Socratica Reads

The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 03:00:00 -0700

Kimberly Hatch Harrison (co-founder of Socratica) hosts this podcast that celebrates the joys of reading. In creating a new illustrated audiobook series for our kids’ channel, Socratica Kids, Kim is revisiting some of her favourite coming-of-age stories that inspired her. In this episode, Kim discusses “The Book of Three” by Lloyd Alexander.

If you would like your own copy of the book discussed, it is available here:

https://amzn.to/3RymWGR

If you prefer, you can buy a boxed set of the first five books of the Chronicles of Prydain:

https://amzn.to/42N6706

Kim’s book: How to Be a Great Student

ebook: https://amzn.to/2Lh3XSP

Paperback: https://amzn.to/3t5jeH3

Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/3atr8TJ

If you'd like to talk about this podcast (and all things Socratica), you can join our Discord by becoming our Patron on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/socratica

Socratica Reads is sponsored by The Socratica Foundation as part of their Literacy Campaign.

You can learn more about this educational nonprofit at https://www.socratica.org

Support this work: https://socratica.kindful.com

Transcript:

Welcome Everybody! To Socratica Reads. My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the co-founder of Socratica. We make educational videos, mainly about STEM topics, and mainly on YouTube, and we create other educational materials you can find on our website, socratica.com.

None of this work would be possible, if I hadn’t grown up to be a reader. My mum read to me at a very young age, and she wasn’t deliberately teaching me to read, but I sort of caught on and taught myself. This happens sometimes, for some kids.

Turns out I’m hyperlexic, and I’m just naturally drawn to the written word. If there are words on a box of cereal, I’m reading it. I want subtitles on my movies. I walk down the streets of a foreign city translating all the street signs. It’s just how I go through life, reading, reading, always reading.

This is not a neutral pursuit. After you read enough, your brain naturally starts synthesizing and integrating, and drawing some meta conclusions from everything you’ve fed in. It’s made everything about my life and my work possible.

That’s why I am determined to help other people FIND their way to the book life. The joy and the POWER of literacy is literally life-changing.

So where do I do this literacy promotion? Well, I’m also the co-founder of the Socratica Foundation, which is an educational non-profit.

One Socratica Foundation project I’m currently working on is an English Language Arts video series called Astrid’s Journal. It’s on our kids’ channel, Socratica Kids, and it’s especially intended for grades 3-5. This is a journal kept by a girl who is about 10 years old, in the year 2525, in a place called Scandiland. In this world, kids experience a very different kind of childhood. We learn about this world through Astrid’s eyes.

Along the way, in addition to reading the story, -we are modeling how useful keeping a journal can be for developing the skills of observation, writing, and also developing emotional intelligence by understanding your reaction to the events of your life.

Did you read any journals or coming-of-age stories when you were a kid? My favourite at that age was Harriet the Spy, which was a big influence on me and by understanding Harriet, I was better able to understand myself.

You might think reading a book is a pretty passive experience, but actually, this can be a surprisingly empowering experience for a kid. These stories often echo the timeless Hero’s Journey, where a novice hears a call to adventure, answers the call, goes through a series of challenges and side quests, almost fails, but pulls through at the end and returns home, wiser and forever changed. We’ve all heard these stories, or read them, or watched movies with this universal plot, but it’s something else when you can SEE YOURSELF in the story.

That’s what makes The Book of Three so powerful for kids.

When you read the Book of Three as a child, it may be one of the first Hero’s Journeys you come across. But if you read it for the first time as an adult, or if you come back to it and re-read it, as I just did, you may see it differently. Maybe you think Lloyd Alexander wrote something a little derivative, like a lite-verison of The Lord of the Rings (or the Hobbit) from Tolkein. Or Homer’s the Odyssey.

But wasn’t it just exactly right for you as a kid?

Here’s what I love about it.

The heroes are NOT heroic. I mean they have heroic aspects that come out under pressure, but they also make so many mistakes. They’re self-centered, and hopeless in a lot of ways. It takes them many times to learn their lesson, and they learn it imperfectly. They’re like us, in other words.

I’m going to start you off at the very beginning when we first meet our unlikely hero Taran, the assistant pig-keeper. He has nowhere to go but up.

Are you ready? Let’s begin.

{Kim reads excerpt}

We’d love to chat more with you about these ideas. Do you have a hero’s journey book that inspired you as a kid? Our Discord Server is open to all of our YouTube channel members, and our Patrons from Patreon. You can join at patreon.com/socratica. Thanks for listening.

—-----

Did you notice there were no interruptions of this podcast? That’s because we’re sponsored by The Socratica Foundation! The Socratica Foundation is dedicated to the three timeless pillars of learning and knowledge: literacy, numeracy (also known as math literacy), and critical thinking. The Socratica Foundation literacy campaign includes such projects as a course on phonics, reading lessons, book donations, and sponsoring this podcast, which celebrates reading. You can learn more about the foundation at socratica.org.

Down a Dark Hall by Lois Duncan

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 03:00:00 -0700

Kimberly Hatch Harrison (co-founder of Socratica) hosts this podcast that celebrates the joys of reading. For the start of spooky season, we are turning to the theme of Dark Academia. In this episode, Kim discusses the book “Down a Dark Hall” by Lois Duncan.

If you would like your own copy of the book discussed, it is available here:

https://amzn.to/4f5zyPv

Kim’s book: How to Be a Great Student

ebook: https://amzn.to/2Lh3XSP

Paperback: https://amzn.to/3t5jeH3

Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/3atr8TJ

https://snu.socratica.com/join

If you'd like to talk about this podcast (and all things Socratica), you can join our Discord by becoming our Patron on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/socratica

Socratica Reads is sponsored by The Socratica Foundation as part of their Literacy Campaign.

You can learn more about this educational nonprofit at https://www.socratica.org

Support this work: https://socratica.kindful.com

Transcript:

Welcome Everybody! To Socratica Reads. My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the co-founder of Socratica. We reach a fairly specific audience with our YouTube channel, which focuses on advanced math, science, and computer programming. Our audience is spread all over the world, and while we may not all be studying the same things, or in the same professions, the one thing we all share is a love of learning.

In case you don’t know, I wrote a book called How to Be a Great Student, which is the true story of how I figured out the academic life, making LOTS of mistakes along the way. I was always VERY bright, but not always VERY disciplined as a student, because I didn’t have to be. For the longest time, I could just coast through. But we all reach a point where we find our limit, and have to actually DO the work. In my book I explain the various techniques I learned that mean success in academia. I’ll include a link in the show notes in case you’d like to get your own copy.

It’s Autumn here in the northern hemisphere, everyone has gone back to school, and it’s also the start of spooky season. Today is Hallowe’en, tomorrow is the start of Dia de los Muertos. All that adds up to a theme I’d like to introduce into the Socratica Reads podcast: DARK ACADEMIA. We’ve mainly been reading science fiction together, and by now that may seem like the theme of the podcast as a whole, but it’s actually the books that influence us, that inspire us in our work. Science fiction is a helpful thing to read because it keeps you looking ahead, wondering about what will happen, what are the consequences of your scientific investigations or your cutting edge engineering project.

Dark Academia is another theme that has particular appeal for our people, friends of Socratica, or as we call them, Socratica Friends. We are a community of people who love learning. We love the autumn because it means Back to School. We love sharpened pencils and fountain pens and Japanese ballpoint pens and notebooks and journals and typewriters and a laptop that fits perfectly in your backpack. We love the old card catalog and carrels in the library. We love our kindle and as soon as we finish one ebook we load up another one. We have a signature style: prep school uniforms. We love Harry Potter robes. We OWN Harry Potter robes. We love Oxford and Cambridge and the other Cambridge and the Ivy League and little liberal arts college no one has heard of. We love Caltech AND MIT. AND Harvey Mudd.

If this all made sense to you, you’ll understand why I’m adding Dark Academia to the reading list for our podcast about the love of books and the power of literacy.

And speaking of the vital importance of literacy,I’m going to pause here to say—there will be no further pauses, because our podcast is sponsored by The Socratica Foundation Literacy Campaign. The Socratica Foundation is an educational nonprofit dedicated to the three timeless pillars of learning and knowledge: literacy, numeracy (also known as math literacy), and critical thinking. The Socratica Foundation literacy campaign includes such projects as a course on phonics, reading lessons, book donations, and sponsoring this podcast, which celebrates reading. You can learn more about the foundation at socratica.org.

One of the themes of Dark Academia is that you have locked inside some secret knowledge or wisdom or power that is hidden—maybe even from yourself—but by leaving society at large and joining a smaller group of knowledge seekers, this special talent of yours can emerge. This often means going away to a remote college, or joining a secret society. In our book for today, DOWN A DARK HALL, by Lois Duncan, it’s a newly opened boarding school out in the boonies in upstate New York. There are only 4 students at Blackwood Academy for Girls. Um, yeah, it’s VERY exclusive.

To get in you had to take some tests. Unusual, psychological tests. Our main character, Kit, isn’t nearly as smart as her best friend from back home, and yet Kit got in and her friend didn’t. One of the girls, Lynda, is sweet but decidedly no genius like her friend Ruth. Kit, who lost her father and was shipped off to boarding school when her mother remarries, bonds with Sandy who also lost her parents. The question is, what else do these four girls have in common? Why were they picked to be the first students at Blackwood?

The school promises individual instruction, helping the students reach their potential. Kit starts taking piano lessons, and while she has never been musical, she starts having dreams about playing beautiful music. She wakes up and her fingers ache as if she has actually been playing all night. Ruth is able to advance rapidly through math. Lynda discovers she has a talent for drawing and painting. And Sandy is writing sonnets.

This is SOME great school. What’s the secret? The DARK ACADEMIA secret? It’s too good to be true, right? I’m going to read you a little excerpt from a part where Kit starts to think this place maybe isn’t what it appears to be.

Are you ready? Let’s begin.

{Kim reads excerpt}

You can stop listening now if you don’t want any more spoilers. But yes, that was Shubert, a NEW composition by Shubert. The girls are getting individual instruction all right, by some very talented teachers.

This story plays around with the concepts of what it is to be a student or a disciple. How much of yourself do you have to give up or give over to someone else so you can develop into your more advanced self. It’s also kind of an inversion of the idea of the muses, who are usually depicted as young women.

There’s also this wonderful idea—have you heard this before—that when you READ, it’s the closest you can get to actually being in someone’s head, sharing their thoughts. This is true even when they are long gone. I can have a conversation (okay, fairly one-sided) with my favourite witty writer, Jane Austen, anytime I like. Maybe you need some life advice, so you turn to the Stoics or Erma Bombeck. This story, Down a Dark Hall, is kind of a gothic metaphor for that experience. We do help Shubert live, whenever we play his music. He lives on in our brains. Jane Austen lives on in my head, and my heart.

We’d love to chat more with you about reading. Do you find yourself drawn to this genre, Dark Academia? Our Discord Server is open to all of our YouTube channel members, and our Patrons from Patreon. You can join at patreon.com/socratica. Thanks for listening.

A Stir of Echoes by Richard Matheson

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 03:00:00 -0700

Kimberly Hatch Harrison (co-founder of Socratica) hosts this podcast that celebrates the joys of reading. In this episode, Kim discusses the book “Stir of Echoes” by Richard Matheson. Matheson is maybe best known for penning several books that were later made into thrilling movies, as well as some timeless Twilight Zone episodes.

If you would like your own copy of the books discussed, they are available here:

Remembrance (collected letters of Ray Bradbury)

https://amzn.to/3SYKjcZ

A Stir of Echoes by Richard Matheson

https://amzn.to/3TVagf6

Neuro Transmissions video about Hypnotism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMQ9mCadSzM

Kim’s book: How to Be a Great Student

ebook: https://amzn.to/2Lh3XSP

Paperback: https://amzn.to/3t5jeH3

Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/3atr8TJ

https://snu.socratica.com/join

If you'd like to talk about this podcast (and all things Socratica), you can join our Discord by becoming our Patron on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/socratica

Socratica Reads is sponsored by The Socratica Foundation as part of their Literacy Campaign.

You can learn more about this educational nonprofit at https://www.socratica.org

Support this work: https://socratica.kindful.com

Transcript:

Welcome Everybody! To Socratica Reads. My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the co-founder of Socratica. We are known mostly for our YouTube channel, where we teach college-level STEM topics, as well as how to be a great student. We have quite a number of other projects—an educational nonprofit called The Socratica Foundation, a channel for the youngest learners, Socratica Kids, and more recently we started Socratica High.

These are all obviously connected to each other in terms of education. A bright line of curiosity and learning links these experiences you had from way back when you’re a kid. Remember back then, what that’s like? You can’t get enough about dinosaurs or space. This enthusiasm can carry you a long way when you’re a kid. But you might come back to Earth hard, and land awkwardly in high school where it’s a lot more work, and very often you have to learn something even if you’re not ready, or you don’t see the point.

There’s a little bit of a disconnect then between our high school channel and our main “grownup” channel, Socratica. For the most part, people who are watching Socratica LOVE STEM. They love math, they love computer science, they love biology, chemistry, physics, all of that good stuff. So there’s a kind of survivor bias. We see all the people who survived algebra. Survived their brushes with rough classes where they were in over their head, or dull classes where they were bored, or you know, sometimes you don’t get to study what you’re REALLY interested in until you get to college. Like let’s say your main interest is in Anthropology or Psychology or Planetary Science, odds are you didn’t get to study what you were passionate about until you got older.

So the question becomes what SUSTAINS you during those years when your classroom learning just isn’t doing it for you. As my father would say, I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count.

READING.

I mean, of course I’m going to say reading, on this podcast celebrating reading. But truly, this is it, this is your secret weapon, or your invisibility cloak, or your hidden armor of mithril. When you are surrounded by dullness and work that does not inspire you, but you have to do it, day in, day out. READING is the cure.

I want to remind you that this is really the WHY behind this podcast. Reading inspires a lot of the work we do at Socratica. If I spent ALL my time just doing YouTube work, or more broadly let’s say digital creator work—if I only read things that would directly, immediately impact that work, I would probably lose those creative sparks that Make SOCRATICA what it is.

This is why this podcast is supported by the Socratica Foundation’s Literacy Campaign. Reading is one of those skills that you need to be employable, but more importantly it is a personal asset, a source of strength. It’s something that can sustain you through some tough times and can show you new ideas, new vistas. You can go to the library and read for free. Speaking of tough times. It’s hard to beat free.

There is something to be said though, for actually OWNING a book—there’s this research that shows having books in your house when you’re a kid is associated with academic success. Now clearly it isn’t causative in one step. Buying a book and putting it on your shelf isn’t going to instantly make you a great student. It’s more what happens next, what do you do with those books. I think part of it is that you have immediate access, day or night, you can keep coming back to YOUR book, and getting more out of it each time. Once you’ve decided to have books in your house, certain events like that become more likely. I know books are very expensive, so I’m going to recommend library sales and goodwill.

If you can go to a thrift store and buy a book there for a dollar, read that book, and then reread it. You’ll be amazed how much more you get out of it the second time you read it. If you read it a third time, watch out, you’re on your way to doing literary analysis, because you’ll start to understand the mechanism of what holds the book together. This is what I recommend. It’s much better to thoroughly digest a few books than to race through a whole list.

Now these don’t have to be CLASSICS of literature, although that is richer material. But maybe this season’s hot paperback isn’t a book you’re going to get a lot out of with multiple re-readings. That’s more like light entertainment, that’s more disposable. I don’t mean literally throw it in the trash, just hand over those books to a friend or swap them for another book in a Little Free Library. What you want is a book that has some IDEAS, ideas that you will come back to even years later. There’s something about it that intrigues you.

This is bringing me back to how reading will sustain you through times when you need something to keep your mind active. School isn’t doing it, work isn’t doing it—so you pick up your book at the end of the day and there’s this BIG IDEA that just feeds your brain.

In the last episode of our podcast, I shared something I found from Ray Bradbury talking about how Charles Beaumont was an IDEA man, and how his books were so intriguing to adolescents, and inspired them to talk about these ideas, and go on to create their own stories. I think of today’s writer as a spiritual brother to these men. Richard Matheson. All three of these writers created teleplays for The Twilight Zone—talk about a platform for BIG IDEAS.

You may know Richard Matheson best for his Twilight Zone episode Nightmare at 20,000 feet, starring William Shatner and a mysterious creature out on the wing of the airplane. My personal favourite is Little Girl Lost, about a girl who fell out of bed into another dimension. That there were other dimensions of space that we couldn’t see, that was a pretty BIG IDEA to be introduced to as a kid. Many of his books have been made into quite good movies, which is rare.

Today’s book from Richard Matheson is one that I came across in the 90s. Stir of Echoes. And the BIG IDEA that really intrigued me at the time, and still to this day, is that our minds have all sorts of capabilities that we only have hints of. Sometimes we can see glimpses of them using tools like hypnotism.

In the late 80s, when I was in high school, I attended a school assembly with a hypnotist. I was one of the volunteers, and I was VERY SUCCESSFULLY hypnotized. One of the things they did was balance me on the back of a chair. Now there’s NO way I could do that in real life, but under hypnotism, I was very easily able to tap into this potential capability. The fellow suggested that my spine was like an iron bar, very strong, very straight, and it seemed like the most obvious, true thing.

So I’ve studied the brain a bit, in classes about neurobiology, and psychology, and I’ve worked doing research in a few neuro labs. There’s this big divide between the scientific literature studying the brain’s capabilities and books that are meant to intrigue, and spark your imagination. There REALLY aren’t many books that have to do with hypnotism, but I was happy to come across this one from Richard Matheson. And in it there is a chair balancing demonstration! So I felt like I was in good hands. Here’s someone who understands some of the oddities that hypnotism can unlock, and if we expand on that idea, where does it go. So today I’ll share a little bit of this book.

Are you ready? Let’s begin.

{Kim reads excerpt}

There’s such a synchronicity at work in our world. The day I picked up my copy of Stir of Echoes to reread it, I got a notice on my YouTube account that there was a new video from a channel I follow. My fellow edutuber friends Micah and Alie run a channel all about the brain, neurobiology, neuroscience, and psychology called NeuroTransmissions. And guess what their video was about. Hypnotism. So clearly there’s something at work that brought me to revisit this topic this month. I’ll link to the Neuro Transmissions video in the show notes, please go visit their channel and say hi.

I’d love to hear about your own experiences with hypnotism, if you’ve been hypnotized. Our Discord Server is open to all of our YouTube channel members, and our Patrons from Patreon. You can join at patreon.com/socratica. Thanks for listening.

Free Dirt by Charles Beaumont

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0700

Kimberly Hatch Harrison (co-founder of Socratica) hosts this podcast that celebrates a love of reading and discovery. In this episode Kim shares a new-to-her author (Charles Beaumont) she learned about by reading the letters of one of her favourite authors (Ray Bradbury). She poses the question: how do you find new books to read? What leads you to them?

If you would like your own copy of these books, they are available here:

Remembrance (collected letters of Ray Bradbury)

https://amzn.to/3SYKjcZ

Perchance to Dream by Charles Beaumont

https://amzn.to/3T04C9S

The Hunger and Other Stories by Charles Beaumont

https://amzn.to/434agwb

Kim’s book: How to Be a Great Student

ebook: https://amzn.to/2Lh3XSP

Paperback: https://amzn.to/3t5jeH3

Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/3atr8TJ

https://snu.socratica.com/join

If you'd like to talk about this podcast (and all things Socratica), you can join our Discord by becoming our Patron on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/socratica

Transcript:

Welcome Everybody! To Socratica Reads. My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the co-founder of Socratica. We make beautiful educational videos on a variety of STEM topics: math, science, computer programming—and underlying everything we do is this notion that we are natural learners. I don’t just mean me, personally. Humans. Learning is our natural state of being.

I really don’t understand this idea that you get one shot at your education, mostly when you’re a child, and that’s it. I refuse! I refuse to accept that idea. So one way you can give yourself the chance to continue your education—for the rest of your life—is with READING.

What freedom! You can read whatever you want, going as deep as you want.There is this tendency, of course, to gravitate to the familiar. You keep picking out the same kind of book, reading the same authors. I’m guilty of that. Well, guilty is maybe the wrong word. There’s nothing wrong with continuing to read wonderful authors. I still have a few Charles Dickens left, and I haven’t read ALL of Shakespeare, and I was absolutely delighted when a new book of Ray Bradbury’s collected letters just came out.

Have you ever read letters or marginalia from one of your favourite authors? It can really be a trip, because you’re used to seeing their professional, polished work, as opposed to their thoughts in progress, mid-process. It can feel a little like spying. Letters can be so intimate.

I’m not finished with this book of Bradbury’s letters, yet—it’s called Remembrance—but I wanted to tell you about an experience I had, how by picking up THIS book, it led me to discover a whole new author. Well, new to me. Charles Beaumont, who was a friend of Bradbury’s.

So I came across this name in Bradbury’s letters, and it sounded so familiar, but I knew I had never read anything by someone named Charles Beaumont. So I looked him up, and it turned out I was used to seeing his name—in the credits of Twilight Zone episodes. That’s another great place to find authors, by the way, including Ray Bradbury and Richard Matheson.

Before I read a passage to you, I’m going to pause to say—there will be no further interruptions. No commercials from sponsors. That’s because we are sponsored by The Socratica Foundation. And the Socratica Foundation is sponsored by—you. The Socratica Foundation is an educational nonprofit dedicated to the three timeless pillars: Literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking. We have a Literacy Campaign to spread the best possible kind of infection—infectious affection for reading. This includes reading lessons, book donations, and this podcast, Socratica Reads. You can learn more at socratica.org

I got myself two books— two collections of stories by Charles Beaumont. In this first book, there’s an introduction by Ray Bradbury! So we’ll start there, an old fashioned idea—when you meet someone new, you should be introduced by a friend. Are you ready? Let’s begin.

{Kim reads excerpt}

This introduction goes on but aren’t you intrigued by this title? Let’s now turn to Mr. Beaumont himself: Free Dirt.

How PHYSICAL and voluptuous are these descriptions of such a repulsive person? This helps me understand why I came to know Beaumont through the Twilight Zone, because that show was so good at poking into human frailties, character weaknesses, things that maybe would be ignored in polite society but not when pushed into a twilight zone scenario. Which is really my favourite kind of science fiction—being able to see what happens to human beings if we leave our comfort zone and are exposed to one new thing. A trip to outer space, an alien, time travel—they’re interesting because of the truth about human beings and the human psyche they expose.

If you want to chat more about Charles Beaumont, or Ray Bradbury, or the power of creative friendships, our Discord Server is open to all of our YouTube channel members, and our Patrons from Patreon. You can join at patreon.com/socratica. Thanks for listening.

Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Fri, 22 Dec 2023 03:00:00 -0700

Kimberly Hatch Harrison (co-founder of Socratica) hosts this podcast that is a home for people who love reading and want to revel in how good it makes you feel when you find a great book, or revisit a much-loved classic. In this last episode of the year, Kim returns to the “Dark Is Rising” series by Susan Cooper. Last year at this time, we discussed “The Dark Is Rising,” the second book in the series, set on the longest night of the year. This time we’ll look at the first book of the series, Over Sea, Under Stone. This book series is masterful in the way it helps children understand the scope of time, and how stories can last for generations. It’s a lesson that is helpful for adults to be reminded about as well.

If you would like your own copy of this book, it is available here:

Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper

https://amzn.to/3Tzyo7c

The Dark Is Rising (5 book boxed set)

https://amzn.to/3WeMeuv

Kim’s book: How to Be a Great Student

ebook: https://amzn.to/2Lh3XSP

Paperback: https://amzn.to/3t5jeH3

Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/3atr8TJ

https://snu.socratica.com/join

If you'd like to talk about this podcast (and all things Socratica), you can join our Discord by becoming our Patron on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/socratica

Transcript:

Welcome Everybody! To Socratica Reads. My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the co-founder of Socratica. You know, Socratica, the company that makes educational videos on YouTube. It’s true, we make beautiful STEM videos that help you Learn More. But I hope you will also think of us as a group of people who simply love learning.

I wrote a book called “How to Be a Great Student,” and it’s not so much about getting better grades in school as it is about making room in your life for the joy of discovery. Understanding how to do right by yourself, so you’re not getting in the way of doing your best work. When you help yourself become a great student, you take ownership of your own learning, and no one can take that from you. We are all born natural scientists, making observations about the world. Or—detectives if you prefer.

I think that explains why it’s so delightful to read mystery stories. It taps into this great pleasure we get from exercising our brains.

Now, I’m not going to pretend to be ignorant about this sad fact: there’s a lot of anti-intellectual sentiment out there, a kind of sneering at book-learning. But I believe that’s the dark side, and we are on the side of the light. There might be a battle we will win today, like, keeping one of your favourite childhood books in the library, but somewhere else in the world someone is trying to prevent a girl from going to school. We can’t assume that all of human society has come to the universal agreement that learning is good and that’s settled. You’re going to have to keep up your end of the struggle. Even if all you do is post on Twitter how much you love your local library. That helps. Wearing a Socratica sweatshirt. That helps. Um…you could buy a copy of my book and send it to your little cousin. Just a thought.

I have this podcast as a home for people who love reading and want to revel in how good it makes you feel when you find a great book, or revisit a much-loved classic. I love to think about how books have influenced us over the years, both in our work, and personally. In this last episode of the year, I want to return to the “Dark Is Rising” series by Susan Cooper.

We just had the longest night of the year here at Socratica Studios. It was the Winter Solstice. Last year at this time, we discussed the second book that gives the series its name “The Dark Is Rising,” which is set on the Winter Solstice. Oooh, is it spooky. But this year, I want to focus on our coming out of the darkness. From here on out, our nights will get shorter, and the days will get longer. One day it will even be SUMMER.

So this time we’ll look at the first book of the series, Over Sea, Under Stone. It’s set in the summer in Cornwall. If you are interested in British history, and British mythology, you might already know a little about the stories about this part of the countryside.

This book series is masterful in the way it helps children understand the scope of time, and how stories can last for generations. It’s a lesson that is helpful for adults to be reminded about as well.

Once again, this is a story that celebrates the curiosity of children. Of people, in general. People who are on the side of the light. There’s this idea imbued through the book that only if you are open-minded will you be able to discover the secret truths that are all around you.

Before I read a passage to you, I’m going to pause to say—there will be no further interruptions. No commercials from sponsors. That’s because we are sponsored by The Socratica Foundation. And the Socratica Foundation is sponsored by—you. The Socratica Foundation is an educational nonprofit dedicated to the three timeless pillars: Literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking. We have a Literacy Campaign to spread the love of reading and share its enormous power. This includes reading lessons, book donations, and this podcast, Socratica Reads. You can learn more at socratica.org

Now let’s turn to some tempting passages from this British mythical mystery, Over Sea, Under Stone, by Susan Cooper. Are you ready? Let’s begin.

{Kim reads excerpt}

Again I’m wondering how I might have been influenced by this book had I read it as a child, the age of the children in the book, as opposed to sometime in my 20s. Would it have been as moving to me as say, the Narnia books. I revisit these books now as an older person, and I’m more interested in this Uncle Merry character and what is he thinking and not saying. But above all I think it’s important that children read, if not these books, books that are LIKE these books. Books that celebrate being on a quest for truth.

If you want to chat more about Susan Cooper’s works, and the power of reading, our Discord Server is open to all of our YouTube channel members, and our Patrons from Patreon. You can join at patreon.com/socratica. Thanks for listening.

Skeleton by Ray Bradbury

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 03:00:00 -0700

Kimberly Hatch Harrison (co-founder of Socratica) hosts this podcast that celebrates the power of reading to inspire. In this episode, Kim returns to her favourite Hallowe’en friend, Ray Bradbury. Back in the day, every Hallowe’en, RDB would read from his book The Hallowe’en Tree at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena. But that’s not the only work of Bradbury’s that is appropriate for Hallowe’en! “Skeleton” is a remarkably funny and creepy little tale, perfect for the season. This may also be the motivation Kim needs to get back to making Biology videos.

If you would like your own copy of this story, it is available here:

The October Country by Ray Bradbury

https://amzn.to/49isi0v

Kim’s book: How to Be a Great Student

ebook: https://amzn.to/2Lh3XSP

Paperback: https://amzn.to/3t5jeH3

Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/3atr8TJ

https://snu.socratica.com/join

If you'd like to talk about this podcast (and all things Socratica), you can join our Discord by becoming our Patron on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/socratica

Transcript:

Welcome Everybody! To Socratica Reads. My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the co-founder of Socratica. You may know us best from our YouTube channel where we make the educational videos of the future. Mainly math and science—STEM topics. It’s been a few years since I’ve made biology videos, which is too bad because I am a molecular biologist. I keep meaning to get back to that series.

This podcast is all about the books we read that inspire our work. And here’s a little story from my fella Ray Bradbury, that speaks to me on a certain level as a biology enthusiast. It’s called SKELETON, and you can find it in his collection of stories called The October Country. I of course associate Ray Bradbury with Hallowe’en, what with his brilliant “The Hallowe’en Tree” and “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” but there are so many stories from Bradbury that remind us of our human body, our frailties that come from being incarnate. These are things that many people are afraid to look square at. But as a biologist, you must.

Especially now, in the era of COVID, I find myself baffled by how out of touch people are with how their body works. How we are in a fight for survival against a mindless horror. Maybe that’s why I found re-reading this story oddly comforting on this Hallowe’en night. It strikes the right tone for me right now, and it reminds me a bit of what it’s like to KNOW what is going on inside your body. You might be horrified by the idea of a virus replicating in your body. This fellow in the story is so out of touch with his body that he is horrified by the idea that there is a skeleton carrying him around. He kind of goes to war with his own body.

Before I read a passage to you, I’m going to pause to say—we are sponsored by The Socratica Foundation. And the Socratica Foundation is sponsored by—you. The Socratica Foundation is an educational nonprofit dedicated to the three timeless pillars: Literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking. We have a Literacy Campaign to spread the love of reading and share its enormous power. This includes reading lessons, book donations, and this podcast, Socratica Reads. You can learn more at socratica.org

Now let’s turn to the story of Mr. Harris and his skeleton. Are you ready? Let’s begin.

{Kim reads excerpt}

I love the people in Ray Bradbury stories. I love this loveable, adorable wife, she’s so sweet to her husband, and all he can think about is his peculiar obsession. He’s so out of touch with reality. It will destroy him in the end. So anyways, yes, this story is a good reminder for me—I have a job to do, I need to return to biology teaching. I need to explain to people how the immune system works. Stay tuned.

If you want to chat about Ray Bradbury and the power of reading, our Discord Server is open to all of our YouTube channel members, and our Patrons from Patreon. You can join at patreon.com/socratica. Thanks for listening.

The Machine Stops by EM Forster

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 03:00:00 -0700

Kimberly Hatch Harrison (co-founder of Socratica) hosts this podcast that celebrates the power of reading to inspire. In this episode, Kim presents a surprising vision of the future from a celebrated novelist of manners and society, E.M. Forster (author of A Room With a View, A Passage to India, etc.).

If you would like your own copy of this story, it is available here:

The Machine Stops, The Celestial Omnibus, and Other Stories by E.M. Forster

https://amzn.to/48C22Os

Recommended by Bookpilled

https://www.youtube.com/@Bookpilled

Kim’s book: How to Be a Great Student

ebook: https://amzn.to/2Lh3XSP

Paperback: https://amzn.to/3t5jeH3

Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/3atr8TJ

https://snu.socratica.com/join

If you'd like to talk about this podcast (and all things Socratica), you can join our Discord by becoming our Patron on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/socratica

Transcript:

Welcome Everybody! To Socratica Reads. My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the co-founder of Socratica. We make beautiful futuristic educational videos. That means we’re often inspired by science fiction, as it treads a fine line between celebrating new discoveries and inventions, and showing us a picture of how it could all go wrong if you forget your humanity along the way. Today I’d like to share with you an unexpected source of one of these stories!

But first, I’m going to interrupt myself here to say—there won’t be any more interruptions, because this podcast has ZERO ads. No ads! That’s because we’re sponsored by The Socratica Foundation. And the Socratica Foundation is sponsored by—you. The Socratica Foundation is an educational nonprofit dedicated to the three timeless pillars: Literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking. We have a Literacy Campaign to spread the love of reading and share its enormous power. This includes reading lessons, book donations, and a little PR for reading in the form of this podcast, Socratica Reads. You can learn more at socratica.org

Now I was telling you that I was surprised to learn about this episode’s book. I heard about it from a BookTuber I’d like to recommend—a channel called BookPilled—that features all kinds of classic sci fi in my favourite form, the inexpensive used bookstore paperback, preferably with a lurid cover. I spend almost every episode saying Never Heard of It. NEVER heard of it! And I have my phone open and I’m looking up these books. There’s very often an auction associated with the episodes so if you really want to get your hands on that exact copy you can place a bid. I’ll include a link to bookpilled in the shownotes. The channel is great fun, and it helps me expand my understanding of this art form, so I consider it an educational channel. I started reading scifi before the internet existed, and I only really knew about the books that were on the shelves of my local library—which was truly excellent, but even the best library doesn’t have EVERY book. That was one thing that was a real trip about visiting bookstores in different towns back then, you might actually discover a book you didn’t know existed.

Like this book. Let me actually start talking about this episode’s book.

It’s called The Machine Stops. It’s either a very long short story or a pretty short novella. And it’s by EM Forster. The EM Forster I know and love from novels like A Room With a View and A Passage to India and Howard’s End and Maurice and Where Angels Fear to Tread.

You see, I thought I read everything EM Forster ever wrote. At least, that was everything that was on the shelves of my library and local bookstores. I had no idea he ever wrote any science fiction. But he did, and boy howdy, it’s a doozy. It’s GREAT. I- I- I don’t even understand how I never heard about this so I had to read it and now that I’ve read it I have to tell you that it exists and it’s great and you should read it too, and tell people about it and get them to read it.

So I know EM Forster as a sensitive, elegant novelist who dissected the intricacies of human relationships, and exposed the hypocrisies of his society, and warned of the dangers of people denying their human nature. A lot of my understanding of early 20th century society comes from reading novels like these.

But here’s the thing.

I really SHOULDN’T be surprised that EM Forster wrote SciFi. I’m so glad he saw that he could do the kind of work he always did, but in this different genre. This…POWERFUL genre. Science Fiction can be, when it’s done well, a vehicle for examining human nature and society. In this work, The Machine Stops, we get to consider the impact of technology on a future society where people live underground and are entirely dependent on a vast computer-like MACHINE for their every need. This book is from 1909, but the themes of technology, isolation, and the potential consequences of over-reliance on machines for human life make it so fresh.

I’m going to read a little from the beginning, and I hope you are moved to get your own copy. If this is your first introduction to Forster, you have some really great works

Are you ready? Let’s begin.

{Kim reads excerpt}

There’s a lot about this society that Forster imagined that feels familiar. If you read it—I’m going to say WHEN you read it—please read it—I think you’ll find it relevant for our current discussions about the impact of technology on our lives.

If you want to chat about the ideas in The Machine Stops, our Discord Server is open to all of our YouTube channel members, and our Patrons from Patreon. You can join at patreon.com/socratica. Thanks for listening.

The Pedestrian by Ray Bradbury

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 03:00:00 -0700

Kimberly Hatch Harrison (co-founder of Socratica) hosts this podcast that celebrates books and authors. She introduces you to the wide variety of writing that has influenced the work at Socratica. Often, it’s the incomparable Ray Bradbury. It’s his birthday, and we’re talking about his short story “The Pedestrian.”

“The Pedestrian” used to be in “The Golden Apples of the Sun” story collection, but it has been removed from the more recent editions. You might be able to find it in an older edition from a used bookstore.

Here’s a collection that does contain “The Pedestrian”:

Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales by Ray Bradbury

https://amzn.to/45iefWe

Kim’s book: How to Be a Great Student

ebook: https://amzn.to/2Lh3XSP

Paperback: https://amzn.to/3t5jeH3

Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/3atr8TJ

https://snu.socratica.com/join

If you'd like to talk about this podcast (and all things Socratica), you can join our Discord by becoming our Patron on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/socratica

Transcript:

Welcome Everybody! To Socratica Reads. My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the co-founder of Socratica. We make beautiful educational videos that look to the future. We’ve had a lot of help along the way from a certain special fellow. It’s his birthday today. Ray Bradbury. He, more than anyone else, taught me to be a futurist.

I’m going to interrupt myself here to say—there won’t be any more interruptions, because this podcast has ZERO ads. That’s because we’re sponsored by The Socratica Foundation. And the Socratica Foundation is sponsored by—you. The Socratica Foundation is an educational nonprofit dedicated to the three timeless pillars: Literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking. Socratica Reads podcast is part of our Literacy campaign. You can learn more at socratica.org

A literacy campaign is an optimistic thing. Ray Bradbury is an optimistic writer, but he’s also a realist. One of the most powerful things you can accomplish with science fiction is you can do an end-run around all the psychological barriers we have—all the denial, all the whistling through the graveyard about the fate of humankind. It’s so much easier to face up to our frailties when they’re given to the people of the future.

That’s what this story, The Pedestrian, lets us do. Now this story was written in 1950, and it’s set in 2053, but it’s also about today. It’s pretty spooky.

Are you ready? Let’s begin.

{Kim reads excerpt}

This is a very short story, and I’m tempted to just read the whole thing, because that would be a good time for me, but I do very much want to encourage you to check this out from the library or support your local bookstore and find a copy for your very own. This story, “The Pedestrian,” is in my old copy of The Golden Apples of the Sun, but it’s been removed from more recent editions. You should be able to find it in other story collections, so I’ll include a link in the shownotes.

If this story reminds you of Fahrenheit 451, uh…me too. You can see Ray Bradbury pinning down this idea about how what is NORMAL is enforced and what kinds of formerly natural and beneficial human behavior becomes subversive. How do we anesthetize ourselves so we accept what our lives have become. Do you see yourself or your loved ones in this story? Can you do something about it?

If you want to chat about the ideas in The Pedestrian, our Discord Server is open to all of our YouTube channel members, and our Patrons from Patreon. You can join at patreon.com/socratica. Thanks for listening.

Call Me Joe by Poul Anderson

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 03:00:00 -0700

Kimberly Hatch Harrison (co-founder of Socratica) created this podcast to share her love of reading and encourage others to develop this habit. In this episode, Kim introduces a short story by Poul Anderson called “Call Me Joe” that may remind you of a certain movie franchise with humans colonizing a land by impersonating the blue natives.

Call Me Joe (Collected Short Works) by Poul Anderson

https://amzn.to/3rqlRqK

Kim’s book: How to Be a Great Student

ebook: https://amzn.to/2Lh3XSP

Paperback: https://amzn.to/3t5jeH3

Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/3atr8TJ

https://snu.socratica.com/join

If you'd like to talk about this podcast (and all things Socratica), you can join our Discord by becoming our Patron on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/socratica

Transcript:

Welcome Everybody! To Socratica Reads. My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the co-founder of Socratica. You might know us from our YouTube channel, where we teach STEM topics like math, chemistry, biology, astronomy, computer programming. We’re looking to the future when we make our videos. And that’s why, very often, we find ourselves inspired by science fiction.

Before we go on—don’t you hate interruptions—there won’t be any more because this podcast is FREE from ads. That’s because it’s sponsored by The Socratica Foundation. And the Socratica Foundation is sponsored by—you. The Socratica Foundation is an educational nonprofit dedicated to the three timeless pillars: Literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking. Socratica Reads podcast is part of our Literacy campaign. You can learn more at socratica.org

This podcast came to be because I wanted to share this feeling, this idea—that all the books you read, all the ideas you come across in your life comingle and stew in your head, sometimes for years, before they emerge into something new.

Here’s a fun example, I think, of a book that must have, at least on some level, inspired a certain movie franchise about humans colonizing a land by impersonating the blue natives. This is “Call Me Joe” by one of the golden era sci-fi writers, Poul Anderson.

This is a short story that first appeared in the magazine Astounding Science Fiction in 1957, so you might imagine kids consuming it and the images and ideas later influencing their creations. That’s what I’d like to think, anyway.

Call me Joe is about a group of scientists who are working on exploring Jupiter. They don’t land. They’re orbiting the planet, and they’re using some kind of telepathic remote control of an artificial body that is suited for life on this hostile planet with high gravity, where you take shelter in an ice cave and breathe hydrogen and helium, and drink methane.

The story has a few elements of its time—that can be a double-edged sword. I love that this is a book from the 50s the very start of the era of molecular biology, and that was part of the zeitgeist, the concept of genetics involving actual molecules. So here, Anderson is describing creating artificial life pretty convincingly. On the other hand, in this story there are no women except there’s some line about how they’re going to need housewives when they settle Jupiter? I don’t know, that’s depressing Poul, that’s a sad vision of the future, with no roles for women.

But the thing I love most about this story is how much this setting really does feel like a science lab. How the technology is falling apart, and needs constant tinkering. The main character, Anglesey, is very believably just a jerk. No one wants to work with him. But he has this special talent of creating a mental link with his artificial Jovian called Joe (uhhh I just got that). Those of us who have been around labs know just this kind of guy. We don’t like him, he throws tantrums, he’s a spoiled child, but there’s one thing he’s good at and we don’t want to risk the work so we put up with him.

What makes this story really interesting to me—why it’s SO much more interesting than the modern movies we’re getting on this theme that are all about conquering and pillaging an unspoiled planet—is that we get to experience what it’s like to transfer your consciousness and be a remote person. What is that going to do to you, psychologically. At some point, are you going to lose your humanity? Or at the very least, evolve into something different?

I’m going to share with you a passage when the “psionics” engineer arrives who will service the psychic control equipment and he meets Anglesey, so you can see him through his eyes. This is a chance to re-meet the main character. It’s an interesting device. Are you ready? Let’s begin.

{Kim reads excerpt}

If you’ve been going to sci fi movies and think that’s what sci fi IS, I encourage you to reach back into the archives and explore some of the early examples of sci fi writing. I think you’ll find it more challenging in a good way. Science fiction, at its heart, is not about the spectacle, and that’s where I think sci fi movies have lost their way. Good science fiction makes you think.

And if you enjoy thinking, and discussing what you’re thinking, our Discord Server is open to all of our YouTube channel members, and our Patrons from Patreon. You can join at patreon.com/socratica. Thanks for listening.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Thu, 15 Jun 2023 03:00:00 -0700

Socratica Reads Episode 20: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Kimberly Hatch Harrison (co-founder of Socratica) created this podcast to share her love of reading and to help others find their way back to reading, or to develop a new habit. In this episode, Kim gets around to reading something off her TBR list: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. She didn’t love it, but that’s okay. You don’t have to love every book to love reading. There’s still something interesting to be had when you figure out WHY you don’t love a book.

You can get your copy here (and decide for yourself):

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

https://amzn.to/45RBsiS

Kim’s book: How to Be a Great Student

ebook: https://amzn.to/2Lh3XSP

Paperback: https://amzn.to/3t5jeH3

Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/3atr8TJ

https://snu.socratica.com/join

If you'd like to talk about this podcast (and all things Socratica), you can join our Discord by becoming our Patron on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/socratica

Transcript:

Welcome Everybody! To Socratica Reads. My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the co-founder of Socratica. We make futuristic videos about math, science, and computer programming. This podcast is all about how reading inspires the work we do. But it’s also about how great books connect us with the ideas people have around the world, not just now, but in the past AND the future.

One topic that’s like CATNIP to any STEM kid is: The Multiverse. Parallel lives. Every time you make a choice: strawberry or chocolate—you split off another life. How different would our lives be if we had made different choices along the way?

So today’s book on this topic has been on my TBR (To Be Read) list for a while now—The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. It’s one of those books you see on the shelf of recommendations at your local bookstore, and your friends have all read it, and the LA Public Library keeps offering it to me on my ebook app (available now for a quick 7 day loan) so I finally gave in and read it.

Socratica Friends, I did not like it.

But just because you don’t like a book, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about it. It’s fun to share your enthusiasm for a book that really works, but it’s also interesting to figure out WHY a book doesn’t work. So what happened here?

As soon as the premise became clear I was into it. There’s a library you might get a chance to visit at the moment when you straddle life and death. When you open a book from this library, you are allowed to see the roads not taken.

This is a story I want to read. I want to know if the main character already knows about the choices she made that changed her life, or were there small things she didn’t realize she could have done differently. But you know, we need to care about the protagonist. We need to understand them, and feel something for them. We don’t have to love them. We might be frustrated by them, or annoyed by them, or even hate them.

I feel nothing. The protagonist, Nora, doesn’t make any kind of sense to me. She’s not a real person.

A writer is a Creator, in the truest sense of the word. They have the power to Create living, breathing, thinking people who continue to live in our minds long after we close the book. Tell me Elizabeth Bennett isn’t a real person. I could tell you all about her, and predict how she would act in a given situation, and what she would say.

Can I tell you anything about Nora, the heroine of this book? No!

She’s talented. I’ll give you that. She’s SO TALENTED. Why, she could have been an Olympic Swimmer if she hadn’t quit swimming. She could have been a FAMOUS ROCK STAR. She could have been a GREAT SCIENTIST studying glaciers. This is such an insult to scientists, musicians, swimmers…It’s like that lie that people started telling their kids: you can be anything you want to be, you’re such a genius! Here’s a trophy. That nightmare of a parenting technique has come to life in this book. This author apparently thinks it’s actually true.

Alright. I’m about done here. But I have to send this message to writers everywhere. If you don’t understand your character, don’t write them. This is a man who wrote a caricature of a fantasy woman and has no idea what this woman thinks, feels, wants. Nothing. She doesn’t care about anything, so we don’t care about her. We don’t even care that she’s in this remarkable place, being given this remarkable chance.

I am still going to read you an excerpt that I do like. The librarian. I think she might actually be a real person. Maybe you’ll see what I mean.

Are you ready? Let’s begin.

{Kim reads excerpt}

This passage hints at the idea that Mrs Elm has an interior life, separate from Nora. She knows things. And she’s thinking about her chess game, and sometimes she doesn’t bother to listen to Nora. That’s interesting. There’s a kernel of an interesting character there. Well, maybe in another life, I’ll get to read THAT book.

If you’d like to discuss these ideas with other people who have ideas about books, our Discord Server is open to all of our Patrons from Patreon and our YouTube channel members. Thanks for listening.

Oh, but before you go—have you noticed this podcast is FREE from ads? That’s because it’s sponsored by The Socratica Foundation. And the Socratica Foundation is sponsored by—you. The Socratica Foundation is an educational nonprofit dedicated to the three timeless pillars: Literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking. Socratica Reads podcast is part of our Literacy campaign. You can learn more at https://www.socratica.org/

𝙎𝙪𝙥𝙥𝙤𝙧𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙣𝙤𝙣𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙛𝙞𝙩:

https://socratica.kindful.com

Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 03:00:00 -0700

Kimberly Hatch Harrison (co-founder of Socratica) created this podcast to share her love of reading and to foster the development of this excellent habit. In this episode, Kim talks about what happens when everyone is recommending a book that just isn’t that great (cough cough The Three Body Problem) and how you can come back with a better book that explores similar themes (Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke).

Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke

https://amzn.to/40FdUKC

Kim’s book: How to Be a Great Student

ebook: https://amzn.to/2Lh3XSP

Paperback: https://amzn.to/3t5jeH3

Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/3atr8TJ

https://snu.socratica.com/join

If you'd like to talk about this podcast (and all things Socratica), you can join our Discord by becoming our Patron on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/socratica

Transcript:

Welcome Everybody! To Socratica Reads. My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the co-founder of Socratica. You probably know us for our futuristic educational videos, including how to program in Python, SQL or “sequel” - we also have a course we’re launching on Mathematica…but the big news to a lot of programmers is what’s gonna happen now that there are some generative AI out there in the wild, like ChatGPT. What does that mean for programmers, if there’s an artificial intelligence system that can do your job faster.

Well, there’s a literary genre tailor made for helping us think about the impact technological advances have on human society. Science Fiction. We spend a lot of time on this podcast thinking in terms of scifi, because we’re sort of a forward-thinking company. Our goal is to create the tools you’ll need to be an educated person now but also going forward. That’s going to require a little flexibility.

I wonder if some of this anxiety about the future and people feeling obsolete explains why so many people have been recommending the book The Three Body Problem to me. So I read it, and it just did not do it for me. I was interested for a few reasons. It’s partly set during the Cultural Revolution in China, and I came up in science working with some people who experienced it firsthand. And it was just as tragic as you might imagine. So there’s one appealing aspect of the book. For science fiction fans, how do you reconcile humans who are so creative and capable of having beautiful visions of the future turning on each other and demonizing the very people who would help us move forward into the future?

Anti-intellectualism is a pretty scary thing for a scientist. It’s like our real-life boogeyman - it really exists, we’ve seen it happen again and again.

Now what if there was an outside influence who had immense power and could shut down these curious people. Take away all their initiative. They lose heart completely. These are some of the ideas explored in The Three Body Problem, and these ideas are intriguing and meaningful to me.

But this is not a very good book. It’s just not well-written. I don’t think it’s a translation issue - there’s a lot of great English translations of books from various other languages. It’s just so wooden. I can’t even pick a passage that’s interesting to share with you.

So what do you do when EVERYONE is talking about a hot book and you feel so disappointed by it? My response is to pick up a different book. If you’re interested in thinking about the future of humanity and what happens to scientific inquiry or technological advancements in the face of what appears to be a superior force - and some of you are being forced to consider this because GPT is coming for your job - I’d like to recommend Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke.

This book asks the question - what will we do when we are presented with the tools that answer all of our questions? Will we mature intellectually, level up? Or will we devolve? Will we stop thinking and exploring? The caterpillar life has to end for there to be butterflies.

There will be people who say oh, the Three Body problem is hard sci fi. Yes. I don’t have a problem with that. But it’s not enough to just list interesting technical ideas and call it a book. We don’t CARE unless it gives us an experience. Good novel writing includes the human. Human emotions, human senses. IF you ever wonder why a piece of writing isn’t grabbing you, have a look at HOW it tells the story. Is it just an info dump, or does it actually take you some place. Does it help you understand by placing you there. Seeing the situation through someone else’s eyes? Do you get to hear what they hear, feel what they feel?

Now in this book, Childhood’s End, there are many technical details, but they are also beautiful passages. So I’m going to pick one almost at random, and I hope it entices you to pick up this book. Which is a good book.

Are you ready? Let’s begin.

{Kim reads excerpt}

So we just went on a journey with this character Jan. We saw what he saw, we heard what he heard, we had an experience, even though this is hard sci fi. Yes? Well, my Socratica Friends, I hope you are feeling like a hopeful explorer. If you’d like to discuss these ideas with other curious people, our Discord Server is open to all of our Patrons from Patreon and our YouTube channel members. Thanks for listening.

The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 03:00:00 -0700

Kimberly Hatch Harrison (co-founder of Socratica) created this podcast as a way to share her love of reading. She credits most of her professional success (and much personal joy) to her lifelong habit of reading everything she could get her hands on. In this episode, Kim discusses the special pleasure of seasonal re-reading. The context: it’s the Winter Solstice, which is the perfect time to read “The Dark Is Rising” by Susan Cooper.

The Dark Is Rising (5 book boxed set)

https://amzn.to/3WeMeuv

The Dark Is Rising (book 2 of 5)

https://amzn.to/3vfdsF7

Kim’s book: How to Be a Great Student

ebook: https://amzn.to/2Lh3XSP

Paperback: https://amzn.to/3t5jeH3

Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/3atr8TJ

https://snu.socratica.com/join

If you'd like to talk about this podcast (and all things Socratica), you can join our Discord by becoming our Patron on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/socratica

Transcript:

Welcome Everybody! To Socratica Reads. My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the co-founder of Socratica. You know us for our beautiful and futuristic videos about math, science, computer programming, and How to be a Great Student.

Because we’re a kind of educational technology company, and we make videos on YouTube, and we have a website we’re developing, socratica.com, I think it surprises some people that we are big proponents of one of the oldest, original forms of educational technology. That is—reading.

Yes, of course, I want you to spend time with our videos, and our website, but I really, really, want to make sure I never give you the impression that the good old techniques are obsolete. I owe ALL of my success in life to being a reader. A lifelong reader.

If that hasn’t been true in your life, I want to tell you it’s never too late. It’s not like gymnastics or being a ballerina or something. You’re not going to age out of this window when you can become a reader.

So in this podcast, Socratica Reads, I’m kind of coming around to this theme—it’s been evolving over time—of reading what inspires you. Reading that makes you happy, reading that makes you think, reading that makes you feel. Reading isn’t JUST for education. It IS an essential tool in your lifelong learning, but it’s also a partner in your life, like a family member. A loved one who will be there with you, your whole life.

Today I want to share this idea that reading is one way you can celebrate certain times in your life. I hear this every year—I’ve said it myself—it doesn’t feel like Christmas yet. Well, that might mean it’s time to re-read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. The Hallowe’en Tree by Ray Bradbury always gets me in the mood for Hallowe’en. I’ve read these books dozens of times, but every year it feels a little different, because YOU’RE a little different.

This year, I’ve been doing a lot of gardening, and it’s made me much more aware of the seasons changing. I’m not a morning person, so by the time I get out into my garden in the late afternoon it already feels like the day is over. The light is coming in at a weird low angle, and my plants definitely aren’t getting quite enough sunlight to thrive. So this year I’m VERY aware that today is the shortest day of the year, the Winter Solstice.

And this is the perfect time of the year to read The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper. This is one of those books that I wish I had read when I was younger. I read it sometime in my twenties, but I can just imagine that if I had read it when I was a kid, like the Narnia books, it would have had a different impact. But this gets back to the idea that it’s never too late. Your relationship with a book evolves over time.

So when I was a kid, I probably would have been enchanted with the magical aspects, whereas now, I’m thinking more about the arc of time.

As you get older, your sense of time passing changes dramatically. Re-reading this book at different times in your life may raise interesting questions for yourself. But enough philosophical jibber-jabber, I want to get to the book and read a little to you, so you’re tempted to pick it up and read with me today.

Are you ready? Let’s begin.

{Kim reads excerpt}

When you read The Dark Is Rising, you’ll get a sense for why this day of the year is so significant. Do you have some books or short stories or what have you — that help you celebrate this time of year? Do you indulge in re-reading certain books or stories? If you want to discuss this idea, our Discord Server is open to all of our Patrons from Patreon and our YouTube channel members. Thanks for listening.

All Cats Are Gray by Andre Norton

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Wed, 09 Nov 2022 03:00:00 -0700

Kimberly Hatch Harrison (co-founder of Socratica) created this podcast to share her love of reading, that most accessible of learning tools. Today Kim talks about how the shortest stories can create an indelible impression. And for those short on time, or finding it hard to commit to a long work, this can be a good way to ease into the reading habit. The short story Kim introduces is All Cats Are Gray by Andre Norton, which is available for free on Project Gutenberg as a standalone work. It’s also available in paperback in this volume of collected short stories:

Tales from High Hallack (volume 1)

https://amzn.to/3NWprQO

Kim’s book: How to Be a Great Student

ebook: https://amzn.to/2Lh3XSP

Paperback: https://amzn.to/3t5jeH3

Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/3atr8TJ

https://snu.socratica.com/join

If you'd like to talk about this podcast (and all things Socratica), you can join our Discord by becoming our Patron on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/socratica

Transcript:

Welcome Everybody! To Socratica Reads. My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the co-founder of Socratica. We make beautiful videos about math, science, computer programming, as well as the meta-topic - How to be a Great Student.

One of the most essential tools to being a great student is to develop the habit of reading. You don’t want reading to be some weird exceptional thing you only do when you’re taking a class or because it’s the only option. If reading becomes part of your life, if you do a little every day, you’ll find it easier and easier to slip into a book, or an article, and easier and easier for you to create written material yourself.

There’s a certain way you compose your thoughts for writing that’s quite distinct from giving a talk, or making a video, and I’ve got to tell you, although I’m in the business of making educational videos, I would never in a million years tell you that videos have replaced books.

Reading has made a huge difference in my life. I’ve learned SO much from people I never met, and especially people who lived and died long before educational videos were a thing.

So, having said all that, I do understand that there are a lot of demands on our time. And it’s easy to push off reading, while there’s a constant feed of short video content right there on your phone. But I’m asking you and telling you - don’t give up on reading. Your brain needs it.

Do you read short stories? If you’re short on time, or finding it hard to commit to a long work, this can be a good way to ease into the reading habit. I’m going to recommend, as always, Ray Bradbury, but I want to make sure you try on all kinds of authors. Here’s another one of my favourites, Andre Norton. One of the things that sets apart Andre Norton for me is - I remember characters and places from Andre Norton stories better than from a lot of other writers. This is an interesting exercise when you read a short story. Ask yourself - what were the essential characteristics that the author got across VERY fast. How is it that some books go on for hundreds of pages, and you don’t take much away from them, but others can accomplish something unforgettable in under 50 pages?

Today I’m going to share the beginning of Andre Norton’s short story “All Cats Are Gray,” and you’ll see how quickly you’re pulled into this world. Are you ready? Let’s begin.

{Kim reads excerpt}

Even the shortest stories can create an indelible impression.I’ve never forgotten the character of Steena, and I’m glad I get to recreate her in my mind when I read this story. I never got to meet Andre Norton, but I’m glad I get to meet Andre Norton in her stories. I hope you pick up one of her books soon, and get to know this intriguing person. Thanks for listening.

Anatomy, A Love Story by Dana Schwartz

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 03:00:00 -0700

Socratica is known for spreading a love of learning. Kimberly Hatch Harrison (co-founder of Socratica) created this podcast to share her favourite reading experiences. Today Kim talks about her favourite part of Anatomy: A Love Story by Dana Schwartz.

Get your copy here:

Anatomy: A Love Story by Dana Schwartz

https://amzn.to/3SpJ05e

How to Be a Great Student

ebook: https://amzn.to/2Lh3XSP

Paperback: https://amzn.to/3t5jeH3

Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/3atr8TJ

https://snu.socratica.com/join

Transcript:

Welcome Everybody! To Socratica Reads. My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the co-founder of Socratica.We make beautiful videos about STEM topics, and a lot of our work is infused with an appreciation of the History of Science. Our videos are all non-fiction, but we also enjoy reading historical fiction - especially when it involves scientific discoveries.

So there’s this meme going around about how do you know when you’re reading Fantasy or Science Fiction. Here’s an example: In Fantasy, you buy things with COIN while in Science Fiction it’s CREDITS. But I’ve got to tell you, I’m not SURE that you can say if this book is one or the other.

When I was reading this book, Anatomy, I was struck by what a genre-bending/ genre-blending experience it was. It’s set in Edinburgh in the early 19th century, and centers around a school for surgery. So there’s a Dark Academia feel. There’s some spooky resurrection experiments going on, like Frankenstein, and there’s a little bit of romance with some kiss-kiss in a graveyard, and there’s a plague - timely - and some social questions about class and women being denied the opportunity for education. There’s a lot going on, and it’s also just really fun and perfect for the beginning of the Hallowe’en season.

I had a really hard time picking my favourite part for this podcast, because the whole book hangs together so beautifully. So here goes with a little bit that makes me simultaneously disgusted and intrigued, which is kind of the perfect way to feel about this era of science and medicine.

{Kim reads excerpt}

It’s still amazing to me how a good book can transport you to a different time and place and inside someone else’s head. I hope you’re getting that sense from this podcast, Socratica Reads. Thanks for listening.

I Sing The Body Electric by Ray Bradbury

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Mon, 22 Aug 2022 03:00:00 -0700

One of the missions of Socratica is to share the joy of learning, especially the power of reading. Kimberly Hatch Harrison (co-founder of Socratica) created this podcast to share her favourite reading experiences. Today Kim talks about her favourite part of I Sing The Body Electric by Ray Bradbury.

Get your copy here:

I Sing the Body Electric and other stories

https://amzn.to/3c3eTkj

I Sing the Body Electric by Walt Whitman

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45472/i-sing-the-body-electric

How to Be a Great Student

ebook: https://amzn.to/2Lh3XSP

Paperback: https://amzn.to/3t5jeH3

Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/3atr8TJ

https://snu.socratica.com/join

Transcript:

Welcome Everybody! To Socratica Reads. My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the co-founder of Socratica. We make beautiful, futuristic educational videos. You might wonder where we get our vision of the future. Why do we look forward to a better future? A lot of it comes from growing up on a steady diet of Ray Bradbury who was a real visionary. Today is his birthday. He would have been 102 today, and I wish he were here so we could talk to him. I’d like to think he’d have some thoughtful, and ultimately hopeful reaction to the strange times we’re living in. Thankfully, we have Bradbury’s stories, and as long as we’re reading him, he will live forever.

None of us knows what the future brings, but the wonderful thing about reading science fiction is that we can “try on” different possible futures. We learn a lot about ourselves by observing how we react to the possibilities. And then—we can use our reactions to guide how we go about preparing for the future. It’s a little like magic. Read about a possible future, decide how we feel about it, and change course if necessary. In this way, writing about the imagined future becomes a way to change the actual future!

A lot of sci fi is dark. Dystopian. And Bradbury certainly didn’t shy away from that darkness. I’ve spoken before about his Fahrenheit 451 as a cautionary tale. But even in the midst of great sadness, Bradbury always was there to show us the way through, with that flicker of hope and humanity.

Today I want to share with you another one of my favourites from Ray Bradbury—a short story called “I Sing The Body Electric.” You may recognize the title from a Walt Whitman poem, which is a rich and meaty thing to read. Please read it.

The poem is all about the mystery and glory and holiness of being incarnate. Of having a body, of BEING a body. Which is great fun to keep in mind as you read Bradbury’s story about a robot grandmother.

Like the best science fiction, by imagining a possible future, touched by technology, certain truths about the human condition are made more clear to us. Here’s my favourite part of I Sing The Body Electric—a family dinner. I’ll read it to you now. Are you ready? Let’s begin.

{Kim reads excerpt}

What a lovely, lovely man Ray Bradbury was. We remember him. Thanks for listening.

At Sixes and Sevens by Rachel Riley

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Fri, 05 Aug 2022 03:00:00 -0700

Do you love to read? Can you think of something you read lately that changed how you did things? Or made you feel better about something you are dealing with in your life? Like…MATH?

Kimberly Hatch Harrison (co-founder of Socratica) created this podcast to share her favourite reading experiences. Today Kim talks about her favourite part of At Sixes and Sevens by Rachel Riley and Dr. Gareth Moore

Get your copy here:

https://amzn.to/3Qw7wAx

How to Be a Great Student

ebook: https://amzn.to/2Lh3XSP

Paperback: https://amzn.to/3t5jeH3

Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/3atr8TJ

https://snu.socratica.com/join

Transcript:

Welcome Everybody! To Socratica Reads. My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the co-founder of Socratica. In this podcast, I’m sharing my favourite reading experiences. I’m picking out books that made an impression, that I found influential, and I’m jumping right to my favourite parts. There’s a sea of books out there - we’ll never run out of things to read and books to share with each other.

This book comes to us from across the pond. If you’re an American, especially a younger American, you may be less familiar with the pun in the title: At Sixes and Sevens. It’s a book about math, hence the sixes, and sevens, but that phrase “at sixes and sevens” means you are confused and discombobulated. Which also is the state of many people when they think about math.

This is a book from Rachel Riley, who I first saw on a quiz show called Countdown.

The Brits really have us beat when it comes to quiz shows. Do you know COUNTDOWN? Or the funny nighttime version populated by comedians, 8 out of 10 cats does countdown? Ohh, my friend, you’re missing out. Okay, first I’m going to read to you a little description from Ms. Riley’s book and I’m curious if anyone would understand how the game actually works if you haven’t seen it. There’s a letters game and then there’s a numbers game, and this is Rachel’s description of the numbers game:

(reads excerpt)

Okay, so anyway, this game Countdown is completely addictive, and an extra challenging way to play it at home is to do it without paper. I was absolutely scandalized when I heard that some people record it and PAUSE the playback while they try to solve each round. That’s okay, really, the important thing is that you’re using your brains and doing math puzzles for fun. That’s pretty amazing that people all across the UK actually do this every day. What a country.

Rachel has a co-writer for this book, Dr. Gareth Moore, who I understand supplied some of the brain teasers in the book. I know Dr. Moore as the author of the Penguin Book of Puzzles, which is a collection of riddles from throughout history - ancient puzzles like the riddle of the sphinx and things from more recent history, like Victorian and Edwardian era and the modern era. So I recommend you look for that book as well. But today I want to talk about At Sixes and Sevens, because I’m so pleased that Rachel Riley is out there doing good work with the audience she has access to.

Now this book is full of tips and tricks and simple, real-life explanations of certain math situations. The whole book is pretty useful. But the very beginning, which contains a good pep talk for improving your math, and building your confidence, is my favourite part. I’m going to read it to you now. Are you ready? Let’s begin.

{Kim reads excerpt}

Before I let you go today, I want to tell you about a new project I’ve been working on that is also intended to help people feel more comfortable with math. I think you can tell, I love puzzles and word problems, and I would really like to help people enjoy them and enjoy being good at them. So on our newest YouTube channel Socratica High we have an algebra series. I’ve been making videos for that series all about WORD PROBLEMS. I can’t tell you how many people have told me they struggle with word problems. They don’t seem to get …they’re a GAME! I’ll include a link in the shownotes.

Thanks for listening.

Socratica High Word Problems playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-VfR_4zJHyKYA7e8b2Y7B9p5CqKL35pM

Aggressively Happy by Joy Marie Clarkson

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Fri, 24 Jun 2022 03:00:00 -0700

Not all education happens in the classroom, or from reading textbooks. Be on the lookout for ALL the places where you can learn. If you’re really looking, you can find inspiration in the most unlikely places. Even…TWITTER.

Do you love to read? What are you reading that sparks your curiosity and brings you joy?

Kimberly Hatch Harrison (co-founder of Socratica) created this podcast to share her love of reading—a love that has the power to transform your life.

Today Kim talks about her favourite part of Aggressively Happy by Joy Marie Clarkson

Get your copy here:

https://amzn.to/3QHrkl7

How to Be a Great Student

ebook: https://amzn.to/2Lh3XSP

Paperback: https://amzn.to/3t5jeH3

Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/3atr8TJ

https://snu.socratica.com/join

Transcript:

Welcome Everybody! To Socratica Reads. My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the co-founder of Socratica. At Socratica, we’re busy creating the “Education of the Future.” We focus on math, science, and computer programming, but underlying ALL of the work we do is this basic attitude of celebrating learning. It’s a matter of acknowledging the great joy that is to be had in discovery.

Most people think about learning taking place in a traditional context: classrooms, and textbooks.

But I would argue that you have to be willing to search out knowledge and inspiration—sometimes in unlikely places.

One of the unexpected virtual places I pick up useful knowledge is…TWITTER.

Okay, yes, maybe mostly I’m just being entertained by pictures of cats, but really, I have had great success following people like scientists and writers and learning from them.

One of the people I follow on Twitter is Joy Marie Clarkson, who just published a book “Aggressively Happy.”

The title comes from a very funny online insult. Someone just couldn’t handle how positive Ms. Clarkson was. She responded by using it as her twitter description, and writing a treatise on the vital importance of finding the joy in your life. I love this response SO MUCH. I love her.

I know this is a parasocial relationship - I don’t actually know Ms. Clarkson at all, but I can’t help but feel we have a lot in common. One of my pet peeves is people who leave mean comments on our YouTube videos. What is their deal, anyway? I spend my life making gorgeous FREE high-quality educational materials. Are they trying to discourage us? My response is to block a lot of negative words, and block a lot of negative people. Ms. Clarkson went one step further, and created this book in response to the rampant negativity out there. A joyful manifesto.

I read Ms. Clarkson’s book when it came out this year, and when I finished it, I immediately turned back to the beginning and read it all over again. And here’s my favourite part:

(reads excerpt)

It turns out, Mr. Collins has a surprising strength: thankfulness. What? YES. I hope you will get your own copy of Aggressively Happy so you can read more of this wonderfully enjoyable and instructive and insightful book.

Oh!! I have to tell you about another lovely little treat that is at the end of each chapter in the book—there are recommendations of something to read, something to see, something to listen to, and a point to ponder. I love receiving and making recommendations, and this is something I’ve been doing in our monthly newsletter Socratica Dialogue, so if you’re interested in getting MY recommendations in your mailbox once a month I’ll include a link in the shownotes.

Thanks for listening.

Star Daughter by Shveta Thakrar

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Tue, 31 May 2022 23:45:00 -0700

Do you love to read? What are you reading that sparks your curiosity and brings you joy?

Kimberly Hatch Harrison (co-founder of Socratica) created this podcast to share her love of reading - a love that has the power to transform your life.

Today Kim talks about her favourite part of Star Daughter, by Shveta Thakrar

Get your copy here:

https://amzn.to/3M5R72U

How to Love Reading (Study Tips Video)

https://youtu.be/el-S8iroORQ

How to Be a Great Student

ebook: https://amzn.to/2Lh3XSP

Paperback: https://amzn.to/3t5jeH3

Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/3atr8TJ

Transcript:

Welcome Everybody! To Socratica Reads. My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the co-founder of Socratica. You may know our YouTube channel, where we teach math, science, computer programming…the real focus of our work is lifelong learning.

And for me, the SECRET to lifelong learning is READING.

The love of reading has taken me further in life than anything else.

It’s great, of course, that there are online videos (like ours!) to teach you a lot of different things, but, at least so far, there’s not a video for everything. Maybe one day. We’re working on it. It’s going to take a few generations of edutubers to cover the basic curriculum.

If you really want to be able to get inside the mind of a great thinker, you’re going to want to read what they write.

So in this podcast, I’m giving you a taste of the kinds of things I’m reading - what I find inspiring. And because time is short, I’m skipping to my favourite part.

Today I want to share with you a fantasy novel called Star Daughter by Shveta Thakrar. This is a novel about a young woman named Sheetal who is half human, half star, who lives among us. Her true nature is hidden, along with her silvery hair that she has to keep dying. Speaking of dying, her father suddenly takes ill because of something Sheetal did, and she has to go searching for a way to rescue him. This involves a reunion with her starry relations.

But first, she visits a Magical Night Market. And this is my favourite part.

(reads excerpt)

One of the best parts about reading is that you enter someone else’s MIND. It’s one brain, talking to another brain. This might be someone who lives on the other side of the country, or in a different country, or someone from a whole other time that you would never get a chance to talk to. If you’re used to picking up books about people who are just like you, I encourage you to expand your horizons a little. You know what your life is like. Read about someone else’s life. Listen to someone else’s thoughts. Thanks for listening.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Wed, 27 Apr 2022 03:00:00 -0700

After a brief hiatus, we’re starting Season 2 of Socratica Reads with a new theme: My Favourite Part. To foster and develop your love of reading, Kimberly shares her favourite parts of the books she’s reading. What are you reading that sparks your curiosity and brings you joy?

Today Kim talks about her favourite part of Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury.

If you'd like to talk about this podcast (and all things Socratica), you can join our Discord by becoming our Patron on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/socratica

Get your copy of Fahrenheit 451 here:

https://amzn.to/39nc382

Mentioned in this episode:

How to Love Reading (Study Tips Video)

https://youtu.be/el-S8iroORQ

How to Be a Great Student

ebook: https://amzn.to/2Lh3XSP

Paperback: https://amzn.to/3t5jeH3

Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/3atr8TJ

Transcript:

Welcome Everybody! To Socratica Reads. My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the co-founder of Socratica. You may know us best from our YouTube channel, where we focus on math, science, and computer programming. We also have a kind of meta-series on How to Learn, where we teach study techniques, and I recently wrote a book about how I figured out how to be a great student. It’s called….How to be a Great Student.

One of our most popular videos in this series is called “How to Love Reading.” We hear from a lot of our viewers that they want to cultivate the habit of reading, but for the most part it feels a chore to them. Something they HAVE to do, rather than something they WANT to do, or are even DRIVEN to do, from a deep NEED inside. I’m talking about myself right now, I NEED to read, I always have, so it’s a little hard for me to relate to this idea, that reading is a habit you need to try to develop. I’ve never had to force myself to read a lot.

So we made this video to try to bridge the gap and extend some understanding towards the people who aren’t great readers, but they see people like me doing it, I read everywhere in all situations, and I won’t stop talking about how much I loved a certain book, or how libraries are my favourite thing in the world, and…so we made this episode of our study tips series, and I think we were at least partly successful in what we were trying to achieve.

I say we because my friend Liliana and I wrote this episode together. She’s another great reader, and we have had such fun over the years exchanging books and finding new authors to share. It’s like a very small book club. She once brought me the new Neil Gaiman book and sat with me while I read it because she loved it so much and wanted to re-experience it with me. It’s a really special thing that we share.

So I’m thinking…this is what I’m going to do for at least a while, maybe a season or so on this podcast. It’s like a relaunch. Last year, the theme of the podcast was talking about the books that inspired our work at Socratica. And since so much of our work is about learning and trying to create the education of the future, it makes a lot of sense that science fiction books were inspiring for us. I went back and re-read a lot of the classics that were formative for me as a child and young adult, like the Martian Chronicles and Ender’s Game and Flowers for Algernon.

I could have kept this podcast series going for a long time in this same direction, but…I’m not going to. Instead, I’m going to do a little bit of the kinds of sharing that Liliana and I have been doing. Rather than dwelling on the big important momentous insights that certain books have brought me, I’m just going to share my favourite parts. I’m reading all the time, and my daily reading habit brings me a lot of small joys. Not necessarily giant earth-shattering events, just small moments that improve my life every day. So I’m inviting you to experience a few of those moments with me. I think that will give you a more honest understanding of how *I* love reading.

I think it’s only fitting that I start with Ray Bradbury, because he’s someone I love reading, and I re-read him a lot, and I started the podcast in the first place to talk about Ray Bradbury on his 100th birthday, and anyway, it’s my podcast and I love him.

So I just re-read Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 because I feel lucky that no one ever tried to stop me from reading it. It’s a book that’s been banned a lot, and somehow, miraculously, because of the time and place where I was born, I get to read what I want, including Fahrenheit 451.

But I never really thought about it as a book about censorship, but rather it’s a cautionary tale, giving us a picture of a kind of society we could easily slouch towards, where people would rather not be using their brains. The main character was content, or normal in that society, until something woke him up.

Here’s my favourite part:

One two three four five six seven days. And as many times he came out of the house and Clarisse was there somewhere in the world. Once he saw her shaking a walnut tree, once he saw her sitting on the lawn knitting a blue sweater, three or four times he found a bouquet of late flowers on his porch, or a handful of chestnuts in a little sack, or some autumn leaves neatly pinned to a sheet of white paper and thumb-tacked to his door. Every day Clarisse walked him to the corner.

One day it was raining, the next it was clear, the day after that the wind blew strong, and the day after that it was mild and calm, and the day after that calm day was a day like a furnace of summer and Clarisse with her face all sun-burnt by late afternoon.

That was my favourite part of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Do you have a favourite part? If you want to talk about these things, we have a discussion board over on Discord that’s open to all of our Patrons. You can support our work at Socratica by going to patreon.com/socratica.

So…subscribe or - whatever it is you do with a podcast - and I’ll be back soon to share with you my favourite part of what I’m reading.

The Magician's Nephew by CS Lewis

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Mon, 29 Nov 2021 03:00:00 -0700

Socratica Reads Episode 10 - The Magician’s Nephew by CS Lewis

What do you consider “real” science fiction? Does it include books like The Narnia Chronicles? In this episode of Socratica Reads, our host Kimberly Hatch Harrison talks about the increasingly common narrowing of the definition of science fiction, and recalls one of the Narnia Chronicles that she read as a child that does meet many of the criteria of science fiction, although it is a blend with various other genres.

You can buy your own copy of “The Magician’s Nephew” by CS Lewis here:

https://amzn.to/3C7JSns

And here is a complete set of “The Narnia Chronicles”:

https://amzn.to/3A6wP3A

My first book - How to Be a Great Student

ebook: https://amzn.to/2Lh3XSP

Paperback: https://amzn.to/3t5jeH3

Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/3atr8TJ

visit our YouTube channel:

youtube.com/socratica

and our website socratica.com

If you find our work at Socratica valuable, please consider becoming our Patron on Patreon!

https://www.patreon.com/socratica

If you would prefer to make a one-time donation, you can also use

Socratica Paypal

https://www.paypal.me/socratica

We also accept Bitcoin! :)

Our address is: bc1qda47tgfyk67lxa7yqn8y5m02hjcglghsd5c58n

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome Everybody! To Socratica Reads. My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the co-founder of Socratica. We make beautiful, futuristic educational videos. We focus on math, science, and computer programming, and you can find us on YouTube and on our website, socratica.com.

In this podcast, Socratica Reads, I’m tracing the books that have inspired our work here at Socratica. It shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise that it’s very often SCIENCE FICTION that got into our brains and helped us dream of the future. But I want to be clear - that’s a pretty wide net I’m casting.

Are you a sci-fi snob? Do you insist on your science fiction being HARD sci-fi? That is, the science fiction that focuses on rigorous applications of science and engineering, and usually features realistic rocket ships and perfectly calculated orbits and technically correct warp drives and evolutionarily plausible alien life forms?

Or can you accept that the genre is flexible, and that many remarkable works include elements of fantasy, drama, mystery...and that some of these books leave out the technological details?

I ask you this, because it seems to me that many people I know read themselves into a corner, where they only read the same kind of book over and over. It doesn’t help matters that we’ve moved away from wandering through libraries and physical bookstores. Part of that is due to the PandemicTime, but even before then - were you relying on Amazon recommendations, for instance, that are just based on what other people also bought? If you bought one book by Larry Niven or Andy Weir, you’re most likely to buy another hard sci fi book? It’s just common sense, it’s good for Amazon’s bottom line, but are you reading yourself into a self-imposed bubble?

And I say this with great affection, because I LOVE hard sci fi. But I read EVERYTHING, so of course, I’m biased - I think this is the WAY to be. I am being somewhat hypocritical, because I have very little patience for incorrect science in movies. Nonsense physics really makes my skin crawl - for instance. you see characters jumping and landing at laughably incorrect rates, and I just DON’T get it. This isn’t like a complicated physics problem, we’ve known the equations for a long time. There’s no reason to just eyeball it and go with what you think LOOKS cool.

So when things like that happen, it really takes me out of the movie and completely breaks the illusion. It makes me angry, because I can feel the machinery behind the movie, there’s some ignorant yahoo at his computer doing the animations, thumbing his nose at the laws of physics. We have a lifetime of experience observing the laws of physics, and so when they violate them in a movie, we see it instantly and we know it is wrong.

So, I get it, if you expect rigor and correctness in your sci fi books. I do get it.

I think there’s room for sci fi that respects science, but doesn’t put it in the center of the story.

Today I’m looking back at a book that I read at a very young age that I consider science fiction, of a sort. But it’s also high fantasy and a coming of age story. And while there is science taking place, it’s sometimes called magic. And yes, the details of how it all works are left as an exercise for the reader.

I’m talking about “The Magician’s Nephew,” by CS Lewis.

Depending on how you read the Narnia chronicles, this is either the first story or the sixth in the series.

Chronologically, it’s the first. We see the birth of Narnia.

What places this as scifi, for me, is not just that there is a character of a mad scientist (a cautionary tale), but also this work was my first exposure to the idea of parallel worlds. It gave me a picture of the birth of a world, The Big bang, Narnia-style. It also gave me the pleasure of watching children behave as scientists - Observing, exploring, deducing the rules of how travel between these worlds works.

If it’s been a while since you’ve visited Narnia, I hope you will read these books again, as a grownup, and think about how much they exposed you to important ideas, so you would recognize them when you saw them again, years later. Probably for me, the most important lesson from the Magician’s Nephew was this:

Just because you’re a scientist doesn’t mean you’re an enlightened human being.

I’m going to read a little of the Magician’s Nephew to you now, but I do hope you will dig up your old copy, or buy a new one. I’ll include a link in the description box. Are you ready? Let’s begin.

Nightfall by Isaac Asimov

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Thu, 30 Sep 2021 00:00:00 -0700

Isaac Asimov was trained as a chemist, but he achieved true immortality as a science fiction author. He wrote on every conceivable topic, including nonfiction works on the history of science and technology, The Bible, Shakespeare...His first big splash in sci-fi was the short story Nightfall, published when Asimov was only 21. You can buy your copy here:

Nightfall and other stories https://amzn.to/38M5Y1p

If you’d like to try Asimov’s nonfiction, maybe start with The Roving Mind, a collection of 62 essays on a variety of topics including creationism, pseudoscience, censorship, population, philosophy of science, transportation, computers and corporations of the future, and astronomy: https://amzn.to/3EswBqT

My first book is here!

How to Be a Great Student

ebook: https://amzn.to/2Lh3XSP

Paperback: https://amzn.to/3t5jeH3

Or read for free with Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/3atr8TJ

visit our YouTube channel:

youtube.com/socratica

and our website

socratica.com

If you find our work at Socratica valuable, please consider becoming our Patron on Patreon!

https://www.patreon.com/socratica

If you would prefer to make a one-time donation, you can also use

Socratica Paypal

https://www.paypal.me/socratica

We also accept Bitcoin!

Our address is: bc1qda47tgfyk67lxa7yqn8y5m02hjcglghsd5c58n

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome Everybody! To Socratica Reads. My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the co-founder of Socratica. You can find our beautiful math, science and programming videos on YouTube and on our website, socratica.com.

Our aim at Socratica is to create the education of the future. So it shouldn’t surprise you to hear that our work has often been inspired by the literature of the future: science fiction. Today I’m looking back at one of the earliest works of one of my favourite authors: Isaac Asimov.

Asimov famously wrote or edited over 500 books. To say he is an inspiration to me as a writer is a weaksauce understatement!

Asimov was a chemist by training, but you probably know him best as a science fiction author—although he only wrote a handful of sci-fi novels, including Foundation. Mostly he wrote short stories, and we’re going to talk about his first short story success today—a famous little tale called Nightfall. But, full disclosure—I really love Isaac Asimov for his nonfiction. There’s hardly a topic that I’ve studied that Asimov didn’t thoroughly digest and write about in the clearest of language.

The other day, I watched an interview with Isaac Asimov and Dick Cavett from 1989, and somewhere in the middle, I couldn’t help but say out loud—what a treat it was to listen to such a clear, good-humored thinker. I love him. I just LOVE him. I’m so grateful he left so much of himself behind for us.

The thing about science fiction is that it’s this wonderful combination—it’s both a peek into someone’s pure imagination and their problem-solving brain. I mean, I KNOW that Asimov had a firm grasp on previously solved scientific problems, and he was just a GENIUS at explaining things, especially the history of science and the story behind how much of technology emerged. But his works of fiction are also very precious to me because I get to see how this incredible teacher works out a hypothetical. I get to see Asimov doing thought experiments. It’s a real treat.

Nightfall reminds me in its setup of the very first science fiction story I can remember reading: All Summer in a Day, by Ray Bradbury. I talked about it in my first episode of this podcast. In that story, set on Venus, there are constant violent rainstorms, and the people who live there only get to see the Sun very briefly, once every seven years. So there, one thought experiment is: What would that do to people? How would they feel about the Sun, and how would they treat that event. Imagine if you missed your chance to see the Sun and feel the Sun. I maintain it’s the saddest story in the whole world.

In Nightfall, Asimov creates an even more extreme situation: what if you only saw the stars once every couple thousand years? What sort of mythology would grow up around the experience? As you might expect, Asimov creates a worthy hard sci-fi explanation for this scenario—the planet is normally lit by many suns, and you have to wait for all the other suns to set and the last sun is at aphelion, where it can be hidden by a solar eclipse. Only then will it be dim enough so you could actually see the stars. And this specific confluence of events would be very rare. Anticipating the stars would be like anticipating the Second Coming.

The story is prefaced with a quote from the Transcendentalist writer Ralph Waldo Emerson. “If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God?” This is from the beginning of Emerson’s essay “Nature.” It feels fitting that a Romantic quote, a Transcendental quote, starts this work. Because on this planet, seeing the stars is so beyond people’s understanding—so Transcendant an Experience—that it’s ASSUMED very likely it will cause you to go mad.

We’re unraveling the mysteries of the universe as we speak, and it does make me wonder what CAN we handle. Will we be able to cope with discovering life elsewhere? What about parallel universes? Are we so jaded, so blase, that we’ll be able to accept anything and everything? Or is there something out there that could make us absolutely run amok?

Because this is one of Asimov’s first works, it makes me really pay attention to how he did it. How did he pull it off as a novice writer. Asimov uses a familiar device in this story—an outsider comes around asking a lot of questions. In this case it’s a journalist asking the scientists at the observatory to explain the situation. That way it doesn’t just feel like a lot of exposition. Which is nice for the reader, because all too often sci fi writers fall into this trap of listing off all the details they’ve figured out - I’m looking at you, Neal Stephenson.

I’m going to read this part of Nightfall to you now. Are you ready? Let’s begin.

The psychologist grumbled wordlessly. He turned to Theremon, impaled him with his sharp eyes, and began. 'You realize, of course, that the history of civilization on Lagash displays a cyclic character -- but I mean cyclic!'

'I know,' replied Theremon cautiously,'that that is the current archaeological theory. Has it been accepted as a fact?'

'Just about. In this last century it's been generally agreed upon. This cyclic character is -- or rather, was -- one of the great mysteries. We've located series of civilizations, nine of them definitely, and indications of others as well, all of which have reached heights comparable to our own, and all of which, without exception, were destroyed by fire at the very height of their culture. 'And no one could tell why. All centers of culture were thoroughly gutted by fire, with nothing left behind to give a hint as to the cause.'

Theremon was following closely. 'Wasn't there a Stone Age, too?'

'Probably, but as yet practically nothing is known of it, except that men of that age were little more than rather intelligent apes. We can forget about that.'

'I see. Go on!'

There have been explanations of these recurrent catastrophes, all of a more or less fantastic nature. Some say that there are periodic rains of fire; some that Lagash passes through a sun every so often; some even wilder things. But there is one theory, quite different from all of these, that has been handed down over a period of centuries.'

'I know. You mean this myth of the "Stars" that the Cultists have in their Book of Revelations.'

'Exactly,' rejoined Sheerin with satisfaction. 'The Cultists said that every two thousand and fifty years Lagash entered a huge cave, so that all the suns disappeared, and there came total darkness all over the world! And then, they say, things called Stars appeared, which robbed men of their souls and left them unreasoning brutes, so that they destroyed the civilization they themselves had built up. Of course they mix all this up with a lot of religio-mystic notions, but that's the central idea.'

There was a short pause in which Sheerin drew a long breath.

'And now we come to the Theory of Universal Gravitation.' He pronounced the phrase so that the capital letters sounded -- and at that point Aton turned from the window, snorted loudly, and stalked out of the room.

The two stared after him, and Theremon said, 'What's wrong?'

'Nothing in particular,' replied Sheerin. 'Two of the men were due several hours ago and haven't shown up yet. He's terrifically short-handed, of course, because all but the really essential men have gone to the Hideout.'

You don't think the two deserted, do you?'

'Who? Faro and Yimot? Of course not. Still, if they're not back within the hour, things would be a little sticky.' He got to his feet suddenly, and his eyes twinkled.

'Anyway, as long as Aton is gone -- ' Tiptoeing to the nearest window, he squatted, and from the low window box beneath withdrew a bottle of red liquid that gurgled suggestively when he shook it.

'I thought Aton didn't know about this,' he remarked as he trotted back to the table. 'Here! We've only got one glass so, as the guest, you can have it. I'll keep the bottle.' And he filled the tiny cup with judicious care. Theremon rose to protest, but Sheerin eyed him sternly.

'Respect your elders, young man.'

The newsman seated himself with a look of anguish on his face. 'Go ahead, then, you old villain.'

The psychologist's Adam's apple wobbled as the bottle upended, and then, with a satisfied grunt and a smack of the lips, he began again. 'But what do you know about gravitation?'

'Nothing, except that it is a very recent development, not too well established, and that the math is so hard that only twelve men in Lagash are supposed to understand it.'

'Tcha! Nonsense! Baloney! I can give you all the essential math in a sentence. The Law of Universal Gravitation states that there exists a cohesive force among all bodies of the universe, such that the amount of this force between any two given bodies is proportional to the product of their masses divided by the square of the distance between them.'

'Is that all?'

'That's enough! It took four hundred years to develop it.'

'Why that long? It sounded simple enough, the way you said it.'

'Because great laws are not divined by flashes of inspiration, whatever you may think. It usually takes the combined work of a world full of scientists over a period of centuries. After Genovi 4I discovered that Lagash rotated about the sun Alpha rather than vice versa -- and that was four hundred years ago -- astronomers have been working. The complex motions of the six suns were recorded and analyzed and unwoven. Theory after theory was advanced and checked and counterchecked and modified and abandoned and revived and converted to something else. It was a devil of a job.'

Theremon nodded thoughtfully and held out his glass for more liquor. Sheerin grudgingly allowed a few ruby drops to leave the bottle.

'It was twenty years ago,' he continued after remoistening his own throat, 'that it was finally demonstrated that the Law of Universal Gravitation accounted exactly for the orbital motions of the six suns. It was a great triumph.'

Sheerin stood up and walked to the window, still clutching his bottle. 'And now we're getting to the point. In the last decade, the motions of Lagash about Alpha were computed according to gravity, and if did not account for the orbit observed; not even when all perturbations due to the other suns were included. Either the law was invalid, or there was another, as yet unknown, factor involved.'

Theremon joined Sheerin at the window and gazed out past the wooded slopes to where the spires of Saro City gleamed bloodily on the horizon. The newsman felt the tension of uncertainty grow within him as he cast a short glance at Beta. It glowered redly at zenith, dwarfed and evil.

'Go ahead, sir,' he said softly.

Sheerin replied, 'Astronomers stumbled about for year, each proposed theory more untenable than the one before -- until Aton had the inspiration of calling in the Cult. The head of the Cult, Sor 5, had access to certain data that simplified the problem considerably. Aton set to work on a new track.

'What if there were another nonluminous planetary body such as Lagash? If there were, you know, it would shine only by reflected light, and if it were composed of bluish rock, as Lagash itself largely is, then, in the redness of the sky, the eternal blaze of the suns would make it invisible -- drown it out completely.'

Theremon whistled. 'What a screwy idea!'

'You think that's screwy? Listen to this: Suppose this body rotated about Lagash at such a distance and in such an orbit and had such a mass that its attention would exactly account for the deviations of Lagash's orbit from theory -- do you know what would happen?'

The columnist shook his head.

'Well, sometimes this body would get in the way of a sun.' And Sheerin emptied what remained in the bottle at a draft.

'And it does, I suppose,' said Theremon flatly.

'Yes! But only one sun lies in its plane of revolution.' He jerked a thumb at the shrunken sun above. 'Beta! And it has been shown that the eclipse will occur

only when the arrangement of the suns is such that Beta is alone in its hemisphere and at maximum distance, at which time the moon is invariably at minimum distance. The eclipse that results, with the moon seven times the apparent diameter of Beta, covers all of Lagash and lasts well over half a day, so that no spot on the planet escapes the effects. That eclipse comes once every two thousand and forty nine years.'

Theremon's face was drawn into an expressionless mask.

'And that's my story?'

The psychologist nodded. 'That's all of it. First the eclipse -- which will start in three quarters of an hour -- then universal Darkness and, maybe, these mysterious Stars -- then madness, and end of the cycle.'

He brooded. 'We had two months' leeway -- we at the Observatory -- and that wasn't enough time to persuade Lagash of the danger. Two centuries might not have been enough. But our records are at the Hideout, and today we photograph the eclipse. The next cycle will start off with the truth, and when the next eclipse comes, mankind will at last be ready for it. Come to think of it, that's part of your story too.'

If you haven’t read any of Asimov’s beautiful writing before, I hope this inspires you to add him to your bookshelves. This was Asimov as a young man, and just imagine what years of reading and research and writing did for him. I hope I grow up to be just like him.

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Sun, 22 Aug 2021 03:00:00 -0700

It’s hard to pick one book that Ray Bradbury is best known for. He only wrote a handful of longer books (Fahrenheit 451, Something Wicked This Way Comes, etc.). Mostly he was a creator of perfect little stories—stories that were usually about something other than what you initially thought. 26 strange, lovely little stories about Mars are woven together in The Martian Chronicles. Today, on RDB's 101st birthday, Kimberly revisits this essential work.

Get your copy of "The Martian Chronicles" here:

https://amzn.to/3zcdK5n

Mentioned in this episode:

Launchpad Astronomy workshop:

https://www.launchpadworkshop.org/

Christian Ready Launchpad Astronomy YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/user/christianready

Star Dragon by Mike Brotherton

https://amzn.to/3CZnqNx

Spider Star by Mike Brotherton

https://amzn.to/3gg2BUt

My first book - How to Be a Great Student

ebook: https://amzn.to/2Lh3XSP

Paperback: https://amzn.to/3t5jeH3

Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/3atr8TJ

If you find our work at Socratica valuable, please consider becoming our Patron on Patreon!

https://www.patreon.com/socratica

If you would prefer to make a one-time donation, you can also use

Socratica Paypal

https://www.paypal.me/socratica

We also accept Bitcoin! Our address is:

bc1qda47tgfyk67lxa7yqn8y5m02hjcglghsd5c58n

TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome everybody, to Socratica Reads. I’m Kimberly Hatch Harrison, the co-founder of Socratica. What do we do at Socratica? We’re dreaming up the education of the future. It’s hard, sometimes, not to get mired in the issues of today. How do you keep your eye on where we want to go? This is one of the real benefits of science fiction. It allows you to think freely. I don’t mean in DENIAL about reality, or that you become unreasonable or illogical. Just that you can think about what the world could be like if we leapfrog over some of the roadblocks that are keeping us stuck here. That’s why my podcast Socratica Reads is focused on science fiction. I’m collecting the stories that have inspired me and inspired our work at Socratica.

One of my guiding lights, my North star, is Ray Bradbury. I started this podcast a year ago today, on Ray Bradbury’s 100th birthday. It’s a year later, and of course, I am still looking to Bradbury to remind myself. There’s something about that man that keeps the curious child alive in me.

It’s not just Bradbury. It seems like the universe is conspiring. Something amazing happened to me this month. I just got back from a visit to Laramie, Wyoming, where I was invited to take part in a very special workshop called “Launchpad Astronomy.” It’s run by two astronomy professors: Mike Brotherton and Christian Ready. You might recognize Mike Brotherton from his other life as a writer of hard scifi like Star Dragon and Spider Star. Christian Ready you might know as your “friendly neighborhood astronomer” from his YouTube channel Launchpad Astronomy.

These two fellows lead a small class of writers every year in this crash course on Astronomy. It’s their gift to the world. If you’re tired of terrible mistakes in science fiction - these are your new heroes. This is their way to fight back and try to inject a little reality and real science into the creative projects you’ll see on the big screen and read in science fiction stories. I’ll include a link in the description so you can see how many extraordinary creators have been through this program.

You know I was in heaven, because it was back to school time - we spent a whole week in a college classroom learning about black holes, quasars, the birth of stars, the expansion of the universe, some basics of relativity, cosmology, you know. All the good stuff. AND we got to do a little telescoping. We went up in the mountains to this observatory where there were true dark skies. We saw the Milky Way, and some sneaky little fireballs. We saw Saturn and its rings. Jupiter and the Galilean moons. And RED MARS.

I thought a lot about Ray Bradbury while I was there. How much he loved space, and the people who bring space to us. I remembered the epitaph to The Martian Chronicles:

“It is good to renew one’s wonder,” said the philosopher.

“Space travel has again made children of us all.”

The Martian Chronicles is not a novel. It’s a compilation of stories. But they’re not the stories you might expect about human space exploration or what happens when people finally arrive on Mars. In your typical science fiction story, we’d hear all the details about the special new rocket, and the specific flight path, the complications of orbital mechanics, and so on. In these Mars stories, Bradbury says the rocket takes off, and then the rocket lands. Meanwhile, a Martian woman dreams of an Earthly man and realizes something terrible about her Martian husband.

Or, how about the second story. Imagine if you went on a rocket to Mars, and you arrived and nobody cared?

I’m going to read you an excerpt from this beautiful little story.

Are you ready? Let’s begin.

(reads pp 16-25)

I wish Ray Bradbury were here to see the Martian expeditions, and to see that double rocket landing footage from SpaceX. But we’re seeing it for him. It is Ray Bradbury’s 101st birthday. May he live forever.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Wed, 30 Jun 2021 03:00:00 -0700

Have you been snacking on a steady unwholesome diet of Dystopian Science Fiction? Does anyone write Utopias anymore? Kimberly revisits Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, and considers how this work influenced her thinking (and ultimately influences her work with Socratica).

Buy your copy of Brave New World here: https://amzn.to/2TjyH9C

My first book - How to Be a Great Student

ebook: https://amzn.to/2Lh3XSP

Paperback: https://amzn.to/3t5jeH3

Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/3atr8TJ

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome everybody, to Socratica Reads. My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the co-founder of Socratica. We make beautiful - really, incredibly gorgeous videos about math, science, computer programming, and even learning about HOW to learn. At Socratica, we like to say we’re building the education of the future. It should come as no surprise, then, when I say that our work has often been inspired by the LITERATURE of the future - science fiction. That’s what this podcast is all about.

There are lots of book review podcasts, but this... is not that.

This is a personal journey. I’m retracing my steps. How did Socratica come to be the way it is? To quote You’ve Got Mail - “You are what you read.” (I think the Finnish astronomer Esko Valtaoja may have said it first.)

or...Dr. Seuss, when he said

The more that you read,

the more things you will know.

The more that you learn,

the more places you’ll go.

It’s a sentiment shared by a lot of people. And I do really believe that the books we read influence our thinking. There’s a reason why oppressors like to burn books. They want to control the message. But more than specific information, what we read can influence our very outlook. Are we hopeful? Are we fatalistic?

That’s why I’m focusing on Science Fiction in this podcast. Reading science fiction trains you to think simultaneously about the future - the possible future - and where we are now, and to think about the road we’re on.

We can’t KNOW the future. So - going to college, trying a new job, starting your own business, like Socratica - these are all acts of faith and hope in much the same way science fiction is. We assess where we are, think about where we want to go - and try to point our feet in the right direction. I think the books we read about the future are enormously helpful to us, even just on a subconscious level - especially when we’re facing transitions in our lives. Every time we read another book, we add more experiences we can draw on. We’re not on our own.

Today I’m thinking about a book I read just as I was about to start high school. I went to a very high-powered prep school for 9th through 12th grades. 100% of their graduates go to excellent colleges. It was kind of like a dream world - perfect students, perfect teachers - and when I got in, I thought okay, I’m on my way. The future is bright. It turns out, I was woefully underprepared. I had attended rather indifferent schools up 'til then, and I really didn’t have any study skills, other than being a voracious reader.

I share the story of how I figured it all out, the hard way, in my book How To Be a Great Student - you can find a link in the description.

The book that helped me make this leap into a new society when I was 13 was Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. And here’s why I think it was so helpful at the time, and continues to be helpful, virtually every time I start a new endeavor. It’s because this book describes a Utopia. No one starting a new job or a new school thinks to themselves they’re making a bad decision. We’re all too willing to just see the superficial nice things, so we feel good about our choices in life.

A Utopia, by definition, is an idealized place that doesn’t exist. It’s interesting to me that so many current writers go for the obviously unpleasant dystopian picture of the future. Of course as readers we’re going to reject that and feel repulsed and think that could never happen here. We’d see it coming and make different choices. Books that feature utopias work in a more subtle way. You’re seduced by all the pleasantness, all the happiness and security. Then at some point the bottom falls out, and you’re horrified by what you thought was a good idea. This is MUCH MORE like real life, and that’s why I think Utopian novels are actually more effective.

The book begins with an epigraph in French written by the Russian philosopher Nicholas Berdiaeff. I’m going to roughly translate it for you.

Berdiaeff says,

“Utopias appear to be more achievable than we used to think. Now, we have to ask ourselves how do we PREVENT utopias? They ARE possible. Life marches on TOWARDS utopias. Maybe a new era is beginning, one in which the intellectuals and the cultured class of people will dream up ways to avoid utopias and return to a society less PERFECT and more FREE."

Huxley’s choice of this quote makes it very clear that this book is to be taken as a cautionary tale.

The setting of Brave New World is especially provocative to me as a biologist, because we’re not reading about how society might be changed by a warp drive and interstellar travel. Instead, almost all of the science fiction in this book comes in the form of applied biology. Basically, eugenics, with some psychology and brain washing thrown in. Using these tools, a new peaceful society has emerged in the year 632 A.F. That’s 632 years after Henry Ford introduced the Model T, so sometime in the 26th century. Say THAT 3 times fast.

There are a lot of fun references where Ford has basically replaced God, even in mild swear words, and people make the sign of the T instead of the cross. Religion doesn’t exist anymore in this society, neither does literature or anything that might bring about strong emotion like romantic love or family. No one has parents anymore. Mother and Father are obscene words. Babies are decanted from artificial wombs - children are raised by the state. The elites are all very attractive, and they spend most of their time as consumers, dressing in fancy clothes, swapping partners and they’re drugged into a state of simple-minded bliss. There’s also a huge artificially created population of clones who do all the grunt work that keeps the trains on time. Everyone has their place in society, and because of psychological conditioning, they’re all very happy in their predetermined roles.

Well, almost everyone. We meet Bernard, who is not quite as perfect of a physical specimen as he should be, and mentally - something has happened. His socialization didn’t quite take. He doesn’t fit in, and he’s resentful. Despite this freelove society, women reject him. Wanting to make a big impression on a girl, he takes her on a vacation to visit a reservation where a small population of Native Americans live like they did before this Great Society. It’s like a zoo for people. On this trip, Bernard discovers a young man named John, a Noble Savage who quotes Shakespeare and has a secret connection to Bernard’s world.

Bernard brings John back with him and introduces him into society as a novelty and Bernard’s social ranking rises. But really, this device allows us to step back and see the world fresh through John’s eyes. While he was initially seduced by the vision of a beautiful young woman - here he quotes Miranda from Shakespeare’s Tempest “Oh Brave New World that has such people in it!” - the more he learns about how this Great Society works, and what mindless drones the citizens are, the more horrified he becomes.

This is the big takeaway for me. Just because a new place is shiny and exciting, and it’s easy to be impressed by new people living a different kind of life - there is probably a tradeoff. You don’t get a fantasy for free. How much of yourself will you have to give up to live this way?

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Tue, 04 May 2021 03:00:00 -0700

EPISODE DESCRIPTION: When Flowers for Algernon came out in 1959, It was science fiction. What if you could go in for surgery and come out with more intellectual potential? In this episode of Socratica Reads, Kimberly ponders how some of this concept has actually come to pass (informed by her stint in Joe Tsien's "smart mouse" lab). How has this book influenced our work at Socratica? The message of the book is clear, and sadly at odds with much of academia.

Get your copy of "Flowers for Algernon" here:"

https://amzn.to/3eFla2N

Transcript:

Welcome Everybody, to Socratica Reads. My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the cofounder of Socratica. You know us from our educational videos about math, science, programming, and how to be a great student. Socratica Reads is a podcast about the books we’ve found influential. It really shouldn’t come as a surprise that people dedicated to making the education of the future were heavily influenced by science fiction - the literature of the future.

Today’s book is “Flowers For Algernon” by Daniel Keyes. Do you think of this book as science fiction? I read it when I was around 12, and it wasn’t in the sci-fi section of the library, but it certainly follows the typical sci-fi premise - imagine a world with a certain technological advance. How will people behave in this new slightly tweaked future? How will society respond?

In this world, as imagined in the late 1950s, there is cutting-edge brain research underway. You can go in for surgery, and come out with a higher IQ. You might think the Algernon from the title is the main character, but no - Algernon is a mouse - a test subject who has had this surgery, and become much smarter than your average rodent.

The funny thing is, when I read this book as a kid, it was still science fiction. But when I was in grad school at Princeton, I spent a little time doing research in Joe Tsien’s lab, where we made smart mice. We did this by overexpressing a certain gene active in the brain called NR2B. Mice with extra NR2B could learn how to solve a water maze faster, and they could remember better. Reality was catching up.

It is still science fiction to imagine this being used in people, and in Flowers for Algernon we have a cautionary tale. The main character is Charlie Gordon who has very limited abilities, and can only follow simple directions. Even Algernon can beat him at maze puzzles. Charlie goes to a night school for challenged students, and learns to read and write, but will never progress as much as he wants to. He is a man trapped in a body that doesn’t respond to his hard work. He longs to connect with other people, but of course, people are cruel, and they don’t think of him as a real person, and even the people Charlie thinks are his friends play cruel tricks on him.

Could this surgery deliver Charlie into a better life?

The researchers ask him to keep a journal, so we hear Charlie’s thoughts.

March 11th, the day after the operation. Charlie writes

If your smart you can have lots of frends to talk to and you never get lonley by yourself all the time.

I will say it’s hard going reading through Charlie’s journal entries. You ache for him, even as he rapidly improves. You see how he does suddenly understand how people saw him before - there’s a sort of Adam and Eve eating from the tree of knowledge moment, where he is ashamed.

Very, very briefly, he’s able to connect with his fellow human beings. But he rapidly passes them.

May 15 ...strange how when I’m in the college cafeteria and hear the students arguing about history or politics or religion it all seems so childish.

I find no pleasure in discussing ideas any more on such an elementary level. People resent being shown that they don’t approach the complexities of the problem - they don’t know what exists beyond the surface ripples.

This is the beginning of his downfall. Charlie becomes MEAN. He hurts everyone around him with his superiority and his attitude that his work means more than being a decent person and having meaningful relationships.

It’s interesting that Charlie can the truth of this when it comes to the scientists:

August 11 “You’ve become cynical,” said Nemur. “That’s all this opportunity has meant to you. Your genius has destroyed your faith in the world and in your fellow men.”

“That’s not completely true,” I said softly. “But I’ve learned that intelligence alone doesn’t mean a damned thing. Here in your university, intelligence, education, knowledge, have all become great idols. But I know now there’s one thing you’ve all overlooked: intelligence and education that hasn’t been tempered by human affection isn’t worth a damn.”

This is where the book really makes me sad. I’ve been around brilliant people all my life. And you might think that the smarter you are, the less foolish you would be. But some of the smartest people I knew - the people I went to college with, my professors - so many of them were really just idiots about basic human kindness and decency.

This reminds me of another quote, from a play about a simple man who understood simple truths - Harvey, written by Mary Chase. It was made into a movie starring James Stewart as Elwood, a man with an imaginary 6 foot, three and a half inch rabbit as a best friend. They want to lock Elwood up. But Elwood was such a GOOD person, why would you want to keep him out of society and leave nasty people out in the world, just because they were smart? “Years ago my mother used to say to me, she'd say, "In this world, Elwood, you must be" - she always called me Elwood - "In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me. ”

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Thu, 11 Mar 2021 10:49:00 -0700

Ender's Game is an essential read for gifted kids and adults who were gifted children. And anyone who is supposed to be raising or educating gifted kids.

We don't just root for Ender. We ARE Ender.

Although Ender's Game is ostensibly science fiction, much of it reads as a slice of real life for gifted kids. They've all experienced the mix of pride and shame when a teacher singles them out for praise (enraging other kids). They've felt the loneliness and isolation. And they've been let down by the one-size-fits-all education they're required to spend their entire childhoods on.

At Socratica, we're very much focused on this essential question: how do you give people the education they NEED and DESERVE? That may be why this book speaks to us.

Purchase your copy of Ender's Game here: https://amzn.to/3thefTf

Thanks for listening. 💜🦉

Watch our beautiful educational videos at https://www.socratica.com/

Support our work at https://www.patreon.com/socratica or https://www.paypal.me/socratica

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome Everybody, to Socratica Reads. My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the cofounder of Socratica. We make the educational videos of the future. Or educational videos for YOUR future. On the Socratica Reads podcast, I share some of the books that have inspired us, and it’s almost always that literary genre for dreams and dreamers - science fiction. Today I’m revisiting ENDER’S GAME by Orson Scott Card.

This is one of those books I wish I had read as a kid. I think it would have helped me channel some rage. It was written in the mid 80s, but I didn’t come across it until I was an adult. I first read Ender’s Game right before I was going to start teaching in my old high school - which was a super high-powered prep school. I am glad I read it then, because it reminded me of what it was like being a smart kid (all the kids I taught were also really smart, and it helped remind me of the situation they were in).

This book doesn’t shy away from the power and potential of children. I suspect that makes a lot of people uncomfortable - and I think that’s why, when they did a movie adaptation, they wrote the script with MUCH OLDER kids. But we’re not talking about the movie here on Socratica READS.

The other thing I’ll say is that I wish this book was the only book in the series, and not the start of the Ender Wiggin Cinematic Universe. This book is practically perfect, and I was so happy to re-read it. I have no desire to re-read any of the other books, especially because at some point they got REALLY WEIRD about embryos and Petra and Bean could only talk about their potential children? I mean, someone was obsessed.

So, anyway, I’m going to do my best to pretend this was the one and only book about Ender.

I was thinking about how different the experience is to read a book as a kid, when maybe it’s the first time you’ve ever come across your own thoughts verbalized. What is it like for a smart little kid to read Ender’s Game - what a kindness to create this book for them. I felt so alone as a gifted child - no one knew what to do with me, and everyone pretty much ignored my special needs as long as I wasn’t causing any trouble. At least my parents were able to put me in a private school where I was PHYSICALLY safe - I wasn’t getting beaten up for being smart, but I was certainly verbally bullied and socially excluded. The actual education I received in my grammar school was indifferent at best. I can say it probably did me no harm. Michael, my sweet brilliant husband, grew up in a very small town with very few educational options - I’m pretty sure he was the smartest person in a hundred mile radius - and he DID get into trouble, apparently - he was always getting scolded for talking in class. And he DID have to physically defend himself at times. I imagine he was bored, and lonely, and surrounded by people who didn’t understand him.

What DO you do with a gifted child? No one knows what they’re doing. So, you stick them in piano lessons. I’m joking, but also I’m not joking - Michael took piano lessons, and so did I. I’m sorry, that really did nothing for me. I’m sure it didn’t hurt, but it wasn’t the ANSWER.

This is one of the giant questions we are trying to address at Socratica. Who speaks for the bright kids who want to learn? What’s out there for them? Can we serve this under-served group of learners.

Ender’s Game tells the story of what happens when a brilliant child IS properly educated - at least, properly educated in order to achieve a certain goal. In Ender Wiggins’ family, he’s one of three brilliant children. It’s sort of a Goldilocks problem - his elder brother is smart but disgustingly cruel. His elder sister is smart but too gentle to do what it takes. But Ender, the third child, is just right. Just the right blend of intelligence and when it calls for it - the killer instinct.

The book begins in a post-war era. Humans narrowly escaped complete annihilation by insect-like alien invaders. They’re called Buggers and they’re incomprehensible. They still exist, somewhere out there on their home planet, and they’ll be coming back, so people have to get ready. And that means training the next generation of military leaders who can think creatively and beat the technologically superior Buggers.

While the bugs reproduce like mad and spread out across the universe, humans on Earth have learned to control their population. Families are limited to two children, except in exceptional cases. And Ender’s family was exceptional. I actually wish there was a little more time spent with Ender’s brother and sister, who have secret identities online as intellectual giants, even though they are still children. I find that part of the storyline amazingly prescient for a book written just at the start of the internet age.

There’s an element of Harry Potter receiving his letter to go to Hogwarts - I think every bright kid hopes that someone will recognize their special talents and they’ll be rescued from their dreary life and be taken away and properly nurtured and educated. But the downside of that is something that most gifted kids have experienced - they are pointed out in class as being exceptional, and the other kids hate them for it.

I think a lot of readers will be fascinated by the *specific* training games that Ender is put through in this weird space boot camp. But the intricacies of the game don’t matter, it could have been anything. It’s that Ender is pushed to the limits of his ingenuity. Here’s a short quote from Ender, who recognizes the meta-nature of his training: “most boys in this school think the game is important FOR ITSELF, but it isn’t. It’s only important because it helps them find kids who might grow up to be real commanders, in the real war. But as for the game, screw that.”

I wonder how many kids recognize this about their own real-life education - that it’s not so important that you read and analyse THIS book or derive THIS math formula - it’s that you CAN analyse a book and you CAN derive a math formula. It’s training for your brain. Maybe school would feel different if kids could appreciate that a lot of their education is arbitrary - it’s like eating your vegetables or doing exercise. But then again, you’d like to be able to enjoy what you are doing, not just for the long-term benefit.

I’m interested in pulling out what is it about this book that is so satisfying - even though it’s science fiction, and much of it is set in a fantasy space boot camp, there’s something so FAMILIAR about what happens to these kids. These scenarios COULD happen anywhere. The smart little kid is picked on and grownups let it happen. The smart kid learns that the grownups have their own issues and limitations. Even though much of the book is sad and scary, ultimately, there is a message of hope - you will graduate to freedom, if you are smart enough to see it, and seize it.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Wed, 20 Jan 2021 10:30:00 -0700

One of the silver linings to the very strange pandemic year we've all lived through, 2020, was the Octavia Butler renaissance. People woke up to the fact that she was a brilliant writer, and her book "Parable of the Sower" shot to the top of bestseller lists. The book was eerily predictive for 2020, in a lot of ways.

Kimberly shares her thoughts.

Purchase your copy of Octavia Butler's prescient novel here: https://amzn.to/3qDzFbP

Thanks for listening. 💜🦉

Watch our beautiful educational videos at https://www.socratica.com/

Support our work at https://www.patreon.com/socratica or https://www.paypal.me/socratica

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome everybody to Socratica Reads.

My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the co-founder of Socratica.

We make futuristic learning videos. What do I mean by that?

We teach math, science, and programming that will take you into the future. Your future.

You may think you can’t see your future, but you can. Maybe not with perfect clarity, but you can LEARN to speculate in a powerful way. You NEED to envision your future, to know what you have to do to get there. Unless you’re okay just living your life like you’re floating in a river, being carried helplessly to some unknown destination.

This is what I’m doing in this podcast.

I’m focusing on what we read at Socratica that helps us think this way.

It’s mainly science fiction.

Sci Fi has an undeserved reputation as being lightweight reading, and Sci fi authors as being lightweight writers. As if just anyone could make up a picture of the future that is compelling, and possible, and internally consistent, and TRUE.

I have enormous respect for Science Fiction writers. They have to capture the truth of our society, our technological capabilities, as well as our human psychology, and then they have to imagine what would happen to our society if something were tweaked. How would we respond as human beings. What would happen next.

These people, these Science Fiction writers - there’s a certain wizardry to them, to be able to envision the future so well. You may really think Octavia Butler was psychic, if you’ve read Parable of the Sower, which she wrote in the early 90s. This book has surged in popularity this year, since we’ve been living in PandemicTime, because it captures so much of the strange collapse of normal life that we are experiencing.

I feel a certain kinship with this author. Octavia Butler was born in Pasadena, like me. She was an only child of an impoverished family, like me. She LIVED at the library, like me. We were both determined to succeed. But she also saw a different side of Los Angeles that I did my best to avoid and turn a blind eye to. She was keenly aware of the frailties in the system, and she captured the frayed ends in her work.

This book starts in Los Angeles in the 2020s. There’s been a sad slide of American society into disrepair and crime. It’s not completely spelled out, but you get the impression that the environment has suffered a radical change. It only rains once every six or seven years in LA, and water is a very expensive commodity. The main character lives in a kind of constant lockdown, in a gated community. Not because they’re wealthy - it’s just too dangerous to go outside. The kids haven’t gone out to school for years. Her father takes his life in his hands to go out to work. Fire is a constant threat. A lot of this feels like our year 2020.

I’m going to read you a couple short passages from the beginning of the book. Notice how Butler investigated this very thing that has preoccupied our thoughts so much this year: what changes will this experience cause in all of us? And are we prepared to change? When put to the test, what would we quickly give up, and what would we think is essential.

Are you ready? Let’s begin.

All that you touch

You Change.

All that you Change

Changes you.

The only lasting truth

Is Change.

God Is Change.

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

Each chapter of the book starts with a quote like this from the main character and her new spiritual practice she calls “Earthseed.” She experiences a call to create this new religion, even though she’s raised by a Baptist minister. This next passage is what she says right after they all risk their lives to leave their safe compound and go a few blocks away to get baptised in a real church:

A lot of people seem to believe in a big-daddy-God or a big-cop-God or a big-king-God. They believe in a kind of super-person. A few believe God is another word for nature. And nature turns out to mean just about anything they happen not to understand or feel in control of.

Some say God is a spirit, a force, and ultimate reality. Ask seven people what all of that means and you’ll get seven different answers. So what is God? Just another name for whatever makes you feel special and protected?

There’s a big, early-season storm blowing itself out in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s bounced around the Gulf, killing people from Florida to Texas and down into Mexico. There are over 700 known dead so far. One hurricane. And how many people has it hurt? How many are going to starve later because of destroyed crops? That’s nature. Is it God? Most of the dead are the street poor who have nowhere to go and who don’t hear the warnings until it’s too late for their feet to take them to safety. Where’s safety for them anyway? Is it a sin against God to be poor? We’re almost poor ourselves. There are fewer and fewer jobs among us, more of us being born, more kids growing up with nothing to look forward to. One way or another, we’ll all be poor some day. The adults say things will get better, but they never have. How will God - my father’s God - behave toward us when we’re poor?

Is there a God? If there is, does he (she? it?) care about us? Deists like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson believed God was something that made us, then left us on our own.

“Misguided,” Dad said when I asked him about Deists. “They should have had more faith in what their Bibles told them.”

I wonder if the people of the Gulf Coast still have faith. People have had faith through horrible disasters before. I read a lot about that kind of thing. I read a lot period. My favorite book of the Bible is Job. I think it says more about my father’s God in particular and gods in general than anything else I’ve ever read.

In the book of Job, God says he made everything and he knows everything so no one has any right to question what he does with any of it. Okay. That works. That Old Testament God doesn’t violate the way things are now. But that God sounds a lot like Zeus - a super-powerful man, playing with his toys the way my youngest brothers play with toy soldiers. Bang, bang! Seven toys fall dead. If they’re yours, you make the rules. Who cares what the toys think. Wipe out a toy’s family, then give it a brand new family. Toy children, like Job’s children, are interchangeable.

Maybe God is a kind of big kid, playing with his toys. If he is, what difference does it make if 700 people get killed in a hurricane - or if seven kids go to church and get dipped in a big tank of expensive water?

But what if all that is wrong? What if God is something else altogether?

Next we learn something significant about what else is happening out there:

One of the astronauts on the latest Mars mission has been killed. Something went wrong with her protective suit and the rest of her team couldn’t get her back to the shelter in time to save her. People here in the neighborhood are saying she had no business going to Mars, anyway. All that money wasted on another crazy space trip when so many people here on earth can’t afford water, food, or shelter.

This looking towards Mars is really the essence of Earthseed, and you’ll learn more about this idea throughout the book.

Sometimes when we read dystopian fiction, or science fiction, we have to suspend our disbelief. We have to accept that things are really that bad, or that certain technological wonders are really possible. Do you find it believable that in the face of this sad state of affairs that they would still be going to Mars? If you think this is unbelievable fiction, I would remind you that the same year that China set off a global pandemic, and kept 11 million people in Wuhan locked in their homes, they went to the moon to gather rocks. More than 4 million acres burned in California this year, but we also had SpaceX launching astronauts twice to the international space station. Here in the real world, in 2020, our lives were a mix of devastating loss and sublime achievements.

I wonder how readers today will respond to the spiritual roots of this book. I will say I’m very grateful to have read the Bible as a work of literature when I was in high school. You may or may not be religious, that’s your personal business - but if you read much of anything, you’re missing a lot of references if you don’t have a grounding in this fundamental work.

The title of Butler’s book, Parable of the Sower, comes from the New Testament. There are versions of this story in three of the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Jesus draws an analogy between the farmer’s soil and the human heart. The seed is the Word of God. He says there are four different reactions to the word of God, like there are four kinds of soil.

First, the hard heart, where the seed will fall along the roadside. The seed can’t even start to grow here.
Second, the shallow heart. Superficially, it looks like the seed will grow, but just below the surface are stones. The plant will wither.
Third, the crowded heart. There’s a lot going on here - thorns, weeds - lots of other things growing that will choke out the seedling and prevent it from thriving.
And finally, the fourth kind of soil, the fruitful heart, where the message can take root and flourish. The soil is receptive.

Which of these will you be? Will you be able to receive the message we’re getting from living through the Pandemic? I feel like I’ve been all four, at various times. Be well, Socratica Friends.

The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Fri, 30 Oct 2020 08:00:00 -0700

Every year Kimberly reads The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury, in remembrance. Did you put away your childhood loves? What do you remember? What have you been collecting since you were a child?

Purchase the Ray Bradbury short novel The Halloween Tree here: https://amzn.to/35P9WUO

Thanks for listening. 💜🦉

Watch our beautiful educational videos at https://www.socratica.com/

Support our work at https://www.patreon.com/socratica or https://www.paypal.me/socratica

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome, Everybody! To Socratica Reads.

I’m Kimberly Hatch Harrison, the co-founder of Socratica.

We spend our time at Socratica making beautiful educational materials like something out of the future and also something out of the past. We’re leveraging the full power of new media, but at the same time, we’re careful to hold up the traditions of scholarship - stretching back to the age of Socrates. You can learn a lot very efficiently with computers, and videos, but at the same time, the heart of education is a dedicated teacher who can tell a story.

In this podcast, Socratica Reads, I’m sharing some of the primal influences that shaped who we are. I spent most of my formative years with my nose in a book. And so I feel very close to the authors who were there with me, helping me figure out the world.

I lived at the library, and about once a week, my mum would take me to Vroman’s - the oldest and most extraordinary independent bookstore in Pasadena. Back in the day, you could buy three books for five dollars, so that five dollar bill with Lincoln on it still holds a special place in my heart. Even though money was scarce in our house, books were not. And almost all of my Ray Bradbury books have a picture of a pumpkin and a kind message from my favourite author.

Ray Bradbury looms large in my imagination and really - he helped shape how I see the world and the people in it. In this podcast I’m focusing on science fiction, because I believe that genre almost more than any other, has the power to develop your understanding of the world whilst simultaneously allowing you to run thought experiments about how the world might be different.

Ray Bradbury IS a science fiction author, but he’s also a fantasy author, and a historian. All of these genres come together in his book The Hallowe’en Tree.

I associate Ray Bradbury with Hallowe’en - and that’s not by accident. Every Hallowe’en, he would visit Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, and he would read to us from The Halloween Tree. He would be very formal - suit jacket and tie, sitting at a table, reading. Underneath the table, he was wearing shorts and white tennis shoes. I loved him so much, this grownup little boy. He was so jolly. It was like Santa was visiting, except on Hallowe’en. Hallowe’en Santa.

Every word that he spoke, every expression on his face - you could feel how much he loved the world. He had endless enthusiasm for rockets, outer space, mysterious creatures like dinosaurs and the Loch Ness Monster. Hundreds of people lined up for the chance to exchange a few words with him as he signed books. I never heard him utter an unkind syllable.

I used to bring him a white pumpkin every year. I have no idea why I decided to do that, it just seemed right. I loved those weird white pumpkins, and I figured he would, too. He would draw a little pumpkin in my book, and ask me about how my studies were going. One time we talked about albinos and why their eyes were affected. He thought albinos always had blue eyes - maybe because of white cats and dogs. By this time I knew about white mice and how their eyes were pink. He knew just how to find what we were both interested in, within a few seconds!

Ray Bradbury helped me feel comfortable being a collector of odd bits and pieces of information. Every magpie enthusiasm was worthy of paying attention. What made you happy, what made you frightened, it all meant something. You never knew when it could come in handy, whether I was watching Jeopardy or writing something for school. Nothing was off limits. I saw how Ray Bradbury had collected every shiny thing he loved and put them all into his books. He once told the story of how some jerks tried to make him feel bad for collecting Buck Rogers comic strips as a boy - can you imagine? But he had the presence of mind, at nine years old to stand up for what he loved. Spacemen and carnivals and magicians and World Fairs and he bottled them up and preserved it all for us in his books.

This book, The Halloween Tree, is a supernatural story. There’s some time travel, and fantasy elements, and a historical unraveling of the myths we may not realize we are retelling with our Hallowe’en traditions.

The Halloween Tree is set in an ordinary town, full of ordinary boys who run around in sneakers and drink soda pop and dare each other to have adventures. But on Hallowe’en, the best day of the year for these boys, there is something terribly wrong with their friend Pipkin - the most adventurous of them all. The gang of boys stop by his house to pick him up for Trick or Treating, and he’s not dressed in a costume. He looks awful. Is he sick? Pip tells his friends he’ll meet them at a scary old house on the other side of the Ravine. And that’s where their adventure starts. I’ll read a little for you - this is when you’ll meet the owner of the house where the Hallowe’en Tree stands.

Are you ready? Let’s begin.

Let me introduce myself! Moundshroud is the name. Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud. Does that have a ring, boys? Does it sound for you?

It sounds, the boys thought, oh, oh, it sounds,...!

Moundshroud.

“A fine name,” said Mr. Moundshroud, giving it a full sepulchral night-church sound. “And a fine night. And all the deep dark wild long history of Hallowe’en waiting to swallow us whole!”

“Swallow us?”

“Yes!” cried Moundshroud. “Lads, look at yourselves. Why are you, boy, wearing that Skull face? And you, boy, carrying a scythe, and you, lad, made up like a Witch? And you, you, you!” He thrust his bony finger at each mask. “You don’t know, do you? You just put on those faces and old mothball clothes and jump out, but you don’t really know, do you?”

“Well,” said Tom, a mouse behind his skull-white muslin. “Er- no.”

“Yeah,” said the Devil boy. “Come to think of it, Why am I wearing this?” He fingered his red cloak and sharp rubber horns and lovely pitchfork.

“And me, this,” said the Ghost, trailing its long white graveyard sheets.

And all the boys were given to wonder, and touched their own costumes and refit their own masks.

“Then wouldn’t it be fun for you to find out?” asked Mr. Moundshroud. “I’ll tell you! No, I’ll show you! If only there was time-”

“It’s only six thirty. Hallowe’en hasn’t even begun!” said Tom-in-his-cold-bones.

“True!” said Mr. Moundshroud. “All right, lads - come along!”

He strode. They ran.

At the edge of the deep dark night ravine he pointed over the rim of the hills and the earth, away from the light of the moon, under the dim light of strange stars. The wind fluttered his black cloak and the hood that half shadowed and now half revealed his almost fleshless face.

“There, do you see it, lads?”

“What?”

“The Undiscovered Country. Out there. Look long, look deep, make a feast. The Past, boys, the Past. Oh, it’s dark, yes, and full of nightmare. Everything that Hallowe’en ever was lies buried there. Will you dig for bones, boys? Do you have the stuff?”

He burned his gaze at them.

“What is Hallowe’en? How did it start? Where? Why? What for? Witches, cats, mummy dusts, haunts. It’s all there in that country from which no one returns. Will you dive into the dark ocean, boys? Will you fly in the dark sky?”

The boys swallowed hard.

Someone peeped: “We’d like to, but - Pipkin. We’ve got to wait for Pipkin.”

“Yeah, Pipkin sent us to your place. We couldn’t go without him.”

As if summoned in this instant they heard a cry from the far side of the ravine.

I hope you will pick up a copy of The Halloween Tree. Visit your local library, visit your local bookstore. And revisit your memories and keep them alive the way Ray Bradbury did.

2001 by Arthur C. Clarke

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Wed, 23 Sep 2020 11:30:00 -0700

On the first day of Autumn, Kimberly looks back at another fall day when she first read the book 2001 and her life changed for the better. Does this book still inspire hope for humankind?

If you'd like your own copy of Arthur C Clarke's 2001, consider purchasing using our affiliate link for an easy way to support this podcast.

Amazon link:

2001: a Space Odyssey

https://amzn.to/35RdGEX

The complete Space Odyssey series: 2001, 2010, 2061, 3001

https://amzn.to/2YRpBBn

TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome everybody to Socratica Reads.

My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the co-founder of Socratica.

We make educational videos about math, science, and programming.

I hope you can sense that we make our videos from a certain viewpoint - of optimism and hope about the future.

One of the reasons I’m doing this podcast is to give you a window into our sources of inspiration. What makes us think the way we do?

I’ve spent almost all of my life reading. I haven’t been picky, honestly. I read everything.

But out of the thousands of books I’ve read, there have been a few that appeared at just the right time and nudged me in a certain direction.

That’s what this podcast is really about.

I have to warn you, this is not your typical book review podcast.

There are plenty of those out there already, doing a great job.

Socratica Reads is a personal journey.

It’s an exploration of the profound effects that the right book at the right time can have on a person.

Today is the first day of Autumn. I always associate the Fall with going back to school. It’s another kind of a New Year. You re-enter school with a new identity. Now you’re a sophomore. Now you’re a junior.

It’s another chance every year for things to go differently.

The year I started seventh grade, I was 12, and deep in my ugly duckling years.

When I look back at photos now, I don’t quite see it.

But to kids my age, it was really obvious.

I wonder what was it that marked me as a social outcast. I had very heavy glasses (this was before they were making nice thin polycarbonate glasses - if you had a strong prescription, your glasses were as thick as your thumb), and even with my glasses I didn’t see very well, so that meant I was really clumsy - I was a disaster at sports. And plus, I was just a weird kid, I loved to read, I got along well with adults - so my classmates rejected me and at every moment reminded me that I didn’t belong.

We had a new science teacher that year. Brian Miller. He had thick glasses, like mine, so immediately I felt some kinship. On the first day of school, to break the ice, he asked the class what did we do over the summer. I said I had been to the East Coast to visit family, including a trip to New York where I saw some plays and musicals. One of my regular tormentors was sitting behind me, and she started chanting under her breath, “New York. New York. Yeah, I went to New York.” You know, the stupid stuff that bullies do, it’s never anything clever, it’s just incessant taunting. This was letting me know that nothing had changed, she still despised me for existing.

The next kid went, and the next, and my bully got a bit louder, enjoying the laughter of the kids nearby. But then she went too far, and Mr. Miller heard her. He yelled at her. “What the HELL is your problem?” he said. That was all he said. He motioned for my classmate to go on with their story.

My bully was stunned into silence, and I felt a strange sense of emptiness - but in a good way. The absence of taunting was like a vacuum - and who knows what was going to move in in its place. There was the POSSIBILITY, all of a sudden, of a new kind of life for me, one where I wasn’t being constantly picked on.

Now. What does this all have to do with the book we’re talking about today. Well, this wasn’t the only way science teacher Brian Miller changed my life for the better. He brought in a shelf of books into the classroom that we could borrow, and he put Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001 into my hands.

There wasn’t any sci-fi section in the kids’ library that I usually went to. I really didn’t know anything about the genre. This was my first real sci-fi book. And it was all about how humans were capable of EVOLVING into something rich and strange. For a kid who desperately needed to grow up and grow out of her punishing environment, it was absolutely the perfect book at the perfect time.

I want to read you a quote from Arthur C. Clarke:

"There's no real objection to escapism, in the right places... We all want to escape occasionally. But science fiction is often very far from escapism, in fact you might say that science fiction is escape into reality... It's a fiction which does concern itself with real issues: the origin of man; our future. In fact I can't think of any form of literature which is more concerned with real issues, reality."

Science Fiction was a powerful new tool I was being exposed to. It was a way for people to imagine different ways of life, possibly better, possibly worse. This is so self-referential - my first sci-fi book was 2001, and the book itself acted like the 2001 monolith - it was showing me, working on me, to help my brain grow in new directions.

2001 was made simultaneously into a movie, directed by Stanley Kubrick, and the making of the movie influenced the book, and of course the book, as it was being created, was the source material for the movie. Now I can see this isn’t like your typical sci-fi book. There’s a bit of emptiness to it, like a scaffold that the movie seems to hang on. I’m not sure you’ll completely understand the movie without reading the book, and the imagery in the book is certainly enhanced by Kubrick’s movie.

I do think when most people think about 2001 they focus on the later parts of the story set in space, because of the incredible visuals provided by the movie. But I’m not here to talk about the movie. This is Socratica READS, after all.

So I mentioned the monolith, and it’s an image from the book that is inscrutable and unnatural and unknowable (is that a word)? We see the monolith allowing humans to leapfrog ahead in evolution. Later we see it act like another kind of shortcut - through time and space, a wormhole. But I’m most interested in what it does in the beginning of the book.

We meet a tribe of early proto-humans, who are on the brink of extinction. They’re not really hunter-gatherers, they’re just gatherers. They’re not going to be able to survive eating berries. But this greater intelligence in the universe has recognized that they have the potential to do more, to be more. And so one night a monolith appears to test them and to instruct them.

I’m going to read you a passage that just fascinated me when I first read it. The idea being - what would the most sophisticated teacher in the universe be like. Could we understand its methods at all?

Are you ready? Let’s begin.

They were still a hundred yards from the New Rock when the sound began.

It was barely audible, yet it stopped them dead, so that they stood paralyzed on the trail with their jaws hanging slackly. A simple, maddeningly repetitious vibration, it pulsed out from the crystal, and hypnotized all who came within its spell. For the first time - and the last, for three million years - the sound of drumming was heard in Africa.

The throbbing grew louder, more insistent. Presently the man-apes began to move forward, like sleepwalkers, toward the source of that compulsive sound. Sometimes they took little dancing steps, as their blood responded to rhythms that their descendants would not create for ages yet. Totally entranced, they gathered round the monolith, forgetting the hardships of the day, the perils of the approaching dusk, and the hunger in their bellies.

The drumming became louder, the night darker. And as the shadows lengthened and the light drained from the sky, the crystal began to glow.

First, it lost its transparency, and became suffused with a pale, milky luminescence. Tantalizing, ill-defined phantoms moved across its surface and in its depths. They coalesced into bars of light and shadow, then formed intermeshing, spoked patterns that began slowly to rotate.

Faster and faster spun the wheels of light, and the throbbing of the drums accelerated with them. Now utterly hypnotized, the man-apes could only stare slack-jawed into this astonishing display of pyrotechnics. They had already forgotten the instincts of their forefathers and the lessons of a lifetime; not one of them, ordinarily, would have been so far from the cave, so late in the evening. For the surrounding brush was full of frozen shapes and staring eyes, as the creatures of the night suspended their business to see what would happen next.

Now the spinning wheels of light began to merge, and the spokes fused into luminous bars that slowly receded into the distance, rotating on their axes as they did so. They split into pairs, and the resulting sets of lines started to oscillate across one another, slowly changing their angles of intersection. Fantastic, fleeting geometrical patterns flickered in and out of existence as the glowing grids meshed and unmeshed; and the man-apes watched, mesmerized captives of the shining crystal.

They could never guess that their minds were being probed, their bodies mapped, their reactions studied, their potentials evaluated. At first, the whole tribe remained half crouching in a motionless tableau, as if frozen into stone. Then the man-ape nearest to the slab suddenly came to life.

He did not move from his position, but his body lost its trancelike rigidity and became animated as if it were a puppet controlled by invisible strings. The head turned this way and that; the mouth silently opened and closed; the hands clenched and unclenched. Then he bent down, snapped off a long stalk of grass, and attempted to tie it into a knot with clumsy fingers.

It’s really tempting for me to just keep reading. I find myself rooting for this tribe, like they’re my distant relatives. You see the impact of these visions that are implanted in these pre-humans. They learn how to use three tools: the stone club, the toothed saw, and the horn dagger, and it’s up to them what they will do with them. They conquer hunger, they conquer their predator, and they conquer their competition, the Others. At some point, speech allows them to pass their knowledge on to the next generation. We know what’s in store for them.

At this point in my life, when I’m 12, I’m still being educated in grammar school, and a lot of the time I don’t know why I’m asked to do certain things - I don’t understand the methods or the reasons behind my schooling. But reading that passage made me crazy hungry to get my own monolith. I wanted my mind to be expanded and fiddled with so I could evolve into a better human. It planted a seed of something - a vision of a more direct way of learning.

There’s another passage later in the book that also made my heart go pitterpat as a kid who loved learning. We’re now with Dave Bowman, a man from our world, or one very like ours. He is a well-trained astronaut, but there’s nothing about him that makes us think we’re not just as capable of being chosen for his fate. We read this:

“Bowman had been a student for more than half his life; he would continue to be one until he retired. Thanks to the twentieth-century revolution in training and information-handling techniques, he already possessed the equivalent of two or three college educations - and, what was more, he could remember 90 percent of what he had learned.”

I am not surprised to re-read this and realize that I’ve been dreaming of a coming revolution in education my whole life. At least one part of this promise has come true - if you want, you can keep learning for the rest of your life. I know I’m not going to stop.

When I first read this book, 2001 was still in the future. Many of the technologies Clarke proposed are commonplace today. I wonder what it’s like reading this book for the first time as a kid, now. Does it seem quaint? It feels timeless to me. And so hopeful. I hope kids still get that sense that humans have incredible potential. I hope.

Happy 100th Birthday Ray Bradbury

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Sat, 22 Aug 2020 03:00:00 -0700

Happy 100th Birthday to one of our greatest sources of inspiration - Ray Bradbury, who wrote beautiful stories about regular humans in extraordinary circumstances. Kimberly discusses the first Bradbury story she ever read, All Summer In a Day.

Purchase the Ray Bradbury story collection A Medicine for Melancholy here: https://amzn.to/3aA3UK4

Thanks for listening. 💜🦉

Watch our beautiful educational videos at https://www.socratica.com/

Support our work at https://www.patreon.com/socratica or https://www.paypal.me/socratica

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome everybody to the first episode of Socratica Reads.

My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the co-founder of Socratica.

We make beautiful educational videos.

We specialize in futuristic learning - math, science, and programming like you’ve never seen it before.

When I’m not making videos, I spend a lot of my time reading.

In this podcast, I’m sharing the books that have inspired us and sparked creative ideas.

I’m focusing on Science Fiction - which is like imagination personified. Personified isn’t really the right word. Encapsulated.

It is an AUSPICIOUS day to start this venture.

August 22nd, 2020.

We’re celebrating Ray Bradbury’s 100th Birthday.

Ray Bradbury said, (I’m gonna read a quote) “Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it's the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself. ...Science fiction is central to everything we've ever done, and people who make fun of science fiction writers don't know what they're talking about."

You tell ‘em, Ray.

Ray Bradbury has been an important figure in my life since I was 9 years old.

When I was 9, I started the 4th grade, and at my grammar school every year they would hand out a small book called a reader - that was how we studied English.

These little readers had a lot of grammar exercises, and about a dozen short stories.

I would always take my reader home and read ALL the short stories in a day or two. Yeah, I was that kind of kid.

Well, that year, for the first time, I read a story by Ray Bradbury. It was about a little girl, 9 years old, who didn’t fit in with her classmates. They all scorned her because she was different. I couldn’t believe it - someone was writing about ME. He was telling MY STORY!

I mean, not LITERALLY, but still. By some miracle, Ray Bradbury understood me. I was a VERY bookish girl who got thick glasses in the beginning of the 4th grade (although I really should have gotten them in the 3rd grade), and I started pulling away from my classmates academically, socially, in all ways, really. I was like a little adult in the 4th grade. And my classmates could sense that I was something different, and they didn’t want to be around me anymore. My best friend unceremoniously dumped me, just stopped talking to me.

And so I really related to this girl in the story. It was called “All Summer in a Day.” I remember saying out loud, when I finished it - “This is the saddest story I’ve ever read.” And I still think that.

I’m going to read you an excerpt. This story is found in the collection “A Medicine for Melancholy” and I’ll include a link in the show notes. I hope you will go buy this collection of Ray Bradbury stories if you don’t already have it, or many on your shelf, like I do. Now let’s hear Ray Bradbury’s words on this, his one hundredth birthday.

Ready? Let’s begin.

The children pressed to each other like so

many roses, so many weeds, intermixed,

peering out for a look at the hidden sun.

It rained.

It had been raining for seven years;

thousands upon thousands of days

compounded and filled from one end to the

other with rain, with the drum and gush of

water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers

and the concussion of storms so heavy they

were tidal waves come over the islands. A

thousand forests had been crushed under

the rain and grown up a thousand times to

be crushed again. And this was the way life

was forever on the planet Venus, and this

was the schoolroom of the children of the

rocket men and women who had come to a

raining world to set up civilization and live

out their lives.

"It’s stopping, it’s stopping !"

"Yes, yes !"

Margot stood apart from them, from these

children who could ever remember a time

when there wasn’t rain and rain and rain.

They were all nine years old, and if there

had been a day, seven years ago, when the

sun came out for an hour and showed its

face to the stunned world, they could not

recall. Sometimes, at night, she heard them

stir, in remembrance, and she knew they

were dreaming and remembering gold or a

yellow crayon or a coin large enough to buy

the world with. She knew they thought they

remembered a warmness, like a blushing in

the face, in the body, in the arms and legs

and trembling hands. But then they always

awoke to the tatting drum, the endless

shaking down of clear bead necklaces upon

the roof, the walk, the gardens, the forests,

and their dreams were gone.

All day yesterday they had read in class

about the sun. About how like a lemon it

was, and how hot. And they had written

small stories or essays or poems about it:I

think the sun is a flower,That blooms for just

one hour. That was Margot’s poem, read

in a quiet voice in the still classroom while

the rain was falling outside.

"Aw, you didn’t write that!" protested one

of the boys.

"I did," said Margot. "I did."

"William!" said the teacher.

But that was yesterday. Now the rain was

slackening, and the children were crushed in

the great thick windows.

Where’s teacher ?"

"She’ll be back."

"She’d better hurry, we’ll miss it !"

They turned on themselves, like a

feverish wheel, all tumbling spokes. Margot

stood alone. She was a very frail girl who

looked as if she had been lost in the rain for

years and the rain had washed out the blue

from her eyes and the red from her mouth

and the yellow from her hair. She was an old

photograph dusted from an album, whitened

away, and if she spoke at all her voice would

be a ghost. Now she stood, separate,

staring at the rain and the loud wet world

beyond the huge glass.

"What’re you looking at ?" said William.

Margot said nothing.

"Speak when you’re spoken to."

He gave her a shove. But she did not

move; rather she let herself be moved only

by him and nothing else. They edged away

from her, they would not look at her. She felt

them go away. And this was because she

would play no games with them in the

echoing tunnels of the underground city. If

they tagged her and ran, she stood blinking

after them and did not follow. When the

class sang songs about happiness and life

and games her lips barely moved. Only

when they sang about the sun and the

summer did her lips move as she watched

the drenched windows. And then, of course,

the biggest crime of all was that she had

come here only five years ago from Earth,

and she remembered the sun and the way

the sun was and the sky was when she was

four in Ohio. And they, they had been on

Venus all their lives, and they had been only

two years old when last the sun came out

and had long since forgotten the color and

heat of it and the way it really was.

But Margot remembered.

"It’s like a penny," she said once, eyes

closed.

"No it’s not!" the children cried.

"It’s like a fire," she said, "in the stove."

"You’re lying, you don’t remember !" cried

the children.

But she remembered and stood quietly

apart from all of them and watched the

patterning windows. And once, a month ago,

she had refused to shower in the school

shower rooms, had clutched her hands to

her ears and over her head, screaming the

water mustn’t touch her head. So after that,

dimly, dimly, she sensed it, she was different

and they knew her difference and kept

away. There was talk that her father and

mother were taking her back to Earth next

year; it seemed vital to her that they do so,

though it would mean the loss of thousands

of dollars to her family. And so, the children

hated her for all these reasons of big and

little consequence. They hated her pale

snow face, her waiting silence, her thinness,

and her possible future.

I really do hope you read the rest of this story, if you haven’t already. Because if you were anything like me as a child, you will recognize how miraculous it was, that Ray Bradbury wrote a story about us. Somehow, as a grown man in the 1950s, he knew what it was like to be a weird 9 year old girl in the 1980s. I was not alone.

This is the power of really good science fiction. It opens the door to examining people in a different way. Somehow, because you accept this otherworldly scenario, you also buy in to these characters. I’m not sure that Ray Bradbury would have gotten away with telling a straightforward narrative about a weird 9 year old girl. We’d say, well what does HE know about it. But because he’s telling us a made-up story about Venus, he can SNEAK in with these dead accurate insights about human nature.

There’s a kind of a thread running through a lot of Bradbury, this affection for the oddballs who are true to themselves. You read his stories and you come away with a lot of love and understanding. I carry that with me, and I think maybe you can sense that in our work at Socratica. We will never talk down to you or make you feel strange because you love to read or you like to study science or you collect dinosaur toys. You’re safe with us, you’re among friends.

So I say to my friend Ray Bradbury on his birthday: I love you, thank you, Live Forever!

Welcome to Socratica Reads

Kimberly Hatch Harrison — Thu, 28 May 2020 04:00:00 -0700

Where do we get our ideas at Socratica?

We went to school, of course, and that set us on a certain path, studying math & science & computer programming….

But we believe strongly in Lifelong Learning here at Socratica. You don't have to stop learning when you leave school. The best way to continue developing your mind is to READ.

I’m Kimberly Hatch Harrison, the co-founder of Socratica. And this is: SOCRATICA READS, where we share the books that are inspiring us.

In this podcast, I focus on one of my favourite genres - Science Fiction. A lot of people look down on Sci-Fi, like it’s some kind of literary junk food. But the truth is, Sci-Fi has the power to sneak up on you and TEACH you things while you were busy looking at the shiny rocketship.

Things about human nature, and eternal questions like who am I and why am I here.

I hope you’ll join me.

💜🦉

Watch our beautiful educational videos at https://www.socratica.com/

Support our work at https://www.patreon.com/socratica or https://www.paypal.me/socratica