Episode 95: Transcript

Episode 95: Science Fiction Keeps Trying to “Fix” Disabled People

Transcription by Keffy



Charlie Jane: [00:00:00] Welcome to Our Opinions Are Correct, a podcast about the meaning of science fiction and the universe and jelly beans and everything. I'm Charlie Jane Anders, the author of a new writing advice book called Never Say You Can't Survive, a young adult novel called Victories Greater Than Death, and a forthcoming short story collection called Even Greater Mistakes.

Annalee: [00:00:23] And I'm Annalee Newitz. I'm a science journalist and science fiction author. And my most recent book is a piece of science journalism that's called Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age.

Charlie Jane: [00:00:37] Today, we're going to be talking about disability in speculative fiction. Science fiction and fantasy are full of portrayals of disabled bodies, some of which are nuanced and positive and many of which… aren't. 

[00:00:51] Why does science fiction keep wanting to “fix” disabled people are turning them into inspirational superheroes instead of just letting them be people? To get deeper into this, we're going to be joined by the amazing, incredible Elsa Sjunneson, author of the brand new book, Being Seen. 

[00:01:08] And also, as our audio extra next week, we'll be talking about our favorite copycats of James Bond. Which reminds me, did you know that our patrons get audio extras after every episode, plus essays, reviews, and access to our Discord channel? It's all amazing, and it can be yours for just a few bucks a month. This podcast is entirely supported by you, the listener, so anything you give, goes right back into making our opinions even more correct. Find us at patreon.com/ouropinionsarecorrect.

[00:01:44] Let's get started.

[00:01:46] OOAC theme music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion. 

Charlie Jane: [00:02:14] We're so excited to be joined today by Elsa Sjunneson, the first deafblind person to win a Hugo Award. She's the co-editor of Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction, and her work has been published in CNN, The Boston Globe, Metro UK and Tor.com. Elsa has been a finalist for best fan writer and best semiprozine Hugo Awards, a winner of the D. Franklin Defying Doomsday Award and a finalist for the best game writing Nebula Award. She has worked with New Jersey 11th For Change in the New York Disability Pride Parade. And her new book, which is amazing, is called Being Seen

[00:02:50] Thank you so much for joining us, Elsa,

Elsa: [00:02:50] Thank you so much for having me. This is such a delight.

Charlie Jane: [00:02:55] Yay! So first of all, why did you think it was so important for you to coedit that volume, Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction?

Elsa: [00:03:04] So when I was asked to coedit the project, I was asked to edit the nonfiction section. And I was really excited about it because there are not a lot of critical spaces for disabled people to tell their stories when it comes to interacting with the media that we're being depicted in, if that makes sense. Like we don't often have the space to talk about it. And so I was really excited to be able to give sort of a forum to a population of people that don't often get heard, to really comment on the ways that we're being depicted, the ways that we're being described, and how that affects us and how we want to be seen. Which goes back to the title of my book, but just, that's a theme. How disabled people are viewed is something that only we can really speak to. And so I was really honored and excited that I had the opportunity to facilitate that for people from my community.

Annalee: [00:03:59] So one of the things that you say, in your book is that science fiction has a eugenics problem. And this is something we've talked about a number of times on this podcast about how eugenics is tied to the history of science fiction. And I want you to talk us through how this plays out, especially in regards to disabled people.

Elsa: [00:04:18] Well, the way that it plays out in regards to disabled people is think about how many times you've seen a disabled body in science fiction. And then think about how many times that disabled body has been augmented to be better or to be fixed. How many times that disabled body has been co-opted for science. How many times has that disabled body not been autonomous? And that's really the backbone of eugenics is removing autonomy and self expression from disabled people and from not allowing us to form communities. 

[00:04:54] So often, you will see one lone disabled character in a science fiction or fantasy novel, and they will sort of be off in their own worlds, and they won't have people. And so that, too, is eugenics. And I think it really does come from the idea that non-disabled authors have a really hard time imagining that disabled people want to live in the bodies that we have, in the conditions that we live in. And so they assume, because this is what eugenics tells you, that disabled people would rather be dead for be fixed.

Annalee: [00:05:30] Yeah, it makes me think about how in Star Trek: The Next Generation, how we meet Geordi, who’s blind, but we never see him like hanging around with all the other disabled people on the Enterprise. Like they don't ever, it's never like, and here's all my buds and they have other kinds of disabilities. It's just like, it's Geordi, and that's it. 

Elsa: [00:05:49] And not only is it Geordi and that's it, but Geordi has a visor that sort of circumnavigates his disability. Which, I think that Geordi is cool. Like, I love the idea of the visor. I can see that existing in a cyberpunk or futuristic setting. But I also want to recognize that like, that's often the only depiction that you have of a blind person in space. You don't have blind people using adaptive devices that don't circumnavigate their disability. And that's actually a piece of eugenics too, is the idea that we can't survive in the bodies that we have, and that we need to adapt to be non-disabled people.

Charlie Jane: [00:06:31] Yeah. And so actually, I wanted to ask about Geordi, because you are very critical about Geordi in the book. And I wanted to ask, what is the difference between a good depiction of assistive technology versus one that kind of erases the disability? And on a similar note, you kind of talked about how you love Toph from The Last Airbender, but you don't really love Daredevil. And I'm just, what's the difference there? Like, can you just tease out those things for us?

Elsa: [00:06:57] So Toph. I love Toph because Toph has a magical ability that is an adaptive device. She still can't see. Like, she's not going to be able to see anything. But she can feel things under her feet, she can manipulate the space around her to make it accessible for her. The difference between that and Daredevil is that Daredevil, we get these visual—and this is part of what's interesting is that I can critique it on the level of what the film is doing. Because the film is never showing us that Toph can see. But Daredevil does, we got these visions of like a red world that Daredevil can still sort of see in and how he senses things. And that circumnavigates his disability and it makes non-disabled viewers say that Daredevil isn't blind. And that's actually the biggest thing, is how audiences react to the character. I have never heard a fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender tell me that Toph isn't blind. Everybody accepts that Toph is blind. I have had people at conventions tell me that Daredevil isn't blind for a decade.

Charlie Jane: [00:08:06] And so it's a similar thing with assistive technology, like you feel like if it if it makes it so that you don't even feel like the person is disabled. That's like where it crosses the line for you?

Elsa: [00:08:15] I think so. I mean, because a disabled body is different from a non-disabled body. I move through space differently. I experience the world differently. That doesn't mean it's bad. It just means that it's a different experience. And I think when we force disabled bodies to conform to the non-disabled experience, that's when things start to fall apart for me. Because non-disabled people then just can write just a non-disabled character, and say that they're disabled, even though they don't have the experience of disability because they have these adaptive aids. Does that makes sense outside of my head?

Charlie Jane: [00:08:56] Yeah. No, that makes total sense.

Annalee: [00:08:58] Yeah. I mean, it kind of brings up what we've been dancing around, which is this idea that you see all over the place of disabled people who also have superpowers. Like sort of how Geordi can see in other parts of the light spectrum because of his hair band over his eyes, Daredevil sees in this, like, whatever that world is. 

[00:09:20] So what is the problem with doing that? And also, I think, more importantly, how do we get out of that? Like, how do we have superpowered, disabled characters where the powers don't like erase their disability? 

Elsa: [00:09:32] Well, I think the way that you have a superhero who's disabled where their power doesn't erase the disability is to not have the superpower relate to the disability.

Charlie Jane: [00:09:42] Right. 

Elsa: [00:09:43] So like, a blind character, who can do telekinesis and they maybe understand spatial skills differently. Or they have echolocation which still means you have to pay attention—

Charlie Jane: [00:09:58] Oh, nice.

Elsa: [00:09:58] —to your surrounds. All of that would be fine. It's when the disability is being effectively solved by the superpower that you have a problem.

Annalee: [00:10:08] Mm-hmm. And that's the Daredevil model. 

Elsa: [00:10:11] Yeah. And Toph’s is literally an adaptive aid.

Charlie Jane: [00:10:14] Right.

[00:10:16] So in your book, one of the things you say is that horror is the worst genre to be disabled in? Why? What is it about horror? Or why is that the case?

Elsa: [00:10:25] Horror just has so many facets of awfulness when it comes to disability. If you're a woman in horror, you are 90% sure to be the victim. And if you're a disabled woman in horror, it is just your fear is part of what makes horror work. We see it in Red Dragon, where there is a blind woman who is, effectively is in a relationship with a serial killer. And she doesn't know because she can't see who he is. 

Charlie Jane: [00:10:53] Oh, right.

Elsa: [00:10:54] And the horror there is she can't identify this person because she can't see. In Hush, it's a home invasion story where a deaf woman who lives by herself in the woods is being stalked by this man in her house. She can't hear him. The horror is literally hinging on the fact that she can't hear him. So the viewer is afraid because she doesn't have hearing. But there's also that sense of relief for non-disabled viewers that oh, this would never happen to me because I can hear or I can see. And I think that that causes a lot of harm. 

[00:11:30] There is one exception, which I didn't actually get to write about in the book that I'm really excited to cover, which is the horror movie Run, which came out in 2020. And it is a horror movie that is about caregiver murder, and abuse. 

Charlie Jane: [00:11:49] Oh.

Elsa: [00:11:50] And about a wheelchair-using woman whose mother is a narcissist, and is one of the best depictions of disabled women I have ever seen. It actually works. So I'm actually really excited to be able to tell people there is a horror movie that is actually not kind to disabled women, but it does actually depict the experience extremely well.

Annalee: [00:12:14] Is it that her mom is abusing her? Is that the scenario? 

Elsa: [00:12:18] Yes. Yes.

Annalee: [00:12:18] Yeah. Okay.

Elsa: [00:12:20] Her mother is abusive. I don't want to say too much else. But like, it actually worked because I was not feeling like her disability was the thing that made her weak. And it wasn't the thing that the movie was hinging on to make us feel fear.

Annalee: [00:12:35] Yeah, that's really interesting. It's kind of the flip side of what you're saying about the superpowers is if you turn the disability into the thing that makes the horror possible, that's when it gets toxic.

Elsa: [00:12:48] Exactly.

Charlie Jane: [00:12:50] Right. 

Elsa: [00:12:50] But it works for men, too. Being Seen is primarily about what it's like to be identifying as, this is one of those tricky spaces because it is primarily about women. And like, I talk about this a little bit in the book that gender and disability is really tricky. But—

Charlie Jane: [00:13:10] Yeah.

Elsa: [00:13:10] Men tend to be the monsters when it comes to horror. Don’t Breathe, which now has a sequel, it is a home invasion movie again, but this time the blind man is the monster and the home invaders are the people who should be scared out of their wits because he has superhuman hearing.

Charlie Jane: [00:13:32] Oh, no. Oh my gosh. 

Elsa: [00:13:35] So he basically hunts them through the house and kills them and also ends up being a rapist. So either you're a victim or you're the monster, there is no in between in horror, except for this one movie.

Charlie Jane: [00:13:47] Yeah, and I was gonna say, actually, that leads into my next question, which was like, I feel like one of the things in science fiction is that all too often disabled people are the bad guys. They're the villains. They're the kind of terrifying, you know. You talk about this in your book, whether it's people who have some kind of, maybe they have burn scars on their faces, or they have some kind of facial difference, or, you know, I've lost count of how many people in wheelchairs turned out to be like the bad guy or the monster or whatever.

Elsa: [00:14:17] In The Kingsmen. It's the woman with the cheetah feet who is like the crazy assassin. In the new James Bond movie, it's a dude with facial scarring. Like it just goes on.

Charlie Jane: [00:14:27] Right.

Elsa: [00:14:27] And on and on. I mean, the most recognizable villain in science fiction is Darth Vader, and he's absolutely disabled.

Charlie Jane: [00:14:38] Yeah, you go through all the Star Wars characters, and you're like, well, here's like 10 Star Wars characters who have disabilities of various types and only Yoda who you know, it's kind of a limit, an edge case. Yoda and like one other character are okay, but everybody else there's just like a string—

Elsa: [00:14:53] Yeah, Cherrut Imwe, he's the other one who's not a villain.

Charlie Jane: [00:14:58] Right? Which I'm not familiar with that. character, I guess. And Saw Gerrera is a little bit complicated. But yeah, Darth Vader, like you talked about how his breathing apparatus is like this, you know, he's scary because he needs an assistive device to breathe. And it's like this scary noise that he makes.

Elsa: [00:15:15] And like that sound is a sound that literally everybody on the planet now associates with “Scary guy who can choke you from six feet away.”

Charlie Jane: [00:15:23] Right? 

Annalee: [00:15:25] Yeah.

Charlie Jane: [00:15:25] Yep, that’s an issue. That’s a problem.

Annalee: [00:15:26] So it's demonizing both the disabled person and the assistive device that they're using? 

Elsa: [00:15:31] Yes. 100%. 

Annalee: [00:15:34] Yeah. So we've been talking about like demonizing disabled people. But what are some of the other tropes in speculative fiction that just piss you off the most? Like, is there one that just or two that just really stand out as like, please stop doing that.

Elsa: [00:15:47] I mean, I could really go without the magical cures. I'm really done. 

Charlie Jane: [00:15:52] Yeah, for sure.

Elsa: [00:15:53] Like, I just, and it's complicated, right, because some disabled people do want cures. And I don't want to erase that there are people who would really, really like it, if they could just wave a magic wand. A lot of the people I know who wish that they could wave a magic wand are in extreme pain that they cannot escape. And so I fully empathize with wanting to not be in pain. I'm right there with them. If I could wave a magic wand and my PTSD would go away, I would absolutely do that in a heartbeat. 

[00:16:26] But magical cure narratives sort of skip over the idea that there's any kind of healing period or adjustment from being disabled to being non-disabled. And that's really, really toxic, because it prioritizes and able bodied as the only good body that can exist. And it undercuts that one might be comfortable in a disabled body or even happy. 

Charlie Jane: [00:16:48] Yeah.

Elsa: [00:16:49] I've been deaf blind since I was four months old. Because I lost my vision within the first few months that I was alive, I've never been able to see out of two eyes consciously. So how long would it take me to see out of two eyes? I don't know. Years?

Charlie Jane: [00:17:10] Right. Yeah. And there was a string of stories for a while there, like, you know, Avatar, and also Lost with the character of Lock, there was a whole string of stories where people do get a miracle cure for their disability. And it's like, this is presented as just like this unalloyed good that, you know, you can be a giant blue cat guy. And like, it's kind of complicated. 

[00:17:30] So wrapping up this segment, final question. In the book, you there are things that you do praise like you like how Game of Thrones deals with disability, you like the character of Miles Vorkosigan and you also say a lot of nice things about the movie A Quiet Place. What is it about those stories in particular, that makes them better than the usual representations in speculative fiction?

Elsa: [00:17:50] So, in Game of Thrones, it was the fact that there were actual disabled people playing disabled characters. And that makes a huge difference to the storytelling screen. But I also feel like it was realistic, because so often, books that take place in high fantasy settings, or books that take place even in historical settings, don't have disabled people. 

Charlie Jane: [00:18:13] Mm hmm. 

Elsa: [00:18:13] Which is about as inaccurate as you can get. Because if you're living in a world that doesn't have a whole lot of medical care, you're gonna have a lot of disabled people. 

Charlie Jane: [00:18:24] Right? 

Elsa: [00:18:23] You fall off a horse, and you break your spine, and it's 1540. Either you're dead, or you're never walking the same again.

Charlie Jane: [00:18:35] Right, right.

Elsa: [00:18:35] So the idea that everybody is sort of magically perfect and fine, doesn't work. So that's part of what made Game of Thrones work is, you know, there are a lot of things that I don't love Game of Thrones for but that one, I was like, well, this actually works. The idea that there are this many disabled people is accurate, and it feels really good to see that many disabled characters, some of whom are in power, some of whom are making bad choices, some of whom are having sex, which almost never happens. Like it actually...

Charlie Jane: [00:19:07] Right. 

Elsa: [00:19:08] They are people. A Quiet Place 1 and 2 also have a deaf actor playing a deaf character. But the other thing that really worked for me with that was that it relies on interdependence as a concept, which is a really strong disability community value. It's the idea that we can't live alone. And we sort of have to use the same skills to work together. And so because her family speaks ASL, when they are no longer able to use their voices to communicate because there are giant monsters that will come and kill you, if they hear you, her family can speak to each other. It's a survival mechanism.

Charlie Jane: [00:19:47] Right. 

Elsa: [00:19:47] They’re suddenly built to live and that's really powerful to me.

Charlie Jane: [00:19:53] That is really cool. So we're going to take a really quick break and when we come back, we're going to talk to Elsa about her book Being Seen.

[00:19:59] OOAC theme music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.

Annalee: [00:20:05] Music, art and entertainment inspire each of us in different ways. But have you ever wondered what inspires the people who create our cultural touchstones?

Charlie Jane: [00:20:13] On The Spark Parade podcast, your host Adam Unze talks with artists and entertainers about their cultural spark of inspiration, everything from Shakespeare and South Park, to Missy Elliott and Lovecraft Country.

Annalee: [00:20:27] You'll hear from creatives such as Yassir Lester, Conor Oberst, Chris Gethard, and Adrian Young.

Charlie Jane: [00:20:33] Be sure to check out The Spark Parade to see what will spark the inspiration in you.

Annalee: [00:20:40] Find it on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts.

Charlie Jane: [00:20:52] So Elsa, you know, first of all, I love Being Seen, it's such a powerful book, I'm really glad that it's it's coming out in the world and that more people can read it. What made you want to write this book?

Elsa: [00:21:02] So I've been doing a lot of talking about disability in media for almost 10 years at this point. And I done, I'd watched enough movies and read enough books that I kind of was coming to a conclusion of a story about what was going on. And the conclusion that I ultimately came to was that the way that we depict disabled women in media was breaking the way that people look at us and can identify us and can relate to us in the real world. 

[00:21:33] I can't tell you the number of times somebody has come up to me and said, but if you're deaf blind. You're not like Helen Keller, how can you be deaf blind? And it's that the archetypes that people just sort of pasted on to disabled bodies have really hurt the way that we can be a part of society. And so that's why I wrote Being Seen because I wanted to show people how the media that they were consuming was driving how they saw disabled bodies. 

Annalee: [00:22:02] Yeah, one of the things you talk about is this idea of the gaze of people looking at you or at disabled people. And you call it the abled gaze. And then there's also a kind of a parallel is this concept of how some disabled people can pass as non-disabled, whether because they have invisible disabilities, or they're, you know, not as disabled, as you know, stereotypes would suggest. And I'm wondering if you could just talk about why it's so important to be visible and to come out as disabled?

Elsa: [00:22:34] So I talk about this a little bit in the book. But for many of us, we are raised by people who try to talk us out of the reality of bodies. And so I think it's really important for self identity for disabled people to accept the bodies that they live in, for one.

Charlie Jane: [00:22:56] Right.

Elsa: [00:22:57] And I think when you can pass, it's a weird thing, because I know for many of my trans friends, it's like, yay, I'm passing as my gender. And for disabled people, I think it's actually a negative to pass.

Charlie Jane: [00:23:11] I think it's a much more complicated conversation in the trans community, to be honest, but yeah. I know. It's complicated.

Elsa: [00:23:15] That’s fair.

Charlie Jane: [00:23:18] Yeah. I mean—

Elsa: [00:23:18] It's complicated. And so yeah, like, it is more of a negative, I think, in the disabled community. Because when you pass that means that sometimes people don't see that you’re disabled and they will actually do harm to you. Like, you get out of your car, and you're using a handicap placard. And someone is like, “You're not really disabled.” You may be signing up for getting yelled at by a total stranger. You know, who then starts to ask you about your medical history in the middle of the street when you're just trying to go get some ice cream.

Charlie Jane: [00:23:54] Oh.

Annalee: [00:23:55] Yeah.

Charlie Jane: [00:23:56] That is a super fun.

Elsa: [00:23:58] I think it's really important for people to recognize for themselves that they're disabled because it gives you the ability to talk back to people when you do pass. And if you're strong enough in your identity, it makes that an easier thing to deal with, in a lot of ways.

Charlie Jane: [00:24:16] Yeah, so one of the interesting things in the book, you talk about how it's hard to talk about disability without having to route around inspiration, and you talk about how inspirational stories of disabled people are actually a problem. And this kind of comes back to the thing we talked about before with like, disabled people with superpowers. You have all these stories in the media about like, a disabled person who climbed Mount Everest or whatever. Why is it a bad thing to have inspirational stories about disabled people?

Elsa: [00:24:43] So it's complicated. On the one hand, it's great people are like, “Oh, look, a disabled person can do the thing. Yay.” But the problem is, is that then you start getting asked questions about why you can't do that. 

Charlie Jane: [00:24:57] Right.

Elsa: [00:24:57] Because going back to this concept of archetypes, right? If the stories that you're seeing about disabled people are always dude climbs Everest, another dude trains his own guide dog and does a 5000, you know, elevation height, with his self trained guide, when he, you know, is modded for doing these things, we get into this loop of like, anything a disabled person does by themselves is suddenly incredible. And sometimes it comes down to little things like, “Oh, you're crossing the street by yourself, good for you.” So what I think we get into is this cycle of seeing disabled people as inspiring because the default assumption is that we can't.

Charlie Jane: [00:25:48] Right.

Elsa: [00:25:48] Rather than being inspired by people because they are doing cool things.

Charlie Jane: [00:25:54] Yeah, that makes total sense. So there's some stuff in your book that's really upsetting and hard to read, like some of the stuff about some of the violence that you've dealt with, and abuse and medical discrimination and the mistreatment from the police, and just all the different ways that ableism can take a toll on you. What are you hoping that non-disabled people will take away from reading about all this, you know, upsetting stuff?

Elsa: [00:26:18] Well, the first thing I'm hoping is that they stop perpetuating the things that they're doing unintentionally. Because I think that some of the things I'm writing about are significantly unintentional. Like that the harm that they're doing isn't actually,  “Oh, I'm gonna, you know, hurt a disabled person today.” It's that toxic ableism sort of seeps through.

[00:26:39] Some of the most horrific ableism I've experienced has been from people who I've known for years who just don't know any better. But I also hope that non-disabled people start to see how systemic it is. Because I do talk about institutions. I talk about the medical industrial complex, and what harm it's doing. And I hope people start thinking about how the medical system is harming disabled people. Because they may have no idea. They may also have no idea about the fact that the police are harming disabled people at significant rate. And one thing I'd really like for people to take away from that section is to never call the cops on a disabled person again.

Annalee: [00:27:19] Yeah, I mean, what's an example of, when you say, disabled people are being harmed by the medical establishment. What's a good example of that, that people can kind of hold in their minds as a template?

Elsa: [00:27:31] So, yeah, I mean, there's not a lot that the average person can do except continuing to push our government to create better health care. Because right now, your disabled fellow citizens are paying more for their insurance through the marketplace than you are if they can't get on Medicare. And our insurance companies don't pay for things like wheelchairs or hearing aids. Like, I paid for my hearing aids out of pocket. They don't pay for those, because they're considered a non-essential medical expense. 

Charlie Jane: [00:28:06] That's insane. 

Elsa: [00:28:08] Yeah, it is. It's completely nuts. It is bonkers. The idea that we are told we must wear hearing aids to comply with hearing society. And yet it's not actually paid for by our insurance. I don't know. But most non-disabled people don't know that until they have to buy hearing aids for their parents.

Annalee: [00:28:26] Yeah, and I mean, there's been this move to make hearing aids available as an over the counter technology, which would be a lot cheaper. And that's been this huge controversy. And I was just reading about that today in The Washington Post, that there's finally going to be a bill that will hopefully allow people to buy cheaper hearing aids over the counter without permission from their doctor. Which again, is just so bizarre, like, why do you need? Why do you need a doctor to verify that you want to get hearing aids? Like if you're having a hard time hearing, then you should just get some hearing aids? Like, you know, it's ridiculous.

Elsa: [00:29:01] I think it's about control. I mean, I do see that a lot of the things that people do, that well, not that just people do, but the things that society does around disability often centers around the idea of controlling disabled experience. This is why, for example, you will see residential facilities having conversations about whether or not their adult disabled residents are allowed to have sex. 

Annalee: [00:29:28] Yeah. 

Charlie Jane: [00:29:29] Oh man.

Elsa: [00:29:29] This is why you will have doctors deciding whether or not you can buy your hearing aids over the counter. Like there is no trust in place and also there's a certain amount of, “You need to be taken care of because you're disabled.”

Charlie Jane: [00:29:42] Right, so final question. Because this is a science fiction podcast, I wanted to kind of bring it back around and ask, what's your optimistic scenario for like the future of disability? What would you like to see in the world of 100 years from now?

Elsa: [00:29:57] I love this question.

Charlie Jane: [00:30:00] Yay.

Elsa: [00:30:00] In 100 years, I want to see architecture completely changed. 

Charlie Jane: [00:30:04] Yeah.

Elsa: [00:30:07] Because ways that our buildings are currently built are not built with a framework for disabled people. So the idea that you never have to go through the back entrance of any building to get inside, if you have a wheelchair, that's one. Our transit systems would have to be completely revolutionized. I actually saw a first step. I was in New York last week, and I hadn't been back since 2020. And over the announcements on the subway, I heard, “This is an accessible station.” They didn't have those announcements when I was living there. Those are new. So the idea that, like, in 100 years, maybe one, all of the subway stations are accessible. And it’s not just—

Annalee: [00:30:55] Yeah, that'd be nice. 

Charlie Jane: [00:30:55] That would be good. 

Elsa: [00:30:56] Yeah. And not just 25% of them. Because currently, it’s 25% of them. But it's, you know, the fact that you don't have to have that announcement, because you can assume that you can go everywhere. It's the idea that there is no barrier to access for adaptive aids. Like, you don't have to do anything to get hearing aids, you can just go and get them fitted. 

Charlie Jane: [00:31:22] Right. I mean—

Elsa: [00:31:24] And I really hope within 100 years, we have nationalized health care, like every other rational country on the planet.

Charlie Jane: [00:31:34] That would be that'd be really nice. Fingers crossed. Here's how hoping.

Annalee: [00:31:36] I want my earbuds to have a hearing aid mode. Like why can't I turn my earbuds into hearing aids? Like, I don't understand.

Elsa: [00:31:44] I keep asking that question. I'm like, why do air pods look like hearing aids? Why can't Apple just [inaudible] hearing aids?

Annalee: [00:31:53] Yeah, just turn it into an amplifier.

Charlie Jane: [00:31:56] That’s a really good question. Really good question. So Elsa, thank you so much for joining us. Can you tell people where to find you online?

Elsa: [00:32:01] So you can find me as snarkbat literally everywhere on the internet. It's my website, it’s my Twitter, it’s my Instagram. That's spelled S-N-A-R-K-B-A-T. Yes, I echolocate using sarcasm.

Charlie Jane: [00:32:16] Nice.

Elsa: [00:32:17] Find me on November 4, at Elliot Bay Books with Annalee talking about Being Seen. That's also being co-sponsored by the Seattle Public Library. And then you can find me at Seattle Town Hall on December 8, at 7:30pm. And that's being co-sponsored by Third Place Books. 

Charlie Jane: [00:32:37] Awesome. 

Elsa: [00:32:39] And that will be in conversation with Meg Elison. So those are two events where you can find me in conversation with non-disabled people talking about my book.

Charlie Jane: [00:32:50] Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Have a great rest of your day and looking forward to seeing you soon.

Elsa: [00:32:56] Absolutely.

Annalee: [00:32:56] Bye, thanks.

[00:32:59] OOAC theme music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.

Charlie Jane: [00:32:58] We're gonna take a short break. And when we come back, we're going to answer a couple of questions from you, our beloved listeners

Charlie Jane: [00:33:13] Welcome back. So for our final segment, we wanted to answer a couple of questions from some of our beloved Patreon supporters, which, that could be you. Anybody at the Vulcan or higher level can ask us any question and we'll answer it on the podcast.

Annalee: [00:33:30] Just become a Vulcan.

Charlie Jane: [00:33:30] And posted prompts recently. Yeah, just become a Vulcan. Or wait, I can't remember if it's like, what the highest level is. But anyway, so [Javier Aviles sp?] asks, you know, if society is like a cake with layers, that you go on uncovering the deeper you go, what good does having an archaeological perspective on life bring? And also, you know, why do we need archaeology? How does it help us to have an examined life? And finally, would Star Trek be better if people remembered that Picard was, himself, an archaeologist? 

[00:34:02] Annalee, what do you think?

Annalee: [00:34:04] Yeah, so first of all, yes, I think it would be really interesting if Picard’s archaeology background came up a little bit more often than just the one time when he, like, sleeps with a hot archaeologist—

Charlie Jane: [00:34:18] Vash.

Annalee: [00:34:17] And I guess it’s supposed to be that they bond over their shared love of history. Because actually having a knowledge of deep time, where where humanity has been, really helps us not just plan for the far future, which I think it does, but also just to think through problems in the present. Because history provides us with so much data about how people dealt with all kinds of problems in the past, that we're facing now. 

[00:34:46] For example, in my book Four Lost Cities, I talked about how the Angkorian civilization, the Khmer Empire, which was centered in today's Cambodia, but really spread across a huge part of Southeast Asia and Thailand and Vietnam and Laos. They were dealing constantly with wildly fluctuating climate, and dealing with super dry seasons and super wet seasons. And this is something that in California and large parts of the world now, we're starting to see as part of our everyday lives.

[00:35:19] How do we deal with drought followed by floods, followed by drought, followed by floods? And knowing how people dealt with it in the Khmer Empire 1000 years ago, also how they failed to deal with it, all the things they did wrong—

Charlie Jane: [00:35:34] Right.

Annalee: [00:35:34] Would be really great for people to be studying right now. And in fact, a lot of the archaeologists who work on the Khmer Empire, try to write policy articles that will help people in the present day. Even just thinking about things like urban infrastructure, like what do you need in your urban infrastructure? And what could go wrong if you build incorrectly? 

[00:35:57] Yeah, and I also think, like, history is full of ingenious ways that people have avoided conflict. There’s lots of histories of war. But there's also histories of dealmaking, peacemaking coalition building, polyglot societies, multicultural societies. How did those societies work? And how can we borrow some of their innovations? 

[00:36:21] One of my favorite examples of a polyglot society from the past is the culture that grew up along the Silk Roads that connected basically eastern China with the Middle East, and even kind of beyond, you know, eventually kind of stretched into Europe and Africa as well. And these were cultures and cities that were on a trade route. So they were very cosmopolitan. They were full of people who spoke different languages had really different belief systems, really different kinds of food, and they all coexisted. And we have lots of artifacts from that era, which show that like a town might have a Muslim temple, a Buddhist temple, Jewish temple, and like, everybody's just hanging out. It's all good. 

Charlie Jane: [00:37:10] That is awesome. 

Annalee: [00:37:10] Yeah. So those are all the good things about that archeological layer cake. And I'm sure that Picard, in the back of his mind, is thinking about a lot of that stuff when he's trying to come up with strategies for dealing with unknown civilizations. That's my headcanon. 

Charlie Jane: [00:37:27] I'm sure he is. 

Annalee: [00:37:29] Our other question is from our patron [David Cups sp?], who says he ran across a comment in a recent Scientific American that said, if another spacefaring civilization had established a colony here sometime before 1 million years ago, there's a good chance we wouldn't know it. And he wants to know whether that is actually true. And what does this say about the Fermi Paradox if other races are establishing colonies on worlds, including their own, and then they survive, and then they leave? And he compares it to the Vikings, with their early settlement in North America? 

[00:38:06] So Charlie, Jane, what do you think? Does it make a difference?

Charlie Jane: [00:38:09] I mean, yeah, I think this is the thing that's always bugged me about the Fermi Paradox, in particular, is this notion that like, we don't think about timescales, like I think, for us a million years is a long time. It's, you know, it's a lot longer than we've been around. But in the grand scale of the cosmos, it's really not very much time at all. And, it's not just that other civilizations could be springing up hundreds of light years away, they could also springing up, you know, hundreds of thousands of years ago, and it will be hard for us to detect any civilization that was that old unless it was so far away that its emissions are still reaching us now. 

[00:38:49] But I think that that is one of the things that people don't often think about when they think about, like, life outside of our solar system, is that that the timescales for which life could have emerged are much bigger than people acknowledge. And I wonder sometimes about like, whether our civilization will leave anything behind that people can find a million years from now if we cease to exist. What do you think about that? 

Annalee: [00:39:11] Yeah, this is like one of my very favorite thought experiments, I have to say. Not so much the thing about whether we will leave anything behind because I don't really care. Because whatever. Our civilization isn't that great that we need it to be preserved for—

Charlie Jane: [00:39:27] I like it. I like our civilization, I don’t know.

Annalee: [00:39:30] I do. I like human beings. I want humans to keep surviving and evolving and becoming—

Charlie Jane: [00:39:36] We invented Spumoni. 

Annalee: [00:39:36] —cool. 

Charlie Jane: [00:39:36] There has to be something to let the universe know, we invented Spumoni.

Annalee: [00:39:42] I'm not as excited about Spumoni as I am about, like maybe some other things that we've done. But I do love thinking about this idea that another civilization evolved on earth like a billion years ago or on Mars, you know, a couple billion years ago because now we have a lot of evidence that Mars used to have big bodies of water, could have supported life that was, you know, somewhat recognizable to us as life. It wouldn't have been crystalline entities, like on Star Trek

[00:40:13] But yeah, I think that if there had been some kind of sophisticated civilization that we would recognize, and it had, you know, emerged on Earth, say, during the Triassic. It was just like 200 million years ago. If that civilization had been building with perishable materials, I don't think we would have any evidence of it whatsoever.

[00:40:40] I think, including if they actually had genetically engineered dinosaurs to be pack animals or their food animals for that matter. I mean, I guess we could have found if they were actually butchering dinosaurs, we might find signs of butchery on the bones. That's something that we see a lot in archaeology, but those bones could have been completely ground into dust, and we would never know about all those dinosaur barbecues. So I mean, I love that.

Charlie Jane: [00:41:10] I mean, what I want to know, and I know, we got to wrap this up. But what I want to know is, if there was a previous civilization living on Earth, wouldn't they have maybe used up more of the fossil fuels? Wouldn't they have maybe dug up more of the heavy metals from beneath the ground? Wouldn't that some of that stuff have been moved around in ways that we might be able to be like, well, it's weird that all this stuff is closer to the surface than it ought to be? Or something?

Annalee: [00:41:35] I don't think so because that's making a lot of assumptions about what it means to be a civilization. I mean, just because we exploit fossil fuels doesn't mean that previous civilizations would have. They might have used solar energy. They might have used wind, energy, water energy. They could have been near volcanic activity and used thermal power. 

Charlie Jane: [00:42:00] Mm hmm.

Annalee: [00:42:02] So I think, you know, this is where this is an exciting thought experiment for me is imagining a civilization that emerges, that doesn't exploit the same kinds of resources for energy that we do. Or maybe that doesn't even put a value on that kind of energy consumption. Maybe they have a very different system of living. Maybe they fly or maybe, they build very, very different kinds of habitats than we do. Maybe they're really small, like maybe they’re the size of mice. I mean, I don't know, like, this is, again, wild speculation. And I'm sure that there will be evolutionary biologists who were like, “No, you could not have a sophisticated civilization made from mice-sized people.”

[00:42:56] The final thing that I would say about this, the other piece that always excites me is thinking about whether or not those civilizations actually exist on Earth right now in the form of termite colonies, or ant colonies or beehives. Because we still don't really understand very much about how non-human animals communicate. We do have lots of hints that they build sophisticated civilizations. I mean, ants build cities, they have farms. They have farms where they have basically ranches, they keep aphids that are kind of like cows. They grow fungus, kind of like the way we grow corn. So maybe we've just misunderstood and actually, we're the kind of unsophisticated lumbering beasts and the ants are the ones who are the true civilization. And when, creatures arrive from another world, they're going to be like, oh, there's these weird, blobby monkey creatures, like get them out of the way we really need to talk to the ants, you know?

Charlie Jane: [00:44:01] That would be a great science fiction story. 

[00:44:03] Okay, cool. Well, thanks so much for listening. This has been Our Opinions Are Correct. You can find us at patreon at patreon.com/ouropinionsarecorrect. And if you join at one of the upper levels, you can ask us questions like that and we’ll answer it on the podcast. Also, we're on Twitter at @OOACpod. 

[00:44:19] OOAC theme music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.

Charlie Jane: [00:44:20] Thank you so much to our incredible, valiant, brilliant audio producer Veronica Simonetti. And thanks so much to Chris Palmer for the music and thanks again to you for listening. You can find us wherever podcasts are found online. If you haven't already subscribed, please do subscribe. If you like us, please leave a review in one of the reviewing places. And we'll be back in two weeks with another episode. But if you're a patron, we'll have an audio extra next week and we'll also be seeing you on Discord. Bye!

Annalee: [00:44:50] Bye!

Annalee Newitz