Sasha Sagan on Science and the Sacred

not forever welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not

just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Sasha Sagan. She's a writer who has also worked as a television producer, filmmaker, editor, and speaker. Sasha's writing has appeared in New York magazine, Oh,

The Oprah Magazine, Literary Hub, and others. Today's Sasha and Eric discuss her book for Small Creatures such as We, Rituals for Finding Meaning in Our Unlikely World. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here. I'm excited to talk with you about your book called for small creatures such as We, Rituals for finding Meaning in our Unlikely World. And we will get to that in a moment, but we'll start like we

always do, with the parable. There is a grandmother who's talking with her grandson and she says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second. He looks up at his grandmother and says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And she says, the one you feed.

So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do well for us. Let me say I love it. I think it's such a beautiful way of communicating something so much larger than just a few sentences that it takes to tell that story. The first thing that comes to my mind is the questions of like wonder and curiosity and awe and how we

get that, how we tap into that. It's so easy to be blase about the natural world, about our place in the universe, about reproduction, about all these things that we get to know when we're you know, young, and we become very ordinary in our lives. And I think there's something about feeding the awe, feeding the wonder, and even the things that are very very simple, like we

eat food that grows in the ground. It grows because it gets light and water and nutrients from the soil, and it grows and we eat it and we live. If we can tap into the part of ourselves that can feel some sense of awe about just that, if we feed that part of ourselves. I think that grows, and the more curious we are, even about very ordinary things, and the more we can pursue that outlook, I think that's the wolf that I want to feed. I love

that curiosity is such a big piece for me. So one of the things I love about your book you say very early on that in your Household, being Alive was presented to me as a profoundly beautiful and staggeringly unlikely, a sacred miracle of random chance. And I love that idea because a lot of what you're trying to do in this book is bring back a sense of sacredness to a scientific worldview. And you know, you say elsewhere, which I absolutely love, you say, why does the provability

of something rob us of the thrill of it? And so talk to me about how we can keep a sense of all and mystery and if you'll use the word sacredness, sacredness around things that we can explain. Why does being able to explain something tend to take away the importance we give it. It's such a good question,

and it's such a strange thing. I think we have this idea, you know, I always say we malign facts as cold and hard, and we have this idea that if you just look at the data, it's unromantic and it doesn't give you the spine chilling thrill that a mystery gives you. But I think the way that we've been able to understand the natural world by following scientific evidence is so much more astonishing than a lot of the mysteries that we concocted for ourselves or the things

that we were most comfortable leaving unknown. When we come face to face with the reality of our place in the universe, what we're made of, how we got here,

all these deep old questions, it's startlingly beautiful. And I think one of the things my parents did when I was a kid was they would sort of describe things, saying, imagine if you were from another planet and you notice that humans were doing this, or imagine that you had never seen this before, or the moon appeared one day and it hadn't been there this whole time, And to sort of take a step back and see very ordinary things or things that we understand deeply, or even things

that we've just discovered in the last generation, and take the tools we use to describe fairy tales and miss

and ancient stories that haunt us. The best example I can think of is if we told children there's a secret code in your blood that connects you to your ancestors, and whether you believe in it or not, it's there and it holds information that maybe you don't even know, but we have figured out how to do it, and we can find out all these things about ourselves that we never knew before with this amazing decoding system that we've just discovered, but was here all along, instead of

just having like the worksheet that you do in middle school with the alleles and the RNA and that you know, all the stuff that doesn't get presented like this grand, sweeping, beautiful thing, you know. I think that there's so much there. We all feel this craving for the sacredness, as you said, for a connection to the immense grandeur that we're all

part of. And I think whether you're secular like me, or you're religious, or you're somewhere in between, or there's elements of religion that you really connect to and there's elements that you find alienating. Wherever you are on that spectrum, I think that that desire to feel, that feeling that even the earliest humans must have felt looking up at the night sky at the Milky Way. To connect to that, I think there's ways to do that that rely just

on the information that is supported by science. Yeah, and I mean what we learned from science is usually, at least for me, way more mind bending and miraculous and like what than the myths we have, you know, the myths are like well, yeah, okay, so you know it's one thing to think, well, the universe was created five or six thousand years ago by creating two people, and it's like, Okay, I can't understand that. I understand how

we birth babies. Okay, maybe, but then you go hold on a second fourteen billion and it all came out of nothing like and for me, those are sacred experiences. When I'm actually able to touch the awe of it all. I couldn't agree more. And I think that one of the things that we really struggle with as a species

is the tolerance for ambiguity. And sometimes when we have a really large question but we don't have the answer for it, or even a really small question, you know, in our daily lives, but we don't have the answer for it, the urge to just put an answer in, to not sit with the discomfort of not knowing is so strong that we're willing to settle for answers um just to not have that anxiety of having this empty space when we're we have a profound question that is

really at our core. And so I think the more we can get comfortable with saying, well, this is the information we have now, we may get more information that disproves this, or we may get more information that supports it, but we're going to follow the evidence and it's going to lead us somewhere we could never expect. But at least we'll know that it's not a product or it's less likely to be a product of our wishes and hopes and fears. Yeah, And I think that's an interesting

thing to hold. How to hold that idea, because it's really easy to be like, well, this is true because science said it's true, but science said all sorts of things were true in the past that we know now like, well, no,

that was completely wrong. I partially like really want to be like wow, that's amazing, and then there's another part like, well, what maybe that's not it at all, And like you say, holding that ambiguity is interesting, and it's one of the areas that I found like a deeper spiritual life, particularly in a mystic dimension, helps with that because the mystics ultimately go like, well, you can't really know any of this, Like at a certain level you pass beyond intellectual understanding.

And having some experiences like that sort of lead have led me more naturally to holding scientific truths a little bit more lightly. Like you said, I think you said it very well. That's what we believe now. May not be a true we don't know for sure, but that's

the best guess we have. I think the thing that's so powerful about science it's not just like a list of bullet points to be compared with you know, another list of bullet points you know, from any other tradition, But it's a tool to try to figure out what's going on. It's very hard for us to not project what we want to be true or what we hope

to be true. And so if we can sort of just over and over again test our views and see what stands up to scrutiny and let the stuff that doesn't fall away and be okay with that, I think that's a pathway to a deeper understanding, coupled with are getting comfortable with the idea that what we know is still such a tiny fragment of what there is to know.

You state that eloquently throughout the book, sort of this idea of this is a puzzle that we're never really going to solve, like thinking like, oh, if I just gather more knowledge, I will be able to put all the pieces together. But it seems to be the more we know, the more we go what on earth is going on around here? Right, And the more questions we have.

And I think that that the idea that that's great and having questions is good, you know, following that curiosity isn't necessarily a problem, I think is something that can be so joyful and it's something that you see um with small children very often that they're just so excited to have questions and may well just keep going and you know, the why why why phase can be exhausting, but it's also such a thrill because there's so much information for them to absorb, and you know, following those

threads down all the paths that there are is something that I think adults, you know, maybe can take a little page from that Toddler book. Yeah, one of the things that happens. I think as you move from a religious worldview to a secular worldview, I don't want to put science opposite religion, so I'll just stay with secular

for now. In most religious worldviews, or at least in a lot of them, particularly Christianity, there's a sense that you are this special, unique creature that God loves and God knows you, and you're this thing, and then you come over here to the secular worldview of Okay, I am one speck of dust in the grand scheme of things. I am a I'm a I am a speck of dust in a flash of lightning, you know, like boom, that's it. So what that can feel like often is

oh my god, what happened to meaning? It's the existential crisis. It's the meaninglessness. I'd love to talk about how you and your parents before you, because they obviously informed that held that issue, and how they found meaning in what if you're not careful, looks like a just a meaningless existence. I think you really had it on the head with

the existential crisis. And I think even if you're not leaving a religious upbringing, um, even if you're brought up secular, as I was, the existential crisis, I think it's almost a rite of passage. I think that's real, and I think it's important, and I think you have to go through that very painful looking glass that says you know, life is not forever. We are all mortal, and we are here in the grand scheme of things for the

blink of an eye. And even though I was not ever told anything otherwise, I still, as a teenager and I read about in the book, had to really come face to face with that idea viscerally. I mean, it's difficult,

it's painful, it's really hard. But on the other side of it, what I think is there the other side of the coin is well, I'm right here, right now, it's happening, and they're the countless circumstances that could have gone just a millimeter in the other direction and I would be someone else, or I wouldn't be here, or some medical problem a thousand years ago, some ancestor didn't

make it to adulthood, and you're not here. All the people who it took and before them, all the non human primates and all down to the single celled organisms who it took for you to be here right now. The litening to this podcast, it's astonishing, it's amazing, it's worthy of celebration, it's beautiful. And I think, you know, my parents really raised me with this idea from the earliest time that I was aware of mortality, that we're very lucky to be here at all. And crucially, it's

more special because it's not forever. If we lived forever, there would be no hurry to do anything. There would be very little thrill and beauty and excitement. And you know, it takes both sides of the coin. Without death, there is no life. And I think that you know that's true of all things, you know, cold and hot, long days, short days, darkness and light, all those things. You know, we have to have the other side, not in a spiritual way, necessarily in a very literal way. You know,

the summer is hard to appreciate if there's no winter. Yeah, you're saying that made me think of two artistic renderings of that. One is a Matt Hague book I think called How to Stop Time, and it's about vampires, but essentially they're just bored out of their mind. And Jason Isabel wrote an amazing song called If We were Vampires, which is this beautiful love song to his wife, basically saying, if we were vampires, this wouldn't be so special because

we just go on and on forever. It's the fact that I know that one of us is going to lose the other. It's a beautiful and heartbreaking song that gave me chill as you're describing it. And I think that that's something that sometimes certain religious traditions that suggest that you know there is something after this and you will be reunited. Well, and that this is just the dress rehearsal for something else. Well, if that's not true, that really robs us of something right now here. And

now that this isn't the dress rehearsal. This is the show, and it's up to us to make the best of it and do what we can to do right and to enjoy and to have some happy nous. You say that the biggest drawback for you of being secular is the lack of a shared culture. Say more about that, Yeah, I mean I really like you know, parties, um and celebrations and holidays and rituals, and I lost my dad when I was fourteen, and not having a infrastructure for

mourning was difficult. So for background were Jewish. We don't believe, we don't adopt any of the theistic elements, but culturally, you know, expression wise, cuisine wise, holiday wise, you know, we are Jewish, and we found ways to connect to our ancestors without necessarily taking on their theological points of view. So we had Hanukah and pass Over, but we did

them in a secular way and I loved that. And you know, for a while, I thought, oh, well, Judaism isn't you know, it's so weird how it's like a culture and a you know, sort of ethnic for and a religion and these overlapping then diagrams. But as I got older, I realized that this is very common. I mean, Christmas is celebrated in a secular way, all that stuff, And I mean I have had several people reach out to me recently um saying that they consider themselves culturally Mormon.

They don't believe in the theology anymore, but they were brought up Mormon and they still connect to elements of that. And I think every person, even if you're very devout, we're all navigating, well, what are we going to emphasize in our own lives that was passed down to us, and what are we going to slightly repurpose and what are we gonna let fall away? And we've been doing

this for generations. No matter how traditional you think you are, you're doing something differently than they were doing a couple of hundred years ago. So I think a celebration and a party and a rite of passage and a coming of age ceremony and a wedding are so much more powerful when they're not just going through the motions, when they really reflect the philosophy of the booth involved. And so that's how I really got interested um in what eventually led to my book is this idea of well,

how can we still mark time? Because so much of ritual is about processing change, births, marriages, deaths, year changing. It's the days are short, the days are long, it's cold, it's hot. Time is passing? How is this happening? I can't feel the earth moving, and yet here we are time is passing. And so I think, you know, really craving that, but craving it in a way that reflects what I really believe is become. You know a lot of what I think about and a lot of what's

interesting to me. Yeah, I agree, and I think ritual can be so important. You've got a young daughter. I've got a son who is twenty two years old, And as I look back, one of the regrets I think I might have was not finding ritual there that was consistent with him. Luckily, I think he got it from his mom's side of the family, and I think they do a better job of that. I think when I was younger, holidays were just like, oh, like I just you know, and so now I kind of went to

the other extreme. But in looking at it, you know, I I agree with you, and I think ritual can be such a useful and powerful thing. You say that I do not believe that my lack of faith makes me immune to the desire to be part of the rhythm of life on this planet. And I think that's that's so well said in that idea of marking time. Yeah, And it's so funny because it's these events that so many of our holidays and rituals around the world are

built top, are real, scientific, biological, and astronomical events. I mean many, many holidays around the world are tied, especially to the winter solstice and the spring equinox, the phases of the moon is very central to keeping calendar and Judaism and Islam and many other cultures. And this idea of these changes like birth, coming of age, death, these

are biological events. It's very easy to see a sweet sixteen or a King Senora, or about Mitzvah as this purely cultural thing, but it is about a biological change, someone going from being a child to getting to the point where they get to be in the club of adults, and that the group gets to go on one more generation. You talked about somebody who saw right or ritual as a three step path from a state of separation to

a state of togetherness. Talk a little bit more about that, because I think that's really interesting, both the idea that there's actual steps that are important in a ritual and that it takes us from separation to togetherness. Yeah, that's its important point. Yeah. Van Hannah Poo coined the phrase right of passage, and he was a European philosopher, anthropologist, sociologist, I guess, and he had this idea of the ritual as a threshold. And you have this preliminal phase and

postliminal phase. So before and after and then the event and it rings so true. I mean, the easiest example is like a wedding. You start out, you are unmarried to people, you go into the venue or whatever it is, and you have this ritual, this event that everyone there agrees is this portal really from singleness to marriage. And there are so many rituals, even very small day a rituals.

I mean, you know, you do the thing you do first thing in the morning and say, okay, my day is starting, and it's like you're going from sleep world and you whatever, you make your coffee or you do your jumping jacks or whatever it is you do like to start today that counts to um, Yeah, any of the above. You know, you're like green juice, whatever it is. And then it's the day, you know, and there's very

large events you know that happened the world over. I mean New Year's right time is passing all the time. We've arbitrarily, you know, different cultures have different ideas of what year it is, but we've agreed on this calendar that we use, you know, by and large, and it's you know, based on the Christian religious calendar. Fine, um. And but we have this idea that it December twenty one at midnight whatever time Z when you're in now

it's a new year. I mean, it's totally artificial, but we have this threshold that we passed through and we play the music and we kiss each other on the ups and then it's a new year. And I think there's so much in very large and very small events that we do that follows that pattern. Yeah, it is interesting. I just had one of the one of the big birthdays that you would have. I just turned fifty. Happy birthday, Oh my goodness, And you would never have thought that.

I know from looking at me, I appreciate that. I'm just gonna say you're fantastic. I'll preempt you on that. But you know, people will say, like, how does it feel to be fifty? And I'm like, well, honestly, not very different than yesterday. But I also get it's a chance to reflect, it's a chance to mark time, it's a chance to contemplate, you know. I mean, I guess, on one hand, yes, we can trace it back to the day I was born, but it's not like I became fifty that day. And so a lot of ritual

is that way. And again as I said, I think for years I tossed away a lot of ritual or celebration because I went, well, this is just artificial and made up. And I think, as i'm you know, now that i'm old, old, you've seen it so much younger, I'm starting to see more of the wisdom in marking

time because you're right, it just goes. And I think there's something about when you're brought up with very strict set of rituals, which I wasn't, but you know a lot of people who were, and you shake off the philosophy. Let's say that those rituals are built around, it's really easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater and say I don't want anything to do with any of that.

And I think that you know, there is this sense, we have, this feeling that traditions are intrinsically valuable if they're old, but if they're new, it's a little contrived. And I think as we are as a culture, I hope shaking off some of the very old things that are part of our identity and our idea of what is right and wrong, and we come face to face

and really reckon with what we actually believe. We can sort of take some of the value off of things that are old and say and actually look at them and say, well, what do we want this to be like? Because change is inevitable, and the question is what kind of change do you want? And if it's slow change or the change that takes place when you look at something carefully and say I don't need this, I don't want this, this is what's right. Instead, this is what's better.

And I think that we can do that for a lot of this stuff where we think, oh, well, the way that people have been doing it for hundreds of years is the only way. I think we got to let some of that stuff go and create what is meaningful to us and reflects our values. Yeah, I'd like to talk a little bit about that now, about creating ritual, the one that I'll call to your attention, and then I'll ask you for any others that come to mind that you've created. But but you created a really great ritual,

the Ladies Dining Club. Did I give it the right title? Yeah, the Ladies Dining Society, which is like that's necessarily fancier, much better than club. But so you created this thing that is really such a great idea, it's something that I have thought of doing for years, And tell us a little bit more about that and how your understanding ritual affected that. Yeah, so again, I think because you know, sometimes you just can't appreciate something until you have the antithesis.

I'm very lucky. I have a lot of really amazing, really smart, really hilarious close girlfriends, and I don't know if I fully appreciated this is when I lived in New York, and I don't think if I really appreciated them as much as I should have until my now husband then boyfriend and I went to live abroad for a couple of years and I missed them so much. And when I came back and I was seeing everybody one on one and and trying to catch up, I

was like, this is not efficient. And also I have all these amazing women who should know each other in my life. How can I make this happen? So I like it was. I felt like, kind of, so are you doing it? I'll be totally frank. It was like, you know one of those things where you're like this awkward? Is this so embarrassing? But I started a monthly dinner party at a restaurant that I just organized and for I don't know, I think four or five years from when I returned home to New York. Before we left

New York. Um, we did it with only three exceptions, once a month, and you know, sometimes only a few people showed up. Sometimes it was packed. Sometimes it was like you know, weather was bad, everyone was busy, and it was like me and three friends, which was still

great and still fun. But so many friendships and actually professional relationships too, sprung out of this, and a lot of people left New York because as you get into your mid till late thirties, UM, it becomes you know, people settled down other places and it's you know a lot of people left for jobs and relationships and to

have a backyard and all those good things. But these relationships and these friendships have continued and it was so much fun and it was so special, and other people then when they moved away, started little chapters where they were and it took on a life of its own. And now I don't do it anymore, and I'm a mom and I live in Boston and everything is different, but it lives on in this other way and I'm really proud of that, and it was something that I derived so much joy from and it was such a

source of support too. I mean, you know, if I was religious, I might have a monthly women's event or club of some kind. But um, you know, when you're secular, you have to do the legwork of organizing that stuff yourself. But it's so worth it, and you did it monthly. You know, not all rituals should be monthly, but talk about their benefit to that. You know, It's true. I think each ritual, depending on what it is, you know, you have to sort of work out the timing for yourself.

But monthly felt right because it's you know, it's not as much of a time commitment, and you know, us twelve times a year doesn't sound that bad, and you know, people are busy and have jobs, and it's expensive to go out to dinner in New York and all those reasons. But as the rhythm started, there was this other layer that felt really poetic, which is, you know, there's something

very female about once a month. And I had always believed that the female cycle was once a month because we were somehow linked up to the moon and it had to do with the face of the moon. And I totally believe that, and I told people, and then when I went down to research it to write about this in my book, I discovered that there is no evidence to support you know, they're two roughly twenty eight

day cycles, but um, they appear to be unconnected. Which isn't to say we might not someday discover a connection, but as of now I have to reserve belief without evidence about that one. Yeah, it's such a great ritual. It sounds so fun, this thing about like having done that for you know, several years. And I think sometimes it's like we think, well, it's just once a month, what's that really gonna be? But that really can build something special. But boy, people are busy. It is so

hard to get any sort of commitment. You know, it has to be a great thing that happens, because things that aren't great just don't. They don't make it totally. And so much of creating a new ritual is trial and error, and you know there's some nudging involved. Um, but I think also you got to read the room and if it's not if it's not working for the other participants, you may have to let it go and try something different. But it doesn't have to be a

dinner party. I mean, you know, people have these rituals that they don't think of as rituals. I mean, if it's just like Thursday night happy hour with your coworkers or your friends, y'all go to the same yoga class once a week, poker night, movie night. There's a million things people do on a regular or semi regular basis that someone organizes and you know, is fulfilling in some way to the group. Um, that sort of does fall

into this category of for ritual. Yep. There's another ritual that a lot of religions have which is on a different time schedule, which is weekly Sabbath. The Jewish holiday is probably, at least to me, the best known in the best example of you know, it's a day that's

really set aside for deeper contemplation. Yeah. Absolutely, And I mean church services on Sunday, um, you know, weekly prayers all over the world and on you know schedules that are close to weekly also that you know in Eastern religions. There are so many versions of this, and I do think there's something may be said for taking a step back once a week and also finding a formal way to break up work and you know play for lack of a better word, there's something about that that's really valuable.

There's been some really interesting movements around digital sabbaths. Yes, are you familiar with some of those a little bit, But just the idea, I mean, you know, for Orthodox choose part of Shabba or Chavis? Is this idea that you don't I mean, obviously a lot of this predates cell phones and needless to say, but that you don't use electricity, you don't handle money, you don't cook, and especially like mechanical you know, you don't turn on the stove.

These things that sort of are early machinery that we might have had in our homes. And I think there's something now in a secular way. I mean, of course, if you're Orthodox, you also don't use your laptop. But I think for secular people and non joice there is a look towards having a day off from social media and from texting and from all these things that are very easy to just do every day forever and ever until you die if you don't think to take a

break from it. One of the things that you talk about that is in ritual, but it's in so much of other things. In our lives. Language and math and music is patterns, you know, and that we as humans love finding and creating and repeating them. And I'd like to talk about that in its positive sense because we're incredibly good at it, and also it has its negative elements. Great topic I'm fascinated with. So yeah, Paven recognition is so powerful. It's I think it's the key to what

everything we've been able to do as a species. I mean, I'm making totally arbitrary sounds out of my mouth right now, but you know what I'm saying, because we have agreed on the pattern of language and we have learned it from infancy, and if you speak English, you know what I'm trying to communicate. Even though there's no intrinsic meaning to the sounds, it's just a pattern that we recognize.

And this is you know, architecture, everything mechanical, everything we do that's really astonishing, in my opinion, requires this pattern recognition. And it's a biological advantage. It's a huge advantage. I mean, right, if you can learn which berries make people sick and which berries are good to eat, lots of pattern If you can learn this is the time of year when this animal comes this way. I mean, that is a huge, huge,

ancient survival advantage. But we're so good at finding patterns that were like I think we're addicted to it, and

we find patterns where they aren't any. And I think that so much of pseudoscience and so much of a lot of stuff that we you know, again, because we have such a hard time tolerating ambiguity, and we see these patterns, you know, whether it's like the man in the moon, you know, human face in the moon, or it's every time I do this, this happens, you know, all the little superstitions we have that is about our adiction to patterns and our desire to see them even

where when there aren't any. And I think that one of the things that's so important and so powerful and useful about science is the ability to look at the evidence and take a step back and just not just count the hits and not the misses or the other way around, and actually see, is there something here that we can rely on and recreate and independently see or is it just our fears and our wishes coming up

in this part of our brain that is so so powerful? Yeah, I love that you said counting the hits, are counting the misses, because that tends to be the thing that we we see there. And then, you know, the even darker side of patterns is the sense that we put people into patterns. Right. You know, you talk about astrology in the book a little bit, and you know it can be a fairly harmless sort of sort of thing.

And it's another version of thinking, if I know this one little thing about you, I know a lot about you, or I know everything about you, which leads to really awful things like racism. Right, yeah, that line is connected.

And I'm always fascinated by this because I'm I like personality tests like the angiogram and the other ones, and and so there's part of me that's drawn to that, and there's part of me also that's completely repelled by it, because I don't want to put myself in any kind of box, because I know that we start to conform to what we believe. I totally agree. And I think

this again connects to tolerating ambiguity. You meet someone, you see someone, you hear about someone, and you know one thing about them, and very often the color of their skin or where they're from, or something about their gender, sexuality, and because we are so uncomfortable often with the idea of that's one tiny thing or maybe even something significant about this person, but there are a whole complic hated human being with all these characteristics and thoughts and feelings

and ideas and perspectives. But we're impatient or we're just unwilling to leave that open and say, Okay, this individual person, I don't really know anything about them, and we just have this urge to categorize and see patterns where they're earning because we're so uncomfortable with all the things that we don't know, like who is this person who I don't know very well or I just met or I

saw on television? And I think that the more we leave ourselves open to curiosity, and the more we are comfortable with the idea that we know virtually nothing, not just about the great philosophical questions, but about other human beings who we've just met or or didn't meet, I think the more we can again get in touch with what's real rather than our fears. Yea, the whole diving deeper into racial issues and really looking at it. At least I'll speak for myself if I'm honest with myself.

I see things that I'm doing there that I'm like, uh, you know, I have beliefs that I believe everybody should be treated equal, and I you know, I do my best to bring those things into the world. But if I look at the way that my brain defaults too, Oh I see a person like this or a person like that, it's not only color of skin, it's it's cultural attributes. It's all these different things that I will then think, oh, I kind of know a lot about

that person based on those things, and that's just not true. Well, I think the goal is not to have no preconceptions. It's to examine them ruthlessly and to see what they are, and to take them all out and look at them and ask some really hard, deep questions to ourselves. Of course, we're all a product of the culture that we grew up in, and we have these unconscious things that we have to now, do you know, I mean now, ideally, especially now in this moment um, we have to do

the work, so to speak, to examine them. And it's not it's right. It's like no one is born perfectly enlightened. Just to extend the metaphor it's not that scientists have no hopes and wishes of what they're going to find in their experiments. It's that they have to look at what's really there and come to face to face with it,

and not to make themselves feel better. Yeah, I'm always interested within science, and I know this would be judge in a group of people, scientists as a whole collective group, like all scientists, they all follow this. You know, there's some old saying I never get it right, but that like, you know, science doesn't change its mind. It's just the old scientists die like that. It's not quite as beautiful

and enlightened as we think it is. And it's interesting for me because so much of the work that I do, people that I talked to are in the social sciences, and you know, we know in there there's there's mass problems with reproducing the studies, you know, And so it gets back into what we were saying kind of much earlier in the conversation, like holding what we know lightly because you know, even with science we're we're seeing that's

almost impossible not to have prejudice. It's almost impossible not to want a result out of a study, particularly when all the incentives line up in a certain direction, and so I always think it's useful to sort of look at that in ourselves and in others. Yea, And I mean scientists, like old people are you know, flawed human beings. And you know, everybody has their own fears and ulterior

motives and subconscious wishes and all those things. But the question is is there a system in place that takes that into account. I guess that's the thing. And you know, one of the things that my parents really instilled in me that's so powerful and so wonderful that science, is that you are celebrated if you prove those who came before you wrong. That is a great thing to do.

And I think there's something about that, like that idea if we had that in a larger cultural way, where realizing, oh, the people who I don't know, let's say, founded this country were truly screwed up and did horrible things, and we can now take that and make this country better and fix some of the problems that are hundreds of years old by coming to terms with the reality that these were not saints, that these were people who did some terrible, terrible things, and now we can recalibrate and

rebuild the system to be better than the one that was passed down to us, rather than this idea that I think falls much more in line with a religious outlook, which is we have to have this unquestioning respect for these patriarchal figures who we were brought up to revere from childhood, right well, And I think what that gets to also is exactly what we're talking about, which is tolerating the ambiguity, because yes, there were awful things that

were done, and there were also amazing and wonderful things and beautiful ideas that were generated. Both those things are there, and it's it's being able to keep what's beautiful and criticize what's not, and and that that takes a certain amount of ambiguity that just does seem to be missing. You know. I often think now the biggest problem I see in so much of what's happening is that there isn't room for nuance. Yeah, discussion from both sides of

the aisle, right, there's and things are nuanced. Like if we want to talk about like coronavirus, like what's the right path forward? Boy? Is it nuanced? Right? Like? Because yeah, we have got to find a way to you know, as our president would say, live with it. It's going to stay here right. Yes, that's true, but we also can't just be wildly running around letting infection rates get out of control. It's a very nuanced discussion, but no

nuance is happening none. I used the phrase in the book The War on Nuance, and I say, I must I must have missed that phrase somewhere, because I would have immediately that would have been near the top of my list. I mean, it's for words and a very

you know, it's totally understandabled. But I see that every day, and I think it's something that you know, again, like this idea we are some part of us is just more uncomfortable with this very rudimentary idea of good and bad versus this complicated idea that being an adult on

this planet in this year requires. And I think that you know, finding a way to to describe things with accuracy first, and the level of detail that is required is just you know, it takes a really talented person to do that in a at a time when you know the sound bite and all that this you know, hundred and forty character tweet, it really takes somebody who has an immense amount of clarity and understanding and um

ability to communicate um, these really complex ideas. And and I think so often people think that the public is not as smart as they are and treats them, you know, treats us. I'm a member of the public myself, UM, treats us like we are unable to grasp complicated things. And I just don't think that's the case. I couldn't agree more. I don't know the path back, I guess, except to try and have a nuanced discussion where possible. Yeah, lead by example, I guess. Yep, yep. You quote it

in the book. One of your dad's most often repeated phrases is if you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. And I'd like to talk about that in the sense of interconnectedness, because that's another idea that has a very much a spiritual element. And and you know, like I'm I'm primarily you know, if I have a leaning, it's primarily Buddhist. I practice Zen pretty rigorously, and interconnectedness is really at

the heart of it. And it can be this mysterious idea, but it's also not mysterious at all. It's absolutely tangible and real. And I think your dad's phrase captures that so well. So give me your favorite way of thinking about interconnectedness or describing interconnectedness. That's such a great question.

I mean, the web of life on this planet UM and the way that it evolved and the way that we can see UM those connections in our d n A to one another and members of our species and beyond UM to all the life on Earth and you know, plants and bacteria and and all of this, all the symbiosis that is required. And we see that now as with you know, climate change and deforestation and how many species go extinct on a daily basis. That it's not isolated.

These things are not just happening in far away places. Those consequences are going to catch up with us. Are catching up with us right now, and it's because we're all part of this one blue dot, pale blue dot together. And the more we UM see ourselves from that vantage point as though we were coming coming to this planet from Afar, and the more difficult it is to build these walls literal and figurative between us and the other creatures on Earth, the other people on Earth and say, oh, well,

that's happening far away. That person is different than me, that doesn't have anything to do with me. And the more I think we lean into the idea that we're all in this together. We are on this tiny little boat in this immense vast ocean um and all we have are one another, I think the better off will be. I couldn't agree more. Well, thank you so much for coming on. You and I are going to talk in the post show conversation. I just want to ask you a couple of questions about what it's like to be

the daughter of someone as famous as your father. So you and I will discuss what it's like to be Carl Sagan's daughter a little bit in the post show conversation. Listeners you can get access to and many episode for me each week, as well as ad free episodes and the joy of supporting the show by going to one you feed dot net slash join. So again, Sasha, thank you so much for coming on. I've really enjoyed this

my pleasure. Thank you. Eric. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support now. We are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we

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