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On this episode of Casual Space, Beth meets Ed Finn!

• Ed shares his origin story for how the Center for Science and Imagination got started at ASU when a great question is presented to the college president
• We review some of Ed\\u2019s favorite movies that opened his mind to merge Hollywood with space and science exploration\\u2026
• We touch upon the recent The Boeing 737 Max as an AI story; what it means to trust the machine over the human

\\u201cStorytelling is one of our best tools for dealing with complexity.\\u201d- Ed Finn

[At the Center for Science and the Imagination] We do this through story telling. We bring people together with many different backgrounds engineers, social science managers, ask them to come up with technically grounded compelling exciting stories about the world that we might live in\\u2026 we do this in different media- theater, comic books, etc. \\u2026. From all over the world.

\\u201cThe best thing about (reading/ writing) science fiction is not inhabiting other worlds, but inhabiting other people\\u2019s lives.\\u201d

\\u201cWe\\u2019re confronted with impossible situations all the time\\u2026We all confront these impossible things from time to time, this is how we learns, where we demonstrate our resilience, and adapt to something we never thought was going to be possible.\\u201d

Great links to find more related to Ed Finn, his essays and books, and The Center for Science and the Imagination www.edfinn.net

Why Exploration Matters;

\\u201cWhy do we go to Space Now? Not about technical challenges, but now the question is about, what are we going to do there, who\\u2019s going to get to go, WHY are we going to go, and what is our global relationship to the things that are happening off of planet Earth?

When you start to think about space in that way, you can start to recognize what\\u2019s meaningful. We will always want to explore, but what about all the other stuff\\u2026what about how we\\u2019re going to LIVE in space? How are we going to have careers?\\xa0 All of these questions are economic, they\\u2019re social, and they\\u2019re about how we make meaning and dwell in the world and how we make our lives interesting. Space on it\\u2019s own is spectacularly gorgeous (so I\\u2019ve heard), but it is empty. So it\\u2019s what we bring, and what we make of it that will make it worthwhile. So we have to have good answers to that questions. Because if we don\\u2019t, then it\\u2019s never going to happen.\\xa0 We\\u2019ll just end up staying here with all of the interesting complicated messes we have on this planet.\\u201d\\xa0

About Ed Finn:

Ed Finn is a writer, researcher, editor, speaker, and incorrigible experimentalist. He is the kind of person who writes poetry during boring meetings and always has extra snacks. He is the founding director of the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University. He is also an associate professor jointly appointed in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering (which is all one thing) and the Department of English (which is a different thing). He reads, writes, and owns a number of books, and he enjoys traveling, launching into conversation in languages he doesn\\u2019t really know, and being a dad.