what are they?

• 1:07:12Speaker 06

  Really?

• 1:07:12Kelly Weinersmith?

  No, what are they afraid of? Is it just the overwhelming, what are they afraid of?

• 1:07:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, they find me.

• 1:07:17Daniel Whiteson?

  I'm afraid of going to space, for sure.

• 1:07:19Kelly Weinersmith?

  Same.

• 1:07:20Speaker 06

  You and me, same. Yes. I feel like almost every talk I give has one person coming up to me at the end saying, I'm afraid of space. Like, I, it's really big, or it's been around for so long, or it's so mysterious. So how do we know an asteroid isn't going to come and kill us like it did the dinosaurs?

• 1:07:40Daniel Whiteson?

  Fair.

• 1:07:40Speaker 06

  Or I'm scared that we are actually moving and that like there is a lot of stuff happening in the universe that I'm not aware of right now. There are a lot of reasons.

• 1:07:51Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah, these things are all terrifying. I guess it's just a point of view, right? It's like either terrifying, or exciting, or both.

• 1:07:58Speaker 06

  And a lot of people have heard about big scary space stuff, like black holes or solar flares. But they don't have a good understanding of the scale of space or of what is actually possible. So they think that we are in danger of of a black hole coming and sucking us up or something.

• 1:08:17Kelly Weinersmith?

  I feel like I encounter, so for my PhD, I studied parasites, and parasites are like my big thing, which you might not expect, given that I don't write about parasites at all in my books. It's always space and technology. But anyway, and I find that a lot of people, when you first start talking about parasites, they're very scared because they start seeing like imagining parasites are everywhere. They think they're probably getting infected by parasites. But the more they

• 1:08:37Speaker 06

  Especially now.

• 1:08:38Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, right. Yes. Yeah, right. It's in your lettuce. And and there's invasive ticks all over the place. And anyway, but when when I explain parasites in more detail, and I'm like, OK, you know, ticks tend to be in these locations, and here's what you can do to protect yourself. And like, the more you know, the less scary it is. Do you, for a lot of these people, is it just like, if you tell them more about space, they'll stop being scared of space? Or is it not like parasites in that way?

• 1:09:06Speaker 06

  For a lot of them, it is kind of like parasites. Yeah, the kind of the whole point of a podcast that I've been hosting for a few years now, I say that it's the astronomy podcast for people who are overwhelmed by the universe but still want to be its friend. I truly believe that the more you learn about space, the more familiar it becomes, the more you feel like you are a part of it. So there's no reason to be afraid anymore. But some, some cannot be helped by learning more. I've made that mistake a couple of times where I'm like, oh, no, it's OK. Here's how far away the nearest black hole is. And then they hear a really big number and they get scared again. So there are different techniques to deal with it. And that's why I'm really excited to dig into the research for that one.

• 1:09:48Kelly Weinersmith?

  Awesome. I can't wait to read that book. Tell us where else folks can find you.

• 1:09:53Speaker 06

  You can find me online at moiamcteer.com. I'm on all the socials at GoAstroMo. And there you can find information about my book and my podcast, Pale Blue Pod.

• 1:10:05Kelly Weinersmith?

  Thank you so much for being on the show. I had a ton of fun and hopefully we'll have you back sometime.

• 1:10:09Daniel Whiteson?

  I'd love that. Thank you so much.

• 1:10:17Daniel Whiteson?

  Thanks, everybody, for listening. Please go and do us a favor and rate the show on whatever podcast app you're using. It really helps people find us.

• 1:10:25Kelly Weinersmith?

  Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is edited by the amazing Matt Kesselman.

• 1:10:30Daniel Whiteson?

  He really is a wizard. You can also find us online on Blue Sky, Instagram, and X, D and K Universe. Come engage with us.

• 1:10:40Kelly Weinersmith?

  You can email us at questions at danielandkelly.org. We really do want to hear from you.

• 1:10:45Daniel Whiteson?

  And you can find our website, www.danielandkelly.org, where you'll also find an invitation to join our Discord, where everybody comes and talks about the amazing universe.

• 1:10:57Kelly Weinersmith?

  And we also have the most amazing moderators. This is an iHeart Podcast. Thanks for joining us.

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