
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Why We Need To Embrace Stress
Most of us try to avoid stress at all costs. But Dr. Sharon Bergquist, author of ‘The Stress Paradox,’ says too little stress can be…
Thought Leader: Sanjay Gupta
We don’t know when ancient humans first began contemplating the night sky – likely thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of years in the past.
“That’s one of my favorite things about astronomy, that ancient humans were able to do it without advanced tools,” says Moiya McTier, an astrophysicist and folklorist, and author of the recent book, The Milky Way: An Autobiography of our Galaxy. “You don’t have to know advanced math. You don’t have to have fancy equipment. You just have to live in a place that’s dark enough. So I think astronomy is, like, the people’s science in that way.”
“I actually have a very broad definition of science,” Moiya told Short Wave co-host Aaron Scott. “To me, science is any rigorous attempt at understanding and explaining the world around you. … If you look at the explanations that are encoded within myths, you can see that they knew enough about the world around them to predict eclipses, to predict annual floods in Egypt, for example. I think that you can use folklore and mythology to understand the early scientific attempts of humanity.”
But the stars observed by our ancient ancestors did not look exactly the same as the ones we see today. That’s because everything in our galaxy is in motion: the rotating Milky Way, the wobbling axis of Earth, the planet’s annual lap around the Sun.
On today’s episode, Moiya McTier draws out the connections between astronomy and folklore, why the night sky is more dynamic than it might look, and what it feels like to live on an astronomical timescale.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Why We Need To Embrace Stress
Most of us try to avoid stress at all costs. But Dr. Sharon Bergquist, author of ‘The Stress Paradox,’ says too little stress can be…
Thought Leader: Sanjay Gupta
Illumina Board of Directors elects Dr. Scott Gottlieb Chair
Illumina, Inc., a global leader in DNA sequencing and array-based technologies, today announced changes to its Board of Directors. Scott Gottlieb, MD, has been elected non-executive…
Thought Leader: Scott Gottlieb
David Frum: Trump faces his first national security scandal as messaging app blows up
Leading author, journalist and thinker David Frum and The Hub’s editor-at-large Sean Speer discuss the group chat intelligence breach involving senior Trump administration officials and…
Thought Leader: David Frum