Off-Nominal - 106 - Main Menu

Episode Date: May 5, 2023

Jake and Anthony are joined by Sarah Al-Ahmed, host and producer of Planetary Radio, to talk about her new gig running one of the longest-tenured space podcasts.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 106 - Main Menu (with Sarah Al-Ahmed) - YouTubePlanetary Radio stories with Mat Kaplan | The Planetary Societyrae paoletta on Twitter: “Ok way better pic here!!! CAPYYYYYYYYYYBAAAARAAAAA♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️”Follow SarahSarah Al-Ahmed | The Planetary SocietyPlanetary Radio (@PlanRad) / TwitterFollow Off-NominalSubscribe to the show! - Off-NominalSupport the show, join the DiscordOff-Nominal (@offnom) / TwitterOff-Nominal (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterJake Robins (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterMain Engine Cut Off (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@[e-mail]) - jawns.club 🐘Off-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

DLS and go for main engine, start. Hello, Anomalies, and may the fourth be with you. Welcome, welcome. That's right. We picked a good date to do a show, and we picked a great guest to do it on this date, too, because we've got Sarah Alamed here with us, and she is dressed for the day, it looks like. Sarah, what's going on here? Tell us what's happening on the costume situation here.

Yeah, you know, I couldn't just be asked to come on off nominal and not be completely extra. So I decided I would show up in my Jedi cosplay that I usually wear at conventions, because why not? And bring a sweet lightsaber because tis the season. It's amazing. That is a full lightsaber. You told us it was a full lightsaber. That is a full lightsaber. I might blow out everyone's ears with this.

Let's try it. Come on. Main menu select. I've never seen a more realistic lightsaber. interface of my life. Like that is totally what a lightsaber would be if we had lightsaber. I have the shitty Bluetooth audio. Light saber. Oh my God, that's amazing. Oh, and now I've broken it.

I'm sorry. Hold on. It's a realistic experience. Yeah, this is what if Siri was a lightsaber. Awesome. The greatest, we might as well in the show. Like, I don't think it's getting better than that. Just wait until we integrate chat GPT into it, then things get weird. That was incredible. Wow. Somebody clip that. Clip that and tweet it out on what apparently is a potus-like account.

Plan rad on Twitter is it will go from person to person into the future. It's kind of true. I didn't mean to take over Matt Kaplan's existing Twitter account, but, you know, we weren't really using it for anything. I'm not great at posting. on it these days because, you know, I ran social media at the Planet Fairy Society for like two years. And now that it's not my full-time job, it's nice to take a break from it. Your burnout is what you're saying.

Honestly, though, you know, they talk about like social media detoxing. I needed it. So it's nice to take a little step back. Well, you got some fresh content for it today. So that's good. For sure. I'll retweet it. Oh, wow.

That's incredible. Okay. Well, so that's a great start. we should do some drinks. Anthony, you got anything today? What's going on over there? Well, as a foreshadowing for me, I'm going to be gone the next two episodes

because I'm going on a trip now, after Jake had ditched me. I'm just clearing out what's in my fridge, so I've got a couple of hop devils. I think I had one of these last week. It's a victory. This is actually like the goat of victories. So it's got a,

I guess it's kind of like Jersey devil-inspired situation there. Okay. All right. It's a good one. It's really tasty. Got a couple of those around here. Awesome. Yeah.

Is there you got something fun? Yeah. You know, I did that weird thing where you go to the store in Pasadena thinking there's going to be maybe like one space theme beer and you're met with a bajillion of them. So I picked a divine science brewing's event horizon blonde. Whoa. Wow. Look at that can.

Does that sword have a main menu also? Got a lightsaber? Yeah. It's got us. Hold on. What other menus are there on the lightsaber? There's some menus. I just realized if it's the main one, there are submenus of the lightsaber.

Yeah, there are different reactivities for, you know, sound and lighting, that kind of thing. Because it's like combat grades. So you want to make sure you can dial in how, you know, sensitivity is. Oh, sorry. I got super distracted. Have you had this event horizon shindig before? This is my first time. Okay.

You know, cool lady with a glowing sword. That's my jam. I mean, it's almost identical to your vibe at the moment. Yeah. 100% your vibe. Yeah, you've got to be the magical girl you want to see you in the world, you know. I just have a gin and tonic today. Oh, you went a little Anthony here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I finally, I've always wanted to get like that, the fancy blue sapphire bombay gin in the very, very, very pretty bottle. So I saw some of the story today's like, I'm going to get it now and I'll make a gin tonic. Cheers. What's your ratio of gin to tonic? Two to one tonic to gin, I think.

Is that too high for you? What do you do? More of one to one. All right. A ton of lime and then one to one on the other side. And then just sip it longer, you know? More at all. I don't know. I feel like I've gotten through it's two or three of those on a show before. Yes, you have.

Yes, you have. Yeah, unfortunately, you know, the first week of every month we put out two podcasts, so I have to finish production on a podcast and put it out. So I've got to be cogent enough, but this is very nice. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Casey's got you slaving in the first week. You'll never make your way out of the bank vault. Yep, I will be in here all night.

No, thankfully, you know, it's great working with Casey. He is on it, so, you know, it'll be fun. Yeah, we're big Casey fans. Huge. No arguments here. He's awesome. Like, whenever I listen to him speak, it just makes, like, I have a full degree in astrophysics. Like, I like to think I'm intelligent. And then I listen to Casey. I'm like, no, dude, your next level. He is so smart and so kind, you know, so if you ever get a chance to hang out with you.

Astrophysics is one branch of math. And then there's budget math. And that's like totally different. He's so good at it because, you know, he studied physics in school. So, like, yeah, it makes sense. So inflation is nothing. That's like, we got this. We got this. Oh, wow. Okay. Sarah, so we've got you on, obviously, because you are now the host of Planetary Radio. So you took over after our good friend Matt stepped down for a well-deserved retirement. He put it in a lot of years and a lot of time on this show. So we, of course, we had to have you on because we had Matt on at the end of last year to talk about his, you know, his memories and his dreams and his wishes and all that kind of stuff. But now I get to talk to you. Yeah, and I love that show. That was great. Yeah, I think you were there. I think I remember you kind of trolling us from the chat in some capacity. Yeah. If anybody's seen anybody like operating the Planetary Society YouTube channel in your chat for the last few years, that's been me.

Okay, excellent. The wizard behind the curtain. Honestly, I mean, I was just going to say, like, Matt, dude has been running this show for 20 years. By himself, I might add. He's not just like the host. He's the producer. He was the audio editor. This guy's next level.

So stepping into his shoes is daunting, but also, you know, makes me feel very honored. There are so many amazing science communicators out there that would have been great in this role. So it's a weird moment in my life, I feel. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, maybe just tell us a little bit about yourself. So you mentioned a little bit about studying astrophysics stuff, but where does Sarah come from? What's the, what's the backstory that led you to this bank vault? So owning a like Sarah with several menus.

Yeah. Yeah, it's a weird and harrowing story. You know, my, uh, my mom is one of those California red-headed hippie chicks who met my father, who is, um, he was born in Saudi Arabia, came to the United States to come to school and learn engineering. So they met up and part of the way they kind of connected with each other was by watching sci-fi learning, he was learning English at the time. So when I was very small, we watched Star Trek and Cosmos a lot, you know, and I lived in Saudi Arabia for a brief time when I was tiny and I only had so many things to watch. So reading the encyclopedia and watching Star Trek and cosmos. So that's where it kind of began.

But then there was this moment. I was six years old. I was in first grade and my teacher brought in a newspaper clipping to show and tell like you do. And it was all about how they discovered, I think it was the second exoplanet outside of our solar system. And I lost my tiny mind. I went home that night and I was like, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. And they really were convinced I was going to give it up, especially, you know, on my father's side, it's not a normal thing for women to go into science as a Saudi American woman. That's not, that's not expected. So they really did think I was going to grow out of it. But I was super feisty about being, being who I wanted to be and doing that. And, you know, there were moments in college. I was getting

my degree at UC Berkeley. And I'm like, this is super hard. Why did I do this? But totally worth it. totally worth it. And now after all those struggles, I'm just in this mode of like, just be yourself, love what you love. It might take a lot of work. But, you know, if you want to be a Jedi on off nominal and an involved bank, like, do it. Do it. Yeah.

But I did. I went, they thought I would grow out of it as you're sitting in Jedi robes. It's like, yeah, no. Yeah, I'm wrong. But I did. I did the full nutty thing. And I went and I got my degree. and astrophysics, and I did some research for a while. And it was cool, you know, discovering planets,

like finding exoplanets was like my jam. And I did research with Alex Filipenko, taking, you know, images of basically shiny, shiny objects in space, supernovae, gamma ray bursts, active galactic nuclei. It was awesome. But there came that moment where it's like, what do you do with the rest of your life, you know? Do I want to go to grad school? Do I want to continue doing research? And then I had this beautiful moment where I got a job working at Griffith Observatory. I was like, this is a good moment to kind of like calibrate, see what I really want to do with this. And I don't know what made me think that it was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. But I tell you, anytime you tell a little kid that they're made of stardust and you see it click on their face,

right? That was the feeling I wanted forever. So I kind of committed to science communication and here we are. It's wild. Cool, cool. I love the Griffith Observatory. That's a really fun place to hang out. I've only ever been once, but it's like still, just the location of it is so great, you know, standing up there and just staring out over the city. What a place. Yeah, it's a cool thing because, you know, we're at not for its kind of central location as being the best place to both see L.A. and get the picture of the Hollywood sign. I don't know if it would be as popular as it is, but that's perfect because, you know, you bring them in with the Hollywood allure. You throw a little bit of, you know, some buss of James Dean and stuff around there to get them all in the mood.

And then you take them into this observatory with the world's most look through telescope. And, you know, there's a reason. It's one of the most visited places in L.A. And I miss it. As much as I'm working here. I'm laughing at what you said, the world's most looked through telescope. I'm like that. Yeah.

It sounds like a roadside attraction for sure. It does. That's a great qualifier victory on that one. What about those, like, crappy billboards with the Painted On sign? Or it's like when all these new space companies try to come up with some reason that they get to be first at something, you know. We are the first company to ever put a rocket into space that was also on the ground horizontal while it was green and then it changed black when we painted it.

And then it went to... It transitioned through Arkansas on the highway that no rocket has ever been on. and then it went to do it. Yeah, yeah. We painted it with mood ring paint, so it changes colors as it goes through launch. Yeah, yeah. Most look through telescope.

Wow, cool. Yeah, so it's the old bait and switch that and you trick them up there because it's a sightseeing thing. And then, yeah, now you have to learn science. It totally feels like a, like a church of science, though. Like the way, the architecture of it, the way it's situated,

it takes up the grand space that are most often reserved for religious institutions. Like the gravity of the, it's all built with this epic stone and it's got stuff engraved on the walls and you've got to drive up this windy-ass road to get to it you may see that mountain lion that lives nearby i just know that one mountain line that has a what's it named unfortunately p-22 passed away a months ago yeah but you know it's an interesting thing because you know right right down the road from griff's observatory is the greek theater and they actually held a gathering there to celebrate this mountain line because

had been such a part of the culture. And I straight up, I have a big old plushy of P-22 at my house because, you know, the proceeds went to wildlife bridges, so it was worth it. Nice, nice, nice. Well, shout one out. He's got to get a statue on the, on that little plateau of the Griffith Observatory. I feel like they should put something there. Wouldn't that be cool? Or at least like some kind of tribute to all the guides that have worked there, like hundreds of people for, you know, 80-plus years have been up there teaching people science.

And I don't know what we can do to celebrate. write them up there, but that would be fantastic. No, I like what you said there, Anthony, though, because I think didn't Matt describe it the same way when he was on about like these places as being like holy ground, they were like holy sites for science, right? Like, that's exactly same. I think he was talking about some of the observatories he went to, right? Especially.

Yeah, like in Atacama and stuff. I think it was Atacama that he was talking about, yeah. But also, you know, he went to Griffith Observatory as a child, and that's part of what sparked his love for space. And, you know, I taught the school field trips there for so many years. And you can see it clicking those kids' brains. Like, I was going up the steps to take them all into the telescope dome this one time. And this kid turns around, holds up the whole staircase and looks at me and goes, this place is my Hogwarts.

What a sense. But I love that it makes people feel validated in that way. There's so many people that want that moment of connection to the universe. And how do you find people that get that, you know? That's why I love podcasts like this. shows like this, it gives people kind of at least that feeling of connection that we're all kind of thinking about these things together because it can be hard to find your people sometimes. Yeah, the internet's great for that.

It's the best. You can find any kind of people you want now. That's the benefit and also the danger of this. Yes. See also my famous adage, Jake, about podcasts. If 40 people drove your house every week and listened to you for 40 minutes in a row, you would run a cult. and if you only have 40 people on a podcast feed, you're like, oh, but it's not a lot of people listening. It's like, that's one cult's worth of people.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. You like to graduate into like different sports arena-sized audiences, but if you start at a cult, you're doing all right. That's how I feel it. What kind of arena would it take to fill with every person that lives, listens to planetary radio? I don't like to think about it because as the new host of the show, it's really nice to have a good audience, but also the more you think about it, the more up in your head you get. Sometimes you don't want to know.

Yeah. I don't want to know? This is like what my, at Space Symposium, like a couple weeks back, running in people and be like, oh yeah, I've listened for it.

I'm like, oh, fuck. Like, I've definitely like, like, like, like,

tore into that company once or twice. Yeah. I'm like, still listening. Okay. Yeah, that's a good spot for it. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm not used to having people recognize me. I'm just that, you know, that, that nerd girl that like space. And now, now people are like, you're that nerd girl that loves space.

When you stepped into the show where there particular things that you were like, all right, we're going to keep this the same, we're going to add this new thing. Have you worked your way through that list yet? Are you still figuring it out? How does that work? Yeah, because there's a listenership that's been going on for 20 years on the show, we didn't want to rattle it too hard in the first few months. Don't blow it up on the first week.

Exactly. It's a weird enough thing to change hosts. So our idea was basically use the first six months to kind of acclimate, get the audience familiar and comfortable with what's going on, and then start kind of rolling out changes to the show in places that we think make sense. And I mean, honestly, like, I want to get more young people as listeners. And the best way to do that for me is to do some kind of live stream or, you know, throw sound clips up on, TikTok or short form video, things like that. But after sitting in it for a little while, it's such a prodigious amount of work that I want to think very carefully about how we want to make these changes. Because even just the structure of the show, like if you listen to, Matt has said this before, but if you listen to the first show and then you listen to it even now with me as the host, it's the same show. It's the same show.

It hasn't changed a whole lot. And if it's broke, don't fix it. But also there's all kinds of fun things we could do there. And I don't want to just make it up all of myself. I've got some ideas and I've got some things I'm working on. But we recently launched a member community app. So we've got a whole section dedicated to planetary radio. And I want to start asking people what they want to see from the show.

Not like I'm going to take all of their advice. Definitely don't. No, definitely won't. But, you know, I want to modernize it a little. And maybe add some more pop culture references to make people feel, you know, welcome. Honestly, I'm a nerd, but also I think a lot of people come around to the love of science through sci-fi. So anything I can do to do that, I am currently trying to see what I can do to get people from Dune onto the show for the new, you know, new Dune movie coming out later this year. Nice.

That is a holiday I think about, too, because even 20 years ago, the presence of sci-fi and pop culture, like, it's always had a presence since, you know, 2001 and Star Wars days. but it's even more so now and it's like we went way down that rabbit hole in the early 2000s to now. So it's interesting to think about that era and having a show that's lasted the entire run of that through the

zombies and pirates phase of pop culture and then like back over to the sci-fi side. Yeah. Zombies and pirates. That's what we were in. We were in that for 10 years. Like the the a a a early tens was like is it a zombie one or is it a pirate one? Okay, cool. Great.

Like, oh, wait. Oh, it's a vampire one for 10 minutes. All right. Great. It's like, what are we getting back to the space stuff? Yeah. Well, I mean, it's finally kind of socially acceptable for people to be nerdy about this kind of thing. Like, when I was a kid, I did have some friends.

But there were times where I did not have a lot of friends because, you know, I'm that little girl that likes anime for some reason. But now you're a little girl you like anime. People think that's cool. They want to ask if you've seen Chainsaw Man. Like, it's different. It's different. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of cool to be a geek now. That's a big, big boon. All those years of playing

video games in the basement's really paid off for me from that respect for sure. So, same, same. Huh. So you were the digital community manager before the host. Can you maybe describe what that job is and what you did there? Yeah. No, we'll get there. We'll get there. I just, I want to learn a little bit about it and because it's, I think it probably informs a little bit about who you are. Yeah. I mean, functionally, I was kind of like a social media manager. I was running over social media channels and, you know, thinking about YouTube strategies and doing all that kind of thing.

But what we really needed as an organization, because we've got like 50,000 members around the world. It's awesome to have them, but how do you coordinate together when you can't have them connect? So I was hired specifically to try to create some kind of member community. And we didn't really know what that was. Was it a discord? Was it some kind of forum? Like, what was that? So for two years behind the scenes, I was kind of looking at platforms and trying to figure out

what the best way for people to connect would be. And that's how this new member community app came about ultimately. And the wildest thing is that I spent so long working on this and then right as it was about to launch, right at that moment, I get the job as planned to. Terry radio host. And thankfully, we found, we found someone wonderful, Amber Trujillo, who's now our digital community manager. And I got to hand the baby off to her, and she is just carried it into the sunset, and it's wonderful. But the other thing that happened right at that moment was a very public social media platform, went through really weird times, and it revitalized the smaller

private communities of the internet. It's really, really funny. Having that happened right as it wasn't my responsibility because the moment it happened, I was just, nope, out. Yep, you figure out what to do now. See you. Here's this, here's my new baby and this radioactive toxic waste here. Yeah. A bunch of people running for the hills that we want spaces like this. How has that, how has it been? Well, has that given you a different insight into like the launch of it?

Because you got to just participate in it versus worry about it. Yeah. I mean, it definitely kind of enhanced my personal experience with it. I'm not stressed about it. It's just the app that I open up when I wake up to see, you know, like, what are people talking about? But it's also one of my main concerns going into it as someone that managed social media for so long was how much are you going to have to moderate that? Are people going to be toxic in that space? Because I tell you, if you work in social media, like half of your job is just moderating people being awful on the internet.

And especially with space stuff, like, oh, my gosh, the moon landing deniers, the flat earthers, like, the people who don't like the Chinese space program, it's a nightmare. So I was really kind of worried about that going into the community, but people have just been awesome. So in some ways, it's, you know, I'm almost kind of gel because it turned out it turned out so much easier than I thought it was going to be. But at the same time, I like that I just got to build the thing and then walk away, right? Yeah.

Because now I have all the benefit of being like, I helped create that without actually having to do the hard work. fun than maintaining. So it's definitely, definitely good. But also, you know, I am so proud of what the rest of the team has accomplished with it. Like, we have thousands of people in there now, just hanging out. That's, that's amazing. I'm so proud. It might be the, the biggest thing I ever accomplished, and now I'm on to this new ridiculous journey. So it's weird. But why? Why were you wondering like what the job was about. Well, so I can't remember which time it came up, but I actually applied for that job.

That's why I was going to. It turns out that burdening a nonprofit with trying to get a foreigner's visa under control is probably not the right decision for anybody. So it worked out in the long run, you know. Yeah, that's a toughie. But, you know, we do have some people that live outside of the United States. We have to use them as contractors. But, you know, we do have some wonderful Canadian employees.

here. Yes, yes, yes. So that never worked out. But I did, there was, I think, I can't remember for it was when, you know, when, when the application came up that where you got it, which was what, maybe a couple years ago, two, three years ago, something like that. Two and a half years ago,ish. Yeah. Yeah. And I think there was a time before that as well where I don't know if it was called that specific job or if it was like a similar role, but they had a different name at that time. So I applied to one of them. I can't remember anymore. But so that was my brief, back when I was considered, trying to figure out whether I wanted to do my own stuff full time or just get a good job in science communication. That's a tricky one, right? Because it's, there aren't that many jobs like mine.

Hundreds of people apply. Like, frankly, I have this weird survivor's guilt about it. I mean, really, though, I worked my whole life. It's not like I don't feel like I ended up in the right place. But I know how many people out there are so deserving that are so passionate about it. that and it kills me. But now I found myself in this place where I have a microphone. I have a voice and people listen and I can use that voice to uplift others. So in the meantime, I'm like connecting people and sending job applications that that people might want. And it's been really, really cool to see how that that's been working out. That's good. That's good. If I could, I would hire you on to the social media team if we had a full of whole team. I have new opinions about

social media now. I'm not the same guy that applied for that job. You don't want me on that role. Yeah, me neither. Me neither. I would just be blocking people. You're done. You're done. You're done. No, actually, I have the blocks and memes. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. Mimes. I wish I had like a whole factory with people

just making space memes. That would have been so effective. Jake would be good at that role in particular. I do enjoy that stuff. Expertly tuned for a factory of memes. That is, if you notice, that is our social media strategy. You got to block so many people. Like I literally, anytime someone made me mad,

I would take a picture of what they said and I put it in a thing under their name. And if they made me mad, a certain number of times, they were instantly blocked, even if the last offense wasn't the worst, they had established a pattern, therefore. Wow. That is so regimented.

I love it. Yeah. How are you going to do it without being out? Did you print it out, keep it in a file cabinet? It was this digital archive? What format? It's digital. Yeah.

I would love if it was like a Charlie Day, Pepe Sylvia kind of all next to you. It's like, this guy follows that guy and pin. Just a whole web with little yarn and, you know. I love the follower. You had a connection. You said a mean thing. And now all of your followers are on one strike. Oh, wow.

Okay. That's good. Well, you know, you get used to it. You just got to let all the mean comments kind of wash off of you. It's been good training. for, you know, this job, this host of planetary radio because people aren't being personal when it's just like your organization's social media.

But now it's personal. Now it's, now it's personal. And I like people. You literally are at my radio. Yeah, you got the POTA's account. So, yep. It's also, though, the weird part about it is it's when, it's probably why these private, more private sections

of the internet are way better, right? Our Discord's amazing. The community app is amazing, right? When you get a common audience together in a certain place, they're going to be great people. It's when it's when one thing gets retweeted outside of your circle and it like makes its way to a separate Twitter audience or it gets posted in a weird subreddit.

It's that like one little exposure to the outside world, which is the problem is that's where you also find growth is like experimenting with getting out into a different lane. It's just a hot stove that you're waiting. Oh, like oh, I touch that one. I got into the like the Boca people Twitter. Like that's a separate lane than the space fans who are also curious about Boca Chica. Darn, I went a little too far that direction.

It's a hard one. There are some serious trolls that love to just hop on those space accounts. But I always think of a, did you ever see those South Park episodes about trolls and the internet? Oh, yeah. And there's that whole scene about Trevor's axiom and how if you want to make people really mad on the internet. You're not, you're not actually talking to the person you're talking to. You're trying to inflame a whole new audience. It's perfect.

80% of media works today. That's unfortunate. The tough part with our Twitter presence is that I am tremendously sarcastic and make jokes that sound like I'm really fierce about something that I'm not actually fierce about, you know? And then it gets misinterpreted because, you know, like the humor doesn't translate to like the next retweet. And then it does what you said, Anthony, where it goes into some other community.

And then everyone's mad at me because they think I think A, but I actually was making fun of that. And then it's the whole thing. So, yeah. Counts as engagement. Yeah, you just got to let that die out and come back later, you know. Going to the bank vault for a couple hours, have Casey lock you in there. Do that go.

Come let me out when that dies down and I'll try again. If only, yeah. Okay, cool. I think Jason Davis would be the guy that would lock you in the vault if anyone was going to lock you in the vault. He's got kind of a vault keeper vibe. to him. He would lock you in a vault but in a nice way. Yeah. That's a little great in there. This is for your protection. Lock it in there with like a trogdor board game. That's what I could see him doing.

Hmm. Okay. Um, so I wanted to ask like about, you know, you've done, so what is it, May. So you've been on the job for a few months here. I was, you know, listening through some of your episodes and stuff and there's some good stuff in there. You know, you got Canadian moon rover on there, which I was very excited to see about. You had our old friend Tanya Harrison on, some good episodes so far. Any highlights for you so far? What have you, what's been surprising in terms of like, wow, I really enjoyed this more than I thought I did or anything like that? Like, what's been good? It's funny because the moments that I've truly, truly enjoyed are all not recorded, right? It's that moment when you finally shut off the microphone and you start having

those like person-to-person conversations about something that's totally off topic that has really surprised me. As an example, Scott Bolton, who's the PI for the Juno Mission to Jupiter, we're just talking afterwards. And he was telling me about how he and Matt had planned to bring Vangelis on the show together and have a whole conversation about that music, but then Vangelis passed away. And he was like, I still want to do something like that. But, you know, how would you feel about me bringing people maybe jizzah from the Wu-Tang clan onto your show. And it sparked this whole conversation about this whole separate part of his life, which is him and his association with musical artists going to different NASA events holding

concerts. His mother, Michael Bolton. Are they related? That's the connection. You've been missing the whole time. Yep, yep. This is like an office space movie now. Yeah, always those weird moments afterwards where you're having like the deep actual human connections where people can kind of be more vulnerable.

And that's been really lovely. Like the conversations I've had with, you know, Lindy Elkins Tanton, you know, Tanya Harrison, they're just such wonderful humans. And, you know, they're people that like, as someone who's been a space nerd for so long, you see them on the internet. You want to talk to them. You two similarly, people I've seen online so long, but I've never actually had a real conversation. conversation with. And then suddenly you feel like your actual peers. And they were willing to take that call from you because you've got this platform. And it's, it's really cool. But oh, man, I don't even know how to grapple with the fact that like, you know, I went to Yuri's night and

half the cast of every Star Trek show in history just came up and wanted to be on the show. That was wild. How would this go life? That feeling never goes away. So it's good. It's really, it's really nice like that. Yeah. goes away, honestly. No, I think you're right, though, that the off-camera stuff is always lots of fun. I mean, the listeners right now are probably all wondering why we keep making bank vault jokes, and that's because it came from an off-air part of this conversation. This is a really good pre-show.

It was a really good show. There was five minutes of really good content that you all missed, so. Yeah. Luckily, Sarah did not try to turn on the lightsaber until actively rolling. I guess that was maybe my favorite moment of the show of all time. It's funny too because I took out the plug on it so it would be activated before I came on only to have it entered the menu. Much in the way that The Expans is one of my favorite shows because it just made, it was such a realistic view of what that part of the future of the universe will look like. That moment was one of those.

Like, oh yes, that is how bad lightsaber technology will be. It will be barely more advanced than printers. It will just also be a laser sort. Like that's where we're at. So you're out of cyan. It's a green lightsaber. You're on a saying. I was making the jokes earlier in our,

organization Slack chat that I needed to charge the lightsaber. They're just like, yeah, you know, all those scenes of Luke charging his lightsaber. Oh, yeah. They just don't make hyper-grisples the way they use. He's going back into mine again, like he was a youngling. Keep going back in the caves. Is this cable bad? Like, I got to get a different.

for USB cable. He puts it in, never puts it in the right way the first time. USBC would be huge for the lightsaber community for sure. Yeah. Yeah. What's it charge on? It's got a, it's got a, it's it a micro, micro USB? No, actually. It's one of those weird little roundy. A regular DC situation? Yeah. Yeah. That's, it should definitely be a USBC. Super technical term, roundy thing. It's a NIST standard, roundy thing. I think that this lightsaber, I think I purchased it before USBC was actually a new standard now that I think about it.

Yeah, it makes sense. It's been around a while per the intro of Star Wars. Yeah. Surprise the head power. We've got a question in the chat. Are there firmware updates on your lightsaber? No, I don't believe so. What if there's a bug in the menu system?

There probably is. You just got to live with it. Can we talk about why you have Jedi robes? Yeah. And your past experience being a Jedi in real life in places? Yeah. Well, you know, I've always been one of those people that, like, Star Trek was my thing for a long time. I had seen Star Wars as a child.

But, you know, then I met my partner, Dan. And he was one of those people that grew up with Star Wars. Like, that was his jam. And one of these years, we'd always been going to conventions. Our main thing is that we like to cosplay at Doctor Who conventions, because they're awesome. That community is really fun. But one year, he was like, I want to dress up as a Jedi. I want to go to Comic-Con.

Can we do this? And maybe, you know, find one of those organizations. It was actually part of a conversation about volunteering and the organizations that dress up in Star Wars robes like the Rebel Alliance or the 501st and then go to hospitals and, like, you know, talk to kids and stuff like that. So we decided let's do it. Let's get the whole Jedi situation going on. And my first year going to Comic-Con in it, A, don't recommend it because it's really hot out there.

Almost passed out one of those days from heat exhaustion. But at the time, it was, I want to say right, as Ray became like a character that people recognized. And that year there was just like this abundance of little girls dressing up as Ray. And there was this moment I was in line for the bathroom at Comic Con like you do. And these two little girls were both dressed in little Star Wars outfits and they saw me. They're like, oh my gosh, it's a Jedi. And they're like, you need to come with us. And I'm like, we're in the line for the bathroom.

They're like, no, no, no, you need to come. And these little girls drag me out of line. And they pull me over to their mom who is just prodigiously pregnant. She is like about to give birth at any moment. And these little girls are like, we want to know if our little brother. is going to be strong with the force. Can you tell? You know? And I did. I got those little girls. We all sat down. We like touched the mom's belly. And I was like, yeah, the force is strong with this one. You're just going to have to like, you know, guide and protect him. And these little girls are like,

do you know any like cool Jedi codes or anything? And I was like, yeah, we went through. We did the the Jedi code for their little brother. And it was one of my favorite cosplay moments I've had. And I've had some great ones. But those little girls just warmed my. heart. That's amazing. You're in the best place to do conventions too. I mean, it's hard to beat Los Angeles as an area where good conventions with good guests and good content happens, right?

Yeah. I mean, you know, right next to San Diego where all that stuff happens. LA's got a, you know, really bopping convention scene. And then kind of San Jose and everything up north, like the, the anime convention scene up in San Jose is fantastic. Is it? Okay. Oh, yeah, man. Faname, what was interesting about it is I feel like a lot of conventions are almost there.

The problem is they don't stay open late enough. If you keep your convention floor open just for people hanging out, doing jam circles, maybe have some like, you know, theater screens going on all night, those are the moments of like deep connection at anime conventions I've always enjoyed. Because, you know, you don't know what being a nerd is until you're sitting there watching someone addresses Harahisuzumia playing, you know, I don't know, some kind of Final Fantasy song at 2 a.m. That was a chat, GPT line right there. Yeah, yeah.

We can bring that strategy to some of these space conventions. I'm thinking about like IAC and that could use a little bit of living up a bit. Yeah, they definitely flickered the lights on the floor at Space Symposium both evenings I was there to kick us out. It's 455. Time to go. Time to go. Yeah.

Yeah. Hate that. Hate that. Then you've got to do the whole thing of like, where do I go? Where do I drive? How do I get there? Who's there? Should I go hang out that one?

Or do you're going to kick me out of that one? I'm just laughing trying to imagine like Bill Nelson, like showing up to the evening crowd of the space symposium to hang out with whatever the bar scene is there or something like that. It wasn't Nelson, but you'd be shocked. It's always that like almost two in the morning. you're just hanging out and like, is that Jaws Whedon? Okay, all right. Too tired to do anything about it. At that point, you're like, I don't know if I'm making this up.

I'm not going to go attempt to see if I'm making this up or not. Half delirious by that point. Just going to let that happen over in that corner of the bar. It's just a stroke. You've been wearing a costume with too long. So looking ahead to what you want to do next with the show, Planetary Radio. Can you give us any previews or, or, insights into sort of like what's coming down the pipe.

Maybe either for the, you know, just for shows coming up in the back half of this year or any long-term ideas you have. You mentioned some stuff you're working on. I don't know if you can share anything, but we'd love to kind of hear your strategy and things like that. Well, I think what's really cool about the early years of the planetary society is that, you know, one of our founders is Carl Sagan. And he had all of these amazing kind of connections with Hollywood and all of these actors that

were, you know, both passionate about space, but had a big audience. So we're, we're trying to make those connections now with our, you know, advertising strategy. And I want to bring some of those people on. A lot of them I haven't reached out to yet, but like, I want to get Jack Black on to talk about his mom's experience on the Apollo program, right? I want, I want to, you know, delve into all these international missions that need more of a moment, right? And now is a really good, a really good time for that because there are some great space missions going on currently. But I think the Juice mission launching just a little while ago was like our main event. And then Osiris Rex later this year bringing back samples from Asatroy Benu.

That's awesome. But there's not a whole lot else going on in that space. So it's a perfect moment to try to like bring in all of these other international missions and also maybe get a little weird with our subject content. But also, you know, our kind of like strategic framework. for this period and time for us is space for everyone. We're trying to find a way to make the space community more welcoming and accepting of everyone. And I want to create a strategy for bringing people on to talk about, you know, support groups to get into space and the barriers you might face. Or just talk about what space can do for accessibility.

What does it like to be blind on a spaceship? Or, you know, are there things with your body that could be helped? by going to space. There are these like very hopeful forward-thinking topics that we can really like delve into right now. But also just straight up, I would love to start just streaming on Twitch once a month or something, once a week even, you know, or are doing events for our, our planetary radio listeners and our community and hopefully doing some live events as well. I think that would be really sweet. But I'm really excited like, you know, in the next couple days, I'm going to get to talk to Darby Dyer from the Veritas mission. We're trying to

save. We're trying to save that mission to be in us right now. Yeah, we're going hard on that because we need to, right? I mean, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're going to be talking about Veritas in a couple weeks on this show, I think. So, yeah, maybe a tie-in, maybe a planetary society time. We'll see. How it goes. Heck, yeah. Any guest streamers, we know a couple people. Yeah. Yeah. We've done the time on Twitch. Yeah. Yeah. My brother works at Twitch, strangely enough. But, you know, bringing on the voices of science communicators, trying to get, I mean, if I could get Stephen Colbert to come on, that guy is so nerdy about space. Like, there are all of these people who I feel like you might be surprised that they're that deep into space. But it's a great moment to share why they're passionate about it because, you know, space isn't just for the super-sciencey nerds like us, right?

It's forever one. One of my, like, ultimate victory conditions for Off Nominable would be to get Tom Hanks on a year. like, I could retire after Tom. Why have we put zero effort into that then? I didn't know that. It's an ultimate victory condition. We have made zero active effort towards that goal. We have meetings every Monday.

We've never talked about this. Yes, we have. Yes, we have. We have talked about bombing. Tom, if you're listening, and I assume you are. You know, you should reach out to this. Assume you are. He's totally listening.

Yeah, yeah. Somewhere on the multiverse. We have to start going to some cons, Jake. We got to start on a D-D-A-D-O. Yeah. We got to go cosplay. Yeah, I'm in the... As Tom Hanks.

We're only going to cosplay as Tom Hanks characters. Different ones, not even the space-related ones. Just different Tom Hanks characters. Yeah, yeah. Or just, like, have a volleyball that looks like Jupiter that has a little face drawn on it or something. Yeah, there you go. There you go. I love that.

I was I could be that new character from that new movie's got where it's just like the grumpy old man. I could do that one. That would be good. Yeah, you'd be good at that one. The big coat. Which one would I be good at? You'd be good at Big, yeah.

I have no response. Savage, savage. I file a protest. Yeah, yeah. That's cool. That sounds like some good plans, Sarah. You should get, you know what? Here's a, I'll give you a live recommendation.

We should go and find, get an interview with the new, well, besides Tom Hanks. No, Tom X is busy on our show. He's not available for planetary radio. But the ESA's got the new astronaut corps, and they have those new para astronauts. Parastronauts, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Totally working on that one right now.

That really would be. I think that's rad. Like, you know, so they've got different, different kind of abilities for their astronauts in this core. And I'm, like, fascinated by the idea of how ability changes in zero G. Because, like, so many things are upset, like literally upside down. and things are backwards and everything doesn't make sense. And so all of our preconceptions about what is abled and disabled, like are you need to reevaluate every single one of them on different.

I think that's like it's such a cool thought experiment. And like now we get to see an actual real experiment with it. I'm jazzed about that. It's even like this, the fact that there are random humans that are really good at some things and really bad at other things. And we've only sent like 600 people to space. So like there might be some, some vein. of humanity that's just like really good at zero G navigation and can fly around space stations way

fast than astronauts are currently doing and like really good at wayfinding and have like a weird mapping of how they look at spatial awareness or something like we have we just haven't had the big enough numbers in space to actually figure out these weird rabbit holes that we might learn we've been building space stations wrong this whole time yeah yeah yeah yeah because well there's all that stuff happening now you know where we're trying to re reframe how we think about things like ADHD or being on the spectrum and that kind of stuff. Because they've always been historically viewed as like a disability, but then you can you can think about people with ADHD grade in a crisis, right? Okay, so like that's not a disability. That's an

ability. You know, like that's a, so the exact same concept going to to something like space, totally. Like what is it? I don't know what it is. We've got to figure it out. We've got to send some different kinds of folks up there. All I'm saying is I've seen the space station and I feel like I'm better at cable routing than what's going on up there right now. It's a total rash nest. I've had such conversations about that. I've redone my desk a million times and it's never looked like what's going on up there. What has happened?

How many people from different nations are plug in weird cords and this, that, and then leave it there for like 20 plus year. We got these lightsaber chargers that no one's ever seen before. We've got all these USBC ports. Like, what's going on up there? Oh, wow. Then the Chinese National Space Agency sent theirs up there. And you look at it and it's like sleek and has awesome Wi-Fi. But I'm like, I want to see how that grows in in 20 years.

Like I'm tracking that space station solely to see how the cable management comes out in 20 years. Like does it look as wild as the ISS does today. Right. But we need to take those lessons to the lunar gateway, right? We don't want a rat's nest of cables flying around the moon. We have to assume it's getting better, though, because the last days of MIR was worse than all of this combined. You could even get through the hatches on here. There was just like so many cables going through it because they had to run stuff like right through that. They couldn't

close anything if there was an emergency. It's like if there's a fire at all done. When there was an emergency. There were multiple emergencies. Important update from the chat. Bradley says that we Lori Garver is obviously in tight with us at our Hanks numbers down to one Jake. So literally we have not put any effort into this at all. It's achievable. So. Anything is achievable, man. He did Dan Carlin, so maybe you'll come up. Oh, that's another one that we've mentioned many times. Yeah, yeah.

All right. Okay. We have talked about Tom Hanks, by the way. Okay. I feel like I've remembered Carlin more. Carlin is a, that'll be a fun one. It would. Yeah.

Yeah, that's what I'm realizing about this. Like, you know, as much as I thought it would be impossible to get even some of the people that I've gotten so far, like, just reach out, you know? Oh, yeah. Just ask. Yeah. Just ask. People always ask me, like, how do you get that person on the show?

I'm like, I think I just emailed them. Like, that's what I did. I found an email on an old science paper and they were like, sure. Yeah. Yeah. That's the great thing about the space community is that, like, it's a small enough community that even the people at the very, like, upper echelons of, like, the most busy, accessible, accomplished like, you know, the best, I'm putting huge air quotes here, the best people in the

space community. It's still small enough that they're totally accessible. Like, you know, we just emailed Lori Garber like that first time and she's like, yeah, sure, I'll be right there. And then when she came on, and that's just how that went, right? There's nothing crazy about what's happening there. So I love that about space. You can just email the heads of missions and they're like, yeah, how about tomorrow? And you're like, great. Awesome. I remember those moments where it's like, I'm reading a paper and I totally do not get something. And then you just write the head of the paper. And they will literally get back to you in a couple hours with, like, extra data.

It's. Yeah, the scientists especially, you just ask them like, can you explain this to me? They're like, oh, my, you want to talk about the pebbles in Gale Crater? Yeah, let's do it. Let's talk about it. Yeah. I thought weird moment with Scott Hensley. And it was like a paper that had just come out about the recent volcanism on Venus, right?

Robin Herrick and Scott Hensley. And I contacted them for it and they were so excited. And they're like, you're the second person that's reached out to us. Like, this is some pivotal, awesome stuff that you just put out. The volcanoes on Venus, yeah. You know. So, yeah. The reaction we have is like, someone cares about my show.

And the reaction they have is someone cares about my paper. Like, having the same reaction. Someone cares about my entire career. Yeah. I noticed me. Great. Yeah. Hmm.

Hmm. Okay. So about bi-annually, we have to have a show that is basically a big, hour-long advertisement for the Planetary Society. So we should make sure this is also that. Or else. Yeah, or else. Ray Paletta comes to my house with a machete. With a snake. With a snake. Fully licensed snake. A fully licensed snake. And a capybara. Capybara

for snake protection for her I have snake bodyguard Is that part of the licensing It's like only if you have a capy bar The cabby bar I have to watch you do fake stuff for 10,000 hours

Are it even helpful though against snakes Or is it a mongoose Of being a master And then a capi bar I think it's a mongo's right The reason I bring up Capi Bara is because she was on a vacation

recently and the whole time was sending us pictures of Capi Barith. There were great photos. So, I mean, why are you even throwing shade of that? Yeah. That's great. So what I was to say? Okay, so could you, for some people, the listeners who may have never heard of the planetary

society or planetary radio are like, you know, tell them how do they become a part of that? What is the deal? Why become a planetary member? Do the spiel. Do the spiel. Well, you know, we were founded over 40 years ago because we wanted to make sure that space science and exploration had the support that it needed. So we became, over time, the most influential space nonprofit in the world. And we don't have any financial stake in any of this.

We literally just want to help support space missions and learn more about the universe. So if you want to join us, you can go to planetary.org slash join and become a part of our group with our 50,000 members because we're just all over the place doing space advocacy. And our main goals, essentially, are to protect Earth from asteroids and comets so that we can like save our planet, you know, kind of important. We want to explore so that we can find life outside of Earth, right? And I mean, just in general, we're awesome space people. You want to be part of the organization.

That's really what I want to come around to. We're the planetary society. Join us. Yeah. No, you guys are great. As I always say, so I've been a member for a long time. And the reason I know that you're sitting in a bank vault is because, you know, you guys are so open and I just, you know, went to the headquarters in Pasadena when I was there and said,

can I have a tour? And they said, yes, absolutely. And they showed me around and got to see that studio you're sitting in right now. Super open. It's lots of fun and love supporting guys. It's cool, too, because, you know, Bill, Bill and the science guy is our CEO these days. And he just recently helped us install a scale model of the solar system that hangs over our desks. And it's absolutely beautiful.

So if anybody wants to come check out our office, go ahead and email me. You can find me at, you know, planetary radio at planetary.org. And we can get you in here to come check this out because it's awesome. Yeah, yeah, I should say make an appointment. Don't just show up. That was an old-timey thing when I went. But you should try and give them some notice. That was a pre-pandemic kind of layout.

Yeah. Pre-pandemic to show up. Yeah, that's how that goes. And you can see, they have on the wall, they have these pictures of the copy bars framed. They have a scale model of copy bars in the office. Do you still have, when I was there, there was a big, like a, I don't want to say a diorama. It was like a relief, like a 3D picture. What do you call it?

It was like, but it was like the landscape of Mars. I don't know if it was like. Yeah, yeah. It's a Dallas Mariners or something like that. that? Exactly. It's actually a prop piece from one of the first episodes of Cosmos with Coral Yeah, we've got it up on the wall right over as you walk in next to our display from Lightsail, which was our baby spacecraft. It was the first fully crowdfunded spacecraft, something else that our members did. So we've got some really cool artifacts around here.

Part of what we did early on was kind of we were kind of the organization that started that idea of sending people's names to space with spacecraft. So we've got all these cool relics from the early days of like all of our members' names on these things and replicas that we used to send to Mars. Just cool word space stuff people sent us. We've got a whole library in here. It's, you know, it's awesome. Carl Sagan's old desk.

Is it still arranged like you left it? It's like the Einstein desk at Princeton? Nah, no. Bill Nye actually uses it in his office. That's a boss move right there. It's like the plan read Twitter account. It's the same situation. I love this.

I like to imagine that Carl Sagan's got like a secret compartment in there that's like locked and no one can get into it. But if you do get into it, there's like just like the solution to the Drake equations in there or something. You know, like there's all the numbers. It's all filled in. We have the final result. Secretly, I actually made contact with aliens.

Here's what they told me. There's a phone in there that you use, actually. Here's the email address. of the president of alien planet. And much like the plan route account, it's always the current president. Yep. So you call that number and it's the current alien president.

Correct. At alien planet.com. That's social. It's so cool, though. As such a big space nerd who's been a fan of the planetary society for so long, it is so weird and such a privilege to be on this side of it. Because I could just hang out with cool space people all day in this awesome space office.

help people around the world, you know, advocate for the space missions that they love. I truly lucked out in the weirdest, most profound way. And there's literally never a day that I wake up that I'm just like, why, how, how is this real? You know, that's awesome. A fun thing too, because people ask like, do you, are you ever going to go work at a space company or people have, I think said both of us like, hey, do you want to come work at this particular space company? It's like, I don't know, this part's more fun because I get to do all of it. I get to like talk to all of the people and be interested in all of the things. I don't have to go down a single rabbit hole. So there's definitely a benefit to being able to like

just partake in whatever, all the fun parts of like witnessing missions and hanging out with people in real life and yeah, talking about stuff. It's good stuff. Yeah. But you know, next time you guys have a big old party for an Artemis launch or something, I am coming because, you know, Ray got to go to your last one. I'm gel. It was an open invite. You're signed up. I guess she just bailed on everyone else and got a snake licensed to Uber. We were messaging a bunch of the planetary people that night, and it was the same situation as like, can I, they're all thinking, can I leave the Planetary Society party, the place where I work to go to the

random party together, you know. That's the way to do it. Yeah. It's not when they start these streams. It'll be the streamers party. The Offenominal Planetary Society joint party. Okay. Right.

You would that be invite different streamers from different shows on? all like hang out together because you know we're all doing the same work we're all trying to make the world a better place and space too so let's do it the off planetary society mostly just trying to make mostly just trying to make good memes here though yeah this is a meme factory shaped like a podcast it's it's a similar goal though it's similar we influence policy by way of means that that's that's highly effective right i mean i have no proof of that I have no proof of that, but I also have no proof that it's not true. That's true.

Who was it that said? I've tweeted some Bangor Dragon X-L memes that I know have made it into that border. That's true. That has made it into a work. You know at least a couple of workplaces that we have a good line into. So that's a fair point. I made this really dumb video when the ingenuity Mars helicopter kind of rolled out of perseverance. I did this whole little video of the helicopter just been like,

can I go flying now, mom? And the mom being like, no, not until you're done testing. I put all these, like, cute little emoji stuff on their faces. And then I got a message from someone that, like, worked on the perseverance team. And they had shared the whole thing. Amazing. You know, my normal science content did not have that reach. So, uh, memes.

Memes, they get the job done. They do get the job done. Yeah. The JPL, uh, meme Slack channel is, is apparently very good. So, uh, I know I've made it into there one. or twice. And so that didn't come up in the report about psyche. Weird.

The Christmas part did, but the meme channel did not. I think they need to go redo the whole report. Oh, yeah. Well, Jake. Well, that's like,

that's an hour. Got anything to talk about? Do I have anything to talk about? No, I'm mostly getting ready. So you're heading away for a couple weeks here to pay me back for my long vacation. So I'm going to be taken over the rain. So, yeah, next week we have, it's kind of a cool episode.

So we got an author coming on, Jamie Green, who wrote this book called, I'm going to space out on the book. It's about finding life in the universe. So I'll get Anthony to look it up while I keep talking here. But yeah, so it's about a short book just came out last month about, you know, discovering life in the universe. So we're going to have her on to talk about that. And there you go, the possibility of life. That's the one right there. Yeah, and so while Anthony's away, I have my friend Deborahati Das coming on.

She's going to help me co-host with that, which is going to be great. So she was on before. She co-hosted once when you were gone before, Anthony. So it's going to be fun. Yeah, yeah. So that's what I'm getting ready for. And yeah. What about you, Anthony?

You working on anything good? All of the- Squeezing out all the Space Symposium episodes. I just put up the last one today. The final live show from Space Symposium is up. So I didn't want to put them all out on the same day. like, yeah,

people's feed. I spaced them out a little bit. Everyone could have watched on YouTube whenever they wanted, but now they're all in the feed. So the one that I went up today is with Caleb Henry, Peter Beck,

Jonathan Bayliff. So that was a really fun conversation. We talked about state of the industry from like their finance and business perspectives, but also the, all the news that Rocket Lab made at Space Symposium.

So. Yeah. And Caleb almost did math live on stage and then bailed on that. So it was fun. Never do math live. Never do math live. He specifically,

said I'm not doing math live on this stage. Even if it's like 12 plus seven, just never do math live. That was fun. Just mess it up. It's like 23. Yeah, probably. It's probably right.

It's choke, just like a spelling bee. Yeah. Cool. Well, Sarah, this has been awesome. We're so excited to have had you on the show now that you're in the host seat. We hope this is the first of many appearances. Planetary Society employees get open invitation

for this show. So you just let us know if you want to come back on and you're here. All right. I'll be here next week. This has been so fun and thanks for having me on. And I love your guys a show. So it's been an honor and I'm here whenever you need me. We love your show and congrats on the successful takeover. Oh yeah. You did it. You have a send a dad, plan read. Thanks everybody. See you later. Thanks everyone. Bye. Thank you.