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"It's a Man's Man's Man's World" is a song James Brown recorded in a New York City studio in 1966, and, whether you like it or not, you can make the case that he's right. Walking down the city streets, young women get harassed in ways that tell them that this is not their world, their city, their street; that their freedom of movement and association is liable to be undermined at any time; and that a lot of strangers expect obedience and attention from them. "Smile," a man orders you, and that's a concise way to say that he owns you; he's the boss; you do as you're told; your face is there to serve his life, not express your own. He's someone; you're no one.

In a subtler way, names perpetuate the gendering of New York City. Almost every city is full of men's names, names that are markers of who wielded power, who made history, who held fortunes, who was remembered; women are anonymous people who changed fathers' names for husbands' as they married, who lived in private and were comparatively forgotten, with few exceptions. This naming stretches across the continent; the peaks of many Western mountains have names that make the ranges sound like the board of directors of an old corporation, and very little has been named for particular historical women, though Maryland was named after a Queen Mary who never got there.

Just as San Francisco was named after an Italian saint and New Orleans after a French king's brother, the Duc d'Orléans, so New York, city and state, were named after King Charles II's brother, the Duke of York (later King James II), when the British took over the region from the Dutch. Inside this city and state named for a man, you can board the No. 6 train at the northern end of the line in Pelham Bay, named after a Mr. Pell, in a borough named for a Swedish man, Jonas Bronck, and ride the train down into Manhattan, which is unusual in the city for retaining an indigenous name (the Bronx was said to be named Rananchqua by the local Lenape, Keskeskeck by other native groups). There, the 6 travels down Lexington Avenue, parallel to Madison Avenue, named, of course, after President James Madison.

As the train rumbles south under Manhattan's East Side, you might disembark at Hunter College, which, although originally a women's college, was named after Thomas Hunter, or ride farther, to Astor Place, named after the plutocrat John Jacob Astor, near Washington Square, named, of course, after the President. Or you might go even farther, to Bleecker Street, named after Anthony Bleecker, who owned farmland there, and emerge on Lafayette Street, named after the Marquis de Lafayette. En route you would have passed the latitudes of Lincoln Center, Columbus Circle, Rockefeller Center, Bryant Park, Penn Station-all on the West Side.

A horde of dead men with live identities haunt New York City and almost every city in the Western world. Their names are on the streets, buildings, parks, squares, colleges, businesses, and banks, and their figures are on the monuments. For example, at Fifty-ninth and Grand Army Plaza, right by the Pulitzer Fountain (for the newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer), is a pair of golden figures: General William Tecumseh Sherman on horseback and a woman leading him, who appears to be Victory and also a nameless no one in particular. She is someone else's victory.

The biggest statue in the city is a woman, who welcomes everyone and is no one: the Statue of Liberty, with that poem by Emma Lazarus at her feet, the one that few remember calls her "Mother of Exiles." Statues of women are not uncommon, but they're allegories and nobodies, mothers and muses and props but not Presidents. There are better temporary memorials, notably "Chalk," the public art project that commemorates the anniversary of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, in which a hundred and forty-six young seamstresses, mostly immigrants, died. Every March 25th since 2004, Ruth Sergel has coördinated volunteers who fan out through the city to chalk the names of the victims in the places where they lived. But those memories are as frail and fleeting as chalk, not as lasting as street names, bronze statues, the Henry Hudson Bridge building, or the Frick mansion.

A recent essay by Allison Meier notes that there are only five statues of named women in New York City: Joan of Arc, Golda Meir, Gertrude Stein, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Harriet Tubman, the last four added in the past third of a century. Until 1984, there was only one, the medieval Joan in Riverside Park, installed in 1915. Before that, only men were commemorated in the statuary of New York City. A few women have been memorialized in relatively recent street names: Cabrini Boulevard, after the canonized Italian-American nun; Szold Place, after the Jewish editor and activist Henrietta Szold; Margaret Corbin Drive, after the female Revolutionary War hero; Bethune Street, after the founder of the orphan asylum; and Margaret Sanger Square, after the patron saint of birth control. No woman's name applies to a long boulevard like Nostrand Avenue, in Brooklyn, or Frederick Douglass Boulevard, in northern Manhattan, or Webster Avenue, in the Bronx. (Fulton Street, named after Robert Fulton, the steamboat inventor, is supposed to be co-named Harriet Ross Tubman Avenue for much of its length, but the name does not appear to be in common usage and is not recognized by Google Maps.) No woman is a bridge or a major building, though some may remember that Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney is the founder for whom the museum is named. New York City is, like most cities, a manscape.

When I watch action movies with female protagonists-from "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" to "The Hunger Games"-I come out feeling charged up, superhuman, indomitable. It's like a drug for potency and confidence. Lately, I've come to wonder what it would feel like if, instead of seeing a dozen or so such films in my lifetime, I had the option, at any moment, of seeing several new releases lionizing my gender's superpowers, if lady Bonds and Spiderwomen became the ordinary fare of my entertainment and imagination. For men, the theatres are playing dozens of male-action-hero films now, and television has always given you a superabundance of champions, from cowboys to detectives, more or less like you, at least when it comes to gender (if not necessarily race and body type and predilection). I can't imagine how I might have conceived of myself and my possibilities if, in my formative years, I had moved through a city where most things were named after women and many or most of the monuments were of powerful, successful, honored women. Of course, these sites commemorate only those who were allowed to hold power and live in public; most American cities are, by their nomenclature, mostly white as well as mostly male. Still, you can imagine.

In the map "City of Women"-which appears in the forthcoming book "Nonstop Metropolis," a creative atlas of New York City that I co-authored with Joshua Jelly-Schapiro-we tried on what it would look like to live in such power, by paying homage to some of the great and significant women of New York City in the places where they lived, worked, competed, went to school, danced, painted, wrote, rebelled, organized, philosophized, taught, and made names for themselves. The New York City subway map is the one map that nearly everyone in the city consults constantly; it is posted at nearly every station entry and on every platform and subway car. The station names are a network of numbers and mostly men's names and descriptives, but the map is an informational scaffolding on which other things can be built. So on it we have built a feminist city of sorts, a map to a renamed city.

It's a map that reflects the remarkable history of charismatic women who have shaped New York City from the beginning, such as the seventeenth-century Quaker preacher Hannah Feake Bowne, who is routinely written out of history-even the home in Flushing where she held meetings is often called the John Bowne house. Three of the four female Supreme Court justices have come from the city, and quite a bit of the history of American feminism has unfolded here, from Victoria Woodhull to Shirley Chisholm to the Guerrilla Girls. Many of the women who made valuable contributions or might have are forgotten or were never named. Many women were never allowed to be someone; many heroes of any gender live quiet lives. But some rose up; some became visible; and here they are by the hundreds. This map is their memorial and their celebration.
This essay and map were drawn from "Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas," by Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, which is out October 19th from the University of California Press.

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"It's a Man's Man's Man's World" is a song James Brown recorded in a New York City stu­dio in 1966, and, whether you like it or not, you can make the case that he's right.

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A Look Back On Trump's Executive Orders This Week : NPR

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A Look Back On Trump's Executive Orders This Week : NPR

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subscribe to NPR Politics Podcast podcast

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

We'll start with a look at a very busy week in Washington punctuated by President Trump's executive directives on everything from the Affordable Care Act and abortion to a promised border wall with Mexico to calls to restart two controversial pipeline programs. And then there is that ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries signed yesterday.

We're going to drill down on that story today because there has been tremendous reaction to it both here and abroad. To talk about all this, we've called NPR's Scott Horsley, who covers the White House. Scott, welcome back.

SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Good to be with you.

MARTIN: Also on the line with us is NPR's Aarti Shahani from San Francisco. Aarti, welcome to you, too.

AARTI SHAHANI, BYLINE: Hi.

MARTIN: And I'm going to start with you because you've been getting reaction all day on this story. What are you hearing at the borders and from people trying to get into the country?

SHAHANI: What I'm hearing is there is confusion. People have been stranded, detained at airports across the U.S. We don't know exactly how many, but we do know it's not just refugees coming here for the first time. Green card holders, too, people with what is termed lawful permanent residency have also been pulled aside, have their status in question, if - from the designated predominantly Muslim countries.

NPR has also obtained an internal email circulating over at USCIS, the immigration agency that processes immigrant applications. The guidance says officers can keep interviewing people but cannot approve any application. That could affect people, you know, originally from those countries who are preparing to take the U.S. citizenship oath.

MARTIN: Now, I understand you've spoken with somebody who had a difficult time getting into the country.

SHAHANI: That's right. I interviewed a woman named Nisrin Elamin. She's a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at Stanford University. She's had a green card for five years. She's originally from Sudan, and she was doing dissertation research there. She heard about the executive order and made a pretty last-minute decision to come back to the U.S. to avoid problems. She landed at JFK last night around 10 p.m. She still got pulled aside. Elamin said the officer dealing with her just seemed to be making it up as he went along.

NISRIN ELAMIN: The officer who was questioning me told me that they had just gotten word about this executive order 20 minutes before we arrived. So they were so confused about what to do, and they were waiting on Washington to give them more direction on what to do. And when I asked him - you know, I told him I'm a permanent resident - could I be sent back? And he said he didn't know. So he told me to just - he said it's probably going to be a long night so just kind of sit tight.

SHAHANI: Elamin was held until about 3 a.m. Homeland Security decided to stamp her in after asking her a bunch of questions about her take on radicalism and Sharia law, asking her for her Facebook account and handcuffing her. She says one of the officers told her it would not be a good idea for her to travel abroad again, even though she has a green card.

MARTIN: I understand that there are some legal challenges already in the works.

SHAHANI: Yes. The ACLU with other advocates filed a habeas petition, saying that the executive order violates the Constitution and laws passed by Congress. The position focuses on two men from Iraq, one of whom helped the U.S. military in Iraq. ACLU attorney - ACLU attorney here, Cecillia Wang, describes him.

CECILLIA WANG: One of our clients, Mr. Darweesh, served as an interpreter and worked for the United States Army's 101st Airborne Division and has been targeted by threats because of his connections with our U.S. Army in Iraq.

SHAHANI: Now, Hameed Darweesh's wife and child were admitted while he was detained. Wang says that decision was arbitrary. They were all coming in from the same country, same visa. This afternoon, by the way, he was released into the U.S. But the other man, Heider Al-Shawi is still in custody.

MARTIN: Well, let's go to Scott Horsley now. Scott, we don't have time to address all of the executive actions that we've talked about over the course of the week, so let's just focus on this again. Remind us again exactly what yesterday's executive action on immigration said.

HORSLEY: Well, Michel, it closes the door to all refugees for four months. It closes the door to refugees from Syria indefinitely. It cuts, by more than half, the total number of refugees the United States is expected to take in this year, giving priority to Christian refugees from the Middle East. And it puts a 90-day hold on all visitors from the seven countries with predominantly Muslim populations - Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Sudan.

In signing this order at the Pentagon yesterday, President Trump described it as a way of keeping would-be terrorists out of the United States. But critics say it's a step towards that Muslim ban that the president talked about during the campaign, and they say it's a violation of America's commitment to religious freedom and the Constitution.

MARTIN: Well, Scott, stick with that idea for a moment there. You just heard reports that then - we've been hearing reports all day from critics who say that this is heavy-handed, that it's inhumane and that this is a backdoor ban on Muslims. Has the White House offered any reaction to this?

HORSLEY: Yes. The White House has been pushing back on the idea that this is a backdoor Muslim ban. A White House official noted there are a lot of Muslim countries that are not on that list of seven. And certainly, that's true. For example, Saudi Arabia, which was home to most of the 9/11 hijackers, is not on the list. Pakistan, which is home to one of the San Bernardino shooters, is not on the list. The countries that are on the list were actually put together - this list dates from the Obama administration.

And its original purpose was that people who were from those countries and - or who had traveled to those countries were required to get some extra scrutiny before they came into the United States. The critics of this new policy say there's a big difference between asking for that kind of individualized scrutiny and a blanket 90-day ban that President Trump has now ordered.

MARTIN: And what about all these reports about chaos and confusion at the borders? What are you hearing? What is the White House saying in response to that?

HORSLEY: Well, it's not terribly surprising. There was confusion about this. Let me just walk you through the timeline here. President Trump signed the executive order yesterday afternoon about 4:30 p.m., Washington-time. But the White House didn't actually release the text of the order for more than two hours, And even then, those of us who were working at the White House had trouble getting clarity from the White House press office about which countries were actually going to be shut off by that 90-day travel ban.

Now, the White House insists it was communicating for, quote, "many weeks" with relevant officials at the State Department and the Homeland Security Department, although that might be an exaggeration since President Trump was sworn in just over one week ago. But a White House official said today, quote, "everyone who needed to know about this order was informed."

MARTIN: Scott, just very briefly if I could - apologies for interrupting...

HORSLEY: Sure.

MARTIN: ...Any other reaction from lawmakers for and against? One assumes that there is.

HORSLEY: Yes. There has been some praise for this order. The GOP chairman of the House Judiciary Committee called it a sensible pause on the entry of refugees. But a lot of Democrats have been critical. And Republican Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska also went on record tonight saying this order is overly broad.

MARTIN: That's NPR's Scott Horsley. He covers the White House. And NPR's Aarti Shahani joins us from San Francisco. Thank you both so much for speaking with us.

HORSLEY: You're welcome.

SHAHANI: Thank you.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio record.

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A Look Back On Trump's Executive Orders This Week

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subscribe to NPR Politics Podcast podcast MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: We'll start with a look at a very busy week in Washington punctuated by President Trump's executive directives on everything from the Affordable Care Act and abortion to a promised border wall with Mexico to calls to restart two controversial pipeline programs. And then there is that ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries signed yesterday.

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Would You Go to Mars? Meet the Four Women Astronauts Who Can't Wait to Go | Glamour

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Would You Go to Mars? Meet the Four Women Astronauts Who Can't Wait to Go | Glamour

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Would you take the trip? The average temperature on Mars is 81 degrees below zero. But scientists say that in 15 years, we may be able to visit, even live there. Pictured here, four who'd love a ticket: astronauts Nicole Aunapu Mann, Anne McClain, Jessica Meir, and Christina Hammock Koch, photographed at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

In first grade Jessica Meir made a drawing of herself standing on the moon. Turns out she underestimated her own ambition: Today, at 38, Meir could become the first human to touch down on an even farther destination: Mars. A next step for man? Yes, and a giant leap for womankind.

The mission itself is at least 15 years away-it will take that long to build and test every last piece of equipment. But it's already the most hotly anticipated space-exploration effort ever. Governments around the world-in China, Europe, and Russia-have plans in the works to at least land robots on Mars, while in the U.S., private companies like SpaceX are partnering with NASA on a human mission and plotting their own commercial trips. And unlike the 1960s race to the moon, this time women are playing pivotal roles-building rockets, designing space suits, and controlling the remote rovers that are already sending momentous insights back from Mars.

A human landing will not, to put it mildly, be easy. The shortest route to our planetary neighbor is 35 million miles. Just getting there will take six to nine months; a round-trip, two to three years. "This will be the longest, farthest, and most ambitious space-exploration mission in history," says Dava Newman, Ph.D., NASA's deputy administrator. Once they've landed, the astronauts will have to navigate giant dust storms, temperatures that can plummet to minus 284 degrees Fahrenheit in winter, and an atmosphere filled with cancer-causing galactic radiation. If their equipment fails? NASA won't hear an SOS for 10 minutes. And there's no turning back. "It's not like the moon; that's a three-day trip," says Jason Crusan, director of advanced exploration systems at the agency. "When you go to Mars, you're going. You can't abort."

And yet the pull is irresistible: The rovers have revealed a land of swooping red dunes and craters. Evidence of water-not just ice, but actual flowing water -has surfaced, and water is often considered a sign of possible life. "Mars can teach us so much about the past, present, and future of our own planet," says Meir. "That's a phenomenal thing."

Also phenomenal? For the first time NASA's latest class of astronauts is 50 percent female. A fearless group, Meir and her colleagues Anne McClain, 36, Christina Hammock Koch, 37, and Nicole Aunapu Mann, 38, have already flown combat missions in Iraq, braved the South Pole, and dived under thick layers of ice in Antarctica. Last fall they gave Glamour exclusive access to watch them train at NASA's facilities in Houston-and talked about their epic adventure.
"I can't recall not wanting to be an astronaut."
NASA inducts a new class of prospective astronauts every four or five years, and competition is fierce. From application to acceptance, the process takes a year and a half and includes intensive psychological and medical testing. When these women were chosen for the class of 2013, NASA announced that they could be selected for an inaugural trip to Mars.

Anne McClain: There were more than 6,100 other applicants for our class of eight, and I'd made my peace with not getting in. I still remember getting the call that I'd been selected. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't talk. I started crying. I grew up in Spokane, Washington, and I can't recall ever not wanting to be an astronaut. I learned a lot [serving 15 months] in Iraq, flying attack helicopters at the front of the front lines. I joined the Army out of a deep sense of duty, but wanting to be an astronaut feels more like my destiny. With so much conflict in the world, space exploration can be a beacon of hope. No one cares about race or religion or nationality in space travel. We're all just part of Team Human.

Jessica Meir, Ph.D.: I had a fantastic view of the stars from the teeny town in Maine where I grew up. Maybe that's why I wanted to be an astronaut from such a young age. I've always been drawn to remote places-and extreme challenges. While doing research on emperor penguins for my Ph.D. in marine biology, I lived and worked in Antarctica, where I also went scuba diving under several feet of ice.

Christina Hammock Koch: My bedroom wall in Jacksonville, North Carolina, was covered in posters of the space shuttle alongside ones of New Kids on the Block. I had always set my sights on working with NASA, but I didn't want to get there by checking the usual boxes, like learning to fly and scuba dive. I wanted to get there because I was passionate about science and the next frontier. When the opportunity to spend a year at the South Pole came up, I took it. There I was in charge of more than 10,000 gallons of liquid helium to keep the telescopes supercool. Our motto was "When the South Pole isn't cold enough, call us."

Nicole Aunapu Mann: I'm probably one of the few astronauts who didn't know that's what I wanted to do as a kid. "Astronaut" seemed like a far-fetched dream. I'm from Penngrove, California, and it wasn't until my first tour in Iraq flying fighter jets with the Marine Corps that I realized one day I might actually be a good candidate. Going into space will be the absolute coolest thing in the world.
"You never forget the first time you're weightless."
During their two years of training, astronaut candidates learn space skills: flying T-38 supersonic jets that can go 20 miles per minute to practice operating a spacecraft; mastering tasks under 40 feet of water in a massive pool called the Neutral Buoyancy Lab to get used to weightlessness; and surviving what they call the vomit comet.

Koch: The most exciting part for me has been the T-38. As an engineer I'm used to going into my office to think through a problem. But in a supersonic jet, you don't have that luxury!

Meir: For me one of the most rewarding things has been spacewalk training. When you put on the suit, you weigh around 400 pounds. Two people help you into it, and a crane lowers you into the pool. The whole six-hour session is incredibly physically challenging. Your arms stand out at awkward angles because you're inflated; your gloves are bulky and pressurized. Each motion, even just making a fist, requires so much effort. You learn pretty quickly that trying to rush really gets you nowhere. (As they always say, in the suit "slow is fast.") At one point I saw a classmate in a space suit, and I thought, Oh my God, he's really an astronaut. And then it hit me: After 30 years of wanting this so badly, I'm an astronaut too.

Mann: The vomit comet totally blew my mind.

Meir: It's a large plane that's hollowed out. When the pilot is at the top of the parabola and free-falls back down toward the ground, you're weightless for about 25 seconds. You repeat that cycle 30 or 40 times. A lot of people get sick, hence the name. You never forget the first time you're weightless. I loved it.

McClain: We try to prepare [for everything]. Let's say you get a toothache-will someone on the crew be trained as a dentist? When you get there [after nine months], how sure on your feet will you be? But I have no doubt NASA will find solutions. Walking out to the launch pad, would there be that fear? Absolutely. But if you don't face your fears, the only thing you'll ever see is what's in your comfort zone.

Learning to spacewalk: "Getting into a space suit is like getting into a small aircraft-it's hard work," says McClain, here trying on a prototype.
"A Mars trip has all the ingredients for falling in love."
For the next 15 years, the astronauts will be honing their skills both on Earth and in outer space-even, likely, flying the Mars mission's small blastoff capsule to an asteroid near the moon as a test run. Once it begins, the actual mission will go something like this: The four crew members selected (potentially from this class and others) will spend two to three weeks in the launch capsule, then rendezvous with a larger spaceship-a.k.a. "home"-for the rest of the months-long journey. Once on Mars, they'll live up to a year in a structure that will have already been built by robots before returning to Earth. That's a long time for four people to be hermetically sealed together. Will they fight? Get romantic? In one series of NASA-funded studies known as HI-SEAS, six men and women spend up to a year in a 1,300-square-foot biodome on the side of a Hawaiian volcano to help answer those questions.

Suzanne Bell, Ph.D., a NASA-funded psychologist researching group dynamics on extended missions: A Mars trip has all the ingredients for falling in love, and researchers have seen the danger of that in simulated environments. In one incident a man made unwanted sexual advances toward a woman in the other group, and they decided to shut the hatch between the two groups. It's something NASA has to think about if they're going to send men and women to space together for three years.

Martha Lenio, Ph.D., 35, a former HI-SEAS volunteer who hopes to become an astronaut for Canada: We did have conflicts, like whose turn it was to vacuum, but nothing we couldn't work out. In general what I most worried about-like getting bored with the food since everything is freeze-dried or dehydrated-wasn't a problem at all. We'd compete on how creative we could get with taco and pizza nights. By the end of the eight months, some of my crew mates were really ready to get out, but I could have stayed longer!

Sheyna Gifford, M.D., 37, a doctor in St. Louis who is currently living in the HI-SEAS dome for a year: The researchers "back on Earth" (we consider ourselves "simulated astronauts" in "simulated space") are giving us tools to deal with the isolation. We have some virtual reality [VR] games that our loved ones at home can play too, so we can leave each other notes and photos or have treasure hunts. Another researcher is going to use VR to "send us to the beach" for a few minutes a week. That may prove very transportive!
"My son's life will change while I'm gone."
For a mission to Mars, crew members may be able to take only two shoe boxes' worth of personal belongings. But the hardest thing to leave behind? Family. Three of the astronauts are married, and two are mothers.

Koch: I'd definitely miss my husband. When I was at the South Pole, I packed boxes of things to take with me and opened one every few months, so I had something to look forward to. For Mars I'd ask my family and friends to make small surprises for me to open on designated dates. A handwritten card when you've been away 15 months can be the best thing imaginable.

McClain: [For a long-term mission today,] I'd want a way to video chat with my three-year-old son and my partner. Leaving them is the only downside to space travel; they are my everything. I'd also bring my son's stuffed monkey. He would dig seeing it floating in space.

Meir: I'd need music-the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I would definitely request mixes from a few specific friends, and I'd try to get access to The New York Times.

Mann: If I get tapped for the mission, I'll talk to my son about what I'll be doing. He's almost four now but will be a teen or in his twenties by then. His life will change while I'm gone. And that's a big sacrifice.
"From space you can't see borders."
If chosen for the expedition, these women and their fellow astronauts will make many big sacrifices. But they will also go on what could be humankind's greatest exploration to date-an experience those who came before them can only begin to imagine.

Richard Garriott de Cayeux, 54, a private astronaut who has traveled to the international space station: When you're floating in a slightly stale-smelling, noisy tin can, you have this experience astronauts call the overview effect: From space you can see how weather forms and moves, you can see Earth's tectonic plates' seams and deserts and oceans. And suddenly this place you've always thought of as vast looks small and fragile. It's impossible not to feel an urge to protect our environment and our planet.

Tracy Caldwell Dyson, Ph.D., 46, an astronaut who lived at the space station for almost six months: Every night I'd spend 90 minutes watching as we orbited Earth. You're passing it at 17,500 miles per hour, so you have only a moment to soak in the view before you're looking at something else. The most intense experience? My first spacewalk to repair a cooling pump that had failed. I understood how enormous and potentially dangerous it was to be stepping out into the vacuum of space [in nothing but a space suit]. I'm thrilled for the women who are coming after me. I can't wait to see where they go and what they do.

McClain: If we go to Mars, we'll be representing our entire species in a place we've never been before. To me it's the highest thing a human being can achieve.

Meir: What are people capable of? That idea of exploration has always been a part of the human experience. Trying to understand our place in the universe is what drives me more than anything.

McClain: Also, from space, you can't see borders. What you see is this lonely planet. Here we all are on it, so angry at one another. I wish more people could step back and see how small Earth is and how reliant we are on one another.

Mann: Just thinking about it gives me chills.
Ginny Graves is an award-winning writer here on Earth.

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Would You Go to Mars? Meet the Four Women Astronauts Who Can't Wait to Go

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Would you take the trip? The average temperature on Mars is 81 degrees below zero. But scientists say that in 15 years, we may be able to visit, even live there. Pictured here, four who'd love a ticket: astronauts Nicole Aunapu Mann, Anne McClain, Jessica Meir, and Christina Hammock Koch, photographed at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

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Women's March organizers prepare for hundreds of thousands of protesters | World news | The Guardian

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Women's March organizers prepare for hundreds of thousands of protesters | World news | The Guardian

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At about 10am on Saturday, as a quarter of a million or more people gather in protest at the base of Capitol Hill for the Women's March on Washington, the newly minted President Donald Trump will be on his knees at "a service of prayer and reflection" at the National Cathedral.

From that perch four miles away from the White House he won't, initially, be able to hear the civil rights legend Angela Davis, the feminist icon Gloria Steinem or the pro-choice campaigner Cecile Richards addressing the crowds at the march.

But the roar of the masses will surely reach the president's ears later, as the speeches and A-list performers wrap up the three-to-four hour rally and the demonstrators march to the Ellipse, the large green space opposite the White House.

He may even see them if he steps out on to the balcony in the residence to admire the view of the Washington Monument.

"I hope he will be praying about how to be the president of all the people. We are not going to let our rights be rolled back by anyone," Melanie Campbell, president of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation and a speaker at the march, said.

The march organizers are still officially only expecting a crowd of 200,000 to 250,000 people - mostly women, but also many men - based on the number who have registered.

But those close to the planning acknowledge that they are prepared, in coordination with the police, city officials and thousands of volunteers and private security staff, if the numbers swell considerably, to half a million or beyond.

The event is expected to turn into one of the largest marches in US history and although it is not billed specifically as an anti-Trump protest, most of the causes represented are those deemed under threat from the new administration.

"I'm speaking out and marching because healthcare is under attack and women's reproductive rights are under attack. So many awful things were said about women by the incoming president," said Campbell.

"I put a lot of my energy under Obama into supporting black women's leadership and women's leadership overall - we could have broken the glass ceiling with Hillary Clinton and it didn't happen, so that's what's motivated me to take part," she added.

Campbell took exception to Trump's gloomy inaugural speech and his portraiture of inner cities as being in a state of a crime-ridden "American carnage".

"That's not the urban America I know. Not that there are not problems, but it's not all rocked with violence and poverty. America is already great, it's a melting pot and must continue to be," she said.

On Saturday morning, Campbell and other speakers' voices will boom out from jumbotrons positioned among the thousands packing along Independence Avenue, calling for action on racial equality, climate change, criminal justice reform, a higher minimum wage, immigrants' rights and a host of other progressive issues.

Among those on stage or seated next to the stage in VIP seating will be some of the 60-plus members of Congress from the Democratic party who were set to boycott Trump's inauguration ceremony on Friday.

One of those is US representative Chellie Pingree. While Trump was being sworn in on Friday, she was visiting a Planned Parenthood center and a business owned by immigrants in her home state of Maine, before flying to Washington in the afternoon to get ready for the march.

On Saturday morning, she will gather with fellow politicians on stage at the rally and then march with some of the 5,000 women attending from the state of Maine.

"We need to do everything we can to let the incoming administration know we are not happy about their agenda. I've had unprecedented numbers of my constituents calling me worried about healthcare, the environment, public education, and they feel disrespected," she said.

Pingree said Trump was the most unpredictable incoming president most people had ever witnessed.

While Trump struggled to get A-list names to perform at his inauguration celebrations, the Women's March on Washington has attracted singing and acting stars such as Katy Perry; America Ferrera, who is also speaking at the rally; the Orange is the New Black cast member Uzo Aduba; the actor Scarlett Johansson; Cher and the young actor and singer Zendaya.

The march grew organically, from a feminist outcry on Facebook in the immediate aftershock of the election result. Organizers now hope it will kickstart a new era of grassroots activism across a long list of progressive issues chiefly related to equality and social and economic justice.

What began as an expression of frustration and a call to action on social media then morphed into a mass mobilization across multiple progressive causes. The event began to be physically realized on Friday as buses, trains and planes started pouring into Washington, packed full of women - and supportive male friends dotted among them.

Although so-called sister marches are taking place in as many as 300 cities across all 50 states, as well as internationally, thousands chose the capital city to make their presence felt next to the Capitol and the White House.

"This is what a plane full of women who are ready to resist the Trump agenda looks like," read one tweet, showing a flight bound for DC packed with women smiling and waving ecstatically, some wearing pink knit "pussy hats" that have become an informal uniform for the march.

"I am a woman of color and a Muslim from an immigrant family whose country is now going to be led by someone who has been openly anti-immigrant and sexist, has attacked Muslims and is surrounding himself with some horrible people for his cabinet," said Zahra Billoo, director of the San Francisco chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and a speaker at the march.

"I don't think that everyone who voted for Donald Trump is racist, but they were willing to overlook that part of his campaign for whatever reason, and that's not acceptable. We've seen the fallout, in hate crimes, and there is a need for inspiration and community across racial lines, religious lines, family lines, across many communities in America right now," she said.

Billoo said she found Trump's inaugural speech "no better than so many of his campaign speeches".

She saw in it coded language designed to further divide rather than unite voters and to erase civil liberties, she said.

"All of this 'America first' is one way of saying if you don't agree with us, we will come after you," she said. Following scuffles and arrests in protests coinciding with the inauguration on Friday, Billoo said she hoped the Women's March on Washington itself would be a wholly peaceful rally and demonstration.

The march is due to finish at dusk. But Linda Sarsour, one of the four march co-chairs, hopes that the end of the event will mark the beginning of a new movement.

"Making the march happen has been one of the largest grassroots efforts that anyone has ever seen. This is a mass mobilization and we intend to hold the administration to account," she said.
Topics

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Women's March organizers prepare for hundreds of thousands of protesters

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At about 10am on Saturday, as a quarter of a million or more people gather in protest at the base of Capitol Hill for the Women's March on Washington, the newly minted President Donald Trump will be on his knees at "a service of prayer and reflection" at the National Cathedral.

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What Role Have Books Played in Your Life? - The New York Times

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What Role Have Books Played in Your Life? - The New York Times

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How do you cope with the stress of everyday life? How do you relax when there is so little time to do so?

Have you ever found peace or solace by reading books, whether it was last week or when you were much younger?

In " Obama's Secret to Surviving the White House Years: Books," Michiko Kakutani writes:

Last Friday, seven days before his departure from the White House, Mr. Obama sat down in the Oval Office and talked about the indispensable role that books have played during his presidency and throughout his life - from his peripatetic and sometimes lonely boyhood, when "these worlds that were portable" provided companionship, to his youth when they helped him to figure out who he was, what he thought and what was important.

During his eight years in the White House - in a noisy era of information overload, extreme partisanship and knee-jerk reactions - books were a sustaining source of ideas and inspiration, and gave him a renewed appreciation for the complexities and ambiguities of the human condition.

"At a time when events move so quickly and so much information is transmitted," he said, reading gave him the ability to occasionally "slow down and get perspective" and "the ability to get in somebody else's shoes." These two things, he added, "have been invaluable to me. Whether they've made me a better president I can't say. But what I can say is that they have allowed me to sort of maintain my balance during the course of eight years, because this is a place that comes at you hard and fast and doesn't let up."

Students: Read the entire article and the transcript of the interview on which the article is based, then tell us:

- What did you learn about President Obama's reading habits? What, if anything, surprised you as you read the article?

- Have you read or heard of any of the books he mentions reading?

- To what degree, if at all, do you identify with how Mr. Obama characterizes his attitude toward reading Shakespeare when he was in high school?

- In reading about history, have you ever felt a "sense of solidarity," as Mr. Obama says he found in learning about people like Abraham Lincoln and Nelson Mandela? If so, explain.

- What is one book you think everyone, including presidents and other leaders, should read? Why?
Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

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What Role Have Books Played in Your Life?

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How do you cope with the stress of everyday life? How do you relax when there is so little time to do so? Have you ever found peace or solace by reading books, whether it was last week or when you were much younger?

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Have You Ever Been Told You Couldn’t Do Something Because of Your Gender? - The New York Times

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Have You Ever Been Told You Couldn’t Do Something Because of Your Gender? - The New York Times

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Has anyone ever told you an activity, award or job was off limits because you were a girl - or a boy? Have you ever been teased or chastised because you dressed or spoke the "wrong" way for the same reason?

Have you ever been told you couldn't do something simply because of your gender?

In ' Because I Was a Girl, I Was Told...,' Mary Jo Murphy and Sona Patel write:

There will be no female president come January. But in the days leading up to the election, there was a distinct possibility that this 227-year-old gender barrier would be hurdled, and so we asked women to tell us about their own vividly recalled barriers. Almost 1,200 of you responded. Here are some of your stories.

Here are some excerpts from those responses:

Alyssa Furukawa 18, Los Angeles
I was 16 and a junior in high school. I had been appointed co-captain of my school's robotics team. Two boys who applied weren't selected. One was a friend. He didn't talk to me for a week. My victory felt like a loss. A few months later, we were having a conversation and he said, "Well, you're only a captain because you're a girl." I felt utterly invalidated, and crushed that a peer saw me that way. He didn't think I had earned my title. I cried in the bathroom. I shared this story during an English class discussion on gender. Many classmates sat in disbelief, and one simply said: "I can't believe someone would say that to you. Especially you." I thanked that boy for his kind words. I thought about that discussion later, and was saddened because I knew how little the boys in my school knew about the way girls are treated every day, and how it deeply affects us. I really think if we had more conversations about gender, and began to talk about this unacceptable treatment, maybe things could be different. That was when I first became a feminist.
Jayda Imanlihen 32, Washington
When I was in college I went to a learning center to find out how I could purchase a student version of Final Cut Pro, the video editing software. The man who ran the center was usually very helpful to me. I said, I think I've grown past iMovie, how can I purchase the student version of Final Cut Pro? He looked at me and said, I don't know, that program has a really high learning curve; it's really hard. I ended up with a master's degree from Columbia University Graduate School of the Arts, where I studied film. Now I am an award-winning independent producer.

Lt. Cmdr. Onege Maroadi 43, Washington
As kids, my brothers and I were a boisterous trio. Our bedtime ritual was to don our bedsheets as capes, yelling " Supermaaan" as we "flew" from the tallest closets and slammed onto our beds below. Our favorite daytime event was an epic truck race down the steep sidewalk, which always ended in a delightful pile of steel, knees, elbows, joy and laughter.

Twenty years later, I thought my U.S. Navy mentor, a former Blue Angel, could not have been serious when he suggested that I request a pilot slot as my top career choice. A job obviously for people like ... him! From my fearless childhood had emerged an adult who held on to the limitations of cultural norms. I embraced gender barriers, forgetting that once upon a time, I was superman.

The Blue Angel made me clarify my reluctance to other pilots. With conviction, I explained that I was just a mathematics major, to which one pilot retorted that he was just an English major. They were like my brothers after all. Before long, I, too, became a pilot and mentor, encouraging others to rise above their obstacles, even when they own a broken wing - or cape.

Students: Read the entire article, then tell us:

- What memories do you have of being discouraged or even completely prevented from participating in something you wanted to pursue simply because of your gender? Have you ever felt constrained by social norms or conventions, and felt boxed in or limited because of these same "rules?"

- How did you handle it? Did you keep the incident to yourself or did you tell someone? Did you seek help from someone supportive? Who helped you and what did they do? What did you do to help yourself?

- Have you ever witnessed someone else being subjected to this type of discrimination? If so, did you try to help or lend support in any way?
Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

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Have You Ever Been Told You Couldn't Do Something Because of Your Gender?

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Has anyone ever told you an activity, award or job was off limits because you were a girl - or a boy? Have you ever been teased or chastised because you dressed or spoke the "wrong" way for the same reason? Have you ever been told you couldn't do something simply because of your gender?

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Game of Thrones - Epic Tyrion speech during trial - YouTube

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Game of Thrones - Epic Tyrion speech during trial - YouTube

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Game of Thrones - Epic Tyrion speech during trial

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The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism. Trump's shocking victory, his ascension to the Presidency, is a sickening event in the history of the United States and liberal democracy. On January 20, 2017, we will bid farewell to the first African-American President-a man of integrity, dignity, and generous spirit-and witness the inauguration of a con who did little to spurn endorsement by forces of xenophobia and white supremacy. It is impossible to react to this moment with anything less than revulsion and profound anxiety.

There are, inevitably, miseries to come: an increasingly reactionary Supreme Court; an emboldened right-wing Congress; a President whose disdain for women and minorities, civil liberties and scientific fact, to say nothing of simple decency, has been repeatedly demonstrated. Trump is vulgarity unbounded, a knowledge-free national leader who will not only set markets tumbling but will strike fear into the hearts of the vulnerable, the weak, and, above all, the many varieties of Other whom he has so deeply insulted. The African-American Other. The Hispanic Other. The female Other. The Jewish and Muslim Other. The most hopeful way to look at this grievous event-and it's a stretch-is that this election and the years to follow will be a test of the strength, or the fragility, of American institutions. It will be a test of our seriousness and resolve.

Early on Election Day, the polls held out cause for concern, but they provided sufficiently promising news for Democrats in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, and even Florida that there was every reason to think about celebrating the fulfillment of Seneca Falls, the election of the first woman to the White House. Potential victories in states like Georgia disappeared, little more than a week ago, with the F.B.I. director's heedless and damaging letter to Congress about reopening his investigation and the reappearance of damaging buzzwords like "e-mails," "Anthony Weiner," and "fifteen-year-old girl." But the odds were still with Hillary Clinton.

All along, Trump seemed like a twisted caricature of every rotten reflex of the radical right. That he has prevailed, that he has won this election, is a crushing blow to the spirit; it is an event that will likely cast the country into a period of economic, political, and social uncertainty that we cannot yet imagine. That the electorate has, in its plurality, decided to live in Trump's world of vanity, hate, arrogance, untruth, and recklessness, his disdain for democratic norms, is a fact that will lead, inevitably, to all manner of national decline and suffering.

In the coming days, commentators will attempt to normalize this event. They will try to soothe their readers and viewers with thoughts about the "innate wisdom" and "essential decency" of the American people. They will downplay the virulence of the nationalism displayed, the cruel decision to elevate a man who rides in a gold-plated airliner but who has staked his claim with the populist rhetoric of blood and soil. George Orwell, the most fearless of commentators, was right to point out that public opinion is no more innately wise than humans are innately kind. People can behave foolishly, recklessly, self-destructively in the aggregate just as they can individually. Sometimes all they require is a leader of cunning, a demagogue who reads the waves of resentment and rides them to a popular victory. "The point is that the relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion," Orwell wrote in his essay "Freedom of the Park." "The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them."

Trump ran his campaign sensing the feeling of dispossession and anxiety among millions of voters-white voters, in the main. And many of those voters-not all, but many-followed Trump because they saw that this slick performer, once a relative cipher when it came to politics, a marginal self-promoting buffoon in the jokescape of eighties and nineties New York, was more than willing to assume their resentments, their fury, their sense of a new world that conspired against their interests. That he was a billionaire of low repute did not dissuade them any more than pro-Brexit voters in Britain were dissuaded by the cynicism of Boris Johnson and so many others. The Democratic electorate might have taken comfort in the fact that the nation had recovered substantially, if unevenly, from the Great Recession in many ways-unemployment is down to 4.9 per cent-but it led them, it led us, to grossly underestimate reality. The Democratic electorate also believed that, with the election of an African-American President and the rise of marriage equality and other such markers, the culture wars were coming to a close. Trump began his campaign declaring Mexican immigrants to be "rapists"; he closed it with an anti-Semitic ad evoking "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion"; his own behavior made a mockery of the dignity of women and women's bodies. And, when criticized for any of it, he batted it all away as "political correctness." Surely such a cruel and retrograde figure could succeed among some voters, but how could he win? Surely, Breitbart News, a site of vile conspiracies, could not become for millions a source of news and mainstream opinion. And yet Trump, who may have set out on his campaign merely as a branding exercise, sooner or later recognized that he could embody and manipulate these dark forces. The fact that "traditional" Republicans, from George H. W. Bush to Mitt Romney, announced their distaste for Trump only seemed to deepen his emotional support.

The commentators, in their attempt to normalize this tragedy, will also find ways to discount the bumbling and destructive behavior of the F.B.I., the malign interference of Russian intelligence, the free pass-the hours of uninterrupted, unmediated coverage of his rallies-provided to Trump by cable television, particularly in the early months of his campaign. We will be asked to count on the stability of American institutions, the tendency of even the most radical politicians to rein themselves in when admitted to office. Liberals will be admonished as smug, disconnected from suffering, as if so many Democratic voters were unacquainted with poverty, struggle, and misfortune. There is no reason to believe this palaver. There is no reason to believe that Trump and his band of associates-Chris Christie, Rudolph Giuliani, Mike Pence, and, yes, Paul Ryan-are in any mood to govern as Republicans within the traditional boundaries of decency. Trump was not elected on a platform of decency, fairness, moderation, compromise, and the rule of law; he was elected, in the main, on a platform of resentment. Fascism is not our future-it cannot be; we cannot allow it to be so-but this is surely the way fascism can begin.

Hillary Clinton was a flawed candidate but a resilient, intelligent, and competent leader, who never overcame her image among millions of voters as untrustworthy and entitled. Some of this was the result of her ingrown instinct for suspicion, developed over the years after one bogus "scandal" after another. And yet, somehow, no matter how long and committed her earnest public service, she was less trusted than Trump, a flim-flam man who cheated his customers, investors, and contractors; a hollow man whose countless statements and behavior reflect a human being of dismal qualities-greedy, mendacious, and bigoted. His level of egotism is rarely exhibited outside of a clinical environment.

For eight years, the country has lived with Barack Obama as its President. Too often, we tried to diminish the racism and resentment that bubbled under the cyber-surface. But the information loop had been shattered. On Facebook, articles in the traditional, fact-based press look the same as articles from the conspiratorial alt-right media. Spokesmen for the unspeakable now have access to huge audiences. This was the cauldron, with so much misogynistic language, that helped to demean and destroy Clinton. The alt-right press was the purveyor of constant lies, propaganda, and conspiracy theories that Trump used as the oxygen of his campaign. Steve Bannon, a pivotal figure at Breitbart, was his propagandist and campaign manager.

It is all a dismal picture. Late last night, as the results were coming in from the last states, a friend called me full of sadness, full of anxiety about conflict, about war. Why not leave the country? But despair is no answer. To combat authoritarianism, to call out lies, to struggle honorably and fiercely in the name of American ideals-that is what is left to do. That is all there is to do.
More on Donald Trump's victory: Amy Davidson on Trump's stunning win, Evan Osnos on Trump's supporters, and Benjamin Wallace-Wells on who is to blame. John Cassidy on how Trump became President-elect. Evan Osnos on Trump's supporters.

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The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism. Trump's shocking victory, his ascension to the Presidency, is a sickening event in the history of the United States and liberal democracy.

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Your personal brand - Future Tense - ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

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Your personal brand - Future Tense - ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

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Antony Funnell: Hello, and welcome to Future Tense, I'm Antony Funnell. Today's theme is about the power of the personal brand and its complications.

[Audio: Pogba and Stormzy video]

This is a recent viral video featuring Paul Pogba. Don't worry if you don't recognise the name, I had to have this explained to me as well. He's a giant in football. He plays for Manchester United. And they recently paid £100 million to have Pogda join their team, so you know he must be doing something right. Anyway, in this short online video clip he appears with the rapper Stormzy. And the clip itself was launched on Twitter by Pogba's brand sponsor Adidas, which is a brand itself.

Now, this clip was Pogba's way of telling the world that he'd agreed to play for Man United. He didn't hold a media conference or make a speech, because, well Pogba as a personal brand is more important than all that.

But what's really amazing about this clip is that in no way does it relate to football. It's all about personal branding, it's brands by association. It's all three brands-Stormzy, Pogba and Adidas-coming together to create one super brand. And that super brand only works because of this football deal.

But here's the thing, it's actually become bigger than the football deal itself. And that's the power of personal branding. It's no longer enough to be just a footballer or a celebrity, you have to create your brand.

Tania Yuki: The real challenge of what it means to be a celebrity today I think is not about how much you reveal but how much you actually conceal about your day-to-day life, whereas I think the onus was completely different before where it was all about offering glimpses into your life, now it's about giving yourself moments of privacy, maybe when people aren't watching.

But it definitely does put a lot of pressure on celebrities to always be on. I think it really blurs the line between a public and private persona. It's definitely a very, very big shift in the expectations of how much distance you have between you and someone who you follow.

Antony Funnell: And we'll hear more from social media and branding expert Tania Yuki a little later. But first here's Stuart Cunningham from the Digital Media Research Centre at the University of Queensland. Building a personal brand, he says, isn't necessarily just narcissism, it can be the logical reaction to a changing world.

Stuart Cunningham: Well, I think it goes back to all that emphasis that young people have these days on, well, don't expect to get the job for life, you're going to have seven or 10 or however many years these days careers in your lifetime. So you've really got to put your own so-called brand or your own entrepreneurial energies into how you get work. And so what we see today is that being enacted in the entertainment space, and the opportunities with digital now are that there are lots of opportunities for young people to exercise talent in ways that they get immediate feedback from in terms of, well, are people listening, are people viewing? And from that has grown a rather large proto-industry that we call social media entertainment.

Antony Funnell: And it's that industry, or ecology, which Professor Cunningham has recently been researching.

Now, developing your own personal brand is one thing. Let's face it, if all you have is a Facebook account you're still in some way curating your image. But making money from a personal brand you've developed is quite another.

There are now lots of people who make a decent living from being a personality online, doing all sorts of things, and sometimes doing not much at all, just being cute or interesting.

And when they get it right, says Stuart Cunningham, the financial rewards are significant.

Stuart Cunningham: The three genres, or in this space it's called verticals, that are really unique to many multi platforms are game play, vlogging, and style or how-to, the how-to genre. So let me give you a couple of examples. The king of game play is PewDiePie, he's the king of kings really. He's got 43 million subscribers and about 11.5 billion views. He has been at it for most of the history of YouTube, which is now 10 years, so seven or eight years, and he is reputed to be worth somewhere between $15 million and $20 million a year in advertising, licensing, merchandising and other kinds of spin-offs.

So Michelle Phan who is the queen of beauty and style, so she has a whole line in beauty, in makeup, but also in being authentic as well. So it's not just about slapping on lipstick, it's about how your inner self matches your outer self, if you like.

[Audio: Michelle Phan video]

Look, she's got 8 million subscribers, she's had more than a billion views and she is probably worth about $500 million, she's a 29-year-old Asian-American. And in the vlogging space, I mean, think of a person like Tyler Oakley, he is a wonderfully winsome young gay man who is, as he calls, just a personality. Well, that personality is worth 8 million subscribers on YouTube alone and he has had enormously important influence on...for example, the White House has called on him and a number of the other vloggers to help them sell to the millennial generation the whole Obamacare question. So there are some concrete examples of the kind of things we are talking about, at least at the top of the range.

Antony Funnell: And when we talk about branding in this space, we're talking about people building a personal brand, but they are building that personal brand in order to attract more traditional brands for revenue, for commercial gain.

Stuart Cunningham: All of these people started off as complete amateurs, that's the most important difference between this and celebrity culture as we know it. These were people who don't come out of a film school, they're not actors, they haven't been trained as actors or directors, their personalities, their hard work has generated followings, and those followings has turned them into...the current parlance is 'influencers'. And so influencer marketing is now...the marketing world is now chasing these people because they offer a much more authentic route to brands meeting customers.

Antony Funnell: So the personal brand isn't just about identity, it can also be about income or potential income. Or both, of course. And the desire to build a personal brand is now seeping into everything.

Tim Fuller is a sports lawyer and former professional rugby league player.

Tim Fuller: In the past when athletes essentially had a certain, if you like, uniqueness or character, whatever it may be, in the end sponsors often used to jump on board and basically endorse that athlete for their products. But it has shifted in the sense that athletes are understanding that what they represent, whether they have a certain way of celebrating a victory or a try in a game of football, whatever it may be, those types of unique characteristics, if you like, athletes are understanding that there is a value attached to that. And what they are trying to do now is essentially capitalise on that in a commercial way.

Antony Funnell: This is an international thing, isn't it. When we see someone like Usain Bolt, who is a terrific athlete, when we see him do a certain type of gesture, characteristic gesture on the field, he is doing that, yes, because that's what he likes to do and he identifies with that, but there's also branding going on there, isn't there.

Tim Fuller: Absolutely, so those types of celebrations after a victory or if they score a point, whatever it may be, if you think about Australian athletes like Leyton Hewitt who has got the famous 'c'mon' after he used to win a point, Usain Bolt with his unique striking of a pose, a player like Jarryd Hayne who extends his arms and runs around like an aeroplane, he's the Hayne Plane. All of these things aren't really accidents. And as players develop those and develop a certain reputation in those celebrations, what they then go on to do is protect those usually through something like trademark registration.

So in the case of Jarryd Hayne, when he was ultimately contracted to the San Francisco 49ers, the very next day he registered three separate trademarks in the United States; for his number, which was the number 38, for his name Jarryd Hayne, and for his unique moniker, the Hayne Plane. So that was relatively simple for him to do and that's in accordance with Australian trademark law.

It becomes a bit more difficult in other sorts of areas such as image and personality, that in Australia you can't really tangibly recognise, whereas in America they do enjoy certain proprietary right in that image.

Antony Funnell: So we are seeing this trend or a growing trend towards sportspeople creating their own personal brand and trying to manage their own personal brand. Is that filtering down to the junior players and those aspiring even at a school level?

Tim Fuller: It's interesting isn't it because we look at certain athletes in this country and around the world, we know them almost by their nickname. For example, GI, Greg Inglis, Johnathan Thurston, JT. In the States, Tiger who is synonymous with Tiger Woods, Greg Norman was the Great White Shark. All of these types of nicknames or monikers almost become symbolic with the actual athlete. And I think there is that filtering down where junior athletes are much more prone to label themselves, if you like, with a certain name or a certain image. So I think they are very, very aware of the image, and with social media and so forth undoubtedly there's more opportunity to portray what they represent to the broader public. So I think that's absolutely right.

Antony Funnell: So the idea is you get in ahead of the game. If you aspire to being a successful athlete you've got to start building your brand while you are starting to build your body almost.

Tim Fuller: Absolutely. There has been a lot of examples of athletes who don't necessarily sit in the top range as far as the elite type athletes or the hallmark type athletes who have done very, very well through essentially marketing themselves and promoting themselves and often through forums such as the different various social medias. So players are now able to use things like social media platforms where they become an influencer, if you like, and attract an enormous amount of following. And from that obviously sponsorship dollars can flow.

Antony Funnell: You could imagine that there are positives for athletes in terms of the amount of money they'll be able to make in the future from that kind of personal branding. Are their negatives though as far as sport itself is concerned?

Tim Fuller: I think so, because the fundamentals of sport are never going to change, are they, you have to prepare well, play within the rules, you have to treat your body correctly from a rehabilitation process after the match, there are all those types of things. Focus on just marketing and branding itself as a product...I think there is a danger that image and so on could take over some of those other aspects. So absolutely, yes.

Antony Funnell: Sports lawyer and former professional footballer Tim Fuller. This is Future Tense, I'm Antony Funnell.

Building a personal brand can be problematic, particularly when there are conflicts over intellectual property. And they can arise over the most unexpected of things, like who owns your tattoo? Body art is an ever increasing part of personal branding.

But according to Drake University law professor Shontavia Johnson, in a world of ever increasing litigation, just because you paid for the ink and your skin is the canvas, doesn't mean your tattoos belong to you.

Shontavia Johnson: If I have a personal brand and my brand includes the display of tattoos, I feel not only a personal connection but really some amount of ownership in that thing. Along the same lines, a tattoo artist is a creator, just like a musician or an actor or a filmmaker, and that tattoo artist along those same lines is creating art, creating a body of work. And that tattoo artist by and large feels some amount of connection to the work that he or she is creating. And we've seen increasingly high numbers of tattoo artists wanting to have some type of ownership in the tattoo that they create.

Generally speaking when we talk about ownership of a piece of art in any capacity it has to be something original, something that falls within a framework that we understand, so something that is a work of authorship or a work of creativity, and it also has to be something that we can feel, see, hear, perceive in some way, and that's true in most countries around the world. Copyright law requires those three things generally in some capacity. So if those three things are met then really you probably have a copyright in that specific thing from the standpoint of ownership of a tattoo or any other piece of art.

So along those same lines if I am an individual who has a tattoo on my body, then of course I own in some regards, I have some type of personal interest, property interest, if you will, in my body and the things that are on it. But if I simultaneously place something else on my body that is an original work of authorship, that is fixed so that other people can see it, then you probably do have these competing ownership interests. It's not an all-or-nothing in most cases, but we do have multiple types of property ownership depending on whatever that thing is.

Antony Funnell: And if you're thinking the potential conflict Shontavia described there is merely an academic thought exercise, not a legal reality, well, think again.

Shontavia Johnson: One of the first lawsuits in this regard involved a basketball player named Rasheed Wallace who was in a commercial, a Nike commercial, and in that Nike commercial, as the commercial goes along they show the tattoo and the tattoo is being digitally recreated on Rasheed Wallace's arm. And Rasheed Wallace is explaining why this tattoo is important to him and what it means. Shortly thereafter the tattoo artist filed a lawsuit suing this basketball player and the Nike organisation. It was probably very surprising for Rasheed Wallace to learn that someone else said they owned his tattoo.

Antony Funnell: So there have been tattoo related lawsuits, as you say. Have they all related to athletes or some type of celebrity to date?

Shontavia Johnson: Most of them involve a celebrity or athlete, though in the United States there have been some instances where a person wearing a tattoo that has a trademark or a copyright associated with it, that person might receive a letter from the trademark owner or the copyright owner saying, hey, what you are doing is illegal, by photographing yourself in some type of way where you are making money and we want you to stop. Most typically they are celebrities and athletes, but not always. And with social media almost anybody can have a significant platform through social media now.

A makeup artist in a small town in California or a makeup artist in a small community in Ireland can have 2 million followers on YouTube or on Instagram, and so we now have these internet sensations, these internet celebrities who have a platform and sometimes much greater even than traditional celebrities, athletes, those types of individuals.

Antony Funnell: So there's two issues here really, isn't there, there is if you are wearing a tattoo that has somebody else's trademark but say a company's trademark in it, say a sporting company, that could be a problem for an individual, but as you said earlier, there's also that other issue of the artist who designed an original piece of work. So there's really two points of interest with regard to copyright and tattoos, isn't there.

Shontavia Johnson: That is exactly right, there can be copyright issues, there can also be trademark related issues, things in commerce. So there are multiple ways in which body art really has collided with the law. So the best thing in almost any capacity, including this question of body art and copyrights and trademarks, is to get a release of very early, get a contract signed between you as the tattooed individual and the tattoo artist. That is one of the best things an individual can do if they find themselves running afoul of some copyright related claim, some type of contract.

Antony Funnell: And could you imagine a situation where a court...or have there been situations where a court has ordered the removal of a tattoo or the alteration of a tattoo because of a copyright violation?

Shontavia Johnson: No, I've not seen any cases like that. In fact oftentimes when there is a lawsuit they settle very quickly because the tattoo artist in a lot of times doesn't have much to lose, so they are very, very interested in getting justice. And on the other side usually there is a large company, a large corporation who doesn't want any part of that type of lawsuit. They want to settle very quickly so they can continue to do whatever it is they like to do using that piece of body art. So no court has ever gone that far. But we do have a lot of settlement talks, a lot of negotiations where people are trying to figure out how to agree in this particular capacity.

Antony Funnell: Professor Shontavia Johnson, from Drake University in the United States.

[Audio: Kanye West interview]

And the short answer to that question is, once again, busy! Kanye West is a major personal brand. Who cares about whether he can sing. And he's married, of course, to the biggest personal brand of them all, Kim Kardashian. They're celebrities and they're hugely successful, but being a celebrity isn't what it used to be.

Tania Yuki is an Australian-born businesswoman who now lives in New York. She's the founder and CEO of a company called Shareablee, and Shareablee provides data analytics, its technology monitors and analyses how social media is being used by celebrities, corporate brands and their audiences.

Tania Yuki: The pace of change and what social media has done, even to the concept of celebrities, not only has it created a way for celebrities to have their own voice...if you think back to the origins of celebrities, movie stars and musicians where so much of the challenge, if you will, of the average consumer was how to get behind the scenes and learn a little bit more about these people that consumers love so much, now it's really building celebrities, so you have people who became famous socially first and then went on to do television or film. But on the other end of the spectrum with more traditional celebrities, so much more is expressed by them directly to the world and it's not scripted and it's not curated by a PR agency or by a manager, it really does remove that fourth wall between the people who play these characters and the consumers who follow them.

If a celebrity is not active on social media, the average consumer starts to wonder what they are hiding or the average consumer perhaps isn't as interested because it just doesn't feel as authentic and they don't feel as real. And I do think it puts an incredible pressure on celebrities who are themselves practitioners and they are making movies or they are writing or they are making music to also be documenting their lives and their process as they go about that act of creation. So it has really brought behind the scenes or the concept of a behind-the-scenes to a whole new level that is always on.

Antony Funnell: And to do that you're talking about a monumental enterprise, aren't you. If you are a Kardashian, if you are Taylor Swift, if you are someone like that, to actually just keep up with that level of engagement on social media means you need a team of people behind you, doesn't it.

Tania Yuki: It does I think for the most part. I think there are particularly some younger celebrities and influencers who are just so native to the format. If you look at what someone like Justin Bieber or Selena Gomez does, it's almost like just as they go about the state of their day they are capturing images, they are making videos and they are really bringing their fans along with them. So that doesn't feel as orchestrated.

But you're absolutely right, someone has got to be there making sure that everything gets responded to and making sure that things come out the right way, and that's not even beginning to talk about what happens when there is a crisis or some sort of misstep, that has a whole separate team. So it definitely ups the production demands of what used to be maybe prepping your celebrity for one interview with a magazine every so often or with a news show, now it's these constant pieces of content coming out multiple times a day.

Antony Funnell: And what is expected from that celebrity seems to have changed too. Celebrity, building that personal brand was about an emphasis on glamour, if you like, an emphasis on living a rich lifestyle or an interesting lifestyle. But it seems like it's very much about sharing now private moments, that's what people want, they want to be in there with the Kardashians, they want to be in there with Taylor Swift at their party, doing what they are doing, is that correct?

Tania Yuki: That's absolutely correct. The glamour is there naturally, just by virtue of the lifestyle, but it's so much more about grit, it's so much more about being real. There was a whole slew of great Instagram images that many models and celebrities put out of themselves without makeup, just things which you would never think of before. Where it was all about looking great for a camera, now it's all about I think unpacking that and revealing who you are as a person, which when you think about just how curated and how built many of these celebrities are is quite a frightening prospect.

Antony Funnell: And it's a difficult thing to do, isn't it because, as you say, the emphasis is on being real. 'Authenticity' is a word that we hear all the time when we hear about social media. These celebrities trying to put across an image of intimacy, but there has to be a barrier, doesn't there. As you said, it has to be curated. That's a difficult path to walk, isn't it, between the two.

Tania Yuki: It's the real challenge of what it means to be a celebrity today I think is not about how much you reveal but how much you actually conceal about your day-to-day life, whereas I think the onus was completely different before where it was all about offering glimpses into your life, now it's about giving yourself moments of privacy, maybe when people aren't watching.

But it definitely does put a lot of pressure on celebrities to always be on. I think it really blurs the line between a public and private persona, and I think that it really empowers and perhaps makes much more demanding a general public who no longer are just happy to listen to a song that Taylor Swift performs, but they, to your point, want a guided tour inside her apartment, they want to be at her parties and they want her to respond to everything that they post. It's definitely a very, very big shift in the expectations of how much distance you have between you and someone who you follow.

Antony Funnell: And the impact on the celebrities themselves? I've read that with actors, say, the number of social media followers that they have can actually affect decisions about whether they get certain parts or not. Is that sort of thing common?

Tania Yuki: It's becoming increasingly common. I think there's still perhaps a little bit of a disconnect at the very upper end of Hollywood. I think you still have a sense of who is a box office draw and who is a 'star', but definitely on the lookout for emerging talent or in any situation where it might be difficult to make a casting decision, many people casting will say we will look at their inbuilt audience, we will look at how popular they are. And I know the other big challenge that is being faced by many of the studios right now is they are getting a lot of pressure to cast these social media stars who may or may not be actors, they might be aspiring actors and they may or may not be any good by traditional measures yet they've got these millions of people who are supporting them and who want to show up and see them in movies. So making those decisions of when to cast these people into roles, just because you have an audience doesn't mean that you are necessarily going to be great for the film, but at some point if millions of people want to see you in there it becomes a public vote as opposed to something that just comes down to the producers or the directors.

Antony Funnell: And this is a fluid environment we're talking about, this is changing by the day almost. Four, five years ago this kind of environment didn't exist, so people are still learning how to play the game, in a sense, aren't they.

Tania Yuki: Sure. Four, five years ago Snapchat didn't exist, Instagram, so many of these platforms themselves are such new players, it becomes impossible to know what is coming next and what's going to be really influential for the future. But definitely brands themselves are learning a lot about how to be active on social media from celebrities, but it feels like every time a celebrity does something new on Snapchat or does something else that really works on Instagram, suddenly all the fans expect that of everyone and it just becomes this ongoing, very hungry feeding frenzy of more information and more private glimpses into people's lives.

Antony Funnell: I'm reminded of that old Chinese adage, being cursed to live in interesting times.

Our final guest there was Tania Yuki from Shareablee, the vocals from Mr West.

That's Future Tense for another week. My co-producer for this program was Edwina Stott, the sound engineer Steve Fieldhouse.

I'm Antony Funnell, until next time, cheers!

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Antony Funnell: Hello, and welcome to Future Tense, I'm Antony Funnell. Today's theme is about the power of the personal brand and its complications. [Audio: Pogba and Stormzy video] This is a recent viral video featuring Paul Pogba. Don't worry if you don't recognise the name, I had to have this explained to me as well.

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Christopher Marlowe Credited As Shakespeare's Co-Author On Henry VI Plays : NPR

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Christopher Marlowe Credited As Shakespeare's Co-Author On Henry VI Plays : NPR

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True authorship of Shakespeare has been debated for centuries. Now, the New Oxford Shakespeare edition will list Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe as co-author on the three Henry VI plays, part one, two and three. NPR's Robert Siegel talks with Florida State University professor Gary Taylor, one of the general editors of the new volume.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

It's a big day for Christopher Marlowe, who unfortunately cannot enjoy it, having been dead since 1593. The Elizabethan playwright will get credit from Oxford University Press as co-author of three histories, "Henry VI, Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3." Until now, those plays have been credited solely to William Shakespeare. Joining us to explain this decision is Gary Taylor, who's one of the general editors of "The New Oxford Shakespeare" and a professor of English at Florida State University.

Welcome to the program.

GARY TAYLOR: I'm delighted to be here.

SIEGEL: And first I want to clarify what you and your colleagues are not saying. You're not saying that Christopher Marlowe, as some of his admirers might contend, was the real author of Shakespeare's plays and poems. Shakespeare was a fraud. Do I have that right?

TAYLOR: You're absolutely right. Shakespeare was not a fraud. Marlowe did not write all of Shakespeare's works. He did something, instead, that was perfectly normal in the Elizabethan theatre, which is he collaborated with another playwright, in this case Shakespeare.

SIEGEL: What led "The New Oxford Shakespeare" team to declare "Henry VI, Parts 1, 2 and 3" worthy of a shared byline?

TAYLOR: Well, people have suspected that Marlowe had something to do with these three plays since the 1790s. But we haven't had a way that we could test it. And fortunately, Shakespeare has now entered the epoch of big data.

It is now possible for us to compare the text of a play by Shakespeare, or really any play in the period, against all the surviving plays and to see whether these parts of plays that have long been suspected as being maybe not by Shakespeare are by Shakespeare after all or by somebody else.

SIEGEL: So you find textual similarities between Marlowe's acknowledged plays and these histories - not enough to say Marlowe wrote them but enough to say he was a co-author of them?

TAYLOR: Yes, because what matters here is the pattern of similarities. You have a scene which has a completely different linguistic profile than the rest of the play. They had a scenario that set out the plot of the play. And then they could divide it up between different writers.

SIEGEL: Can you give us an example of something that if it turns up in a disputed part of a play, points you in the direction of a particular playwright?

TAYLOR: For one example, the word glory is not all that unusual in plays of the period. And the verb droopeth, you know, it occurs in a number of different writers. But if you put those two words together right next to each other, glory droopeth, that occurs in one of these disputed passages in "Henry VI, Part 1." The only other place it occurs in all the plays of the period is in a play by Marlowe.

Now, just those two words by themselves would not be enough. But when you find a number of unusual combinations of this kind all clustered together in one place, then the simplest explanation for that is that there's two different writers here.

SIEGEL: One tweet about this announcement said, Shakespeare gets the last laugh. Marlowe now gets to share the blame for the "Henry VI" plays. These aren't the finest works attributed to William Shakespeare.

TAYLOR: Well, the "Henry VI" plays are written early in his career. Actually, I think that this evidence makes these plays more interesting. They were helping to create the whole genre of a history play. It was a way of talking about vernacular politics and about civil war. The whole idea for this kind of play with a serious analysis of politics comes out of the collaboration between these two very different but very gifted writers.

SIEGEL: Professor Taylor, thank you very much for talking with us today.

TAYLOR: Thank you for listening.

SIEGEL: It's Gary Taylor, one of the general editors of "The New Oxford Shakespeare" and a professor of English at Florida State University.

Copyright © 2016 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

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Christopher Marlowe Credited As Shakespeare's Co-Author On Henry VI Plays

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True authorship of Shakespeare has been debated for centuries. Now, the New Oxford Shakespeare edition will list Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe as co-author on the three Henry VI plays, part one, two and three. NPR's Robert Siegel talks with Florida State University professor Gary Taylor, one of the general editors of the new volume.

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Dean Kamen on Engineering a Better Body and the End of Disease | WIRED

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Dean Kamen on Engineering a Better Body and the End of Disease | WIRED

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There are two kinds of people in Washington, DC, says entrepreneur Dean Kamen. There are the policy experts, whom he calls cynics. And there are the scientists, whom he deems optimists.

Kamen, speaking at the White House Frontiers Conference at the University of Pittsburgh, places himself in the latter camp. Unlike policy wonks and politicians who see diseases like Alzheimer's or ALS as unstoppable scourges, Kamen points out that previously terrifying diseases were all toppled by medical innovation. The plague, polio, smallpox - all were civilization-threatening epidemics until experimental scientists discovered new ways to combat them.

If that sounds like the kind of disruption that the tech industry has unleashed across the rest of the world, that's no accident. Kamen, the founder of DEKA, a medical R&D company, says that the same trends that have empowered our computers and phones and communication networks will soon power a revolution in health care. He says that medical innovation follows a predictable cycle. First we feel powerless before a disease. Then we seek ways of treating it. Then we attempt to cure it.

Take a look at how we think about renal failure. It took decades to develop the process of dialysis, in which patients travel to a clinic and hook themselves up to machines. It treated the medical condition but was, Kamen asserts, "a horrible way to live." Insulin pumps took an unwieldy and expensive process and made it cheaper and easier. Now, Kamen says, it's time to move past the treatment phase and develop a cure. "How about if you can grow a new kidney?" Kamen asks. "There's 300,000 people waiting for them."

The Time Is Now
The Frontiers conference is a one-day symposium intended to encourage Americans to use technology to face the biggest challenges of the next five decades-medicine, climate change, space travel, artificial intelligence. Kamen, who says he employs 500 engineers, paints the current moment in historical terms. "If you think of the phases of the golden age of humanity," he says, "once we started to understand the basic laws of physics and made engineering rules to apply them, we saw exponential growth of energy and power use-what we call labor." Last century we saw a similar breakthrough in our understanding of electricity. Now, he says, we are ready to tackle another frontier. "Medicine is the last," he says, "because it is the most sophisticated and complex."

As we collect more data and learn more about our bodies, Kamen says, our health will benefit from the same kind of rapid innovation that has defined the tech industry. "We're going to get to the fundamental laws of life," Kamen says. "You're going to be leveraging engineering in a way that's unimaginable today."

As biology and technology intersect, Kamen says, "I think you'll start to see life sciences start to embrace engineering and start to grow at the same exponential pace we've seen in communications." When you buy a new computer, he points out, you don't expect it to perform as well as last year's model; you expect it to be better, faster, capable of doing more. Soon, you will have that same expectation of your own body. You will expect to play better tennis at 80 than you did at 50, as your knees are upgraded to the latest model.

That's why, Kamen says, the cynics will be proven wrong about the threat posed by today's diseases. As long as scientists continue to innovate, we will soon see Alzheimers or heart disease or the Zika virus as no more of a threat than we think of polio or smallpox. "Despite what all the pundits say as they look fearfully backward," he says, "we the innovators need to look optimistically forward."

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Engineering a Better Body and the End of Disease

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There are two kinds of people in Washington, DC, says entrepreneur Dean Kamen. There are the policy experts, whom he calls cynics. And there are the scientists, whom he deems optimists. Kamen, speaking at the White House Frontiers Conference at the University of Pittsburgh, places himself in the latter camp.

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How to Win an Election | Op-Docs | The New York Times - YouTube

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How to Win an Election | Op-Docs | The New York Times - YouTube

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B.E.N (Bionically Engineered Nursing) - YouTube

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B.E.N (Bionically Engineered Nursing) - YouTube

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Reportage sur les Rencontres Nationales du Partage

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Is our world a simulation? Why some scientists say it's more likely than not | Technology | The Guardian

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Is our world a simulation? Why some scientists say it's more likely than not | Technology | The Guardian

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When Elon Musk isn't outlining plans to use his massive rocket to leave a decaying Planet Earth and colonize Mars, he sometimes talks about his belief that Earth isn't even real and we probably live in a computer simulation.

"There's a billion to one chance we're living in base reality," he said at a conference in June.

Musk is just one of the people in Silicon Valley to take a keen interest in the "simulation hypothesis", which argues that what we experience as reality is actually a giant computer simulation created by a more sophisticated intelligence. If it sounds a lot like The Matrix, that's because it is.

According to this week's New Yorker profile of Y Combinator venture capitalist Sam Altman, there are two tech billionaires secretly engaging scientists to work on breaking us out of the simulation. But what does this mean? And what evidence is there that we are, in fact, living in The Matrix?

One popular argument for the simulation hypothesis, outside of acid trips, came from Oxford University's Nick Bostrom in 2003 (although the idea dates back as far as the 17th-century philosopher René Descartes). In a paper titled "Are You Living In a Simulation?", Bostrom suggested that members of an advanced "posthuman" civilization with vast computing power might choose to run simulations of their ancestors in the universe.

This argument is extrapolated from observing current trends in technology, including the rise of virtual reality and efforts to map the human brain.

Quite frankly if we are not living in a simulation it is an extraordinarily unlikely circumstance

Rich Terrile, scientist at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

If we believe that there is nothing supernatural about what causes consciousness and it's merely the product of a very complex architecture in the human brain, we'll be able to reproduce it. "Soon there will be nothing technical standing in the way to making machines that have their own consciousness," said Rich Terrile, a scientist at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

At the same time, videogames are becoming more and more sophisticated and in the future we'll be able to have simulations of conscious entities inside them.

"Forty years ago we had Pong - two rectangles and a dot. That's where we were. Now 40 years later, we have photorealistic, 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously and it's getting better every year. And soon we'll have virtual reality, we'll have augmented reality," said Musk. "If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then the games will become indistinguishable from reality."

It's a view shared by Terrile. "If one progresses at the current rate of technology a few decades into the future, very quickly we will be a society where there are artificial entities living in simulations that are much more abundant than human beings."

Recognizing we live in a simulation is game-changing, like Copernicus realizing Earth was not the center of the universe

If there are many more simulated minds than organic ones, then the chances of us being among the real minds starts to look more and more unlikely. As Terrile puts it: "If in the future there are more digital people living in simulated environments than there are today, then what is to say we are not part of that already?"

Reasons to believe that the universe is a simulation include the fact that it behaves mathematically and is broken up into pieces (subatomic particles) like a pixelated video game. "Even things that we think of as continuous - time, energy, space, volume - all have a finite limit to their size. If that's the case, then our universe is both computable and finite. Those properties allow the universe to be simulated," Terrile said.

"Quite frankly, if we are not living in a simulation, it is an extraordinarily unlikely circumstance," he added.

So who has created this simulation? "Our future selves," said Terrile.

Not everyone is so convinced by the hypothesis. "Is it logically possible that we are in a simulation? Yes. Are we probably in a simulation? I would say no," said Max Tegmark, a professor of physics at MIT.

"In order to make the argument in the first place, we need to know what the fundamental laws of physics are where the simulations are being made. And if we are in a simulation then we have no clue what the laws of physics are. What I teach at MIT would be the simulated laws of physics," he said.

Harvard theoretical physicist Lisa Randall is even more skeptical. "I don't see that there's really an argument for it," she said. "There's no real evidence."

"It's also a lot of hubris to think we would be what ended up being simulated."

Terrile believes that recognizing that we are probably living in a simulation is as game-changing as Copernicus realizing that the Earth was not the center of the universe. "It was such a profound idea that it wasn't even thought of as an assumption," he said.

Before Copernicus, scientists had tried to explain the peculiar behaviour of the planets' motion with complex mathematical models. "When they dropped the assumption, everything else became much simpler to understand."

That we might be in a simulation is, Terrile argues, a simpler explanation for our existence than the idea that we are the first generation to rise up from primordial ooze and evolve into molecules, biology and eventually intelligence and self-awareness. The simulation hypothesis also accounts for peculiarities in quantum mechanics, particularly the measurement problem, whereby things only become defined when they are observed.

"For decades it's been a problem. Scientists have bent over backwards to eliminate the idea that we need a conscious observer. Maybe the real solution is you do need a conscious entity like a conscious player of a video game," he said.

For Tegmark, this doesn't make sense. "We have a lot of problems in physics and we can't blame our failure to solve them on simulation."

How can the hypothesis be put to the test? On one hand, neuroscientists and artificial intelligence researchers can check whether it's possible to simulate the human mind. So far, machines have proven to be good at playing chess and Go and putting captions on images. But can a machine achieve consciousness? We don't know.

On the other hand, scientists can look for hallmarks of simulation. "Suppose someone is simulating our universe - it would be very tempting to cut corners in ways that makes the simulation cheaper to run. You could look for evidence of that in an experiment," said Tegmark.

For Terrile, the simulation hypothesis has "beautiful and profound" implications.

First, it provides a scientific basis for some kind of afterlife or larger domain of reality above our world. "You don't need a miracle, faith or anything special to believe it. It comes naturally out of the laws of physics," he said.

Second, it means we will soon have the same ability to create our own simulations.

"We will have the power of mind and matter to be able to create whatever we want and occupy those worlds."
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Is our world a simulation? Why some scientists say it's more likely than not

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When Elon Musk isn't outlining plans to use his massive rocket to leave a decaying Planet Earth and colonize Mars, he sometimes talks about his belief that Earth isn't even real and we probably live in a computer simulation. "There's a billion to one chance we're living in base reality," he said at a conference in June.