Off-Nominal - 75 - Four of Us Married Each Other

Episode Date: September 2, 2022

Jake and Anthony are joined by Emily Calandrelli, speaker, writer, and Emmy-Nominated Host of Emily's Wonder Lab, to talk about the Brooke Owens Fellowship, which is just about to start recruiting the next class of students, and everything else she is up to lately.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 75 - Four of Us Married Each Other (with Emily Calandrelli) - YouTubeBrooke Owens FellowshipPatti Grace Smith FellowshipMatthew Isakowitz Fellowship ProgramNASA Academy - WikipediaJason Major on Twitter: “Found this photo in my files of the @NASASocial group in front of the Atlantis building at @ExploreSpaceKSC after EFT-1, the first test flight of the @NASA_Orion vehicle. We even had an actual astronaut in there!”Apogee of Fear!–NASA VERSION. Written & produced by Tracy Hickman, Directed by Richard Garriott - YouTubeSubmit questions for Off-Nominal TriviaFollow EmilyEmily Calandrelli (@TheSpaceGal) / TwitterAmazon.com: Emily Calandrelli: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, KindleStay Curious and Keep Exploring: 50 Amazing, Bubbly, and Creative Science Experiments to Do with the Whole FamilyFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterOff-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

TLS and go for main engine start. Hello, everybody. Hi. It's good to see you after, you know, it's seeing you in person, Jake, but we're right back here to the virtual streams. So how you doing down there? You're right? I'm surviving.

I'm surviving. You know, I got eaten alive by mosquitoes last night, and my ankles are a disaster, so hopefully they're all healed up by the weekend. Well, it's bizarre. I come from a place with tons of mosquitoes, and I don't know how it got worse. I didn't think anyone could be worse, but here we are. Florida for you. That's how it goes.

We really threaded the needle on this one, Jake, because we booked our dear friend, Emily Calangeli here weeks ago when NASA was not, you know, planning on doing a launch, and we were like, well, we'll see how that goes. And whether everyone's in Florida, whether we're at the Space Center looking at the countdown, but we are not, and we're just nailing this. So, Emily, how are you doing today? I'm doing good I am thankfully not

in Florida waiting for a launch I will be comfortably watching from my home so I feel for everybody who went down on Monday and now has had to make the decision as to whether or not stay for another week plus but good for you it's going to be

a cool launch when it happens One of the two of us flew home on Tuesday yeah one of the two you were there too I was I we had went down my best friend from college getting married in Orlando Monday night so I was like this timing it's perfect it's great but then I just flew home because I was like I can't can't do that yeah it's a long time

it's a long time but anyway Jake you're going to be there until no end of the weekend and so we'll catch your flower stories next week because I'm sure you got a bunch yeah I'm committed I'm here until it either goes up or it goes backwards so it's yeah we're going to figure it's it has to move in some direction and then I will leave. Can we start off by asking Jake, which of the 900 beers that were left in the fridge when I left the house are still with you right now? So this is the story because everyone who came on the weekend just for one night,

like literally like there's like everyone came and they bought 12 beers and they drank two and then they flew home. And so I have this beach house rented and there's like I cannot drink all this beer. It's like out of control. You have some backups coming this weekend, I think, right? So yeah. So if you're in if you're in Cape Canaveral and you want to hang out with me and drink some beer for free, please send me a message to my own. It's your chance. But yeah, so I don't know who brought this, but this thing is this enormous can zillow. And look at this. It just has handwritten moon juice on it.

What is this? I was looking at that all weekend. I was like, I'm not, I'm not touching that thing. I don't know. And this is like this is 32 ounces. This is like, it's heavy. Like it's a lot. heavy. Yeah. Yeah. But I was like, I tweeted about it. It weighs less on the moon. Significantly. It feels like a regular amount of beer on the moon. Yeah. Yeah, maybe. So I don't know. I'm going to, and it's seven point. I may hate this. We'll find out. Um, I think you won't because on the top shelf on the other side, there was a case of actual moon juice that I saw, like the actual cans or bottles or something and it looked like something you would like. So, oh, he's pouring. You need to drink that out of the gigantic can. What the hell is that?

It just spilled beer everywhere. It's too much. Yeah, this is already out of control. Anyway, so what do you guys got? Emily, do you have anything fun for us today? Well, sort of. I am, you know, it's like 1 p.m. for me. So I am drinking a lavender latte that I make my own lavender syrup.

So that's kind of fun. That's a cool mug. I got into, oh, thank you for comfortable. in my IKEA mug. I really appreciate that. Look at your whole color scheme. It matches the gumballs in the background. It's like you got a whole thing going.

I can't have it competing with the chaos that is my background. Very true. But yeah, I got into lavender lattes like a few years back when they became popular. And I was like, how does one make a lavender latte and just found that you can order lavender buds online from like Amazon and just mix a tablespoon of that with a cup of sugar and make your own lavender simple syrup? and voila, lavender latte in your own home. So, yeah, that's why I'm drinking. Swanky. Okay.

Yeah, feels like that way for sure. It's got this thing called ARPA. It's got this sweet. I assume this is like ARPA-nette inspired. I don't really know. Like what this is. It's kind of cool. Some place from Brooklyn that I'd never heard of.

I don't know. That's cool. Felt sufficiently sciencey. I never really can get the space-themed things like Jake gets, but I guess I should have. stuffed a few moon juices in my bag in the way home. Where do you find the space-themed ones? Well, no.

The Jake lives in Mexico, almost nowhere. But when he lived in the Pacific Northwest, everywhere, yeah. They're really into the space-themed stuff up there. They love their crap beers, and they love their weird, weird, you know, niche, niche art and that kind of thing. So there was all sorts of weird stuff up there. Oh, that's cool. That's cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well. Yeah. So I got this. big beer and we're going to we're going to talk about brookan's fellowship so this yeah this is something i'm really glad that we're finally got you on here emily because uh like i've been i've trying to remember the first time i ran into a brookie and it was like i don't maybe four or five years ago and there was like at a conference and there was like four or five of them and you know and they were like they were a force of nature they were just like

taking over every every conference room they walked into they were engaged with everything and they were asking the best questions and they were just like I was in awe of these these these people and they were you know and they were like they were young they were the kids right and it's just like they were just really they were just killing it so I was like man I really need to learn more about this program and that's when I started reading about it and doing all this kind of stuff and fast forward a few years and here we are finally being able to do a full episode about it so I'm super excited to have you here to tell us about it. I'm super pumped because I just joined the team, like a little over a year ago now, I was like you and was aware of it for a while

and had volunteered with the organization since its beginning. But they really are, like, these brokies, I'm telling you, they are like going to take over the aerospace industry and in many ways already are because they're, I mean, it was started six years now. Yeah. And like six years is, they're doing a, they're doing work on the industry. which is really, really cool to see. And the name recognition of the fellowship has been building each and every year. And it's just, it's become something that is absolutely magical. And so for people who haven't heard of it or don't know what it is,

it's a fellowship for undergrad students who are women or gender minorities who want to work in the aerospace industry and really any field. Like you can be majoring most of the positions that we have are people in STEM, but also if you're majoring in like business or policy or marketing or communication, psychom journalism, that type of stuff, like we have positions for you too. And we select about 50 a year. And if you win, you get a paid internship at one of the top aerospace companies in the world. I saw you scrolling through the website.

You could see some of those names there. It's like SpaceX and Blue Origin and Boeing and ULA and Hermius and Amazon Prime Air and Sierra in Nevada and Ball and just like all of these incredible orgs that you hear about, we have a waiting list of host companies who want to take on Brookies because the people we get are so high caliber that they're like, you're doing all of this wonderful recruiting work and finding incredible people. We would, we have some. And so we have these incredibly reputable companies that we play rookies at for paid internships. That's the first thing you get paid internship.

That's amazing. And the second thing you get is an executive mentor that you're matched with who can help you with your career. And these executive mentors are people like literal astronauts and CEOs of aerospace companies and people who are just leaders in the aerospace world. It is absolutely phenomenal. You can see these profile pictures of astronauts and people who work at NASA. And it's just these are the people that would be your mentor who can tell you advice on what you should do with your career. It's incredible.

And then the third thing you get is a in-person summer summit where you get to meet all of the other bruckies. And so this is the crucial moment where you get to make these friends for life. Because as a woman in aerospace, there are not, there's not a lot. I walk into a room and there are not many people who are like me. And so it's hard for me to build that same community. And this is one of those ways that women and gender minorities can find their community of people that can network with each other and help each other and just be friends with each other throughout their entire career. So yeah, so it's a paid internship. It's the executive mentor.

It's the summer summit. And applications are open today. That's fish wheel. Did we actually nail the day at which they are open? it opened like a couple days ago. It literally opened like 15 minutes ago. Oh, wow. We crushed it.

No wonder you picked this day. The stars are aligned. And then they even delayed our M's one for you. It was perfect. How do you consider it, to be honest. That sensor was like, it was a brooky in there that was like, I don't know.

It seems like we probably should wait for this to be like, it doesn't seem okay. They're like, no, it's probably fine. No, it doesn't do that. No, we shouldn't do that. Let's make sure the temperature looks a little wonky that we're not in a debate. She continues to win that argument.

personally. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Wait, real quick, Benjamin and the chat was like, if we donate super chats, can we send it on to Brooke Owens? And I said, no, screw that. Just donate, send us the receipts, and we'll match them. We're doing one of these, Jake.

I signed us up for one of these. Okay. All right. Sounds good. Cool. So, I made an executive decision. So do it, people. Email it to us, however you get it to us.

Just donate. There's a donate button on the site. Send it to us. We'll also donate once we've collated how much we should donate. It is awesome. Thank you. So, Emily, can you tell us a bit about, like, who is Brooke Owens? And how did this, like, how did this happen? Where did this come from?

And what's the story behind it? Right. So the founders of the Brooke Owens Fellowship are Will Pomerant, Cassie Lee, and Lori Garver, who many people may know as the former deputy administrator of NASA. I mean, these people are just, I knew of them going through school because these are the people who everybody in the industry looked up to. These are the three people that were absolutely killing it in the industry across the industry across the board and people that I admired so much. And they had a dear friend named Don Brooke Owens who was also killing it in her field

and she was a super passionate person. She was a pilot. She had all of these creative interests. She just exuded somebody who was passionate about aerospace but also had a lot of hearts. a lot of perseverance, a lot of grit, and very sadly, she died of cancer. And so in her name and in her honor, they created the Brooke Owens Fellowship to just honor her legacy and the type of person that she was. And so the people that we look for in the industry are very similar to Brooke. They are people who are passionate about aerospace, but also have heart, have a lot of creative interests, have a lot of passions that may or may not be outside of aerospace and just are well-rounded people who want to make the world a better place. And so that's kind of, that's the reason that it was started,

and that is really the inspiration behind the people that we pick for this fellowship. I'd like what you were saying about how these companies are on this waiting list, because there are always these organizations that, or like, you know, programs that are like that, that are like that. Here in Philadelphia, we have Drexley University that has this, a lot of their degrees are co-op programs where it's a five-year program because you are made to go out and work for different semesters. And like every company in Philly is just like, yeah, send us whoever you got like because we just know that these are going to be the best people. I love that. Brooke Owens is like that. It's just like, yeah, I'm on this list,

subscribe for life. Like, we need these people in our world. I love that it's at that point now. And you always see that all the chatter on social media when people are signing up and getting selected and where they're going and the companies are excited. It's such an uplifting like program generally in the space industry. I love it. Yeah, it really is. I love it so much because I think there's this misconception or just this maybe challenge in general because it is a challenge for some companies to recruit diverse people, often because the leadership of these companies are not super diverse. And so when they go to recruit, the people who are looking for jobs, they look to the leadership and they're like, well, would I feel super welcome at this company if I applied?

And then the company is like, it's so hard to recruit diverse people, it says a room full of Whiteman. And so I think a lot of people who are diverse, they look to that and they're just like, I don't know if I want to apply because I don't know what the culture is like there. I don't know what the community is like there if I will have a community at all. We all want to go where we're celebrated, not where we're tolerated. And I think the Brook Owens Fellowship provides that community aspect. and we work with companies who we have contacts at that we can feel comfortable bringing students into so that we know that that support is there.

We know that community element is there. And we can provide that for companies. We can provide that community aspect and make sure that these students feel supported when they're applying to the aerospace industry. So we take away that burden, I think, from some companies that may not have found a way to do that just yet. So, yeah, I think it's such a great avenue to be able to recruit incredible talent and

companies in the aerospace industry are really paying attention. How does a mentor situation work where, sorry, Jake, you probably have a more relevant question. Well, I was just going to say that. I'm taking a mentor direction, so. Okay, we'll get to the mentor. We'll get to the mentors. I was going to say that the organization part of it is pretty clutch. It must be really clutch because the, like, even if you have a company that,

in its most sincerest of hearts wants to change and be more diverse. If you have an existing problem, it's really, really hard to change that momentum, right? Just because of subconscious bias, all those kind of things that even if you want it to be different, you can't just because of things that go. And so you have to find a way to like start the momentum of change, right? And so if you have that external, you know, this intern comes in, but, you know, she comes with a whole bunch of extra support that's like, you know, just plowing into your organization. You can leverage that, right? It's momentum, right?

Absolutely. 100%. 100%. Because it's like as soon as you have people, you're starting to have people who are diverse. You're starting to have more gender diversity, more ethnic diversity. the people that you try to recruit after that, it'll be a little bit easier for them to see those people and be like, okay, well, at least I won't be the first person like me

that's been there. And you start to develop a more inclusive community by having those people there, by hopefully giving them agency to change and tweak the culture at your organization to make it more welcoming and make it more inclusive. And that is exactly, I mean, that's the Brooke Goens Fellowship is just such a wonderful way

to help provide that momentum to companies, just like you said. Yeah, I'm thinking it all through now. Let me ask my mentor question. Do your mentor question now. I'm just curious how the process goes where you're getting paired with a mentor. Do you try to figure out common interests? Is it better to have uncommon interests so that they have perspective from like outside of their direct lane? How does that process go?

Right. We definitely try to match students with common interest. It feels very similar. Like I was just following rush talk on TikTok where people were rushing into different sororities. And in sororities, you have like a big and a little where people are matched. And I think some sororities have like a very complicated process where, you know, you try to find common interest between them. I feel like the Brook-Going Fellowship with their executive mentors, it's very similar. Like we try to find someone who has similar interests,

but also can provide a type of advice that maybe you need. Maybe it's a different type of advice than maybe you've gotten in the past, but also somebody who might have similar challenges that you've had. Like if you're a person of color, we will probably match you with a person of color to try to have those common interests align so that you can go to somebody and talk to them about something that only someone like you have experience. Only someone like the two of you have experience. And so there is a little bit of, okay, like here's the layout of all the people that we have. How can we match all of them in the

best way possible? So it, there's a long day. Certainly. Oh, yeah. There's, there are some long days. That's not like a really fun reading. Yeah, for sure. We would totally pitch it if you need extra hands on that one. That's fun. Oh, 100% because we're just like, okay, well, she has policy. experience and she noted in her application that she's interested in policy but she's also interested in business but this person has policy and business so let's match them together or even like i could i can imagine a you know well this person's going to a work environment that we know is dysfunctional in this way so let's pair them with someone whose other organization they worked out was dysfunctional in a different way so that they can both say that's not how that should go they probably should do this and more you know

here's the way that i would handle it in that situation like knowing the differences in how the industry and even internal companies and teams and political structures and internally, like sometimes different perspective just lets you see straight through what's actually happening in front of you. Whereas if you talk to somebody in the same role, they'd be like, yeah, I don't know. I guess we both must be, you know, running into the same issue. Right. It's just how it is. We have the same perspective. Like, it's hard to. You're like, oh, it is what it is. Like, I guess that's how it always is everywhere. Yep. Yep, yep, yep. Exactly. Exactly. We do the same thing with the host matching. The host matching

is even harder, I would argue, because that's the thing that, you know, they're there at the host company all summer at that company all summer. And a lot of these students will be excited about multiple companies. And a lot of these companies will be excited about multiple students. And so we have to figure out, okay, what is the best placement so that we can place the highest number of students with the companies that we have at our disposal and make sure that both the companies and the students are happy? That's the one I think that probably takes even more time because there's a lot of movement pieces there. Yeah, because I mean, that's also, it's like a job. And so there's like you're almost doing this sort of resume matching, right?

Like you can't just, oh, well, this person would benefit from being in your organization. Like, well, they also have to work and they need to have the right skill sets. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, that's a whole other variable. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to be in that meeting.

I just want to help them find the mentors. That's the one that sounds fun. I know. That one's more fun for sure. For sure. Can he tell us about how this fits into a Brookie's life in terms of like can they come back again next year if they're still in that point of the process when they're starting to look for jobs? How does that play out for them? Like what's the what's the lifespan of this program in someone's early career? Yeah. Well, so you can only become a Brookie once.

But there are some of the other sister and sibling fellowships that are really great that we've seen people who like who win the Brook Owens Fellowship. And then they applied to the Matthew Isockowitz Fellowship, which is an incredible fellowship named after Matthew Isockwitz, Steve Isockowitz's son, who was also a leader in the aerospace industry. And then there's the Zed Fellowship. And so the one that we are most closely related to is the Patty Grace Smith Fellowship, which is for black students. That one is just that one is an incredible fellowship that we work with really, really, really closely. And we actually this this year, we combined our summit so that we got to have all the patties meet all of the Burkeys as well. And so you can only become a rookie once, but there's this community of other fellowships that are that are also really wonderful. And then the other thing I'll say is that the people who win oftentimes they had applied the previous year and sometimes they had applied twice. Like this is their senior year, their last year of eligibility and they had started applying when they're, sophomore and didn't get it till they were a senior. And so it's really cool to see that because you know that like they have applied, they didn't get it. Perhaps they received advice on their application

from us or others because we often, when people ask for advice on how to make their application better, we can give it to them. Then they improve their application the following year and prove it maybe even more the following year and then they finally get it. So it's like it's a wonderful story of just like, you may not be ready for this yet, but take a year and develop more skill sets, develop more interests, and then apply again. And then maybe that's the right point in your career where it's time for you to be a fellow. Then that back and forth, you know, the apply, reject, apply, reject. That's a skill that you teach in and of itself, right? Because that's probably true for the big, the big dream jobs that these young people are going to have, right? You know,

they may not get in at SpaceX or ULA or wherever on the first run. But, yeah. Yes, I have a friend who applied to SpaceX. I want to say she applied like nine plus times and didn't get it until the time something like that. And like I have an experience with a fellowship when I was an undergrad where I applied the first time, everybody in my, it was the Goldwater Scholarship. And everybody in my class was like, don't waste your time applying.

nobody ever gets that. Nobody ever gets that. And I applied and I didn't get it. And I asked my, my professors to look over my application and give me feedback on why they thought I didn't get it. And they gave me feedback on what they think I should have done. And so the following year, I did that thing that they said I should have done. I applied again and then I won it. And so it was something that like changed the trajectory of my career. And I only got it because I was willing to be like, oh, this isn't reflect on me as a person, a character. This doesn't mean I'm inferior.

It just means that I need to do a little bit more work to be eligible to be considered. And they need to pick somebody. So why not me? And that's the mentality that I think we should be teaching these students is that, you know, like failure doesn't mean anything about your character. It just means that you need to, you know, reflect on like how to make your application a little bit better. and maybe next year is your time. And even if you don't get in the next time,

like whatever you did to improve your chances is also building up your own skill set and your own competence and your own confidence and everything that you need regardless of where you're going. Like that is a good, healthy trait to set a goal of a thing, work towards it, keep doing that. It's all those little steps that really matter in the end.

Yeah. Like the first time that I tried to pour this beer and still it, right? And then I got better at it. You can't let... You can't let all the things you've learned. You can't let one spilled beer stop you from having another. That's really my motto. That's right.

Life lesson. Might as well try the second 32-ounce beer. There's no way I'm getting through this, by the way, but it's important. Benjamin is asking how many applications you get versus how many fellowships do you have the ability to support and what that process is like? You know, the number of applications gets larger and larger every year. So every year I say this is the. the best year to apply because next year it's going to be harder. And I think last year it was something close to a thousand and we accepted 50.

So that the application number gets higher and higher every year. But you know, the thing to keep in mind is that we have to accept somebody, right? And the only way you can guarantee that you're not selected is if you don't apply. And so every single person who applies, almost every single person will say like, oh, I didn't think that I would be somebody who could be chosen. I just sort of applied on a whim because my friends encouraged me to. And then they won. And like we always do these like mind gymnastics telling us that we are not the type of person that somebody is looking for to win something. and people just a lot of people count themselves out before somebody else can it's like a

you know like a defense mechanism and we need to stop doing that because somebody has to win it's like that great Michael Scott quote right you know you miss 100 percent of the shots you don't take in Gretairendt'ske yeah Michael Scott yeah Michael Scott that's right yeah Canadian yeah it's just yeah it's offensive to your your home country there, Jake. So can you grow then? So you've got a wait list of companies and you've got a lot of applicants. Like can we, can we accept more than 50?

Like if anyone's trying to be a podcaster in there, you can send them our way. We'll just help them out. You know, we can do that. Very lofty ambitions. I wish we could. The other, the things that people and the executive team consider are, one, this fellowship is until this very year, has been run by 100% volunteers,

like doing, I don't know, 10 to 20 hours a week of work for the fellowship. And so the idea of expanding is like, hmm, what do I give up? My kids or my actual job? Yeah. But this year we have a paying position, which is absolutely wonderful,

gifted by Dylan Taylor, who flew with Blue Origin and then started this buy one, give one model where he donated the same amount of money that he used to pay for the flight, which was like a really nice precedent to set and helped us establish a paid position to make our organization a bit more professional and have this longevity to it and be able to expand in some ways. But also the thing that I'm thinking of is like with a fellowship of 50 people, that is like a good amount of people to be able to know pretty,

pretty well everybody in your class and a little bit larger than that you lose some of that closeness. So for right now I think we think about these things all the time and we are like always open to change but I think right now we're sort of at the point where that number feels good it feels right and because we have all of these incredible sibling fellowships that do something very similar and accept other people that just because we can't accept more than 50, a lot of those same incredible people who are applying to our organization applied to the Matthew Isockwood's fellowship applied instead, applied to Zenith in Canada is a similar fellowship in Canada, applied to the Patty

Grace Smith Fellowship. So there's lots of love to go around in the fellowship aerospace community. I guess one day you could theoretically have like a, you know, like a Brooke Owens West and a Brooke Owens East and do like two, you know, two small cohorts that, you know, or something like that, right? That's very true because this, you know, this fellowship is actually based off of an internship that I did, that Will Pomerance did, that Deanna did, who's on the exact team, who's also Will's wife. The NASA Academy is an internship that is no longer.

around to my knowledge, I think, because it cost a bit too much, but it was one where we had a NASA Academy at every NASA Center. And each one only took about 10 students. But in all, it was like 50 to 100 students a year. And it was like, I'm still very close with all of the people who are in my class. I married one of them. There is another person in my class who married another, the other I mean, there were only 10 people in my class and four of us married each other. That is the type of like, like bonding. Yeah, okay. Yeah, we were close.

We were pretty close, I guess. But that, you know, I do think that that, who knows, maybe that could be the future of these fellowships is that, like you said, we have regional ones and different, like space, big space states. Who knows? Yeah, you might as get more granular. It might be like, you know, brook. Cohen's Long Beach because there's like everyone's just jamming in Long Beach. Yeah. Yeah. So do you have any good stories on like so I mean it's always fun to talk about these in sort of the the high level theoretical but like do you have any good like really granular stories like here is a person who

benefited in this way or here's a company that benefited this way from a brookie like you know any good sort of like crunchy crunchy things that we can we can share as an example of of why this is so important and why it works? Yeah, I mean, shoot. Well, we just had Salabal, who is a Patty Grace Smith fellow, meet the vice president, introduced the vice president of the United States recently. That was an opportunity that she got because of the Patty Grace Smith Fellowship.

We had students who won a flight on the vomit comet, and they were able to receive that free opportunity because they were part of this cohort because of the Brooke Owens Fellowship. I placed a number of Brookies in this free business aerospace program that cost like, I don't know, thousands of dollars to attend that was hosted at the Harvard Business School. And you get a lot of these incredible opportunities because you are placed in the Brooke Owens Fellowship. I mean, it's something that like, or the Patty Grace Smith fellowship. It's just something that completely open so many opportunities and doors in this world because a lot, a lot of times people want to find credible people, credible students,

exciting students to place in their organizations or give opportunities to, and they're not often sure where to look. It takes time and effort to find students who have done a lot of work who are really incredible students who, I mean, they're everywhere, but, It takes time to find them. We do that legwork. We do all of that work to find them. And so when companies and organizations are looking for incredible students to give opportunities to, they look to us because we have all of these wonderful people who are leading in their own ways. They're making their work on the industry.

They are like moving up in the ranks of the aerospace world and changing it in the process. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Pretty cool. Pretty cool stuff. That's great. I was going to ask how many Brooke Owens fellows have married each other so far?

What's your hit rate on this? Ooh. I don't know if any just kids. I don't know if it's as good as a NACA Academy yet. I know. But, you know, it's still only been around for six years. So I think we just give it time. Yeah.

You got to really work on the NASA Academy matchmaking skills. Yeah. Yeah. That's like a better rate than Tinder. I think. So it's pretty good for NASA. A better rate than Tinder. We'll have a 10 for Nass Academy for sure.

Yeah, that's good. All right, all right. So, oh, you mentioned today applications are open. We should talk about the timeline. Yes. Like, what's that schedule like? Applications are open today. I'm very excited.

You can go to brook-oensfellowship.org slash apply. and all of the information is there. I mean, these Brookies are so smart. The tagline with the Brook Owens Fellowship is like, leaders going to lead because after the first couple of years of opening up this application process, Berkeys were like, here are all the other resources I think that we should be giving prospective students who are applying, like advice on how to apply, advice on how to ask for a recommendation letter, advice for how to submit my essays or write an answer to an essay.

And so they created all of these wonderful materials, and now they're up on the site. And so this will be, like, if you apply to this fellowship, it'll be like no other application process you've ever experienced before. And it is certainly an application process that requires things like transcripts and recommendation letters. But it will also be a fun one to apply to because we have a multimedia essay where we want you to flex your creative muscles. And a lot of people will submit videos, TikTok style videos or YouTube style videos, or they'll write a poem or they'll make art. They'll make, like they'll crochet something. Like they're flexing their creative muscles and their interests and just a different light from a different lens, a different perspective. And it's just a fun way to talk about the things that you care about.

And the application process is open now and we are accepting applications for the next month and a week. The deadline is October 10th. So the sooner you get on this, the better because this application process is not something that you want to do in a day. You want to make sure you're taking your time with it. So start now. And the other thing to keep in mind is like you want to get those recommendation letters sent. Like you want to email your professors or your bosses or whoever you're getting to write your

recommendation letter soon so that you're not like what I did in undergrad, which was like two days before a deadline knocking on a door and be like, I'm so sorry, please dear God, forgive me. I need a recommendation letter. Sorry, I'm actually all of my goodwill right now at this very moment. At this very moment, please, I'm so sorry, I'll never do this again. I'm delighted to hear that there's creative parts of that because that is so often overlooked in, especially in STEM, you know, like it just feels like sometimes it's such a like a hammer and steel sort of, uh, uh, no color, no joy kind of industry. Like, you know, it portrays

stuff like that sometimes. And, but it's like, it's so incorrect, right? Like, I mean, and if you don't, if you don't believe that, like go and look at a, you know, go look at a SpaceX dragon and tell me it isn't pretty, right? Like, it's a, it's a sharp looking thing. And they're a design elements to that. And creative people had to be involved in that. Otherwise, it would not work. It would not work as well as it is. It may not even work at all if it wasn't for the, yeah, creative people in there. So even just communication. Like, like, basically. Like, line communication is the most important thing. If you can't tell anyone about what you're doing, then no one's going to know about it.

Yes. Exactly. And like problems. If you have a, you need like good communication skills to communicate problems and issues and solutions. I mean, you want people like proposing solutions from many diverse perspectives. And you also want the culture at the place you're working at to be cool and fun. And you provide that by getting people with diverse interests and passions. and so for many, many reasons, it is good to have people who are creative and have heart in some way.

Yeah, yeah. Sign up, people. We need an off-nominal. Yeah, we do need a rookie anomaly. That's what we need, yeah, a rookie anomaly. That's what we call our listeners, anomalies. So if we can get one that's a crossover. Yeah, we need that.

We probably have some. We probably do already, but like, you know, organically driven. Somebody should tweet you if they're like, uh, hello. I feel like we might already know them, but like we need a fresh one. We need to, well, every year we need a new one. Every year, we need to be replenishing. One out of 50. Yeah, that's the goal.

Emily, we need to talk about Emily a little bit on this show because you, I was trying to write, you know, every week I like fire up the little live stream link and I try to write the little description and I was like, Jake and Anthony are joined by Emily Calendrelli, comma. Oh shit. She does way too much stuff to put in the next couple of words. One of the reasons I love for what you do is that you do so much stuff. It's like just an unbelievable amount of because I can only imagine you're interested in doing all these different things that you're not just like trudging along through all this stuff. So like when people ask you, what do you do? Like where do you even start explaining the different products you have going on?

What is your job? Yeah. I know. What is my job? And you still have 10 hours a week at a minimum for volunteer situations. It's very, it's very different depending on the day. Every single day it's different and I'm just trying to like juggle different balls like all the time. But my tagline is usually like MIT engineer turned Emmy nominated science TV host. And that covers maybe like the top level things. The tip of the iceberg. The pillars of work that I do are TV hosting and writing and executive producing social media work. A lot of social media. work, children's book writing, and public speaking. I would say those are like the four main areas of like paid work that I do. And then the volunteer bucket is different. And that's usually

that's all Brooklyn Fellowship. Yeah, it's a hell of a list of projects that you're, that you're doing here. So it's just like, man. It's yeah, it keeps things interesting and overwhelming, which is that. Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's too much. But yeah. If the listeners want to explore, like, you know, the main thing you're working on right now. Like, what do you want to plug right now? Is it? Yeah, right now.

This month, it's all about stay curious and keep exploring my new book that's coming out September 27th. So this is, I'm so excited for this book because it's all based off of the success of my Netflix show, Emily's Wonder Lab. Man, you are quick with getting those websites. I got the links. I got the links. Look at you. That's great. It did my homework.

So this is. You, it's amazing. So Emily's Wonder Lab was my Netflix show and after that came out, parents and families and educators were all just like, can you give me more ideas on ways to foster curiosity at home with simple and easy experiments? And I was like, I got you. And so I wrote a book with 50 of my favorite science experiments, focusing on ones that are relatively easy to do with materials that are accessible, materials that you can often already find around your house. And, and, And I came out with this book that comes out in a few weeks. And it's not just like a how to book with experiments. It also includes like a number of famous women in STEM throughout the book. It includes ways to hypothesize and experiments within the experiments to encourage kids reading it to ask questions themselves. And I'm just, I'm really proud of it. But the illustrator is the Spanish illustration duo, Cassetti Jack, who has this like really cool kind of.

kind of like offbeat pop art style, which I just, I found so different and unique and I absolutely loved it. And I thought that it just, it looked like no other sort of science textbook I'd ever seen before. So anyways, that is something I'm super super pumped about. Well, I bet that's a big hit with our audience because I know there are a lot of, people, people who listen to this tend to be not too far from the age that me and Anthony are, you know, plus or minus 10 years. Which means they probably a lot of them have small kids, the right age for this, right?

I'm getting this. For sure. Yeah. I just order it. I have a two-year-old who currently continually requests to watch more rocket launches on whenever we're hanging out. It's great. He really loves Falcon Heavy Demo mission.

He just looks at me, goes rocket launch. He goes, pooh. And does the separation. And he's only two? Yeah, let's feed this. Wow. He calls the Space Shuttle, a pace puddle, which is my favorite. So he was only a little bit mad at me last weekend when I was like, I'm going to see a rocket.

And he was like, no, no, me rocket. He said me, rocket. He's like, you and I do rockets together. What are you talking about? Yeah, you know, I said this to Jake this weekend. I was like, when we're back here for Artemis 2 and 3, like, he's going to be way old enough to be like, I'm definitely coming on this trip with you. So when they did figure something out. I know, because I didn't know, I didn't come down to the Cape for this one, but the one with humans on board,

I mean, Artemis 2 and 3. I feel like, man, that's history. Like, I want to be there for those. For sure. For sure. And find a way to bring my family too. Because that's one of those things where, like, if you don't bring your kids and when they're older, they're like, you had a chance to bring me to this launch and you didn't.

Yeah, I mean, I remember, like, I don't know if KSC launches have the same requirement. But I remember for launches that are on the now Space Force Base, you have to be 18. So that's like a no-go for kids. I don't know if Kennedy's the same deal. There's definitely ways to watch it at Kennedy with your family because there's a lot of locals. The feel of heat and stuff like that. Yeah, they have the bleachers out at the 7-5 center or whatever. For sure.

Yeah, I heard the traffic was crazy. Did you guys see that? No, because we just stayed on the beach. Yeah, and we were down in Cape Canaveral and we walked to the beach. And Cape Canaveral was fine. And so we thought it was like a bus. We thought there was something bad. But apparently, like, up in Titusville, it was very, very bad.

It was wild. We were just on the other peripheral of it. Oh, that's very interesting. I wonder if that has something to say about, like, the public's awareness of this launch, because I would assume the kid could be like, yeah. It was sick. I mean, honestly, like, we had, so we were on the beach and 20 minutes after the scrub happened, we had somebody show up that was like, I was just up in Titusville waiting for it to launch,

but I'm here now. And I was like, there's no way. You made it here 20 minutes if it was like what I remember from the hayday of shuttles and whatnot. Interesting. I think the timing of the year also mattered because school just started in Florida. It's heading into a holiday weekend, travels expensive, and it sucks right now. I think there was a lot of countervailing forces. Factors.

Yeah, it didn't seem quite as actually. So we were in a Twitter thread recently, Emily, where it turns out the NASA social for EFT1 was like a who's who of who will be on social media in 10 years. because I think we were both there. And as was like, a whole list of people that were there that I'm like, wow, I didn't talk to them at all, but now I follow them on Twitter and all this. And even that one, so to your comment about it being humans,

like even that one was wild. Yeah, that's so true. But it was very close to the shuttle program, right? It was only three years after the shuttle. So maybe there's just like a, that was on the coattails of shuttle, and this is a little too far. I think you're right because even like my husband who worked in the, I met him at NASA and now he's kind of sort of loosely related with the aerospace industry, but not really the space industry anymore. He was like, I'm kind of embarrassed it.

I didn't know more about this launch. And I was like, I think. She's like, I am too. That's my bad because I'm married to you. I probably should have told you more. But be like, that's probably just a sign that the gin. public is not as aware about all of this as I would have imagined. Yeah, yeah.

I'm kind of wondering if it's going to be crazy this weekend, though, because now it's a Saturday afternoon instead of early Monday morning. Yeah, that'll be a good thing to keep an eye on for sure. Monday morning, the second week of school in Florida was not a great mix for getting the crowds out. No, no. True, true, true. Maybe that's if we put our conspiracy theory tinfoil hats on, maybe that's why they scrubbed.

They wanted more people to show up. That was like my theory of Falcon Heavy, like, oh, this is going to the end of the window for hype. Yeah, that was my theory back there. I'm going to find this picture from the EFT1 thing because it was like, I remember this thread was like a shot. Everyone was like, I was there, I was there. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is a shocking amount of people that were at this. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I think that's why you're like way down my list of people you follow on Twitter. Like it has been a while. I think you were, were you a different handle back then? You were like, MCAL, space scale. That's in my head. NCAL space cow. Yep. See, this was like my...

F-T-1 was the real, there was a real moment to be at. That's right. That's like an OG call-out for sure. Because my nickname for the longest time was M-Cal, like E-M-C-A-L, M-C-C-L. And so my handle for the longest time was M-C-C-A-L. But when I would say that out loud, people thought I was saying like the animal cow, like M-C-C-Cow. And they're like, what a random name. Wonder if she loves cows.

There it is. on a farm. Here it is. We're in here somewhere. Let me zoom at this thing. Yeah, so here's me over here and here's Swapna. Where are you? You're down here.

Yeah, there's like Jason Major. I know. Jason. Oh, yeah. Sophia, right? Sophia. Yep, Sophia. It's a real moment in time.

Look at us. All so young thinking we were so close to EM1. Not eight years away. Young and naive. man those were the days anyway i don't think i like anthony without a beer i'm glad i'm glad that's not the way it is yeah yeah yeah it's a bummer anyway it's funny um so what else are you working on you're working on other are you working on more than 50 experiments for the future are you working on well more tv i've got so i have um a sixth book coming out in the ada lace adventure so i haven't written

talk much about because we're still actually writing it. So that's another thing on the book side of things that's coming out. I'm constantly pitching new science shows. So those are always in the work. I'd love to transition Ada Lace on the case in Ada Lace adventures to a animated show. I think that would be a really cool STEM-focused animated show. I have another animated show called Emily Space Camp that I'm working with an animated studio on that we've done. we're doing something really different with this one that I haven't seen anybody else do, which is basically before it gets sold to anybody, start releasing character development and content and stories about it. We're in September, I believe, we're going to start releasing.

We've already written a bunch of them, little like 60-second stories that are perfect for TikTok and reels that feature the animated characters and myself describing something, sciencey or spacey just to give an idea out to people of like what this show could be like what stories we would tell what things would we teach what demographic would this before to build up hype for it before somebody actually buys it so we're shopping that one around right now and I really I'm really excited about that one and what else I have a podcast that's coming out with lingo kids it's a children's podcast and I have another podcast that I'm hoping will be in the work soon with the same people that created Emily's Wonder Lab.

That is like a little bit secret at the moment. I can't say too much about it. That one will be really cool. We love secrets on the show. Yeah. That means future content. That's right. So yeah.

We're going to quote tweet your announcement, as revealed on off-nominal. As scooped. As scooped. We're looking for our second scoop, Jake. Always on the month for the second scoop. Yeah. Yeah, we average about one scoop every five years. We had one scoop that we're pretty sure the scooping of it killed the project.

I think it might have. I don't know. It was the scoop that Tom Cruise bought a SpaceX flight through Axiom and then it's never come up again. It's never materialized. Yeah, yeah. I think the movie got canceled once they were like, oh, that covers blown. We were out. Yeah.

Yeah, I remember talking about that on TikTok and being like, the numbers here don't quite seem to add up. I was like looking at past budgets of films, and I was like, this seems like either you're going to invest an extraordinary amount of money into this film. And then like I've filmed on TV sets before and I know how long things like that can take movie sets are exponentially different. And I'm like, I don't know. You don't think 10 days on the ISS is enough with everything else that's going on up there? Seems sure. I'm not sure you're going to get exactly what you think you're going to get. but who knows, maybe, maybe.

Might just end up being a Richard Garriott movie instead. Yeah, also excellent. Yeah, excellent for different reasons. Awesome. Honestly, prescient, because I think the main plot in that was that the Russians split the space station in half or something. That's right. They left, didn't they?

Yeah, I think it was. He just has great force. And he was like waving goodbye. Yeah. I mean, he's the child of a Skylab astronaut. So his allegiances are very clear. I have literally no idea what you guys are talking about. I'll send you the link.

Richard Gariot made this movie when he was on the space station. And it was, I think, like an eight to ten minute short film where he's. You need to watch it. Yeah. I don't even want to. There's a lot going on. I don't want to spoil it. Like scripted movie?

Yep. Film with the astronauts of marginal quality of acting. It's called Apogee of Fear. That's right. We got it in the chat. Yeah, yeah. It's definitely. The first film in space.

I interviewed Richard Harriet for my show. Well, you should have talked about Apogee of Fear. We had him on and we talked about it. I'm wondering if he was like, let's not. He was like, let's not bring it up. Yeah. Yeah. Let me skip in here.

Oh, it's loud, huh? Yeah. Goodness. I don't know. We might get pulled off YouTube for this, but he might not be called the NCS. I'm going to skip in because I'm pretty sure. Yeah, I mean, you could just tell the acting quality here. It's just, you know, probably similar to what you experienced in Hollywood, but.

For sure, definitely. So anyway, after you fear, we'll put that in the show notes because it's an excellent, excellent movie. Because that sounds fascinating. We're throwing on. Kids might like it. I don't know. It could be a hit. I haven't really checked that, but.

So, Anthony, what do you work? You flew home, Anthony. So you're back to work already. What do you work on? Anything good coming out? Will I party here on the beach? What's going on with you? I did.

You know how I've been on this quest to have somebody that knows about space insurance talk to me? Because it's impossible to figure anything out about space insurance. I don't know if you know that I've been on this quest, Jake. I found some people who wanted to actually talk to me. And so coming up soon,

probably next week, we go in, we get real numbers, how much people pay, what kind of coverage it is. I actually know about it now. And that's awesome. Yeah, it was a great conversation. So look for that on the feed next week. It's super cool. And also, I think we were hoping there would be more art of some one content.

There may be. There may not be. Yeah, yeah, we'll see. So the other thing I'm working on. That's what I'm waiting on, yeah. I made a thing today. I had this, so there's this podcast network called Relay. They have the show called Connected that I always think of

Off Nominal as the space version of this show. A lot of hijinks. And they did this thing a little while. that I really liked in which they basically made a family feud of their listeners, and then they competed against who knew their listeners better. So I thought we should do two things. I made offnom.com slash trivia, where people can submit questions to be used later. So submit questions, I have some, you know, suggesting prompts, because Jake and I are going to play a newlywed style game where we have to see who knows each other better.

And then we're going to use the similar questions to create a survey so that we'll know who knows the listeners better. And then maybe we'll, I don't know, I guess I should make a trophy or something and send it to whoever wins. So, uh, offdom.com slash trivia. Yeah, please contribute to this. Submit questions. And then later, I'll hit you up for answers. So keep in mind as you're asking the question that you may have to answer this in the future. So this is, this is going to be fun. We are looking for a host. So Emily, I know you're pretty short on the list of projects today, but if you're looking for another thing to host, definitely. hoping to add something for sure.

Oh, and that's all I got, Jake. That's what I got working on. Yeah. I'm not working on anything but the stupid rocket. So we're going to try and watch it. It's kind of stupid rocket. It's a little bit stupid rocket. It's a little bit stupid. Yeah.

So I'll just put that out there too. If you're in the area, like if you're in Cape Canaveral, you're in Titusville, you're here on the space coast somewhere and you want to hang out. We are still getting listeners together for various things. So send me a message and let's hang out. you can be one of these people one of these people this was the attempt one it was a bust

but we had a flag which is right here now yeah Jake's got the flag right that's great we made flags yeah look at that yeah it's cool isn't it beautiful yeah it was great we'll tell some stories next week because we had a fantastic meetup on the beach the night before and a oddly

quiet Cape Canaveral but it was a fantastic time so anyway people should follow the space gal to keep up with too many projects that you're working on. Is there anything else? People should go right now. Brooke Owens, go apply. You need to apply right now.

Brook Owensfellowship.org. Brook Owensfellowship.org is a great one as well. They're also on social media. You can look up Brook Owens Fellowship on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and all of the places that people find social media. And TikToks. That's awesome. And TikTok.

Oh, my gosh. Big on TikTok. I'm recently into TikTok because I'm old now, so I'm only recently into it. Oh, yeah. That's great. I highly recommended. I have TikTok.

Yeah. I mean, that's a slightly out of date news. But yeah, newish. Yeah. Great. I'm still doing the like look at TikToks through the Instagram Reels section. So that tells you how old I am. Yeah.

You'll see like the same stuff we're seeing in about a couple years. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that's fine. I'm fine with that. Oh, Emily, thank you so much for hanging out with us. Yeah. Thanks for having me on.

Good talking to you guys. One, two, three, four, five, four, three, two, one. End of death.