Maria Popova

She was arrested multiple times.

She was denied an American visa.

She was called a communist because she hired scientists from India and North Africa and, you know, the...

countries that are supposed to be communist.

And she just didn't care because she thought science does not know these types of identity boundaries, right?

Because politics and nationalism are identity.

Well, huge.

I mean, we can say because the Pugwash Conference, which is kind of the entity that essentially instituted the nuclear test bans.

I mean, we forget.

We live in such an ahistorical time.

We forget that the nuclear war did not happen.

I mean, it actually was prevented, meaning it works.

Resistance works.

Activism works.

People putting their minds, their hearts together to say no works.

We could all be dead, meaning we could have never been born if that hadn't worked.

Yeah, so we should say, so last night I did a talk with the poet Diane Ackerman, who writes beautifully about science.

And then we had an audience Q&A and a, I think, young, youngish woman asked, she said she has always loved space, grew up loving space, and now it's become politicized.

And, you know, who's vested interest, you know, colonizing Mars and all that.

How can we remain excited about the wonder of it?