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The Michael Shermer Show

306. Stephon Alexander — Fear of a Black Universe: An Outsider's Guide to the Future of Physics

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Science, Natural Sciences

4.31K Ratings

🗓️ 15 November 2022

⏱️ 85 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this important guide to science and society, cosmologist Stephon Alexander argues that physics must embrace the excluded, listen to the unheard, and be unafraid of being wrong. Drawing on his experience as a Black physicist, he makes a powerful case, in his latest book, for diversifying our scientific communities.

Shermer and Alexander discuss: his journey from Trinidad to the Bronx to professor of physics • what it's like being Black in a mostly White and Asian field of science • systemic racism and misogyny • how to be an outsider inside a science • how to tell the difference between revolutionary and worthless new ideas • how do laypeople understand whether something is good science or not? • the double-slit experiment • superposition • connections between quantum physics and Eastern mysticism • creativity • What banged the Big Bang? • Are we living in a matrix? • Deepak Chopra's mind monism • consciousness and the universe.

Stephon Alexander is a professor of theoretical physics at Brown University, an established jazz musician, and an immigrant from Trinidad who grew up in the Bronx. He is the 2020 president of the National Society of Black Physicists and a founding faculty Director of Brown University's Presidential Scholars program, which boosts underrepresented students. In addition to his academic achievements, he was the scientific consultant to Ava DuVernay for the feature film A Wrinkle in Time. His work has been featured by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, WIRED, and many other outlets. He has been a guest on Nova, the Brian Lehrer Show, and Neil deGrasse Tyson's StarTalk, among much else. The author of Fear of a Black Universe and The Jazz of Physics, Alexander lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

Transcript

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0:00.0

You're listening to the Michael Sherman Shower Show.

0:19.6

Hello everyone, it's Michael Sherman and it's time for another episode of the Michael Sherman Show brought to you by Wundrium. You know know Wondrium, a series of college level audio and video courses

0:27.0

and documentaries produced and distributed by The Teaching Company. Wondrium brings you engaging educational content through short-form videos, long-form

0:37.7

courses, tutorials, how-to lessons, travel logs, documentaries, and more, covering every topic you've ever wondered about and many

0:44.5

probably you've never thought you would wonder about. That's kind of the fun of it. I

0:48.4

often just you know pop up the the app on my phone and just scroll through to see what comes up that might

0:54.7

interest me here's what I'm going to tackle in the next week. Secrets of the

0:59.5

occult. So this includes as you can tell, as the publisher of Skeptic magazine, I have some interest in the occult and supernatural.

1:08.0

What is the occult? I'm just going to riff, rifle through some of these 24 lectures each 30 minutes each

1:16.1

the cult in the ancient world talking to the dead look anybody can talk to the

1:21.9

dead getting the dead to talk back, that's the hard part.

1:25.0

He, let's see how they deal with that one.

1:27.0

We'll see about that.

1:29.0

Practical magic, love, money, and health.

1:31.0

Yes, that is what Psychics and

1:33.4

astrologers and tarot card readers and palm readers want to ask you about

1:37.0

because everybody is concerned about love, money, health, and career also.

1:41.6

So you can't go wrong with that the occult in the ancient world. I mentioned

1:45.0

vampires, werewolves, and zombies, oh cool, religious faith in the occult. Ah, now that

1:51.0

will interest me. Crime in the occult. I wonder if Charles Manson

1:56.0

or the Nazis will feature in this one, we'll see. The occult in the Russian

2:01.4

Revolution, of course that's you know who,

...

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