Vlad the Astrophysicist Book

THIS ALL STARTED WITH TWO SIMPLE QUESTIONS.

Vlad the Astrophysicist is a real person: Dr. Vladimir Chaloupka, physics professor at the University of Washington. I met him at the National Youth Science Camp in Bartow, West Virginia, where I have been playing every summer for sixteen years.

And I really did ask Vlad "Are there intelligent civilizations out there other than ours, and if so why haven't they contacted us?" And he really did answer, and my whole world-view was altered in that moment — I was, looking up at the stars, changed.

As it was happening, the writer in me knew I owed it to myself, and maybe to the rest of the world, to capture this story and pass it along. So I framed it as a spoken-word piece, and wrote music to go underneath. I put it out on my "Letters from a Flying Machine" record, I've been performing it ever since, including one performance at TEDxKC.

Peter Nevins's artwork is perfect for this book. The tactile, human touch of his linocut art grounds the high-flown intellectualism of the story with heart and bodily sense. I'm beyond grateful to know him and his work. You can find it on Anais Mitchell's records, you can find it on Gillian Welch's posters, you can find it on the marquee of the New York Theater Workshop production of Hadestown...and it's my sincere hope that this book brings his beautiful art to tens of thousands of eyes and hands.