February 6, 2024: The year of focused equity

Happy New Year! It’s lunar new year, and we’re entering the Year of the Dragon. More than a billion people will be celebrating this weekend, including some in Florence. Bombyx is having a Lunar New Year celebration on Feb 10th, hosted by local author illustrator Grace Lin, who herself has written a book on the subject. We speak with her about some of the symbols and traditions that they’ll be teaching about during the festivities. New years often mean a look at the things you’d like to accomplish, and to that end we’re looking at economic equity. Team R3set was built to specifically look at the economic disparity of disenfranchised communities and built platforms and pathways to make them more resilient. We speak with co-founder John Lewis about why economic equity can be just as important as social equity, and why re-framing what that evening out looks like is vitally important. The new year also brings with it times to reflect on the things that have been done in the past. Mr. Universe, Hampshire College’s Salman Hameed reveals the legacy of Henrietta Leavitt, without whose work we may not have been able to explore as much of the universe as we are able to today, and at the apologies that are only now being offered for the disparagement of her research and ideas.