This week’s podcast came to us from our sixth (!) anniversary show at our home in Brooklyn, New York, from veteran storyteller and LGBT health educator Elana Lancaster.
Elana's story is about his overwhelming frustration when a student teacher attempted to teach his grade school class that, every year the on the vernal equinox, it's possible to balance eggs on their ends, due to planetary alignment -- something that young science enthusiast Elana immediately recognized as a myth.
It’s a hilarious example of that age-old problem -- what do you do when you KNOW the science and the person teaching you DOESN’T? What do you do when you know you’re right and the other person is wrong, but NOBODY will believe you?
I said, "You're wrong..."
Knowing nearly nothing about science myself, this is not a problem I have encountered often, though I know many people who have and it seems terribly frustrating for them.
In this case (SPOILER ALERT), Elana was of course right (shout out to astronomer Frank D. Ghigo for conducting the experiment that confirmed this in 1984!). Sure, you can balance an egg on the equinox, if you try hard enough, but you can also do this any old day of the year. Apparently there is a similar myth about brooms. (I never realized how creepy photos of brooms standing up on their own are!)
As a side note, Elana previously told a story with us about his partner’s transition that was, for me, transformative. There’s a moment, five minutes in, that I still sometimes think about and get serious feels from, even four years later.
Happy science story listening,
Erin Barker, Artistic Director