Astrophysicist and native Hawaiian Dr. Paul Coleman is used to operating in the worlds of both science and spiritual tradition. But in this short podcast, he tells a story of one time when those two worlds clashed, and he was reminded of the importance of remembering his native roots.

This story was recorded when Paul Coleman was at the Exploratorium in June of 2009 as an adviser to our Polynesian Navigation project—a web resource launching April 2010 that will explore the navigation practices of the Pacific Islanders, who were expertly wayfinding in the Pacific thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans.