306. Fear of a Black Universe (1)
306. Stephon Alexander — Fear of a Black Universe: An Outsider's Guide to the Future of Physics
1 (9s):
You're listening to the Michael Shimmer Show.
Wondrium (16s):
Hello everyone. It's Michael Shimmer, and it's time for another episode of the Michael Shimmer Show, brought to you by Wonder. You know, Onem, a series of college level audio and video courses and documentaries produced and distributed by the teaching company. Onem, brings you engaging educational content through short form videos, long form courses, tutorials, how two lessons, travel logs, documentaries, and more. Covering every topic you've ever wondered about and many probably you've never thought you would wonder about. That's kind of the fun of it. I, I often just, you know, pop up the, the app on my phone and just scroll through to see what comes up that might interest me.
Wondrium (55s):
Here's what I'm gonna tackle in the next week. Secrets of the A Cult. So this includes, as you could tell, as the publisher of Skeptic Magazine. I have some interest in the a cult and supernatural, What is the cul here? I'm just gonna riff, riff, rifle through some of these 24 lectures each 30 minutes each, the ult in the ancient world talking to the dead. Look, anybody can talk to the dead, getting the dead to talk back. That's the hard part. Let's see how they deal with that one. We'll see about that practical magic, love, money, and health. Yes, that is what psychics and astrologers and Terra card readers and Palm readers want to ask you about, because everybody's concerned about love, money, health, and career also.
Wondrium (1m 43s):
So you can't go wrong with that. The cult in the ancient world, I mentioned vampires, werewolves, and zombies. Oh, cool. Religious faith in the occult. Ah, now that won't interest me Crime in the occult. I wonder if Charles Mansen or the Nazis will feature in this one. We'll see the ult in the Russian Revolution. Oh, of course, that's, you know, who that was advising? The Czar Rasputin. Ah, here we go. Hitler, Nazi-Ism and the Occult. Yes, there's a whole lecture on that. The Ult and the Soviet Union witchcraft in the cul, the Ult Enlightenment, American Occultism. Oh, boy. I'm definitely listening to this one. In fact, I'm gonna start this today on my bike ride.
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Wren (3m 48s):
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Wren (4m 31s):
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1 (5m 2s):
All right, Thanks for listening. Thanks for supporting this, a great company. And here's the episode. My guest today is, let me give him a proper introduction. He is Stephan Alexander, Professor of theoretical physics at Brown University and 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, underrepresented students.
1 (5m 45s):
In addition to his academic achievements, he was the scientific consultant to Ava d Verney's Wrinkle in Time. I love that. I love the book. I gotta see that film. His work has been featured by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, and many other outlets, and he's been a guest on Nova, the Brian Laer show. And Neil Degrass, Tyson's StarTalk among much else, is the author of the Jazz Physics in his new book. Here it is. It's called Fear of a Black Universe and Outsider's Guide the Future of Physics. Nice to see you, Stephan, How are you doing? Thanks for coming on the show.
2 (6m 19s):
It's great to see you again, Michael, and great to be on your show.
1 (6m 22s):
Oh, boy. Well, to get started here, first, let me note that it's a, it's a really beautifully written book and beautifully read. I, I listen to most of my guest books on audio when I'm out riding my bike or driving my car, walking with my dog. And you've got a great audio voice. It's just such a good, you're a good, good pacer on, on reading your own work, and I like that because then I know the author has close connection to the words, so I really appreciated that. Thank you. So let's start with the, give us your, give us your little potted biography. How do you go from Trinidad to the Bronx to the almost pinnacle of theoretical physics, which is pretty cool?
2 (6m 58s):
Well, like most, I think most immigrants that come to the US there's probably some family connection or community connection. And the part of Bronx that I grew up in in the eighties was one of, you know, had a, a, you know, a Caribbean community embedded in an Italian community in the Bronx, a little Italy, and, which was great fun growing up around. And yeah, so because of that, you know, there was an opportunity for my parents move mainly so that we can have educational opportunities. That was the main reason there were fairly comfortable middle class family in Trinidad, and, you know, we took advantage of that.
2 (7m 41s):
You know, definitely education was a big deal, and I found my passion in physics in de with Clinton High School in the Bronx, had some great teachers. New York City's a great place in that, in that sense, right? Cuz you know, you have a lot of people who also come to the city who also immigrated to the city with aspirations maybe to become a number theorist or a physicist or a jazz musician, and they end up becoming high school teachers because, you know, life situation calls 'em there and I end up, we end up being their students,
1 (8m 13s):
Right? Yeah. Is there somebody, something in particular that nudged you toward the physical sciences and then theoretical physics, a professor or a teacher, a book documentary, something that, you know, kind of really tagged you?
2 (8m 27s):
Yeah, it's interesting. There was a whole set of conditions that, when I think about it, and every time I realized there's something new, Well, I grew up in, during the time I was growing up in the Bronx, which was, again, early eighties to late eighties as an adolescent, hiphop music was being developed, and that culture was really congealing in the Bronx. And that was, it was a very creative time. People were making things up, figuring out how to, to, like, for example, some of the guys in my high school invented the way of doing digital sampling for the hiphop beats. And so there's a lot of innovation in that sense, you know, thirst for, for a lot of auto didactic things going on, people teaching themselves to do things.
2 (9m 11s):
So it was very much in the culture, but then I had great, a great math and physics teacher who were, they were just very enthusiastic and they also went outside of the curriculum. So, you know, we had a traditional curriculum in a New York City public school, but they would like Mr. Feder and Daniel Feder, who was also a rabbi and a number theorist on the side, would, you know, it's okay, I know you're supposed to learn these trigger ideas, but lemme show you where it really comes from. And he would go all into all this number theory stuff. It was just the enthusiasm, right? And then Mr. Kaplan, my high school physics teacher, who was also a jazz musician, right? So, you know, my very first, you know, mentor is also a musician.
2 (9m 54s):
And so there was never any issue for me to do both if I, you know, if I chose that path. So it was just a great place. I mean, there were challenges, obviously, but I look back at, at that situ, at that time of my life in the Bronx as a place where I learned a lot of tricks to Detroit.
1 (10m 15s):
Yeah, you have a lot of references to your various mentors in the book. I mean, you really were hanging out with the who's who in theoretical physics in cosmology for those decades. That must have been pretty cool.
2 (10m 26s):
It was very, it was just so like, I mean, I don't even wanna call this thing serendipity, because, you know, this is, you're a skeptic, you know, this is about the skeptic, so there's no such thing as serendipity. Right? But it did feel that way.
1 (10m 41s):
Yeah, yeah. No, it does sometimes feel like a conjuncture of events without pre-ordained plans do change the world. I mean, change people's lives. That happens all the time. And I, I can imagine that that happened to you with these different people you met. You have a scene in your, in your book up in read in which you reference our mutual friend Brian Keating. This is in the context of, of you discussing in part what it's like to be black in a, in a, in America or in in, in physics and and so on. And some of the issues you've had to deal with there. So here's your scene too, you call it. After a few months into my second postdoc, I stopped going to my office to work.
