Hidden Figures

11/18/20 • 28 min

1 Listener

I’ve always been something of a nut when it comes to the space program...but even though I’ve read all the books, seen all the documentaries, and watched all the movies, I was still surprised to learn something new with the movie “Hidden Figures”...

This was a 2016 film based on a book of the same name...it told the true story about black female mathematicians who worked at nasa during the hottest period of the space race...

They were “computers” in the original sense of the word: people who computer things complex things like flight trajectories, re-entry methods, and landing coordinates...they were even assigned to check and correct the calculations spit out by NASA’s big ibm mainframes...their work was essential to the American space effort...

But this being the 60s, these women were segregated away from the other scientists, meaning that their work was largely forgotten until the movie and book came out...

This got me thinking...are there any forgotten figures in music?...I’m talking about women who did awesome and important things but have largely been ignored by the traditional history of rock?...I’m talking about people beyond Deborah Harry, Janis Joplin, Stevie Nicks, Chrissie Hynde, and Courtney Love...

Well, yes...yes, there was...and we need to know about them...let’s do that now...

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This was a 2016 film based on a book of the same name...it told the true story about black female mathematicians who worked at nasa during the hottest period of the space race...

But this being the 60s, these women were segregated away from the other scientists, meaning that their work was largely forgotten until the movie and book came out...

Well, yes...yes, there was...and we need to know about them...let’s do that now...

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Previous Episode

The Return of ACDC - Power Up Premiere

2020 has been a miserable year...the pandemic...economic ruin...the crazy U.S. election, which featured an impeached President...Kobe Bryant’s helicopter crash...the death of George Floyd...murder hornets arrived in North America...swarms of locusts descended on Africa...

There were so many hurricanes that they ran out of names...the Olympics were postponed...out-of-control wildfires in both North America and Australia...

And we lost more musicians...Neil Peart...Eddie Van Halen...Spencer Davis and dozens of others...

Yeah, it’s been rough...what we need is something to remind us of the before times, the better times, the times when we could count on certain things always being there...

A time when we could just turn it up, rock out and forget all the bad stuff...

That something has arrived...an event that shows us that things can turn around; even when it looked hopeless...it’s the return of AC/DC

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Next Episode

Even More Rock Conspiracies

The universe is a weird, random place that has little regard for what us puny humans think...this is something we find very, very hard to accept...we’re always looking for explanations for the weird, random, and sometimes evil things that befall us...

Occam’s razor—the idea that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one—doesn’t cut it for some people...they believe that there are nefarious things afoot...

For example, I know someone who is all-in when it comes to this QAnon rubbish...quick explanation: a government insider believes that Donald Trump is leading a secret global fight against a cabal of Satan-worshipping politicians and celebrities and journalists who are engaged in everything from child sex trafficking to cannibalism...

Everything about qanon is bat-guano crazy and nothing to do with reality...yet there are people who believe that people Barack Obama, George Soros, and Tom Hanks will soon be arrested and jailed for their hideous crimes...

This is more nutty than even the most out-there “JFK-was-assassinated” or “9/11 was an inside government job” theories...or the idea that the moon landing was faked...or that Sandy Hook was a false flag event...or that Bill Gates is big on vaccinations because he wants to inject miniature tracking chips into all of us...

What else is out there?...chemtrails...the truth about the Denver airport...the UFO cover-up...the evils of fluoridation...flat-earthers, weather control machines, the illuminati, freemasonry...

Okay, what about music?...are there any conspiracies that have taken root?...the answer is “yes...plenty”...and here’s another look down that rat hole of insanity...

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