This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Brad Forenza: Hello again, this is Around the Sun creator Brad Forenza asking you to step away from your telescopes now and just look straight into that big beautiful sky using only your untrained eyes. Pretty miraculous, isn't it? Especially when you consider that wherever you are in the world, you're only seeing a tiny bit of the thing. If you're anywhere near me, of course, you can probably spot the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia, maybe, and likely Orion's Belt, buckled together by the three Sister Stars. Um, I forget their names, though. It's Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka. Right! Sister Sissy and Minnie. They look pretty busy up in that belt tonight, don't they, Brian? You never know what those wacky sisters will cook up next. Okay, this is our series epilogue, part 2 of 3, Sister Stars, starring Sarah Saltzberg and Gretchen Cryer.

[1:06] Sarah Saltzberg: 6,307,209 Mississippians. 6,407,210 Mississippians. That's enough! Sister, I give up! I can't hold my breath any longer!

[1:18] Gretchen Cryer: Told you so!

[1:24] Sarah Saltzberg: Hey, what do you mean, told you so? You're supposed to be rooting for me, not against me!

[1:32] Gretchen Cryer: I told you, it couldn't be done.

[1:39] Sarah Saltzberg: But I'm doing this for us! For you, me, and Mintaka!

[1:45] Gretchen Cryer: I told you, you can't just explode yourself out of Orion's Belt!

[1:52] Sarah Saltzberg: I just want to ignite a little change, so we can get out from under his thumb!

[2:06] Gretchen Cryer: It's already been tried. How can we make anything spark if we don't know our full potential?

[2:13] Sarah Saltzberg: The universe is always expanding, Sissy. But its capacity for change evolves on its own watch, not yours.

[2:21] Gretchen Cryer: Right, but a little jump start never hurt. Do you remember the Big Bang?

[2:30] Sarah Saltzberg: No.

[2:32] Gretchen Cryer: Oh, of course not. You weren't formed. Well, what about it?

[2:38] Sarah Saltzberg: Well, it crosses my mind that before things got too hot, Zeus had locked a bunch of celestial matter into, I don't know, a fiery sardine can, let's say.

[2:46] Gretchen Cryer: A fiery sardine can?

[2:48] Sarah Saltzberg: Something like that. The world was small back then, and no matter how clammy or salty or stinky it got inside that itty-bitty world, no single entity put its individual interests above the collective.

[3:00] Gretchen Cryer: And?

[3:02] Sarah Saltzberg: And they sweated it out. And when they finally reached critical mass, the bang was big, and billions of years later, here we are, still pushing our limits in all directions. And isn't that beautiful? That's the progressive arc of the universe, and it's bending in our favor, but we're not there yet.

[3:17] Gretchen Cryer: Your point?

[3:18] Sarah Saltzberg: My point, dear Sissy, is that Orion's belt remains our place in the cosmos.

[3:26] Gretchen Cryer: Doing what? Holding up his pants? Forever and ever?

[3:32] Sarah Saltzberg: Well, for now, yes. But if Orion was such a great warrior, why can't he hold up his own pants?

[3:40] Gretchen Cryer: You'll understand when you're older.

[3:42] Sarah Saltzberg: I am millions of years old.

[3:46] Gretchen Cryer: Like I said, you're just a child. Mintaka and I were young and idealistic once, too, you know.

[3:53] Sarah Saltzberg: Poor Mintaka, just burning out. She never grew up. All that luminosity, and for what? Just to make Orion shine?

[4:05] Gretchen Cryer: How you doing over there, Minnie? She used to bring such sparkle and joy into the night. Now she's a gassy mess.

[4:12] Sarah Saltzberg: Only because Orion sapped up all her light.

[4:20] Gretchen Cryer: No, only because she wasted her life trying to buck the process.

[4:27] Sarah Saltzberg: Why should she wait?

[4:30] Gretchen Cryer: I'm not victim-blaming. I'm just saying, the universe wasn't ready for Mintaka to outshine Orion. She should have been able to make her own spark.

[4:37] Sarah Saltzberg: Oh, really? And if she'd been successful at putting her own interests first, then how would the sailors have found their way home?

[4:48] Gretchen Cryer: They have GPS for that now.

[4:50] Sarah Saltzberg: Okay, then where would the mortals cast all of their existential questions?

[4:53] Gretchen Cryer: Well, they could write to dear Abby. They have lots of recourse nowadays. It's not the Middle Ages anymore. They've seen lots of change down there. The Enlightenment, the Renaissance. Women don't wait around for things to happen now. They lean in.

[5:04] Sarah Saltzberg: Time moves slower up here. The Scientific Revolution. You remember it, don't you?

[5:12] Gretchen Cryer: Of course. An object in motion stays in motion. And an object at rest stays at rest. Unless it's woke into action.

[5:20] Sarah Saltzberg: What are you trying to say?

[5:22] Gretchen Cryer: I'm trying to say that we can bust out of here if we work together. If we create our own critical mass, we can light up the sky for sure.

[5:34] Sarah Saltzberg: Huh? A critical mass of two? Or not. Forget I ever mentioned it.

[5:43] Gretchen Cryer: You know what? Just use all your energy on Orion the Meathead and burn out like Mintaka.

[5:52] Sarah Saltzberg: You're speaking in binaries. Why challenge the status quo? It's safer this way.

[5:59] Gretchen Cryer: Sister, don't you know what we have bursting inside of us?

[6:05] Sarah Saltzberg: Of course I do. Hydrogen and helium.

[6:08] Gretchen Cryer: Exactly. Life and potential. If we work together, we can light up the sky in double time or quicker.

[6:12] Sarah Saltzberg: Be careful, sissy. Orion the Hunter. Orion the Warrior. Don't forget Orion the Conqueror.

[6:22] Gretchen Cryer: He's nothing compared to the sister stars of Orion's belt. He'll hear you.

[6:33] Sarah Saltzberg: Good. It's time we pull the curtain back on Orion the Great so all the world can see who's really making this constellation shine.

[6:38] Gretchen Cryer: Listen to me, sissy. And listen good. I want to get out of here as much as you do. But you have not thought this through. We have nowhere to go on our own. We have no currency apart from Orion.

[6:48] Sarah Saltzberg: You don't know that.

[6:50] Gretchen Cryer: No, I do. I do. Years ago, before you were formed, I tried to get out. I kept my temperature hot, my mass heavy. I whispered in Scorpio's ear to strike while the hunter was sleeping. I tried to get out. I even agreed to adopt what I thought would be an empowered name through some mortal naming registry, only to fall on my face each time.

[7:12] Sarah Saltzberg: And what did they name you? Something aspirational?

[7:19] Gretchen Cryer: Can we not? Was it Joan of Arc or Queen Zenobia? Oh, I know. I bet it was Michelle.

[7:30] Sarah Saltzberg: No, it was Buddy. They named me Buddy.

[7:41] Gretchen Cryer: Is she a patron saint?

[7:43] Sarah Saltzberg: He was someone's golden retriever.

[7:49] Gretchen Cryer: He? It's still a man's world out there in all directions.

[7:58] Sarah Saltzberg: Then we need to push the boundary. They're not ready for us. We've waited long enough. This is our sardine can. Now we need to bond together so we can split the patriarchy wide open. It's what you once wanted. You said so yourself.

[8:11] Gretchen Cryer: Nobody cares what I want. Nobody cares what you want. But maybe they'll care what we want.

[8:20] Sarah Saltzberg: We? We'll never know unless we try. Billions of galaxies. Endless potential. Infinite possibility. Exploding. Evolving. Expanding every single moment of every single day. And we've only reached the tip of the iceberg. Think about it.

[8:43] Gretchen Cryer: Well. Who better than the incandescent sister stars of Orion's Belt to give progress a little jump start?

[8:53] Sarah Saltzberg: Yeah. Or else we'll just end up like Mintaka.

[9:02] Gretchen Cryer: You're right. You're absolutely right. So this is it? This is how it all ends? With another big bang?

[9:12] Sarah Saltzberg: No. This is how it begins. With objects in motion.

[9:22] Gretchen Cryer: What are you proposing?

[9:24] Sarah Saltzberg: We just hold our breath until we explode ourselves out into the night?

[9:29] Gretchen Cryer: Something like that.

[9:34] Sarah Saltzberg: Okay. Then we blast through whatever walls are blocking us.

[9:42] Gretchen Cryer: Okay. We push the limits of the universe even further. So what do you think?

[9:50] Sarah Saltzberg: I suppose the result couldn't be any stranger than how we got here.

[9:54] Gretchen Cryer: Are you ready to try?

[9:56] Sarah Saltzberg: We've got nothing to lose.

[9:58] Gretchen Cryer: Then hold your breath with me.

[10:05] Sarah Saltzberg: I never thought I'd see the day. On three. One. Two. Three.

[10:09] Brad Forenza: Around the Sun is written and directed by Brad Forenza. For full credits and more content, please visit AroundTheSunPodcast.com. If you enjoyed Around the Sun, please share your thoughts by offering us a positive review wherever you listen to podcasts today. And if you really enjoyed Around the Sun, consider purchasing a copy of Vignettes by Brad Forenza, a compendium publication now available at most cyberbook sellers. Thank you for joining us on another trip Around the Sun. This episode also featured Lizanne Lawless as Mintaka.