Making New Worlds Erika Nesvold

A special five-years-later bonus episode, with updates on a few projects that might interest listeners of Making New Worlds. You can preorder Off-Earth: Ethical Questions and Quandaries for Living in Outer Space now from Penguin Random House using discount code PREORDER15. See https://mitpress.mit.edu/discount-codes/ for discount code information. The transcript for this episode is below. This… … Continue reading "Ep 14: Book Announcement"

Welcome to Making New Worlds, a podcast about the ethical issues of human settlements in space. Here’s a quick trailer to give you a taste of the kinds of questions the podcast will explore. Please share far and wide, and stay tuned! Episodes will be released on iTunes every Wednesday morning starting next week, November … Continue reading "Trailer"

Welcome to the first episode of Making New Worlds: Why Are We Going? Examining our motivations for settling space. We talk to historian Donna Gabaccia about the historical reasons for human migration on the Earth. Sociologist Zuleyka Zevallos weighs in on the harmful effects of colonialism when planning a space settlement. Sci-fi author and scientist … Continue reading "Ep 01: Why Are We Going?"

Before we can head out into space, we have to ask: Who gets to go? What will the population of space settlers look like? Who will be allowed to go, and who will be left behind? Historian Donna Gabaccia rejoins us to talk about what kind of people have migrated to new places on Earth … Continue reading "Ep 02: Who Gets to Go?"

Once we’ve taken that giant leap for mankind and have set foot on a new world, we have to ask: Who actually owns the land we’re standing on? If you’re planning on making your fortune in space by mining or farming or building new habitats, how do you get the rights to work that territory? … Continue reading "Ep 03: Who Owns Mars?"

Once we’ve reached out space settlements, what do we do next? What kind of jobs will be available, and what kind of economy will we have? What kinds of rights do we have as workers in space, and what will we do if our employer tries to exploit us while we’re stuck far from home? … Continue reading "Ep 04: Where’s My Money?"