Going Boldly
What's a little Star Trek among friends?
I’ve been a guest on my friend Bob Cesca’s show a number of times over the last two years. (You should definitely check it out—Bob is a great host.) I last sat down for an interview with him in March. We were discussing the potentially impending indictments against Donald, House Republicans intention to hold the debt ceiling hostage—you know, the usual, non-stop insanity of the modern news cycle. Towards the end of our time together, Bob had a listener question for me: What is my favorite Star Trek episode?
Bob and I already knew we shared a love of all things Star Trek so we chatted about Season 3 of Star Trek Picard, the upcoming Season 2 of Strange New Worlds (episode one just dropped today), and how important Star Trek has been as a mirror of and corrective to late 20th and early 21st century earth.
Bob was just about to wrap up, when I said, “We should start a show that’s just about [Star Trek]. It could be Star Trek as counter-point to the horrors of our times.”
And so we did!
It’s an excuse to watch more Star Trek in all of its iterations (which I’ve been doing when I was six) yes, but it’s also a way to detach a bit from the ongoing, and sometimes extremely disruptive, swirl of bad news cycles, bad media takes, and bad faith Republicans.
I know a podcast about the ways in which Star Trek has shone, and continues to shine, a light on socio-cultural issues, while showing us the potential for a better future, may not be of interest to you. And I know reading a romance novel that’s the result of a collaboration between me and E. Jean Carroll and Jen Taub may also not be of interest to you. But both of these new projects actually make it easier for me, as Bob eloquently put it, to stick my face “in the white-hot plasma stream of American politics” every day.
If you are interested, I’d love for you to join us.
You can listen to Trek Politics here (it will also be on YouTube in the not-too-distant future) and/or you can catch up with what’s going on with The Italian Lesson over at Backstory Serial:
What helps you de-stress, keep your blood pressure low, or otherwise stay sane?
"The Whole is Greater than the Sum of its Parts" - Aristotle
In 1964 Lucille Ball was the force behind the production of the initial Star Trek series with her Desilu Studios. She called it a space western. Desi Arnaz, her former husband, was the inventor of the syndicated rerun when he asked the studio to re-air episodes of I Love Lucy to give his wife some rest while she was pregnant. Were it not for Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz we may not have had Star Trek. Lucille Ball was a true visionary and so much more than just a comedian.
Mary, thank you for your vision, and for being so much more than 'someone's' niece.
You. You help me stay sane, Mary.