Maria Popova

We figured out the scale of the universe.

We discovered so many other things in the course of that multi-year enormous endeavor.

And it was a way for scientists around the world to kind of unite around this common sky and this common search for truth despite the hungers of power.

Well, the solar system.

I mean, of course, this is the lovely thing about science is that we always mistake the limits of our knowledge for the limits of reality.

So we thought at the time that the solar system is the universe, even the notion of a galaxy didn't exist.

Right.

Yeah.

When people have high resistance to something, the way through to them is not by banging forcefully on the walls of their reservations.

The way in is through some sort of Trojan horse method.

And I've done that with poetry.

I used to do a show called The Universe in Verse for many years where I would choose poems that have something to do with science, have interesting people who are neither poets nor scientists read the poem, and then I would talk about the science behind it.

I was so surprised by how many people opened up to real science.

I mean, I would talk about the discovery of dark matter, the evolution of flowers, and I'm a huge believer in the Trojan horse.

I think there's no reason, there's no actual reason for us as human beings to resist.

I mean, science is essentially the reverence of reality.

We are part of reality.

It's a kind of self-negation to deny reality, right?

So it's just our conditioning.

And unfortunately in this country, the conditioning against science is very strong and very structural.