Off-Nominal - 183 - Stumbling into Bridenstine Scoops (with Kristin Fisher)

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

Jake and Anthony are joined by Kristin Fisher to talk about her journey into independent journalism with her new YouTube channel, and we’ll probably kick around some news, too, because there’s been a lot, huh?TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeThe Endless Void - YouTubeBiden Administration “Certainly” Supports Artemis Program – SpacePolicyOnline.comForbes on X: “JUST IN: Jen Psaki highlights Artemis Program: We will send “another man and another woman to the moon.”Trump administration removes moon rock from White House Oval Office | collectSPACEFollow KristinKristin Fisher (@KristinFisher) / XFollow 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

CLS and go for main engine, start. Hello, everybody. Welcome back. We made it back. We missed last week. We missed last week. You know, it's a pretty chaotic week in space, beard off nominal at the National Aeronautics and SpaceX Association.

Things are a little dicey all over the place, right? So, you know, we missed out there. But we're back. We're here. We're excited. We've got Christian Fisher with us, returning to the show. It's been a while, guys. Thank you much for having me.

We have this problem with guests where we do this. We just had this conversation before we started the show where we said, how long has it been? I'm thinking, it must have been like three, maybe four months. And no, apparently it was two years since you've last been on. There's two years. It has to. I was pregnant the last time that I was on your show. So it has to be about two years.

To and some change. As usual, we have criminally not paid attention to our friends and had them on the show often enough. I think, Anthony, this means we just have too many friends. That's how I'm going to take away from it. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. It's not anything to do with our scheduling prowess or lack their own. Actually, Anthony, I remember you like emailed me three days after I had my son,

being like, hey, can you come on the show? I have a real knack for doing this. We discovered this recently. There are no fewer than three or four guests that I've emailed like immediately after they've given birth. So, yeah. So you tried. You did try to have me back on.

You know? Yeah. Your emails cause children is what you're saying? Yeah, apparently that's it. No, it's just I have a good sense for knowing when this person will not be available for long enough that we will then not schedule them for two years. So that's how it goes, Jake. Oh, yeah. Listen, we've got a, there's so much going on here.

Kristen has stories to tell us. You've, you've departed the capital J journalism to end up in our lowercase J journalism department. I know. I'm excited. Maybe we can discuss your use of capital Js or lowercase Js. Yeah, I'm excited to be in the brave new world of independent journalism with you guys. You don't get as good of a seat in the press rooms anymore. Yeah, but anybody can apply for a White House press credential now.

So, you know, what are you guys doing, get on it. That is exactly what you're trying to go back to, right? No, definitely not. Unless they were having like, unless they did a space press conference, right? Like a space themed, we knew it was a day. where they were going to announce some big space initiative, I'd do that. If only such a thing may happen in the near future. Something tells me it might.

Yeah, it seems like it. So we've got that. We need to talk about that. There's like 8,000 news stories that we're not caught up on here, Jake. Yeah. But we should start with what you're drinking down there. Got anything good? Both of you are down there.

So whoever wants to start. I was going to be. I'm not worth of all guests. I'll start. I got a Minervoir. Colonial here today, which is a Mexican brand. They do a bunch of different kind of things here. So, yeah, I'm trying to listen to.

I haven't seen this. It's like with those Sekis, what was the brand? Takate, what was the one that you were like? I don't know if you have this up there. A rare obscure brand. I don't know if you heard about it. That one is, though. No.

This one, maybe you haven't heard of. Anything fun over now that you're not, well, maybe, I don't know, If you're still pregnant this time too. I'm not pregnant. Definitely not pregnant. So last time I had a non-alcoholic beer, I think, which was super boring. Now I have a full alcoholic beer, Elysian Space Dust. Oh, yeah.

IPA. I'm going, you know, there's a theme, and I'm going with it. And I really like this beer. So Elysian space dust IPA. That's got like a pretty high alcohol content, isn't it? Aren't me up in the 60s on the one? Shit, really? Oh my gosh.

You're right. 8%. That's getting a great show. Wow. I did not know that. I'm not bringing up the CNN shit until the back half of the show. I'm like really studying this now. Whoops.

I'm flipping the agenda here. Oh, wow. This is so good. I wonder why. I have this yellow one again, Jake. The sip of sunshine. Last week's show got canceled because I had to take my son to the ER. because his eyes were blurry.

Everything's fine. It was very strange. And this week he's sick. So I almost missed another show. But that meant I didn't have time to go out and buy new beer. So I've got the last sip of sunshine. So not at all a very sip of sunshine day. It was like a snow day that was just rain.

It was one of those. You probably had that too. And are you still in the D.C. area, Kristen? Sure I am. Yeah. Pretty sloppy, Jake. Nothing but sunshine here. I'll take a sip of that.

Okay. All right. Now for that, you get to choose where we start, Jake. Well, I mean, why don't we talk about the endless void? I see a thing behind you on your shoulder there. What's going on? What are you working? Tell us what this is all about.

So I am launching. I'm becoming a YouTuber at 41, you know, didn't have that on my bingo card. I am still a CNN contributor. Still do some space stuff for big space events for CNN, but I'm I am launching The Endless Void. It's about 10 days old. And I went with that name because one of the things I really wanted to do more of was kind of explore. One of the things that I love the most about space is just how kind of mysterious it is.

Right? Like there's so many unanswered questions about space. And I really wanted a name that tapped into kind of the mystery, the unanswered questions, but also I wanted something that was broad where I could cover all the things in space. And so what I'm doing is I'm trying to give myself some breathing room, some time to figure out exactly what I want to do with this channel. Right now, starting with a lot of what I know, which is like daily short space news updates. I've been doing primarily shorts right now and kind of editing them to music, which is something that I didn't get to do before. but ultimately I want to go into longer format stuff, podcasting, video podcasting, and also like

longer videos about various space topics. So I could probably learn a thing or two from you guys about it. If you came here for advice, we're lacking. I haven't tried doing a podcast yet. Well, this whole interface, I was taking notes. It's way easier than a video situation. Yes, it is, yes. Most of my advice, here's how this works.

Jake's going to motivate you to do and try things. And then when you feel burnout, call me, because I'm great at telling people to stop things that they don't like doing anymore. I probably have given Jake advice to stop more things than I have to start things. So is that accurate, Jake? You've got to be careful because people are going to start interpreting this as you killing we Martians, right?

Yeah, well, I mean, I'll take that. If that's how it landed, I'll take that. Yeah, no, no. My whole thing is that you need to, like, just to lay out why I may or may not have killed We Martians, but also to transfer some of my opinions, it is 100% like to contrast with where you're coming from, Kristen, right? Big machines, a lot of people. Big capital P process.

Like, there's a way to do things. In this world, there is not a way to do things. And the one aspect that I optimized for is as little friction as possible. if there's ever a moment where you're like, this piece of the process is preventing me from getting more stuff out in the world than just like immediately kill that piece of the process, whether it's, I tried writing a weekly thing and I hate writing, don't do it anymore. I tried doing a weekly or a daily video thing. Don't do it anymore. Do a weekly thing instead and see how that settles out. And that also works in the opposite direction. We used to be a monthly show. And then we were like,

hey, I was quitting my full-time job. Let's do like a weekly happy hour thing. And then we realized, oh, that's actually the show that we do is that weekly happy hour thing. And here we are. again on Thursdays at four, that has become it. So it's like, as an independent person, when it's just you, even if it's a small team, you got to just optimize for maintaining your interest in doing the thing. And that, to me, is removing all friction from the process. Yeah, well, and that's exactly what I mean when I say, like, give myself some time to figure out exactly what I want this to be. Because, I mean, I've been entrenched in mainstream, levy media for 20 years, you know, Like I am very good at producing, you know, 90-second, two-minute, concise packages and really good at doing, you know, live shots of various rocket launches.

But part of the reason I wanted to do this was I wanted to explore topics that aren't necessarily news or at least news in the way that the mainstream legacy media views it. I need like a rush limb-ball sounder every time you start saying that. I need the whole the Rush Limbault sounders for the mainstream legacy media. And just because I wanted to be more creative, right? Like there and have more time for these types of stories to breathe than what you get a lot of times, unless it's like a big catastrophe or, you know, something like that. Yeah. I have, I still notice that this is hard for me to do too. like, because I, my former career was, was at a big company.

I worked at Best Buy for a long time and their corporate operations and stuff. And so like the whole like big structure, big process thing, like I'm very familiar with that. And going independent, like it's still, it was years ago now that I left that. And I still, sometimes I get these like weird funks from just like, I'm kind of like procrastinating because I have something to do and I don't want to do it. And I'm like, oh, maybe I'll, and I have to like grab myself and be like, what do you, What do you want to do today? Like if there was no obligations, what do you want to do like right now or today?

What do you want to work on? And it's like, oh, it's this. Then I just go do that. And then I'm like so much more productive because you're into it. Right. That is I still have that problem like five years later. So yeah, prepare yourself for that. I have moments where I'm like, what the fuck am I doing?

And other moments where I'm like, oh my gosh, this is exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. But this is like independent media. This is where the energy is right now. I mean, it just feels like this is where, I mean, it's how people are getting their news these days. So. Yeah. What are you? Are they like, it's only the big media.

I was just wondering how your astronaut parents would feel about that. My mom was like, you're doing what? How am I going to be able to watch you? and my dad my dad's very anti-authority anti-any sort of boss so he totally got it you never know because that's like the you know their their interface with the media is totally different right like they this might be a question even when you were like I'm going to be a space journalist how they were like oh god and like were they or like one of those or did they get it I don't understand what that early days they were thrilled they were

that I was going to be covering space. They were not thrilled that I was leaving Fox News. They were both big Fox News viewers, and they were like, what are you doing? But I knew what I was doing. But yeah, they liked the change in beat, not so much the change in town. All right, all right. Okay. Yeah, hypothetically, question, around what date was it that you departed Fox News?

Because I feel like, there might have been a particular date tied to that. I don't know. Still day, yeah. It was a few, it was shortly after Biden took office. It's like a January 2020 kind of thing, 2021. It was, it was a few months after that. I think it was like May of May of 2021. Did you only switch up gigs that administration changes?

Is that like your thing? If only I could time it that well. You know, when you're in the mainstream legacy media. There's your sound effect guy. You can find that. You add in sound effects later. Go find it, you know. I don't even know what to say.

Like, what is mainstream media, legacy media? What are you all for? No, I think you got it. I think you. It's kind of like an old and new space thing, right? Like you don't, there are names you can apply for it, but a lot of it is like, you know it when you see it. You know, is that company, has that company been around a while, but they act like a new space company or if they've been around for not that long, but they act like an old space company. Like axiom.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You get that in the media too, where, and even honestly, sometimes, like, media startups do a startup thing, and they act like we need, like, an official newsroom and this many people, and we've got to have these kind of budgets. And it's, I don't think it's about, like, longevity or it's just a total mindset thing. And also, like, Jake was saying, it's, it's like, what is driving the decisions on what you cover or what you do? Is it what you want to do? Or is it what the bottom line needs? And, you know, like, where is it, where is the inspiration? coming from and where is the decision point happening? That's the difference.

Well, and I like your distinction there. And back to your original question in terms of like, why am I just timing this to administration changes? You know, in legacy media, you have almost everybody at, you know, the cable or national level has contracts, right? And your contracts are mine have always been in three-year cycles. So every three years, it kind of gives you, it forces you to really, reevaluate your life and be like, is this what I want to be doing? Am I at the right place?

Am I doing what I want to be doing, covering what I want to be covering? And so honestly, at the end of the Trump administration, four years covering that White House, I was so burnt out on covering politics. It was, I mean, look at why. I'm getting PTSD just watching the first two weeks of this administration. It's like so intense the amount of information that's coming you. And it's it is a really intense thing to cover. And it was just kind of ugly and nasty.

So I was really ready to cover something other than the White House. And not just other than the White House, but like other than politics, I felt like I was, I didn't feel like I was contributing to the best in humanity. And I felt like by covering space, I might be able to, you know, do something that felt a bit more uplifting. So that's not penetration changes. It's tied to contract cycles. The true but boring answer. I know.

Sorry. I was dull. That's all good. That's all good. Take another drink. Maybe the high percent alcohol will make these more exciting. We'll get you there. We'll get you there.

So when you say you wanted to cover stories that are like not normally what you would have covered, like give us a hint on what that is. So like what is the Kristen Fisher content policy for like what you want to talk about and cover and expand more on? Well, things that you weren't allowed to do in the old days. It's not so much about. That should be a story though. Yeah. I mean, it's not so much about being muzzled or censored.

It's about the definition of news, right? And at a place like CNN, they really prioritize breaking news or news that, you know, you have that nobody says. And those kinds of things are, you can do that a lot in politics or even, you know, in foreign policy and things of that matter. But space, you know, there are scoops, but there's not that many scoops, you know. And the scoops are often so incremental that you kind of lose the bigger, more what I think, ultimately exciting picture. And so a lot of the things that I wanted to cover, like perfect example, I think that dark matter, quantum entanglement, things like that, those are topics that I read

an article on them and I get personally very excited about and I want to know more. But when I was working at CNN, I'm like, God, man, how am I going to, how am I going to visual? Like if I go pitch a story on, you know, quantum entanglement or dark matter, they're going to be like, wait, what? And I get that. Those are two topics that, you know, I've been so focused on human spaceflight, human space exploration, and just various, you know, private commercial companies, various types of rockets launching that I want to explore more astrobiology. astronomy and really kind of get into more of the questions that can't be answered. I feel like in news you always have to try to, you want like a nice little bow at the end.

You want to answer the question. And one of the things I love about space is you can't always answer the question. Yeah. Yeah. Covering science especially is like that even the further derivative of that. Like you talk about, you know, they're not being scoops or not being breaking news. like covering science is basically like there's no surprises because everyone has everything that someone like accomplishes is like 10 years in the making and you can just right paper trail

leading up to everything and everything like every advancement it's just a micro step forward and you just build on it and build on it and build on it and so like it's really hard sometimes to like get a paper and be like look they found the this weird chemical in a rock under a thing and I have to now convince you that this is exciting even though I know it sounds super, super boring. And then and sometimes they have like, So what killed we Martians, Jake? Sometimes they have like embargoes first, like science news, right?

Or they'll have like, there's a new paper coming out and they're not, they're going to keep it a secret so they can have like a press release for it. It's always like the dumbest thing because like they're never, ever actually a secret. You just like, oh, okay, it's coming from this institution and this author, you just pull up their, their author history. And every paper they've written for the last 10 years is a lead up to it. You know? And so it's like, okay, they're going to, they've, they've announcing this.

Or you just ask someone, like, you know, they're, this is the silliest thing to cover these embargoes because science is just, science is a process, right? And so you're always just sort of reporting on, it's still ongoing. I guess, working. Everything's fine. It's hard. And then the ones that have embargoes are like the phosphine at Venus that then there was like an entire cycle of, no, no, no, it wasn't that. Okay, well, maybe it was that. We don't know.

Peter Beck still wants to send a mission there anyway, so who cares? just like there's no start there are no starts or ends to a science story that's like the really really troubling part of it right like they it always has been you know percolating for a long time and then even when when you reach a a peak in the story like it's still going to taper out for a long time after that or change or whatever right so then there's never there's never good clean cuts to talk about it right like the water on mars thing was it yeah i mean there's always water in Mars, but then the, was it, R.S.Ls is my favorite one, right? That's like, I don't know if we ever, every time it ends with like, but the next mission is going to be happening now and then we'll know,

and then we'll know, we'll know for sure. So, not that they're leading us on, but that's just like, it's good that there's always another thing. But there's very few papers that are like, and there you have it. We nailed it. Like, we did the thing. We know what's going on with this. So my favorite thing about the ones that you picked, Kristen, are dark matter, quantum entanglement. I have a take that the Big Bang itself sounds like bullshit. Like all these things sound like just stuff we have, as far as we've gotten, and then we kind of like, you know, something else happened.

Dark matters like that, quantum entanglement. I still don't really get how that even could possibly work. I exist. Yeah. Exactly. Like, there is so much more than I want to. It's exactly. It's magic.

And I don't understand it. And I really want to. I want to understand that a lot better. So I'm kind of back to what I was originally saying. I'm literally just going and doing what feels good. Like I did a piece last week on the possibility of billboards and space. And it was, there were other more newsy things, you know, in traditional newsy terms that I could have done that day. But that one just felt the best.

Like that's what I personally was most curious in. And so that's kind of how I'm doing my story selection right now is just, What do I want to make a video on today? Excellent. Best way to do it. Work on the Big Bang for me. That's my strategy now. We support it.

We support that. Big Bank smells to me. It smells like unfinished business. I'm still, this is my take, Jay. What do you not trust in about it? What do you not like? Doesn't it sound like we just are missing a couple pieces of information?

Like, there was nothing, then there's everything that's all going away from each other really fast. Like, that doesn't really make any sense when you think about it. I know that we have evidence that says that's how it works. But like, It makes no sense at all. Well, does any of this make sense?

No, and that's what I'm going. It's like, once we figure out the basics, like, there is gravity or stuff is round if it gets, if you put enough of it in one spot, and then if you get it even more than that, it like turns into a star. I can, all of that tracks. And then we get to these further extents, and it's like, well, what is it, dark matter is, like 95% of the mass of the universe or whatever. And it's like, well, that just seems like you just missed something earlier on in research.

They all, the ultimate version of this all sound like pretty sure. that's not going to be how it shakes out in 300 years from now, but right now that seems pretty good. And I guess I just have to be okay with that as somebody who's going to live like hopefully 100 years. It's like the Earth is flat pretty soon. But even that one, like we could look and be like, oh, the moon is round and Mars is round.

Like we probably aren't also, we aren't just a flat piece of paper or whatever with an ice wall. But these other ones just feel like, I don't know. It doesn't make any sense. I believe, and this is the thing. I believe it. Everyone that's out there that's doing this research, I believe you.

That is my point is I fully believe you, but I feel like we're just not there yet. So, you know, there's a whole theory of big bangs that are like, hard proof? No, I'm not even one of those people.

I'm just like, it just feels like, I don't know, you know, there's that other, what's the other theory? Yeah, there's the other theory where like,

I have to look this up if this is even an actual thing or like just some stupid Reddit thread, but wasn't there like a, what happened? What if like inside every book? black hole was like the start of a new big bang. And when the, when a black hole began, that was like the input to then what was creating the universe with like microverses. I forget what this

theory was. This was a thing that I read about, I don't know, 20 years ago. So foggy memory, but this is why I did planetary science and not astrophysics. Yeah, man. I always say rockets and politics is where I keep it. And, uh, rockets and politics. That's been, that's been my wheelhouse for the last several years. So just looking to broaden the doubt. I'm glad you were taking this step into the thing that I'm apparently a major, like, religious doubter on, I guess. I don't know. It's fierce. You want the doubters. What aren't they telling us?

Anthony's calling out Big Big Bang. I love that you're a big bang hater. The Big Bang is bullshit. Yeah. I didn't expect that from me today, Anthony. I don't know. Right up there with the Maryland. snake. This is like the horseshoe theory though, right? Like I'm coming, I have arrived at that take, but I come at it from like, believing it so extremely that it, then I'm like, well,

then what, you know? I'm just looking for that next, the next thing. So, anyway, that was a weird rabbit hole to go down. I like rabbit holes. That's, that's the other thing about this. This whole, I'm so used to having to do quick sound bites, 90 seconds, keep everything nice and tight. These nice long-winded conversations. This is great. This is so fun. Let's see you. You could go on forever.

Yeah. That's a good thing. Jake has a whole theory about Johnson Space Center that we've elaborated on over months on end here. So we have our own weird conspiracy theories. So we'll see what you come up with. Like where you take it, you know? God, I mean, what's your one? What's your one?

My one conspiracy theory? Yeah, it could be space or not. I mean, everybody's got one. Your space hot take. Yeah, UAPs. Are you a UAP? I think aliens are real. Hell yeah.

I think there is, I think there, it's another thing I want to cover more of. UFOs, UAPs, what the fuck is going on? The drones. I have, I have so many questions about that. I have gone down that rabbit hole and I have become a bit of a UFO, UAP conspiracy theorist, guilty. Can you do a piece with Tom DeLong? And is he still doing that thing?

We got to figure out how to get Tom DeLong. We tried to get him once. We tried emailing them once. It didn't wake up. Really? Didn't happen. But if you still have a CNN Network's email, then maybe you can get Tom DeLong. Yeah.

I don't. I got they killed my email. Turn off the email. Yeah. Bummer. Yeah. That's the other. I mean, I have no email, no slacks.

That was one of the biggest changes was, you know, when you're in, that world, you have, I mean, you are so well connected. Even when you're sleeping, there's other people that are well connected. So the second you wake up, you know if you've missed anything in the space world while you've been sleeping because somebody else has let you know. On the independent side of things, that was probably one of the most, that first day where the email was shut off and I had to give back my phone. It was like, oh, what? Like, you have to hold all of that infrastructure on your own so that you can track it and monitor it. That's been. one of the biggest changes actually.

That's the thing that is tough is like having the the first paragraph of your email having to explain like I do this thing and it sounds kind of weird but I promise I'm legit right. That's always the first paragraph of our email reaching out to people is like this over credentialing and I could I and that's cold email someone important and you're like hey do you want to come on YouTube and drink beer with us and just like okay I'm actually I have a job you know like that's like I imagine a lot of people are reading it like that right? Yeah, but y'all have like 130-something episodes of this. They can go and anybody can go and see this and know exactly what you guys are about.

Once you get to that point, right? But 10 episodes in, you're like, I don't know, man. Like, do you want to come hang out with me for a little bit, right? But that's, and that's us. That's cold start, us, right? Like, that's what I'm saying is I don't know for you being in the world from Fox News to CNN if, like, you never thought about credentialing in a way that was helpful, right? And has that been a consideration for you of like, now what do I do?

And like, how do I, I don't know, sometimes people ask you for a media credential. And Jake and I never know what to put in that. We like, make a PDF and submit it. And we're like, I don't know, is that count? Maybe you know what that is because you used to have one? Like, what was it, you know? What do we put in that film field? What do we?

No, I've totally. Can you give us one? I don't know. Right now I'm doing the Endless Void slash CNN. So, like, people are like, you know, so far. that has been working. But I'm going to try that. I'm just going to start putting that in there and see what happens.

No, slash CNN specifically, whatever. Oh, slash CNN. They're spending their money elsewhere. They're not probably searching out the lawyers for me. Yeah. But no, that's been, but it is. It's something I've like totally taken for granted. Just the backing of a big media company like that.

The name does carry a lot of weight. Did you have any? But it can also get you in a lot of trouble. Like SpaceX will never, ever, ever, ever, ever talk to you if you're you know i mean that's you notice any differences yeah yeah they just send you a poop emoji but did you notice any any difference from when it said fox news to then when it said cnn like both in sources but also i see within the media world it was a little like whatever you take you take the jobs that are available it's not a big deal but like was there any weird in

terms of access or just the fact that you went from like the thing that people would point to the most right to the most left or whatever at that time right oh yeah there was some there was some weirdness for sure. But, you know, it was kind of coming to a, like my time, like I said, my time at Fox was coming to a somewhat natural end. And in fact, I actually have a good little story for you guys about how part of the reason I was able to make this transition from Fox News to CNN, because I would say, you know, I don't think there's a lot of people that have made that, made that jump, you know. I can't think of any. So, Chris Wallace. Tell no, who used to.

Yeah, yeah. Chris Wallace did. All right, let me have a sip of my beer before I get into this story. How's he doing these days? I don't know what he's up to. He's left CNN. Yeah. I think he's delving into some independent media as well.

It's all the rage these days. Bill O'Reilly, I think still has got a podcast, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's beginning of, you know, it's 10 days into the Biden administration. 2021, right? I'm a Fox News, White House correspondent, and I am burnt out on politics, and I really want to cover space. And my agent has been talking to CNN and is trying to, you know, somebody sent, somebody asked my agent, you know, what is it that, you know, if Kristen comes over here, what would you like to do?

And so my agent calls me one day and he's like, hey, I'm about to go into this meeting right now at CNN. And they want to know what it is you'd want to do. Can you just write like a few sentences about what you're, you know, what you're, what you'd like to cover? And I was like, yeah, Tim, I'm, I'm, I was literally about to walk into the briefing room. And he's like, yeah, I know just like a few sentences. Just jot it down. You're like, about dark matter and a few sentences. Like, how could I do that?

I knew I didn't want to do. politics anymore. I knew I wanted to do space, but I wanted more than like five minutes to be thoughtful with this. But I was like, all right, shit. Like I literally have five minutes. So I sat down, bang something out about like wanting to cover space, but I was all, I knew I need to like stay in D.C. So I was like, well, we'll talk, you know, we'll do space and defense, space force. It's all the rage now. So, you know, to tie that in. But literally jotted this thing down in five minutes, right? So I email it to my agent. He's like, great. I'm go into this meeting. I walk into the briefing room, sit down, and I'm thinking about, you know,

I haven't really prepped for my questions. I'm like, man, like, what am I going to ask about today? And of course, like, immigration was a big deal at that time and working for Fox. I, I'm sure there were people at the network that wanted me to ask about immigration. And there were other things that I should have asked about. But I had this. Gigantic pandemic ruling the world, hypothetically. There were other things, but all I could think about was this like three sentence thing that I just drafted to CNN. And as I'm sitting there and it's taking a while for Jen Saki to call on me because I work for Fox News, I'm thinking, I'm like, what? I really, like, I'd really like to cover space more. And I'd cover space a lot for, you know, for Fox in the White House role.

So when Jen Saki got to me, I asked a question. very simple about Artemis. And all I said was, you know, I asked a question about the Space Force first because it had been asked about the day before. And then my second question was about Artemis. And I said, you know, something to the effect of what's the Biden administration's plan? Are you guys going to keep the Artemis program intact? And Jen Saki said, you know, I'm going to have to get back to you on that one.

She wasn't sure what it was. We didn't talk about Artemis in my quick meeting before this briefing. Well, no, on our minder. Yeah. But this whole question came about because I was simply trying to convince CNN that they needed to hire a space correspondent, that space was a really big deal and that I should meet a person to do it. Like, that is why I asked the question. And the next day, Jen Saki walks into the briefing room and the very first

thing she says is, I'm so glad Kristen's in the briefing room today because I haven't answered her question. And she said, you know, we have looked this over and we've decided that we are going to keep and retain the Artemis program. I remember that. I remember that. Foll pruddle of it. And I was shocked, right? So I get done. And I'm walking out of the briefing room. I've been out for like 10 minutes. And I get a full. phone call from the former NASA administrator, Jim Bridenstein, and he's like, oh, my God, you saved the Artemis program. He was like, I can't, I, he was like, you single-handedly saved the Artemis program.

Now, to be clear, I wasn't saying whether the Artemis program should or should not be saved. I was just asking a question. He's just trying to get a job at CNN, you know, like, that's all you're here for. Yeah. I'm bringing this story up now because somebody, and I'm not going to name any names, but somebody wrote a book and said that the reason that I asked that question was because Jim Bridenstein called me before that briefing and that I was essentially a, I was essentially in bed with NASA and in bed with a Brinstein pawn.

Yeah. I was a Bridenstine Stein pawn and that he had called and given me the signal. like now's the time. The directive. Space Policy Directive 7. Ask about Artem. And this is it. This is your moment. And look, like, as a journalist, that is so insulting.

Like, that is so offensive. It's been a while since this has been out, and I've decided to share this with you guys. That's so good. And I'm now free to say whatever the fuck I want. I love this. But also, the subtext of this, though, by the way, that the, that the, that, that, that, you got a job at CNN by putting the Biden administration on the spot as a Fox News correspondent is exactly backwards of what you would think is the storyline. And I love that. And I'm not saying

that that question is what got me the job at CNN. But it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, there's a line through that, right? Like, it helped. Because then that email went, that email went to whoever it was at CNN and then they looked you up and they were like, oh, wow, she made a lot of noise in the last day. Yeah, right for the space stuff. She's good at the space stuff. Right. Exactly. So. So it was just, so I'll wrap this up. But it was the kicker here is that the person who wrote this book, nobody ever called me to ask me my side of the story or what actually happened.

I was, you know, I feel like that is something that should have been done before you make an accusation like that. But the kicker is this person's publicists sent me emails when the book, came out asking me if I wanted to promote the book on CNN. And I was like, have you guys even, have you guys read the book? Because it doesn't say the nicest things about me. So there you have it. I've set the record straight. Hmm.

All right. Listen, if there's two people on the internet. Go on. Say it. Jake. What are you thinking? Jake, she is welcome in the club of stumbling into scoops. This is what we do.

We stumble into scoops. Stumbling into a. Brianstein scoop. That's usually our bit. I'm just, I'm actually, I'm thinking back to it. So the first time that we met Jim

Bridenstein at IAC in Washington, we like went to the meeting room to talk to him. And like before like we had done any introductions like everything, the very first thing he said, we just like, did you listen to the talk I just did? I'm trying to figure out how we can raise awareness about everything we're doing and get to more people more.

Like all he could think about was this like, getting the message out rather than the actual specifics of it. And so now I'm just kind of laughing at him like four years after that calling you. Like, I just watched the press meeting where you said the thing. We're doing it. We're getting it. One track line. He's the same on either end of the of the action.

Yeah. That's really funny. And the irony now is that, you know, at the, at the, Just looking at it, you would think it's far more likely that the Biden administration coming in would have killed Artemis because they were killing every other, you know, Trump initiative. So, you know, the thinking was, you know, of course they'd kill Artemis, right? And the irony is that now, here we are and Trump's going to get into office, the guy that started the Artemis program. And now we're having all these conversations about who is he going to keep Artemis or are we going to switch rockets or what's going to happen? Do you think that's a legit concern or do you think this is latent, like, space policy, PTSD that every administration change leads to major upheaval?

I mean, I think anything is a legit, I think anything is on the table right now. I mean, the first few days of this administration have kind of shown that, I mean, it's, it's 20, it's January, February, 2017 all over again. I mean, anything can happen. It's the wild, wild west. I do think, you know, I think they're going to have a decision to make. Like what's the priority here? Is the priority longevity, you know, or, you know, something like, do you want to go for something that is ultimately going to be the rocket of choice in terms of just affordability and size

and all that? I mean, do you just completely reverse course and put all? put everything in starship now. But if you do that, you really run a risk of, you know, letting China beat you to the moon if that is something that the United States really cares about. I mean, I think it's, it really comes down to a timing thing. And I don't, you know, I think everybody, anybody who knows anything about space knows that SLS is wildly unaffordable and not sustainable.

But I know a lot of astronauts, I know there is, you know, some thinking. among the astronaut core where it's like, you know, so, okay, so maybe we just do Artemis 2 and Artemis 3. Do you want to do that if there's no Artemis 4, 5, and 6? Like, is there even a point to that? Yeah. We're just making a new gene surname is all we're doing there. Right. And maybe the point to that is just to, you know, get there as fast as possible. But, you know, I think the, I think the administration has a real, a real reason to really look at every option on the table. And I think they are. I have my you're you're touching on like my my current like SLS take because like after

we were talking how was it like a decade of covering this now Anthony we've been covering this rocket for so long I'm like starting to get radicalized on it and I think that like so I use an argument a lot more it's like look we know we know that the rocket is expensive and it's slow but it's what we have and if we don't want to set the program back and we don't want to lose to China and like if you want to keep the momentum and we don't want to cause a lot of disruption, this is your option, right? And I've heard that a lot spoken as like one of the, that's one of the main defenses, honestly, if we're talking about it, that saying like not moving it. And I've decided that that is complete BS. I'm fully off that truck because I'm just like, you know,

I think canceling it and doing nothing gives you as much progress as spending the money and doing half a crap thing. To me, that is like not, you're not getting any value out of that. And I think it may as well just give them money to the treasury and let them do something else with it at the point. So I've decided that there's no, there's no progress lost if you're not making progress. And so I'm done with it. Nice.

Hell yeah. You're done with SLS. Yeah. I, there's, I've no longer like, all the, all the good arguments for SLS, even if they're like not enough together to justify its existence. I've seen like little pocket areas that make a little bit of sense. Those have pretty much all disappeared for me. Now there's just like, instead they're being like 30% of a good idea, there's now zero

percent of good idea. So what do y'all think's going to happen? Now I'm curious what y'all's hot take is. I mean, is, are Trump and Musk going to, you know, kill SLS? I don't know. I, it's tricky. This leads to our pre-show conversation about several unhinged emails I've received about me being required to go on and make statements about Elon Musk and his current activities,

which is the whole thing, right? I think, like, you can pick off, oh, he's doing this USAID thing because they were investigating SpaceX. I don't know what the headline was on that one that I read, but that seemed kind of odd. The whole package, right, it certainly feels like to roll it back a little bit, right? We had Tim Fernhulls on right around the election, I think, Jake, and he, and he, had that nice piece about like how did Elon end up so MAGA effectively was his was his piece of like how did we get here which I thought was awesome and very explanatory of like the path that we've led to

and the Democratic Party's rejection of Elon Musk over the last couple of years and what that amongst other things have led to him being increasingly dark MAGA it certainly feels like he sees this as his like best last chance to get the amount of money necessary to do a Mars program in his lifetime. That's how it reads to me. And I can't shake myself from thinking that. That like, this is it. He's spending all the political goodwill and political cash that he has to see if he can

make this possible. And maybe he's down this rabbit hole of like Doge and all the other parts of the US government because he actually legitimately thinks that like this is a existential threat to the environment that he operates in. And I would believe that if that's what his vibe. is. But on the space side, it feels like he might also spend that political equity to give it a shot. Like Starlink was supposed to fund the Mars program, but what if you could gussy up $10 billion in the next four years? Could you do it? Could you do it if someone gave you $10 billion in the next four

years? And if this is his best shot at doing that, then like, like, maybe that's the whole thing. Maybe that's it. And so if you do that, then what happens to the moon? Do you do moon in Mars or do you just do Mars? That's one of the pieces that I'm really curious about right now. Because, okay, here's a little bit of reading the tea leaves. Trump had the moon rock that was in the White House in the Biden administration. There was like a piece of the moon.

Had it removed? Why? Get that thing out of here. Is it? like did they, were they just making space for something else? Did they not like it? Yeah, what did he replace it with? I sold a picture.

Or are they like, you know, screw the moon. We're doing Mars. That's too many tea leaves for me. I can't do that. Come on, Jake. Let's look, I'm pulling this picture up. What do they replace it with? Because there was some vase.

I thought that's what we're doing here. I thought this is like the beauty of independent media. We can just speculate and rip and not have to pack it up with any facts. Oh, hell yeah. We're going on. Right. Yeah. Let's do it.

Hold on. It was some dumb vase that got replaced. What was this thing? The 8.5% Elysium is kicking in. The 8.5% Elysians kicking in, guys. Collectspace.com has this giant X over the moon rock, which I love. And then what does this scene depict? Anyone recognize this vase?

It looks like some sort of old, like American history painting or something. Yeah, it looks like a Boston Revolution era kind of thing. Uh-huh. Yeah. Knowing, given the rhetoric of this administration, it's probably something to do with like conquering the West. Or surrounded by the writings. It's surrounded by the writings of Washington.

Yeah, it's volume 26 and 27. What happened between those volumes? It's key to figuring this whole thing out. Let's see if they have what this was. This daze, man. This phase. Oh, dear. Yeah.

Search this for, no. You know you're going deep when you're on collect space. Yeah. down some rabbit holes there. Nobody knows what this vase is. Nobody else, like, I was intrigued by this. Yeah. You know, I'll look at what collect space is saying.

Oh, you've returned it to NASA. In fact, that's what Gizmodo says here. That's fun. Maybe you're reading too much into it. And really what it is is that Isaacman wanted it in his office. There's been no Isaacman. stuff, right? Like, we're very distracted by the other confirmations.

No, we don't even have a date yet. We don't even have a date yet. Is there like a priority? Like you do, you do Secretary of State, Secretary of, yeah, the important ones. NASA's like the bottom of the list, right? Yeah. I mean, maybe in this administration, it would be higher up. But, I mean, I think Bridenstein was confirmed really late.

Like, super. I have to say, it was like June, a year plus. Yeah. Okay. I don't think he was nominated until, oh, my year plus. almost a year into the administration. It took a while. We had sleepy Lightfoot

in there for a long time. Jake and I were just roasting on the show and then got into an... Over and over. We were in an elevator at IAC with just us and Robert Lightfoot. We were like, do we bring it up or not? You don't bring it up.

No. You just talk to him to drink. We weren't riding to the rooftop bar at that one hotel, but we did not go drink it with him. But he just is. Speech is so sleepy. We invited them, but he said no.

We did, yeah. Yeah. He said, he said, what else ratio? No. Yes to no ratio. Very, very high on the nose. We have a sense for when someone will be a yes and, uh, yeah, yeah. We only, we only make the yes requests most of the time.

Sometimes even inviting people on this show is a crapshoot. We're like, I don't know, are they, is it going to be a fit or not? And we try to sell it out. So. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, man. I can't figure out what this vase is, but we're going to, if anyone out there knows about the Oval Office vase that replaced the moonwalk.

Fia. Yeah. I want to know what the other side of this vase depicts. Yeah. Now, this is going to be my next video, right? I'm going to have to, we're going to go down the rabbit hole with the removal of the moonwalk. You should do all of the space memorabilia that was ever in the Oval Office and then try to track, like, how meaningful or non-meaningful those were.

Where it went. Where it went after that. That's a good idea. Yeah. That's a good idea. I like that. Did the bushes have any space stuff? I don't know.

Good question. Yeah. Who knows? Don't know. Well, I found the Jen Socky clip, by the way. Should we play this? You found it? Wow.

Yeah, yeah. I found the Jen Soki clip. Should we do this? See, this is what I need to learn. Yes. Go for it. Let's play this thing. It's called many monitors.

Kristen, who's back today again, asked a great question about the Artemis program, which I dug into, and I'm very excited about it now, to tell my daughter all about it. So, for those of you who have not been following it as closely, through the Artemis program, the United States government will work with industry and international partners to send astronauts to the surface of the moon, another man and a woman to the moon, which is very exciting, conduct new and exciting science for future missions to Mars, and demonstrate America's values. To date, only 12 humans have walked on the moon. That was half a century ago. The Artemis program, a way... She's reading this like a school report.

...the opportunity to add numbers to that, of course. Lunar exploration has broad and bicaramial support in Congress. Most recently... Not excited at all to read this. Omnibus spending bill. And certainly we support this effort and endeavor. Why don't we go to you first, Arlene? And then you didn't even get the question. I know. What the hell? I know.

Well, you have to remember two days prior, she had just made a joke about the Space Force. And it was like roundly panned. You know, she made a joke like, is that even a real thing? Kind of kind of thing. This was repentance, this answer. Exactly. Got to make sure you. Did you, so that day, did you ask a follow up to that?

I don't remember. I don't know. I don't remember. What did you do when she came out and was reading that very prepared near hostage letter about Artemis? That TikTok with a stitch of that thing. I couldn't believe it. I was emailing my producers being like, because I would always leave the briefing room and then go right out to our live shot location to talk about whatever the topic of the day was. And I guarantee you I'm emailing my producer being like, holy shit, she's talking about Artemis.

I'm now talking about this. And they're like, no, you're not. Shut down. If it's as exciting as she made it seem, you are not covering this. Yeah, I know. I know. But it's so fascinating now knowing what was going on behind the scenes in that 24-hour period, you know? Like Jim Bridenstein, as you say, who had, you know, made so many friends.

Your puppet master. Your puppet master. Right. The guy that told me exactly what to do. And I bowed down and listened to his every request. they were able to really get in touch with Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor, and were able to really convince him just how important Artemis was, and it was through him that he was able to get to Jen Saki that this whole statement was able to get out in 24 hours.

I mean, listen, the Space Force thing this many years on is quite interesting, because the nominee, by all reporting, the people that Elon has had a hand in picking nominations, for also includes the Secretary of the Air Force, who is a very spacey kind of guy, which is the first time that we're going to have, I always make the division between the plane people and the space people and the space people have someone who's going to run the show. So that will be interesting. Like, what if now the Air Force is like, we should get these space force people out of our department and they should be their own thing?

Will that be the, because that's the issue the first time. The reason I was bummed the first time around was that the space force is still under the Air Force, and I thought that should actually be its own thing. Yeah. But maybe now the plane people will be like, get these space people out of our branch of the military. Yeah. I mean, that's something that they're still, like, fully separating. That's still, like, a huge part of the space force.

But also, I just find it fascinating that five years in, you go and you listen to some of these top generals speak. And they're still saying, like, they're number one. are one of their top issues right now still is people just don't know what they are don't believe that they're real not just like members of the public but members of congress you know five years in um i asked somebody i was like what what what can you guys do different what can we do is you know space and science communicators to um i don't know here she goes jake taking orders from the politicians again, you know? I know. But really, what,

like, what else? I don't understand how people don't know what the Space Force is and what it does yet. Do you blame Steve Carell by any... Totally. Stretch, yeah. That was a shit show. It was a horrible. The fact that... The fact that that Netflix show was out at the exact same time that the Space Force was established.

It was awful. It was a truly terrible show. And I think Steve Carell, that should be a note on his Wikipedia page forever that he did this completely terrible show. blemishing an otherwise dealt a career. I've never watched it. I've never seen it.

It's awful. I think I made it halfway through the first episode. Yeah. I think we both quit at the same time. 59% tomato meter. I'm surprised that's even north of 50. The Space Force thing is funny because the, I think the big problem, one of the big problem with it is that the name sounds silly even though it isn't.

Because like it's, it is no sillier. an Air Force. Like it's literally, if you had a formula for making military division names, it's the same formula where they operate plus force. Like that's literally, but something to do with space makes it sound like it's a made up science fiction. Like, you know, oh, that's what the, that's what Darth Vader's troops are called, Space Force, you know, like. Well, and the fact that they were called Guardians and then their like insignia, didn't it like really resemble Star Trek? I think it was Star Trek. Yeah.

There were like a few similarities where it was like, yeah, yeah, that feels really Star Trek-y. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the initial insignia had the same sort of like kind of like lopsided Chevron sort of situation, right? The Star Trek had? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that.

Mm-hmm. A story in history. Wow. Okay, well, we're wrapping up here. So, Kristen, how? How do we find the endless void? And is there a preview of upcoming content we can get? Like what's coming down the pipe that we're going to be excited with you like?

So you guys have it right there. Thank you. YouTube.com slash at Kristen dash Fisher. That's where you can find all my latest videos. I've really been working on shorts predominantly right now. But coming down the pipeline, I have a longer explainer on Osir's. Cyrus Rex and the asteroid sample that they just revealed its findings on, but also what that means for a theory that I've been very interested in, panspermia, this theory that, you know, life on Earth was seated from asteroids or meteorites or comets. So I have that one coming down the pipeline.

And we'll also have my first video podcasts coming up, like what you guys are doing. I'm not ready to announce my first guest yet, but it's going to be good. It's probably Brian's son. Jim Brainsign. Yeah, it's probably Jim Bronson. You joke. I'm having on my other show next week, so this is going to look weird when it comes out. Or a guest to the Brideside pick.

He's on the show next week. No, no, the other Miko, the main engine cutoff show that I do is he's coming on there next week. That's great. So he's the guiding hand of all of our content strategy. Wow. When I told you that I had a story to tell. little did you know. It would all weave in so perfectly. So it's not him.

No, it's not him. Maybe. It could be. I don't know. We're all just operating in the Bridestein continuum, so. Until Artemis is canceled. Until it's canceled. Yeah. Because the Biden administration made it a DEI initiative. So that's probably the biggest threat, honestly, is now related to that. So is Artemis still Artemis? Like, what if they just keep the name Artemis, but they scrap the architecture and scrap the destination and say

Starship Mars. Is that still Artemis? Well, you can't name a program after a lady anymore. That's not allowed. So we have to come up with a different name just for that reason, right? I hadn't thought of that. You're right. Yeah, it's a lot of twin sister. I can't have that. Yeah, what would the name be? Bring back Aries.

It's going to be some stupid SpaceX names. It's going to be like, you know, like, Yeah. Some bland nonsense. Yeah, I can't even produce those stupid stuff. Starship Super Heavy is a really badly named launch vehicle. I don't think we've ever talked about this. SLS is any better.

They're all bad. They're all bad. The problem was we wasted Aries on that program. And here we are all these years later. And Ares I, Ares 1, Aries 4, Aries 5. That was cool branding. And it was just the worst program. Yeah, it's a bummer.

Well, that's what we got. What's doing on here next week, Jake? Thanks guys for having me. Next week we're going to dig even deeper into politics, Anthony. We're going to go real deep. We're going to talk with Casey Dreyer. He's come back on our old friend. He's been doing a ton of work with like doing like the hard work of like reading all the

executive orders and then trying to figure out which parts of NASA are going to be like actually affected by and which it was. you know, like there's a lot of like, there's a lot of like good journalism to do and like digging into that kind of stuff. And he's been doing a ton of it. So he's probably very tired and we're excited to give him a break from that. Yeah. Are we going to give him a break from that? I feel like he's. No, we're going to make him. We're going to make him work. That's the point of bringing him on. It's funny. We had him on and just talked about like Star Wars, you know, Rogue One or something

the whole time. I think that was my email. It's like, you're probably very busy right now, but that's exactly why we want to talk to you. Yeah, man. Also, my birthday next week. This is the first time we're doing show my birthday. And also, maybe the Eagles victory parade. So we'll see how that goes. Go birds.

Go birds. Go birds. That's all you got. I just say it now because I don't care who wins. I really, I really don't. But I hope for you guys that the Eagles win. I mean, they're all saying. Good luck.

You care a little bit. All right, y'all. Kristen, you're the best. Bye. Thanks so much for having me. you want. Please don't make it two years again. It won't be two years. Promise.

Okay, great. Good news. Okay. See y'all. Bye. Thanks, everybody. Bye.