We might like to think that science is purely objective, driven only by scientific principles and free of social disturbances — but this couldn’t be further from the truth. In this episode, we read Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s debut The Disordered Cosmos, a book exposing how racism and sexism persist across all scientific disciplines. Part introduction to particle physics, part biography, part cultural and social analysis, The Disordered Cosmos examines the colonialist thread running through science’s history and presents a vision of the cosmos as vibrant, inclusive and non-traditional. We talk to Prescod-Weinstein — theoretical physicist, feminist theorist and one of the few Black US American women to ever earn a physics PhD — about her message to the next generation of scientists, and find out who should read this timely, provocative and necessary title.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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