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Outer Space: We Are All Made of Stars

Outer Space: We Are All Made of Stars

FromStrong Sense of Place


Outer Space: We Are All Made of Stars

FromStrong Sense of Place

ratings:
Length:
68 minutes
Released:
Jul 5, 2024
Format:
Podcast episode

Description

As you read these words and listen to our podcast, we’re all riding on a ball about 8000 miles (13,000 km) across. Our rotating disco ball in space is dancing around the sun at about 67,000 mph (107,000 km/h).
Our sun is about 93 million miles (150 million km away), shooting us with subatomic particles. Probably not maliciously, but who knows? The sun might be a trickster. It’s also filling our solar system with light so we can see all the other planets, comets, asteroids, dwarf planets, and moons in orbit.
As humans, it’s nearly impossible to not put ourselves at the center of the world — we all have main-character energy. For millions of years, we puny humans have looked up at the sky and tried to understand just what the devil is going on and where we belong in the whole situation.
In this episode, we try to unpack many of the mind-blowing facts we know about space and our expanding universe — and we get real about the emotional impact of embracing our stardust origins. We talk about the condition called the Overview Effect and whether or not space smells funny. Then we recommend great books that took us there on the page:


Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers


The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowell


The Mars House by Natasha Pulley


The Milky Way by Moiya McTier


Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertolino


For more on the books we recommend, plus the other cool stuff we talk about, visit show notes.
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Transcript of Outer Space: We Are All Made of Stars
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Released:
Jul 5, 2024
Format:
Podcast episode

Titles in the series (100)

One lifetime is too short to visit everywhere and meet everyone. That‘s why we love books with a strong sense of place — they let us travel the world in our imagination. In each episode of our podcast, we explore one destination and talk about what makes that place different from everywhere else on earth. Then we recommend five books that took us to that place on the page. We‘re on a trip around the globe, one great read at a time. Please join us!