Following Your Curiosity | John Read

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deputy chief of Goddard space flight center.

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She was like my mentor.

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And then, um, yeah, all the folks just were like, Oh, I was the lead on new horizons.

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And then, and it was like, I read about you in national geographic.

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How cool is this?

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So you're my professor.

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Welcome to A Heart for Space.

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I am your host, Dr. Imon Jihangir.

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Join me as we uncover what it takes to reach beyond the limits of what we think is possible and turn the biggest dreams into tangible reality.

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All right.

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Well, welcome to another episode of A Heart for Space.

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I am very excited today to have John Reed, who has become a friend recently and has a lot of interesting things to talk about, I think, that are pertinent to our audience.

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So thank you for coming, John.

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Thanks for having me, Eamon.

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It's great to be here.

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It's good to have you.

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So we'll jump right in.

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For people who don't know you, how would you introduce yourself at a party?

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What would you say you do currently?

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Oh, my gosh.

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So I have sort of two hats that I wear.

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Depending on the crowd, one, I'm either the host of Learn to Stargaze on YouTube, which if I'm at Analog Astronaut Conference, that's how people know me.

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But otherwise, usually I'm just a space and astronomy author.

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And so we've got a couple of bestselling titles that have made a big difference in the world, and I'm pretty proud of them.

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No, I mean, it's pretty incredible that you were one of the earliest kind of stargazing books for young people and for amateurs and novices.

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To think how long we've been looking at the stars and that market hadn't really been fully flushed out is pretty amazing.

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Yeah, no one had taken the time to really simplify things down to a point where they were almost infinitely accessible, where you could go out under the night sky and find things in a matter of seconds.

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Yeah, so that's what sort of new.

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That's pretty cool, yeah.

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Yeah.

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There have been lots of books on the market, like Nightwatch by Terrence Dickinson, Turn Left at Orion.

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Really classics, but even when I had those when I was getting started, it was just a little bit too complicated for me.

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And when I wrote my first book, 50 Things to See with a Small Telescope, I wrote that for me.

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Yeah.

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And it took me a while before I learned how to put it on Amazon.

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And then that next Christmas is when I really realized that it was actually helping a lot of people when the reviews started coming in.

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And this was around 2012, 2013.

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And so at this point, you know, this is 12 or 13 years ago, before the age of AI and a lot of these apps and stuff as well.

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I mean, it's interesting to think, because you're right.

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Now you pull out these like stargazing apps and they'll tell you what's above you.

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But 12, 13 years ago, that didn't really exist.

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Yeah.

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So right now we sort of have the opposite problem, whereas people are relying too much on the apps because the apps vastly oversell what you can reasonably expect to see.

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Yeah.

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You know, they'll be like, oh, these galaxies and nebulas and whatever.

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And yeah, if you've got a smart telescope, which is basically a camera, a high performance camera.

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Yes.

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Yeah.

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That can bring these things into view.

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But if you've got a backyard telescope, then the probability of you seeing the things in these apps is actually pretty low or they might be blocked by a tree.

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or what have you.

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And so my son and I were filming a YouTube video this morning where we go over that.

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And to make our point, we actually took the iPhone and we have a cliff on our property.

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We hiked up to the top of the cliff.

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We had one of my other kids at the bottom of the cliff.

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We hovered a drone beside us and we took our phone and we just hucked it off the cliff.

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Like, it's like, this is what I recommend.

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Gosh, that's good.

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So saying, do not use the phone.

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Do not use the like if you're stargazing, you really want to have a clear separation between technology that includes screens and the actual stargazing experience, whether you're using a telescope or whether you're just enjoying the Milky Way.

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Because after that 20 or 30 minutes passes, that's when the heavens really open up and you can see things with your eyes that you didn't believe were possible before.

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Yeah, that's interesting.

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We've had quite a few people over at our stargazing park, Stargazing Nova Scotia, where we film most of our content for Learn to Stargaze.

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And a lot of people, when it's their first time there, they had no idea that you could see the Milky Way without having to go to Utah or something.

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We're within 30 minutes of a city.

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And fortunately, we're surrounded by a preservation area.

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And there's nothing to the south of us.

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And typically, you stargaze to the south.

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But people are like, holy cow.

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And I'm like, yeah, you see that?

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You see the Milky Way?

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Yeah, we see the Milky Way.

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You see that light patch there?

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I'm like, that's not a cloud.

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That's the Lagoon Nebula.

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And you're seeing that without a telescope.

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Yeah, with your naked eye.

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With the naked eye, yeah.

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Yeah.

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That's incredible.

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Now, you grew up in Nova Scotia.

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You can only get to that without, if you've been away from technology for about 30 to 40 minutes.

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Is that just because your eyes have to adjust away from the screen and the lights?

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Got to adjust away from the screen.

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Yeah, some people can get away with red screen or they put red cellophane on their phone, but that's still a to-do.

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But plus it's that...

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there's still a technological barrier there where you're going from, you know, an authentic or like a technological experience where your brain is sort of in phone mode to a natural experience like our ancestors were looking up at the stars.

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I mean, I often think of that because really, it's only been the last 100 and 150 years that we've lost that connection to the stars.

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I mean, if you, it was really when we introduced electricity to a lot of sense, right?

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Because then you could have these lights on

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much more rapidly.

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And now, I mean, everywhere it seems like.

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And then with entertainment, because 150 years ago, your entertainment was live music or maybe a play or someone telling you a story.

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It wasn't sitting in front of the TV.

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Oftentimes it was probably enjoyed outside.

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Absolutely.

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And I think for the most part, for most people, stargazing is a catalyst

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for deep, deep conversation.

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And a lot of the time, the telescope is just a catalyst too.

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Like people bring the telescope out or they see the telescope and you end up just standing around it talking about life, the universe and everything.

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Yeah.

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I mean, yeah, I think there's nothing as deep as the universe to make you think about life.

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Yeah.

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And you've seen the stars perhaps even without an atmosphere in between.

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I've definitely seen the blackness.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Now your eyes still need to adjust.

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So you had earth light, which is Cyan Proctor's favorite term, the reflected light from earth.

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You're looking down, it's hitting your eyes.

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And then your eyes still, I assume, would need to adapt to the dark if you wanted to see stars from suborbit.

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Was that your experience?

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Did you take the time to look away from the Earth, or were you looking at the curve and down?

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I took time to look away, but it was, as you said, too bright and not enough time to adapt.

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And it does make me wonder if they ever shut off all the lights on the space station and just sit up there in the dark.

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Yeah, I think they have to in the cupola, which is, I think, six windows and then a single...

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hexagonal window that they can actually be in.

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When they go to take photos of the Earth, that has to be pitch black because you don't want light reflecting off the windows into the cameras.

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That makes sense.

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And they use regular DSLR cameras.

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And what they do is, I think they've got this felt...

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these felt sheets with velcro on the ends and they can make a little tent below the cupola because i think the cupola also functions there's like oh that was early in the space station i think they used to have like a bathroom up there and like the exercise machines were up there yeah yeah

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Now, it's been reconfigured, but so it really cuts it off from the rest of the station.

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And you sort of huddle up there in the pitch black just with the Earth light.

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And then you can look down.

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That must be amazing.

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At the planet.

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Because the sun is typically, you don't want the sun shining in the window when you're taking photos either.

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So you're in the shade.

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of the space and of the station.

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That was the same for inspiration for as well.

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When cyan came up with this concept of earth light that she wanted to promote, like the space, the spacecraft is,

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is blocking the sunlight so that it doesn't touch the glass in the cupola.

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Yeah.

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And so the only light they're getting is Earthlight.

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And she was asking me where it was shortly after her space flight, because I've known her before she flew.

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And we were driving in her, I think her white Mach-E for...

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Ford, the electric Ford Mustang, which I think was either given to her by Ford or she could back from space.

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For whatever reason, she didn't get a Tesla, even though she was a SpaceX pilot.

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But anyway, so we're driving in her car, probably back from Analog Astronaut.

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And she's like, I don't know why.

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Earthlight was so pleasant.

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She's like, it was just Earthlight.

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It wasn't sunlight.

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Why is this so pleasant?

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And she's like, I need you to do a bunch of math for me.

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And I was, you know, two years off my astrophysics degree.

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And I'm like, no problem.

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I'm like, I can do that math.

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Ended up taking me like a day.

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And it shouldn't have taken me this long.

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This is before AI too.

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I actually had to get the textbooks out.

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And I figured out what the intensity of the light was

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striking the spacecraft reflected from the Earth.

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And then I was like, I got it in lumens or one of those light measurements.

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I'm like, what is this equivalent to?

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And the light level, and this should have made sense right away for me, is the equivalent of sitting in a field on a sunny day, but you're sitting under a giant tree.

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Oh, yeah.

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With lots of leaves all around you.

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That's perfect.

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And you're only, and again, the tree is blocking the sunlight and the only light you're getting is the sunlight reflecting off the fields and a nearby river and the foliage and the green and the blues and things like that.

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And,

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And as hopefully everyone knows, like sitting in a park under the tree on a sunny day where the sun is being blocked by the tree is one of the most pleasant experiences that you can have.

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And that's what the astronauts feel in these situations in the cupola.

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Well, I love that you went home and did the math to then prove that.

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Yeah, and then she used it on a slide.

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She put all my entire formulas on a slide.

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So far, for a presentation, so far, no one's come back to me and said, This was wrong.

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Yeah, you missed the power there.

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Well, so you grew up in Nova Scotia, right?

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Is that right?

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Yeah.

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How do you think that affected your passion for all of this?

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And we can talk about what you did.

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We'll talk about what you did before because I do think it's amazing how you kind of shifted careers.

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Yeah.

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How did growing up as a kid bring you to where you are today?

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Yeah.

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So my upbringing was a little different.

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Born in Nova Scotia.

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But then my formative years were on Prince Edward Island.

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Ah, nice.

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Yeah, which is north of Nova Scotia.

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We used to have to take an icebreaker in the winter to go over.

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The icebreaker was called the Abiguit.

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And it was so big that you could fold up trains inside it.

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So the trains would...

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sort of coil themselves inside these, these big ships and they would go across the ice.

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And I would, I would stand on the bow like Titanic, except because what would happen is the ship would go up and, and, and then the no, the bow of the ship would crash down on the ice and break it.

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And then these lightning bolts would shoot out in all directions, almost to the horizon.

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Yeah.

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These lightning bolts of ice, like on the ice.

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Yeah.

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And then it felt when a ship came down, it felt like an earthquake.

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It was like, and everything was loud and noisy.

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And one of the reasons I did that was just, that was the only way for me to stop getting from seasick.

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Cause I got fairly motion sick.

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Yeah.

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And, um,

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in 97, they built a bridge.

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So that experience is now lost to time, unless you're on a research vessel.

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But that's something that I grew up with taking that, um, the icebreaker ship, the Abiguit or the John Hamilton gray, which was the other big ship that, that we had, uh, across the Northumberland straight to Prince Edward Island.

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But, um,

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On Prince Edward Island about 1997, my mom, who was going through a divorce at the time from my dad, signed me up to the Air Cadet program in Canada to get some discipline.

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And that was the first time I ever met people that were like me, that were nerdy like me, that liked Star Trek, that liked Star Wars.

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Before that, I was surrounded by very rural sort of farmer type kids who played hockey and football and did things like that.

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But there was nobody in my sphere at the time that liked nerdy things like Star Trek and National Geographic and reading and stuff like that.

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When I joined this cadet program, I finally met my people for the first time.

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Like, and a lot, I see a lot of people go to conferences like analog astronaut conference or Astro awards in Austin and finally meet their people.

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And it's magical.

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It's like an emotional experience because they're like, there they are.

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There's the people that, that they get me.

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They, they get me.

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Yeah.

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So I had that experience in about 1997.

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And for that, it was airplanes.

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I loved everything about flying books about planes and the, uh,

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Space was sort of a tangent to that.

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I met astronaut Julie Payette at a...

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I, like, won some poetry contest, and the school, like, drove me up to hear Julie Payette speak.

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So that was my first interaction with space, but aviation was really my thing there.

223
00:14:15.107 --> 00:14:16.569
And my first year...

224
00:14:18.211 --> 00:14:19.352
You go away for the summer.

225
00:14:19.893 --> 00:14:23.116
Keep in mind you're in middle school and high school at this point.

226
00:14:23.196 --> 00:14:29.342
So I went away and did a basic training and learned all about the military, learned all about the Air Force and ranks and stuff.

227
00:14:29.803 --> 00:14:33.166
The next year I was in a marching band at Greenwood Air Force Base for six months.

228
00:14:33.467 --> 00:14:34.408
Sorry, six weeks.

229
00:14:34.908 --> 00:14:37.149
The next year I did an aeronautical studies course.

230
00:14:37.510 --> 00:14:39.070
Keep in mind, still in high school.

231
00:14:39.491 --> 00:14:44.594
The next year after that, I did a glider pilot's license, which was really neat.

232
00:14:44.634 --> 00:14:49.757
So I now have 156 glider flights and that's when you get towed behind an airplane.

233
00:14:50.637 --> 00:14:53.539
And then the next year I got a scholarship to go to Moncton Flight College.

234
00:14:53.899 --> 00:15:02.663
And so I got up, uh, that was an eight week long course after ground school doing, um, basically your private pilot's license.

235
00:15:03.124 --> 00:15:03.404
Yeah.

236
00:15:03.424 --> 00:15:06.786
So it's single engine, non-high performance land aircraft, not at night.

237
00:15:07.466 --> 00:15:10.748
So very basic, but it was still a private pilot's license.

238
00:15:10.788 --> 00:15:11.228
Yeah.

239
00:15:11.248 --> 00:15:12.128
I mean, that's cool.

240
00:15:12.489 --> 00:15:13.869
Into an American pilot's license.

241
00:15:14.230 --> 00:15:16.251
So I was all up on aviation, but then I,

242
00:15:17.272 --> 00:15:23.638
I got into university at Carlton University in Ottawa in aerospace engineering.

243
00:15:24.659 --> 00:15:26.861
And I hated it.

244
00:15:27.681 --> 00:15:29.964
I couldn't understand any of the professors.

245
00:15:30.304 --> 00:15:31.245
Yeah.

246
00:15:31.685 --> 00:15:32.165
I couldn't.

247
00:15:32.426 --> 00:15:33.487
My people weren't there.

248
00:15:34.768 --> 00:15:36.449
I just, that wasn't, that wasn't where they were.

249
00:15:37.450 --> 00:15:40.333
And it's possible I would have stuck to that if I went to another school.

250
00:15:42.468 --> 00:15:50.293
maybe like in the States in Emory Riddle or Johns Hopkins, where I eventually went to do a similar degree, but like it wasn't there.

251
00:15:50.793 --> 00:15:57.518
And I ended up dropping altogether engineering and switching and getting a degree in finance because that's what my dad did.

252
00:15:57.978 --> 00:15:58.618
Very different.

253
00:15:59.079 --> 00:16:00.420
Still math, but...

254
00:16:01.176 --> 00:16:03.258
Yeah, it's still math.

255
00:16:03.899 --> 00:16:05.000
And so I even switched schools.

256
00:16:05.020 --> 00:16:06.702
I moved back to Nova Scotia after that.

257
00:16:06.722 --> 00:16:09.004
I had enough of capital city.

258
00:16:09.404 --> 00:16:10.846
Yeah.

259
00:16:12.187 --> 00:16:15.411
But that's for a while with that math is where I really thrived.

260
00:16:15.431 --> 00:16:17.873
I'm like, okay, well, I'll do this math.

261
00:16:18.093 --> 00:16:24.019
And then what that enabled me to do after I graduated, there was a visa set up under NAFTA.

262
00:16:24.824 --> 00:16:31.470
in which if you were in an accounting-related field, you could move to the United States and only pay 50 bucks at the border.

263
00:16:32.291 --> 00:16:35.274
And so I immediately went down to the States.

264
00:16:35.294 --> 00:16:38.677
There were not a lot of job opportunities for finance people in Nova Scotia.

265
00:16:39.418 --> 00:16:43.121
So I immediately applied for a job in San Francisco and I went and interviewed

266
00:16:44.213 --> 00:16:50.016
And I think one of the reasons they interviewed me was because they got confused with my school.

267
00:16:50.456 --> 00:16:55.759
So they looked at my resume and it said St. Mary's, St. Mary's, where I went to school in Canada.

268
00:16:56.139 --> 00:16:59.961
But there's a St. Mary's in Lafayette, California, which they pull a lot of people from.

269
00:16:59.981 --> 00:17:02.462
So I applied at the Clorox company.

270
00:17:03.503 --> 00:17:08.347
Because we knew someone there and they put it in my resume.

271
00:17:08.728 --> 00:17:13.091
But Clorox usually only pulls from St. Mary's in Lafayette, California.

272
00:17:13.111 --> 00:17:13.972
In California, yeah.

273
00:17:13.992 --> 00:17:14.372
Or Orlando.

274
00:17:15.233 --> 00:17:16.514
And UC Berkeley.

275
00:17:17.695 --> 00:17:18.616
Haas School of Business.

276
00:17:19.176 --> 00:17:19.417
Yeah.

277
00:17:20.177 --> 00:17:21.178
Not Canada.

278
00:17:22.339 --> 00:17:22.579
And...

279
00:17:23.584 --> 00:17:25.906
But anyway, so they were like, wow.

280
00:17:26.286 --> 00:17:28.788
They're like, you're really prepared for this interview.

281
00:17:28.828 --> 00:17:30.649
I'm like, yes, because it means a lot to me.

282
00:17:30.809 --> 00:17:31.169
Yeah.

283
00:17:31.570 --> 00:17:33.331
And because this was, anyway.

284
00:17:33.391 --> 00:17:34.231
This was your shot.

285
00:17:34.372 --> 00:17:35.092
Your one shot.

286
00:17:35.112 --> 00:17:44.399
This was my one shot to have this really cool Fortune 500 job and sort of be as far away from the potato fields of Prince Edward Island as possible.

287
00:17:45.820 --> 00:17:48.922
And but anyway, it still wasn't space, though.

288
00:17:49.946 --> 00:17:51.106
And I work at this job.

289
00:17:51.607 --> 00:17:53.727
And you did it for a while.

290
00:17:53.747 --> 00:17:54.367
I did it.

291
00:17:54.387 --> 00:17:55.248
I moved to California.

292
00:17:55.688 --> 00:17:55.948
Yeah.

293
00:17:55.988 --> 00:17:57.788
It got me out on my own.

294
00:17:57.808 --> 00:18:02.550
I remember within two days of moving to California, as I moved there with just a suitcase, right?

295
00:18:03.250 --> 00:18:10.712
I went to As Is Auto below the Oakland Coliseum and paid $1,900 for a Mazda Protege Sport.

296
00:18:10.932 --> 00:18:11.192
Nice.

297
00:18:11.833 --> 00:18:19.295
And I get back to the office with this car, and they're like, you went where?

298
00:18:20.472 --> 00:18:39.598
they're like dude like you're a white guy you can't go there that's funny i was like i don't know i'm from canada yeah that's probably why you're still here uh anyway that was one of my first experiences with like america differences yeah i mean there are differences because i don't know i was completely oblivious yeah um

299
00:18:40.753 --> 00:18:46.224
You know, and coming from a place that had snow days to a place in Oakland that had civil unrested days.

300
00:18:46.464 --> 00:18:46.765
Yeah.

301
00:18:47.045 --> 00:18:48.608
So that was a bit of a difference there.

302
00:18:48.628 --> 00:18:51.093
And this was in the late or early 2000s then?

303
00:18:51.113 --> 00:18:51.234
Yeah.

304
00:18:52.120 --> 00:18:52.400
Yeah.

305
00:18:52.440 --> 00:18:56.904
So the big events, we had the Occupy Oakland.

306
00:18:57.644 --> 00:19:00.386
And so we were, our building was ground zero for that.

307
00:19:01.067 --> 00:19:06.611
And then the Oscar Grant murder was there and some George Floyd stuff, I think.

308
00:19:07.071 --> 00:19:10.273
Anyway, there was a lot of civil unrest for various reasons.

309
00:19:10.354 --> 00:19:12.955
But that became the new normal for me.

310
00:19:13.276 --> 00:19:14.797
But I think in accounting...

311
00:19:16.156 --> 00:19:18.518
I knew something was wrong.

312
00:19:19.658 --> 00:19:22.600
My soul felt that I was on the wrong path.

313
00:19:23.101 --> 00:19:28.925
I didn't know what the right path was, but I knew that something's eating up my soul doing corporate work.

314
00:19:30.365 --> 00:19:34.828
And so I'm on the path of not here, which is something like lion trackers say.

315
00:19:35.389 --> 00:19:39.431
When they're not tracking the lion correctly, they're like, this is the path of not here.

316
00:19:39.471 --> 00:19:40.132
I can just feel it.

317
00:19:42.264 --> 00:19:44.667
But then, yeah, so I was 27 years old.

318
00:19:44.767 --> 00:19:46.369
This is five or six years in.

319
00:19:46.589 --> 00:19:49.833
And we got, I say we have met my wife at this point.

320
00:19:50.353 --> 00:19:52.175
And we're either engaged or newly married.

321
00:19:52.736 --> 00:19:57.622
And I went to a Rite Aid pharmacy and bought a telescope for, I think, $14.

322
00:19:57.642 --> 00:19:58.763
Yeah, that's crazy.

323
00:19:58.783 --> 00:19:59.824
Yeah, Rite Aid pharmacy.

324
00:19:59.864 --> 00:20:02.187
That's not where I think of getting a telescope.

325
00:20:02.545 --> 00:20:03.306
No, no, no.

326
00:20:03.386 --> 00:20:04.808
It was like a, it was a toy.

327
00:20:05.128 --> 00:20:05.408
Yeah.

328
00:20:05.869 --> 00:20:10.854
But I set it up beside our apartment, beside the BART line, Bay Area Rapid Transit.

329
00:20:10.954 --> 00:20:12.195
And there was this yellow star.

330
00:20:12.215 --> 00:20:13.136
I'm like, that's cool.

331
00:20:13.637 --> 00:20:15.058
I'm going to point at that yellow star.

332
00:20:15.659 --> 00:20:17.982
And I looked in the eyepiece and it was Saturn.

333
00:20:18.442 --> 00:20:21.866
And the telescope had a long enough focal length, probably about 700 millimeters.

334
00:20:21.886 --> 00:20:22.026
Yeah.

335
00:20:23.483 --> 00:20:30.446
And long focal lengths go a long way to clean up an image, at least in the center of the field of view, even if it's a toy.

336
00:20:30.867 --> 00:20:31.127
Yeah.

337
00:20:31.547 --> 00:20:35.009
And for me, seeing Saturn for the first time, it looked high definition.

338
00:20:35.109 --> 00:20:35.449
That's cool.

339
00:20:35.469 --> 00:20:36.229
It looked HD.

340
00:20:36.489 --> 00:20:36.769
Yeah.

341
00:20:37.170 --> 00:20:40.791
And I immediately, like, I was like, no freaking way.

342
00:20:40.831 --> 00:20:41.452
This is insane.

343
00:20:41.472 --> 00:20:41.612
Yeah.

344
00:20:42.292 --> 00:20:44.933
And I immediately bought another telescope, which wasn't much better.

345
00:20:44.973 --> 00:20:50.156
I bought a Meade ETX-60, if anyone is into telescopes.

346
00:20:50.776 --> 00:20:51.876
And that wasn't much better.

347
00:20:51.896 --> 00:20:53.297
But that was my first experience.

348
00:20:53.317 --> 00:21:01.381
I would set it up in front of our apartment and show other people things through it, like Jupiter and its moons.

349
00:21:01.421 --> 00:21:03.142
And then they would go, like, wow.

350
00:21:03.202 --> 00:21:04.902
And this was in the city.

351
00:21:04.962 --> 00:21:10.005
So this is a good point that you can set up a telescope even with all the light pollution and still see things.

352
00:21:10.822 --> 00:21:11.282
Yeah, yeah.

353
00:21:11.302 --> 00:21:13.883
Like, a lot of things aren't affected by light pollution.

354
00:21:15.564 --> 00:21:18.485
Like, the planets, the moon, and a lot of double stars.

355
00:21:18.985 --> 00:21:24.047
Like, even the best double star in the sky, Albireo, I can generally find it in any sky conditions.

356
00:21:24.107 --> 00:21:25.347
Yeah.

357
00:21:25.727 --> 00:21:31.349
But then I realized that there's this, like, joy in showing people the stars.

358
00:21:32.409 --> 00:21:33.650
So I bought a bigger telescope.

359
00:21:34.110 --> 00:21:37.631
And now I'm like, I'm going to become an expert at this stuff so I can share it with other people.

360
00:21:37.651 --> 00:21:39.632
So I bought a 12-inch Dobsonian telescope.

361
00:21:40.460 --> 00:21:43.042
And it was way too big to even fit in our car.

362
00:21:43.422 --> 00:21:46.225
And so I built this giant box, which I still use today.

363
00:21:46.785 --> 00:21:54.651
We mounted it to my wife's 1999 BMW 328, which was in its dying moments.

364
00:21:54.671 --> 00:21:55.151
That's crazy.

365
00:21:55.332 --> 00:21:56.492
Yeah.

366
00:21:56.633 --> 00:22:01.336
And then the base for the telescope fit on the back seat with the front seat pushed forward.

367
00:22:01.356 --> 00:22:02.317
So a really big telescope.

368
00:22:03.937 --> 00:22:10.063
And I learned my way around the Messier list, which is the list of 110 most popular stargazing targets.

369
00:22:10.924 --> 00:22:18.973
And if you know the backstory behind the Messier list, this was a list of things not to look at made by a comet hunter about 200 years ago.

370
00:22:19.333 --> 00:22:20.074
Oh, interesting.

371
00:22:20.174 --> 00:22:21.255
Don't look at these things.

372
00:22:21.295 --> 00:22:22.096
Very difficult.

373
00:22:22.416 --> 00:22:22.676
Yeah.

374
00:22:22.796 --> 00:22:23.016
Yeah.

375
00:22:23.276 --> 00:22:24.717
Of course, his telescope is terrible.

376
00:22:24.757 --> 00:22:32.359
Now that our telescopes are awesome, we now know that these objects that he said don't look at are the star clusters, galaxies, and nebula.

377
00:22:32.859 --> 00:22:33.079
Anyway.

378
00:22:33.639 --> 00:22:35.820
So I made my way through that list.

379
00:22:35.960 --> 00:22:39.461
And by that time, I had the confidence to actually join an astronomy club.

380
00:22:39.941 --> 00:22:43.703
And within a few weeks of joining the astronomy club, they were like, dude, you know your stuff.

381
00:22:44.263 --> 00:22:50.445
Come help us as we go to high schools and middle schools and teach how to use telescopes to all these kids.

382
00:22:50.645 --> 00:22:50.745
Yeah.

383
00:22:50.765 --> 00:22:50.905
Yeah.

384
00:22:51.545 --> 00:22:52.226
And that's what I did.

385
00:22:53.808 --> 00:22:57.952
And soon after I made the book, 50 Things to See with a Small Telescope.

386
00:22:58.012 --> 00:23:01.216
And if people are watching, it looked like- Yeah, why did you make a book?

387
00:23:01.256 --> 00:23:08.003
What was your- I made it for me because I'm like, I realized there's only like 10 things per season that really like impress people.

388
00:23:08.764 --> 00:23:12.887
And so 10 things per season plus the moon and planets is 50 things.

389
00:23:12.927 --> 00:23:15.688
So I'm just like, here's the 50 things to see with a small telescope.

390
00:23:15.989 --> 00:23:17.990
Is this what you would teach kids in school?

391
00:23:18.170 --> 00:23:18.930
I mean, is this part of it?

392
00:23:18.950 --> 00:23:19.611
Yeah, exactly.

393
00:23:19.631 --> 00:23:21.692
So then I just made this reference guide for me.

394
00:23:22.052 --> 00:23:24.314
And you can see it's made in like Microsoft Word.

395
00:23:24.800 --> 00:23:26.482
Yeah, that's awesome.

396
00:23:26.662 --> 00:23:27.303
Which was great.

397
00:23:28.204 --> 00:23:34.190
Um, but I cleaned it up a bit after this and because I realized it was helping so many people.

398
00:23:34.691 --> 00:23:36.673
This is actually San Francisco in the background on the cover.

399
00:23:36.913 --> 00:23:45.182
It's just covered by fog because if you're on Mount Diablo or Mount Sanctuary Pius and the fog rolls into San Francisco, you can actually see the Milky Way and the stars are great.

400
00:23:45.202 --> 00:23:45.583
That's cool.

401
00:23:46.684 --> 00:23:46.884
Um.

402
00:23:47.932 --> 00:23:56.279
Yeah, so when I realized he was helping people and I realized he was selling and I was making a bit of money, maybe $2 a copy at that point, which is pretty good for books.

403
00:23:56.640 --> 00:23:56.880
Yeah.

404
00:23:57.040 --> 00:23:57.440
More books.

405
00:23:58.381 --> 00:24:00.823
I had it translated into 10 languages.

406
00:24:01.203 --> 00:24:02.324
And so I went on Upwork

407
00:24:03.025 --> 00:24:06.146
which was a brand new thing at the time to find freelancers.

408
00:24:06.226 --> 00:24:07.307
And I just hired 10 people.

409
00:24:07.587 --> 00:24:08.067
That's awesome.

410
00:24:08.327 --> 00:24:10.268
And they didn't charge very much at the time.

411
00:24:10.368 --> 00:24:11.349
Upwork was fairly new.

412
00:24:11.929 --> 00:24:17.671
And so for maybe a few thousand dollars, I had this book now in 10 different languages.

413
00:24:18.192 --> 00:24:19.872
And this was probably 2015.

414
00:24:21.713 --> 00:24:25.675
And by the end of that next Christmas, I was like,

415
00:24:26.008 --> 00:24:28.951
The book made enough that I was comfortable quitting my job.

416
00:24:29.252 --> 00:24:29.892
That's amazing.

417
00:24:29.912 --> 00:24:31.674
Because I was on the path of not here.

418
00:24:31.995 --> 00:24:35.679
But not only that, I had found the path that I was supposed to be on.

419
00:24:36.079 --> 00:24:36.360
Yeah.

420
00:24:36.800 --> 00:24:37.621
Which was astronomy.

421
00:24:38.762 --> 00:24:41.205
And teaching astronomy and astronomy outreach.

422
00:24:41.265 --> 00:24:41.605
Yeah.

423
00:24:42.226 --> 00:24:46.030
So at that point, I actually made it.

424
00:24:46.050 --> 00:24:47.172
I wasn't fully confident.

425
00:24:47.636 --> 00:24:47.896
Yeah.

426
00:24:48.316 --> 00:24:49.537
In, in being able to do this.

427
00:24:49.577 --> 00:24:55.178
So the book had made like X amount of money, which was like the minimum survivable amount of money.

428
00:24:55.218 --> 00:24:57.219
I'm like, okay, we have two things that we can do.

429
00:24:57.819 --> 00:25:04.481
I can either move to Canada and do an astrophysics degree or I can go work for NASA.

430
00:25:05.441 --> 00:25:05.641
Yeah.

431
00:25:05.762 --> 00:25:10.543
And so I was just for whatever reason, confident that I could just go into NASA.

432
00:25:10.563 --> 00:25:10.823
Yeah.

433
00:25:10.843 --> 00:25:12.183
So, hey, give me a job.

434
00:25:12.624 --> 00:25:12.744
Yeah.

435
00:25:12.764 --> 00:25:15.064
Which is probably like wishful thinking, but I didn't know that.

436
00:25:15.104 --> 00:25:15.825
I was still young.

437
00:25:16.605 --> 00:25:16.805
Yeah.

438
00:25:17.943 --> 00:25:20.105
Well, 32 or something at this point.

439
00:25:21.026 --> 00:25:22.367
And so we put our house on the market.

440
00:25:22.387 --> 00:25:35.160
I'm like, all right, if the house doesn't sell, then we go and rent like a one-bedroom apartment with my two kids, two cats and dog and wife and do a national physics degree living on like nothing.

441
00:25:35.881 --> 00:25:39.244
Or if the house sells, I go work for NASA and just...

442
00:25:40.025 --> 00:25:43.848
be a budget analyst or something, but at least I'm on the track.

443
00:25:44.188 --> 00:25:44.488
Yeah.

444
00:25:45.289 --> 00:25:46.710
Anyway, the house did not sell.

445
00:25:47.411 --> 00:25:47.751
Really?

446
00:25:47.771 --> 00:25:49.312
Yeah, house did not sell.

447
00:25:49.932 --> 00:25:52.574
So I quit my job and we moved to Canada.

448
00:25:52.594 --> 00:25:52.694
Yeah.

449
00:25:53.911 --> 00:25:55.411
where there's no healthcare expense.

450
00:25:55.491 --> 00:25:57.812
And if you're not making money, you're not paying tax, right?

451
00:25:58.712 --> 00:26:03.753
And university, I think my tuition in US dollars would probably be about 4,000 per year.

452
00:26:04.053 --> 00:26:04.653
It's amazing.

453
00:26:05.433 --> 00:26:07.093
And that's expensive for Canada.

454
00:26:07.113 --> 00:26:09.374
So like 6,000 to 7,000 Canadian.

455
00:26:10.274 --> 00:26:16.235
And you were getting an astrophysics degree at this point, like a master's or a bachelor's?

456
00:26:16.255 --> 00:26:21.756
No, I had to go all the way back because like a business degree is not going to do anything for you in astronomy, right?

457
00:26:21.796 --> 00:26:22.196
Wow.

458
00:26:23.279 --> 00:26:26.041
I guess, how did it feel to be like, okay, we're going to do it?

459
00:26:26.061 --> 00:26:27.502
Because this is a big leap of faith.

460
00:26:27.522 --> 00:26:28.462
You got a family.

461
00:26:28.482 --> 00:26:29.383
Yeah.

462
00:26:29.583 --> 00:26:34.946
You have a very stable job, probably paying you comfortably in a cool town, San Francisco.

463
00:26:34.966 --> 00:26:35.807
People like living there.

464
00:26:36.367 --> 00:26:36.688
Yeah.

465
00:26:36.708 --> 00:26:40.230
So I was actually... And then you're like, nope, we're just going to go.

466
00:26:40.390 --> 00:26:41.851
I'm going to take this leap of faith.

467
00:26:43.360 --> 00:26:44.921
Yeah, it was actually quite well paying.

468
00:26:44.941 --> 00:26:48.383
So I had actually had a house in San Francisco, a four bedroom house.

469
00:26:49.444 --> 00:26:51.465
And we had a five bedroom house in South Carolina.

470
00:26:51.826 --> 00:26:52.746
Yeah, that's wild.

471
00:26:52.866 --> 00:27:00.071
And so I was doing a stint in South Carolina doing East Coast operations, finance manager stuff.

472
00:27:00.131 --> 00:27:04.594
And so for the clients, I was doing Lowe's, Home Depot,

473
00:27:05.718 --> 00:27:08.961
And if I recall, Dollar General, Family Dollar, those were all the clients.

474
00:27:08.981 --> 00:27:16.048
So I was the finance guy supporting all the salespeople, like calculating all their return on investments, making investment decisions.

475
00:27:16.429 --> 00:27:18.251
How did you not talk yourself out of this?

476
00:27:18.711 --> 00:27:20.913
I could see a million ways to talk myself out of this.

477
00:27:21.194 --> 00:27:21.674
Oh, my gosh.

478
00:27:21.714 --> 00:27:22.155
Yeah, yeah.

479
00:27:22.595 --> 00:27:22.835
Oh, my.

480
00:27:22.855 --> 00:27:24.037
Because then I had two mortgages.

481
00:27:24.117 --> 00:27:25.518
Yeah, two mortgages.

482
00:27:25.638 --> 00:27:26.619
One house isn't selling.

483
00:27:26.659 --> 00:27:27.280
Two kids.

484
00:27:27.480 --> 00:27:27.860
Cats.

485
00:27:28.691 --> 00:27:30.311
Yeah, and my wife didn't work.

486
00:27:30.411 --> 00:27:31.532
She's a stay-at-home mom.

487
00:27:31.772 --> 00:27:33.372
Yeah.

488
00:27:34.213 --> 00:27:37.713
And the book brought in, I think, 40 grand that year.

489
00:27:38.514 --> 00:27:41.274
And I'm like, we can do this.

490
00:27:41.434 --> 00:27:43.395
And so the book makes 40 grand.

491
00:27:43.915 --> 00:27:44.575
We can do this.

492
00:27:44.775 --> 00:27:46.156
In Canada, we can do this.

493
00:27:46.276 --> 00:27:47.416
Not in San Francisco.

494
00:27:47.876 --> 00:27:51.317
In middle management and corporate finance at this point.

495
00:27:51.617 --> 00:27:54.178
I'm 10 years into my career, about to go into my 11th year.

496
00:27:54.813 --> 00:27:55.073
Yeah.

497
00:27:55.834 --> 00:27:58.055
And I leave it all behind.

498
00:27:58.435 --> 00:27:58.795
Wow.

499
00:27:59.176 --> 00:28:06.360
And fortunately, I'm like, okay, well, I can do the books and in theory support.

500
00:28:06.820 --> 00:28:11.503
If we can grow the books like 5X, then we'll be more than happy.

501
00:28:12.023 --> 00:28:16.766
And so we wrote this next book, Things to See with a Midsized Telescope, complete success.

502
00:28:17.693 --> 00:28:18.033
bomb.

503
00:28:18.393 --> 00:28:21.635
Yeah, I mean, who's got a mid-sized telescope lying around?

504
00:28:21.655 --> 00:28:21.875
Yeah.

505
00:28:22.015 --> 00:28:23.596
It's either small or big.

506
00:28:23.656 --> 00:28:24.556
There's no mid-sized.

507
00:28:25.016 --> 00:28:26.857
My wife is like, you need to write a kid's book.

508
00:28:27.337 --> 00:28:27.397
Oh.

509
00:28:27.417 --> 00:28:28.738
And I was like, that's silly.

510
00:28:29.218 --> 00:28:29.839
That's brilliant.

511
00:28:29.859 --> 00:28:30.999
She's like, just do it.

512
00:28:31.319 --> 00:28:31.639
Yeah.

513
00:28:32.000 --> 00:28:40.363
So we took the mid-sized telescope, the small telescope, we took the best targets of each one, and we did things to see with the telescope for kids.

514
00:28:40.564 --> 00:28:40.984
Yeah.

515
00:28:41.744 --> 00:28:44.825
And that Christmas, I think it sold 200 copies.

516
00:28:45.126 --> 00:28:45.366
Okay.

517
00:28:45.386 --> 00:28:45.486
Yeah.

518
00:28:46.266 --> 00:28:51.189
And so I went to a publisher and I was like, Hey, do you want to make this into a book?

519
00:28:51.909 --> 00:29:00.733
And they said, um, maybe, um, and then we actually ended up signing a contract, but, but I'm like, but don't touch the kid's book.

520
00:29:00.793 --> 00:29:07.576
I'm going to keep all the rights to that just in case the next year that book sold like 20,000 copies at Christmas.

521
00:29:08.037 --> 00:29:08.277
Yeah.

522
00:29:08.797 --> 00:29:11.058
And then, so that would have been 2018 around that.

523
00:29:11.078 --> 00:29:11.838
Yeah.

524
00:29:11.879 --> 00:29:14.060
And so at that point it was like, okay, we're good.

525
00:29:14.100 --> 00:29:14.760
I'm an author now.

526
00:29:16.627 --> 00:29:18.048
And then many other books followed.

527
00:29:18.088 --> 00:29:19.649
We did five textbooks.

528
00:29:21.111 --> 00:29:24.874
And then really proud of our latest books are by far the best.

529
00:29:24.954 --> 00:29:26.295
We can talk about that in a little bit.

530
00:29:26.335 --> 00:29:29.738
But I'm also curious because, yeah, you've become an author.

531
00:29:29.758 --> 00:29:30.158
You've done this.

532
00:29:30.198 --> 00:29:32.100
But you also kept getting degrees.

533
00:29:32.160 --> 00:29:33.000
Like, why?

534
00:29:33.521 --> 00:29:34.782
Why did you go to Hopkins and get a degree?

535
00:29:34.802 --> 00:29:37.364
Well, you can't really get an astrophysics degree and stop.

536
00:29:39.165 --> 00:29:39.846
There's just more and more.

537
00:29:39.866 --> 00:29:41.988
And so it was challenging because we –

538
00:29:43.137 --> 00:29:44.058
I was doing the degree.

539
00:29:44.078 --> 00:29:46.599
I was raising my kids.

540
00:29:48.000 --> 00:29:50.522
Um, and then we had a third kid somewhere in there.

541
00:29:51.523 --> 00:29:54.244
I, about the time I graduated somewhere after the second undergrad.

542
00:29:54.504 --> 00:29:54.725
Yeah.

543
00:29:54.805 --> 00:30:02.470
And then, so three kids wife, for the most part is still a homemaker who is now riding horses as a hobby.

544
00:30:04.931 --> 00:30:07.233
The book sales are sort of coming off their high.

545
00:30:08.554 --> 00:30:08.794
Um,

546
00:30:10.174 --> 00:30:10.674
I'm renovating.

547
00:30:10.695 --> 00:30:12.316
We bought a hundred year old house.

548
00:30:12.916 --> 00:30:19.142
I renovated that and still trying to do this book, this book thing.

549
00:30:19.582 --> 00:30:22.244
And I go to apply to a masters in Canada.

550
00:30:22.685 --> 00:30:22.945
Yeah.

551
00:30:23.605 --> 00:30:28.730
And basically they're like, listen, I went to the, the like chair of the department.

552
00:30:29.370 --> 00:30:32.333
He's like, you've only got a 3.7 GPA.

553
00:30:33.954 --> 00:30:35.415
He's like, that's not good enough, dude.

554
00:30:35.796 --> 00:30:37.397
He's like, we won't be able to get your funding.

555
00:30:37.737 --> 00:30:38.078
Yeah.

556
00:30:39.133 --> 00:30:40.895
And I was like, you're kidding me.

557
00:30:40.935 --> 00:30:42.857
Canada's off a four-point system, right?

558
00:30:42.877 --> 00:30:46.581
We're not talking 3.7 out of 5, right?

559
00:30:47.041 --> 00:30:48.403
No, it's a weird system.

560
00:30:48.423 --> 00:30:50.244
It's called CGPA or something.

561
00:30:50.264 --> 00:30:53.027
So you can get up to a 4.3.

562
00:30:53.167 --> 00:30:53.788
Okay.

563
00:30:54.949 --> 00:30:57.792
That's a good reference point because we're used to a 4.0.

564
00:30:57.932 --> 00:31:00.495
Yeah, so 4.0 would be like...

565
00:31:01.887 --> 00:31:10.339
That would be like the requirement for, even though like I'm at an A minus or whatever, it's still like, they're like, we need, you're competing against people.

566
00:31:10.419 --> 00:31:11.841
It's a grade based for masters.

567
00:31:11.941 --> 00:31:13.323
They're like, it's probably not going to happen.

568
00:31:14.635 --> 00:31:15.896
And so I'm like, all right.

569
00:31:16.576 --> 00:31:17.556
So I basically go back.

570
00:31:17.616 --> 00:31:20.017
I start, I go and start a YouTube channel instead.

571
00:31:20.357 --> 00:31:24.159
So I start, learn to stargaze on YouTube, which worked out okay.

572
00:31:24.439 --> 00:31:24.739
Yeah.

573
00:31:24.799 --> 00:31:25.919
It's good marketing for the books.

574
00:31:26.119 --> 00:31:29.340
Well, I feel like you treat both of these like a business, right?

575
00:31:29.360 --> 00:31:30.841
It's not a side hustle.

576
00:31:30.881 --> 00:31:34.202
All of the profits you're getting from the book go back into the books.

577
00:31:34.482 --> 00:31:36.303
And then now you've got the YouTube platforms

578
00:31:37.260 --> 00:31:38.541
Yeah, YouTube.

579
00:31:38.741 --> 00:31:41.043
So heavily invest in YouTube.

580
00:31:41.083 --> 00:31:46.648
And just, I mean, with anything, you've got to be in your very small niche.

581
00:31:46.848 --> 00:32:00.339
The secret to success in your small niche is to make sure that you're doing your best and hopefully that you're doing better in that very narrow thing that you own, that you're doing it better than anyone else in the world.

582
00:32:00.559 --> 00:32:00.839
Yeah.

583
00:32:01.560 --> 00:32:01.660
And

584
00:32:02.881 --> 00:32:08.988
And I realized that I think coming into the book, into the second book, like I got lucky with the first book.

585
00:32:09.249 --> 00:32:09.469
Yeah.

586
00:32:09.849 --> 00:32:12.352
But then, and then obviously unlucky with the midsize.

587
00:32:12.372 --> 00:32:13.614
I don't know what I was doing there.

588
00:32:14.034 --> 00:32:19.060
But by the time we did the kids one, I'm like, listen, if I can just make a book that's better than any other book on the market.

589
00:32:19.280 --> 00:32:19.500
Yeah.

590
00:32:20.021 --> 00:32:20.642
This will work.

591
00:32:21.118 --> 00:32:22.179
Yeah.

592
00:32:23.179 --> 00:32:26.081
And we've done that repeatedly ever, ever since.

593
00:32:26.121 --> 00:32:29.322
So if you look at our latest book, this is the Ultimate Beginner Telescope Guidebook.

594
00:32:29.582 --> 00:32:29.842
Nice.

595
00:32:30.283 --> 00:32:32.844
There has never been any stargazing book ever.

596
00:32:33.625 --> 00:32:35.046
Better than this, like guaranteed.

597
00:32:35.767 --> 00:32:37.888
And never a stargazing book easier to use.

598
00:32:38.188 --> 00:32:38.429
Yeah.

599
00:32:38.889 --> 00:32:39.409
Guaranteed.

600
00:32:39.529 --> 00:32:44.993
Plus, we're up with the times and it includes smart telescopes as well.

601
00:32:45.033 --> 00:32:48.976
So anyway, that's the idea is that, okay, no one's done this at this level.

602
00:32:49.256 --> 00:32:49.537
Yeah.

603
00:32:50.177 --> 00:32:52.298
And so we're going to be the ones to do that.

604
00:32:52.319 --> 00:32:58.363
And the same thing applies to YouTube as well, which is more challenging because there's a lot of people in the space space.

605
00:32:58.843 --> 00:32:59.304
Space space.

606
00:32:59.624 --> 00:33:01.105
It's easier to do a video than a book.

607
00:33:02.422 --> 00:33:02.862
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

608
00:33:02.882 --> 00:33:08.527
Because the book takes about two years to do well, to do better than anyone else.

609
00:33:08.547 --> 00:33:10.508
It takes about two years, at least for me.

610
00:33:11.809 --> 00:33:13.871
And that's like full-time dedicated effort.

611
00:33:16.255 --> 00:33:23.397
So, but, but YouTube, you can, I would say the videos that we've done that have done better than anyone else are probably like 80 hours.

612
00:33:24.117 --> 00:33:24.397
Wow.

613
00:33:24.837 --> 00:33:30.218
Whereas a book is probably, um, three to 4,000 hours of effort.

614
00:33:30.538 --> 00:33:31.399
Don't be discouraged.

615
00:33:31.439 --> 00:33:34.119
People listening, you can be an author or a YouTuber still.

616
00:33:34.659 --> 00:33:34.920
Yeah.

617
00:33:34.940 --> 00:33:35.160
Yeah.

618
00:33:35.220 --> 00:33:40.621
No, I mean, so a book, if we want to talk books, as long as you're consistent, um,

619
00:33:41.879 --> 00:33:49.244
And like the way to write a book or a nonfiction book, like you've written a book, is just you have to make sure that every day you're doing a little bit.

620
00:33:50.204 --> 00:33:58.810
And so for me, if I'm writing a novel, I just make sure that I'm writing 2,500 words per day, which I can finish before lunchtime.

621
00:33:59.576 --> 00:34:07.322
And if I'm writing nonfiction, I make sure that I write a thousand words per day because nonfiction includes research and whatnot.

622
00:34:07.443 --> 00:34:13.748
And so as long as I hit those two milestones every day for months on end, you know, the book is going to come together.

623
00:34:15.378 --> 00:34:18.819
And so that's the Venn diagram of what it takes.

624
00:34:18.999 --> 00:34:20.639
Yeah.

625
00:34:20.679 --> 00:34:22.340
No, I mean, that's a great Venn diagram.

626
00:34:22.520 --> 00:34:25.341
It is that like consistency, small steps.

627
00:34:25.441 --> 00:34:27.841
It's consistency and power and like account.

628
00:34:28.181 --> 00:34:28.522
Yeah.

629
00:34:28.802 --> 00:34:29.442
No, I mean, it's right.

630
00:34:29.462 --> 00:34:31.742
When I wrote my book, I was like, okay, I want to do it in eight weeks.

631
00:34:31.822 --> 00:34:33.143
Every week I have to write a chapter.

632
00:34:33.643 --> 00:34:34.743
So we'd be on vacation.

633
00:34:34.803 --> 00:34:35.563
Family would go to sleep.

634
00:34:35.623 --> 00:34:37.064
I'm like, all right, this is my time.

635
00:34:37.224 --> 00:34:40.625
So if this is really the goal I set for myself, then let's do it.

636
00:34:41.905 --> 00:34:46.966
So it is that consistency and just kind of, yeah, account keeping for yourself, like keeping yourself accountable.

637
00:34:47.286 --> 00:34:49.387
And writing a book, some of it's math, right?

638
00:34:49.587 --> 00:34:52.707
Like a book is generally 65,000 words.

639
00:34:53.787 --> 00:35:01.049
And so if you write 1,000 words a day and you only work weekdays and that's three months, right?

640
00:35:01.629 --> 00:35:05.390
And so sort of just thinking about it like that.

641
00:35:05.410 --> 00:35:06.270
And I think I've done...

642
00:35:07.499 --> 00:35:10.661
I published, depends how you count, probably about 20 books.

643
00:35:11.021 --> 00:35:11.662
That's amazing.

644
00:35:12.282 --> 00:35:16.525
And, but that's only a fraction of what I've written, if that makes sense.

645
00:35:16.565 --> 00:35:16.825
Yes.

646
00:35:16.925 --> 00:35:17.905
Yeah.

647
00:35:17.945 --> 00:35:19.927
Because I do science fiction as well.

648
00:35:20.107 --> 00:35:20.407
Yeah.

649
00:35:21.167 --> 00:35:22.748
Which is a whole different thing.

650
00:35:22.928 --> 00:35:23.589
That's a whole different.

651
00:35:23.789 --> 00:35:24.930
It's a lot of fun though.

652
00:35:25.310 --> 00:35:25.570
Yeah.

653
00:35:25.590 --> 00:35:28.532
Because you can imagine it's not just you're creating the world.

654
00:35:29.588 --> 00:35:33.591
You're creating a world, although you're sort of like discovering it.

655
00:35:34.311 --> 00:35:42.837
Because I don't feel like, like I've got this whole world in the different sci-fi series that I've written, but it's speculative fiction.

656
00:35:42.897 --> 00:35:44.759
So for me, the world already exists.

657
00:35:45.359 --> 00:35:48.261
It's just the world as it is, but 80 years down the road.

658
00:35:48.541 --> 00:35:49.002
Fair enough.

659
00:35:49.442 --> 00:35:49.922
Same people.

660
00:35:49.942 --> 00:35:50.843
The people don't change.

661
00:35:50.863 --> 00:35:52.544
You're exploring that space, yeah.

662
00:35:52.904 --> 00:36:03.429
So tell us about, yeah, learn to stargaze and why you decide to branch into that, why you thought books weren't enough or you needed more ways of, I guess, doing this.

663
00:36:03.969 --> 00:36:06.030
So books have a lifespan, right?

664
00:36:06.070 --> 00:36:10.172
Like they hit the market, and if it's nonfiction, it might take a while to ramp up.

665
00:36:11.299 --> 00:36:17.942
And then they sort of trickle off and they sort of need marketing and you need some way for for your reader readers to connect with you.

666
00:36:18.522 --> 00:36:26.186
And so I met with all these consultants about, OK, I want to start a YouTube channel because I was already doing YouTube before, but not like serious.

667
00:36:27.202 --> 00:36:31.125
And they're like, you need to be like Astro Backyard or John Stargazing.

668
00:36:31.865 --> 00:36:36.589
But I'm like, I've taken a lot of marketing courses and I've met with a lot of marketing people.

669
00:36:36.609 --> 00:36:38.290
I'm like, I don't think that's going to work.

670
00:36:38.370 --> 00:36:39.871
Plus, that's like too much me.

671
00:36:39.911 --> 00:36:43.193
Like, what if I decide that I want to have other people on board or whatever?

672
00:36:43.213 --> 00:36:50.278
And I was like, the famous case study in business for naming things is Kills Weeds Dead.

673
00:36:51.619 --> 00:36:53.280
Because you know exactly what it does.

674
00:36:53.300 --> 00:36:54.261
Yeah, that's right.

675
00:36:54.681 --> 00:36:55.401
In the name of the product.

676
00:36:57.371 --> 00:36:59.731
And I'm like, it needs to be that.

677
00:36:59.831 --> 00:37:03.352
And so it's, I teach people to stargaze, learn to stargaze.

678
00:37:03.412 --> 00:37:03.712
Yeah.

679
00:37:04.132 --> 00:37:08.053
And a New York consultant I hired was like, no, that's the stupidest thing ever.

680
00:37:08.553 --> 00:37:09.333
I'm like, no.

681
00:37:09.693 --> 00:37:16.814
And it's available on .com, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.

682
00:37:16.875 --> 00:37:17.315
That's wild.

683
00:37:17.875 --> 00:37:24.456
And then so I effectively spent a day buying up every domain and on Twitter.

684
00:37:25.416 --> 00:37:29.958
And so we're learning to stargaze across every platform, ignoring the New York consultant.

685
00:37:30.338 --> 00:37:30.618
Yeah.

686
00:37:31.599 --> 00:37:32.999
And so that was born.

687
00:37:33.039 --> 00:37:35.860
That was born 2020 or 2021.

688
00:37:35.940 --> 00:37:37.801
It was born during the pandemic.

689
00:37:38.141 --> 00:37:38.541
Gotcha.

690
00:37:39.242 --> 00:37:46.285
And then we hired Haley Davies, who's a cinematographer from the Trailer Park Boys.

691
00:37:46.785 --> 00:37:51.607
If anyone's ever seen probably the worst show on television ever,

692
00:37:52.758 --> 00:37:54.220
that people can't stop watching.

693
00:37:54.600 --> 00:37:55.341
Yeah.

694
00:37:55.381 --> 00:37:58.185
I think it's even where Elliot Page got his start.

695
00:37:58.606 --> 00:37:59.266
That's amazing.

696
00:37:59.607 --> 00:38:07.857
As, of course, Ellen Page and her famous line that I think made her famous, where she goes to the lead character in the show and she's like, I can't respect you.

697
00:38:08.078 --> 00:38:08.959
And he's like, why not?

698
00:38:09.359 --> 00:38:11.442
And she goes, you grow weed in the car that you live in.

699
00:38:12.985 --> 00:38:16.827
Anyway, and then she became an international superstar.

700
00:38:17.268 --> 00:38:20.069
Yeah, or now he became an international superstar.

701
00:38:20.250 --> 00:38:22.251
Yeah, he became, yes.

702
00:38:22.731 --> 00:38:29.375
And so we took their creative director because she was expecting a kid soon, and so she couldn't be on.

703
00:38:29.395 --> 00:38:30.556
That's awesome.

704
00:38:30.616 --> 00:38:32.117
She had her until she had Michael.

705
00:38:33.898 --> 00:38:37.179
And, and so that, that really springboarded the YouTube thing.

706
00:38:37.199 --> 00:38:38.719
And we're not, we're not a massive channel.

707
00:38:38.739 --> 00:38:40.039
Like we don't have our play button yet.

708
00:38:40.520 --> 00:38:43.840
We're 80, 82,000 subscribers on.

709
00:38:44.020 --> 00:38:44.560
Pretty good.

710
00:38:45.241 --> 00:38:45.681
On YouTube.

711
00:38:45.701 --> 00:38:48.961
But like we use it to teach people to stargaze.

712
00:38:49.422 --> 00:38:54.823
And so we succeeded in that if you Google telescope or how to use a telescope, you get us.

713
00:38:55.163 --> 00:38:55.443
Yeah.

714
00:38:55.883 --> 00:38:57.664
Which which is what our goal is.

715
00:38:57.684 --> 00:39:02.425
And so the videos that we have to like approach, you know, are approaching a million views or like one that's above a million views.

716
00:39:02.445 --> 00:39:03.005
That's awesome.

717
00:39:03.065 --> 00:39:03.985
That's what it is.

718
00:39:04.065 --> 00:39:09.807
It's it's solving that very specific issue that people have, which is they've got a telescope and they don't know how to use it.

719
00:39:10.447 --> 00:39:15.108
And meeting them where they're at, because often it's just you have your phone and you're like, how do I start?

720
00:39:15.208 --> 00:39:17.229
You know, like I have a telescope here.

721
00:39:17.269 --> 00:39:17.989
How do I do this?

722
00:39:18.489 --> 00:39:19.550
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

723
00:39:19.610 --> 00:39:27.156
But eventually, like we said earlier, you got to put the phone away and have that authentic stargazing experience without any technology.

724
00:39:27.677 --> 00:39:31.800
So do you leave your phones in the car or you're good enough to just put them in your pocket?

725
00:39:32.040 --> 00:39:32.521
I wish.

726
00:39:32.701 --> 00:39:33.141
I wish.

727
00:39:33.361 --> 00:39:33.641
No.

728
00:39:33.701 --> 00:39:34.382
So like most.

729
00:39:34.582 --> 00:39:34.802
Yeah.

730
00:39:34.822 --> 00:39:35.003
Yeah.

731
00:39:35.043 --> 00:39:38.846
So if I'm if I'm like trying to stargaze, then I'll try really hard.

732
00:39:39.546 --> 00:39:41.188
It's tough being a YouTuber.

733
00:39:41.888 --> 00:39:42.288
Yeah.

734
00:39:42.349 --> 00:39:47.013
In that space, because you get, you really do acquire a screen addiction.

735
00:39:47.113 --> 00:39:49.175
And I think that's something that I'm struggling with right now.

736
00:39:49.555 --> 00:39:49.795
Yeah.

737
00:39:50.215 --> 00:39:54.860
Especially when the person that makes the video is not supposed to be the person that posts it.

738
00:39:56.001 --> 00:40:01.686
But since my assistant moved on, I had an assistant the last year and she went on to Andy's East Coast Kitchens.

739
00:40:01.786 --> 00:40:03.067
And so I'm like shaking my fist.

740
00:40:03.647 --> 00:40:04.468
Darn it, Andy.

741
00:40:05.229 --> 00:40:06.330
In your East Coast Kitchen?

742
00:40:06.350 --> 00:40:06.450
Yeah.

743
00:40:07.030 --> 00:40:09.594
So I haven't rehired an assistant yet.

744
00:40:10.175 --> 00:40:12.338
But she was great in that she would post the videos.

745
00:40:12.578 --> 00:40:16.804
But now that I have to do it, you sit there, you post the video, and then you watch the videos come in.

746
00:40:17.225 --> 00:40:19.809
I mean, it's crazy, too, to think in 2012.

747
00:40:19.929 --> 00:40:22.533
Was it 2012 when you got your first telescope?

748
00:40:22.713 --> 00:40:23.454
How long ago was it?

749
00:40:25.004 --> 00:40:28.026
Would have been 2010.

750
00:40:28.066 --> 00:40:28.326
2010.

751
00:40:28.366 --> 00:40:30.468
We didn't have the phone addictions we have now.

752
00:40:30.608 --> 00:40:32.769
I mean, the iPhone was three years old.

753
00:40:32.809 --> 00:40:36.692
The apps were, they were there, but they weren't really flushed out.

754
00:40:36.812 --> 00:40:37.653
I mean, I don't remember.

755
00:40:37.713 --> 00:40:38.993
I was on a flip phone back then.

756
00:40:39.094 --> 00:40:42.596
I don't remember like sitting there and just scrolling all the time.

757
00:40:42.696 --> 00:40:49.821
So just interesting to see how even in that time, like your relationship as someone who does this professionally has changed with your phone.

758
00:40:50.658 --> 00:40:56.601
I remember sitting on rounds and watching my attending be on his phone in like 2008 or nine.

759
00:40:56.841 --> 00:40:58.482
And I was like, that's so rude.

760
00:40:58.562 --> 00:41:03.484
Like, why is he taking texts while like the house staff is talking to him, you know, the trainees.

761
00:41:04.045 --> 00:41:05.445
But now that's like common.

762
00:41:05.465 --> 00:41:06.826
It's like common practice.

763
00:41:07.406 --> 00:41:07.766
Yeah.

764
00:41:07.966 --> 00:41:08.507
Pretty nuts.

765
00:41:09.655 --> 00:41:14.779
Yeah, I was thinking of doing a video where I need to hire someone to film it.

766
00:41:15.019 --> 00:41:19.242
But like where we go without screens for a week and see how it works for our stargazing.

767
00:41:19.262 --> 00:41:23.505
I was thinking of doing that with Nathan Harpst, who is a big TikTok star.

768
00:41:24.145 --> 00:41:26.207
And we collaborate a lot on projects.

769
00:41:26.647 --> 00:41:27.568
And I'm like, can you?

770
00:41:27.588 --> 00:41:29.569
Because he's really addicted to screens.

771
00:41:29.689 --> 00:41:30.630
Yeah.

772
00:41:31.250 --> 00:41:31.531
You know.

773
00:41:32.610 --> 00:41:33.331
We all are.

774
00:41:33.971 --> 00:41:34.992
We all are, yeah.

775
00:41:35.012 --> 00:41:35.552
We all are.

776
00:41:36.213 --> 00:41:41.797
But it's funny because his screen time, my screen time, it puts me at like four hours a day.

777
00:41:41.837 --> 00:41:42.137
Yeah.

778
00:41:43.018 --> 00:41:47.281
His screen time shows up as greater than 24 hours.

779
00:41:47.721 --> 00:41:49.963
That's wild because there's multiple screens.

780
00:41:50.298 --> 00:42:02.702
he's yeah so he edits and film he just has multiple devices and he just is constantly putting out wow and i was like holy cow and we'll be on tour with him and he'll just be like all day yeah like

781
00:42:03.387 --> 00:42:13.213
Well, and I wonder, you know, when we talk about like technology and how it's affecting our ability, one, to like just like disconnect so we can let our eyes adapt.

782
00:42:13.233 --> 00:42:17.195
But like, how are these mega constellations like Starlink and other satellites?

783
00:42:17.235 --> 00:42:18.776
How is that affecting us?

784
00:42:19.557 --> 00:42:21.778
How do you think that's going to affect our ability to view the sky?

785
00:42:21.818 --> 00:42:24.820
Some people say, well, the sky is so big, it won't really affect us.

786
00:42:25.020 --> 00:42:28.062
But I don't know what your take is on someone's thought about this.

787
00:42:29.103 --> 00:42:33.266
Yeah, at this point, like, astronomers don't like, like, professional astronomers don't like it.

788
00:42:33.706 --> 00:42:37.148
Astro photographers don't like it because you need to edit them out of your photos.

789
00:42:37.649 --> 00:42:38.809
Yeah.

790
00:42:39.630 --> 00:42:43.733
I think when dealing with the public, though, it's kind of exciting.

791
00:42:44.733 --> 00:42:46.674
Because I also like space exploration, right?

792
00:42:46.995 --> 00:42:47.435
Yeah.

793
00:42:47.815 --> 00:42:49.656
So, you know, now you can see.

794
00:42:50.917 --> 00:42:58.781
Uh, like when a, when a Falcon nine or something does a second stage burn, you can see that up even here in Canada, depending on the orbit.

795
00:42:58.861 --> 00:43:01.803
Like if it's a sun synchronous orbit, it's pretty amazing right over us.

796
00:43:01.823 --> 00:43:01.983
Right.

797
00:43:02.003 --> 00:43:02.363
Yeah.

798
00:43:03.744 --> 00:43:05.885
And so we see those second stage burns.

799
00:43:05.985 --> 00:43:16.890
We see the Starlink trains and that gets people excited about space and anything that gets people excited about space is, is okay with me for now.

800
00:43:17.791 --> 00:43:17.951
Um,

801
00:43:18.635 --> 00:43:20.677
You also, like, the Starlinks have gotten dimmer.

802
00:43:21.297 --> 00:43:23.979
They've also turned a little blue, I think.

803
00:43:24.399 --> 00:43:27.161
So they're doing something so that they're not as reflective.

804
00:43:27.562 --> 00:43:31.965
But now I've noticed a lot of satellites with a blue tinge, and I think they're Starlinks.

805
00:43:32.305 --> 00:43:33.166
Yeah, interesting.

806
00:43:33.206 --> 00:43:34.567
So that's been new.

807
00:43:34.987 --> 00:43:41.272
It also depends on the season and the time of night, because you need the sun angle to be such that the satellites are going to show up.

808
00:43:42.710 --> 00:43:47.898
Um, but there's also two different hobbies within stargazing.

809
00:43:47.998 --> 00:43:51.063
Like one is astrophotography, which is where you are using technology.

810
00:43:51.243 --> 00:43:51.463
Yeah.

811
00:43:51.524 --> 00:43:52.886
And the other one is stargazing.

812
00:43:53.346 --> 00:43:57.533
And it's sometimes hard for people to grasp just how different those two hobbies are.

813
00:43:58.793 --> 00:44:00.314
And some people will go with a telescope.

814
00:44:00.354 --> 00:44:03.837
They'll bring their new telescope out and maybe it's just like a toy telescope.

815
00:44:04.557 --> 00:44:08.660
And they'll, you know, maybe they'll even come to me and they'll be like, how do I attach?

816
00:44:08.800 --> 00:44:09.901
How do I attach my camera?

817
00:44:10.121 --> 00:44:10.421
Yeah.

818
00:44:10.641 --> 00:44:11.762
Like, I'm like this.

819
00:44:12.462 --> 00:44:13.363
It may be fancy.

820
00:44:13.483 --> 00:44:14.364
It may be expensive.

821
00:44:14.644 --> 00:44:15.905
But this is for stargazing.

822
00:44:15.945 --> 00:44:18.166
Like there's no place to attach a camera.

823
00:44:18.186 --> 00:44:18.306
Yeah.

824
00:44:18.326 --> 00:44:18.486
Yeah.

825
00:44:19.527 --> 00:44:22.949
And so you have to have that conversation and then people will be confused.

826
00:44:23.349 --> 00:44:23.729
Yeah.

827
00:44:24.029 --> 00:44:25.830
I'm going to put my iPhone up to it.

828
00:44:26.410 --> 00:44:28.831
And it's like, yeah, but that's not the same.

829
00:44:28.931 --> 00:44:38.675
Like you've removed yourself entirely from the stargazing experience from what is stargazing and you've shifted over to astrophotography, which is a completely different hobby.

830
00:44:39.686 --> 00:44:42.771
Which I'm going to argue we do all the time now with technology.

831
00:44:42.791 --> 00:44:45.495
You go to a concert, everyone's got their phone out.

832
00:44:45.535 --> 00:44:46.537
They're not looking at that.

833
00:44:46.637 --> 00:44:51.846
I mean, when we watch rocket launches, I don't know if you see these, but I often am like, put your phone down.

834
00:44:52.547 --> 00:44:53.188
Don't record it.

835
00:44:55.458 --> 00:44:56.559
Because you detach yourself.

836
00:44:56.799 --> 00:44:58.421
It's a very different experience.

837
00:44:58.882 --> 00:44:59.322
It is.

838
00:44:59.823 --> 00:45:04.147
And the other thing that's coming up this August for anyone that's traveling for it is the eclipse.

839
00:45:04.408 --> 00:45:04.688
Yeah.

840
00:45:05.369 --> 00:45:10.554
And it is very hard to not try to photograph it.

841
00:45:11.135 --> 00:45:11.235
Yeah.

842
00:45:11.255 --> 00:45:12.576
I mean, doubly hard for...

843
00:45:13.622 --> 00:45:14.664
someone in social media.

844
00:45:14.704 --> 00:45:19.171
Cause like, like I'm being, I'm literally being paid to go photograph this thing.

845
00:45:19.431 --> 00:45:20.834
So how do I go and enjoy it?

846
00:45:21.234 --> 00:45:21.495
Yeah.

847
00:45:21.595 --> 00:45:26.242
Because at the same time, if you can just put a camera, that's just watching what you do.

848
00:45:27.428 --> 00:45:32.370
And get that very human experience of seeing an eclipse on camera.

849
00:45:32.510 --> 00:45:32.790
Yeah.

850
00:45:32.870 --> 00:45:34.351
Like, people are going to relate to that.

851
00:45:34.551 --> 00:45:34.851
Yeah.

852
00:45:35.251 --> 00:45:38.913
That's what we did when I went and saw the last one in 2024.

853
00:45:38.933 --> 00:45:41.354
It came through the U.S. Yeah.

854
00:45:41.474 --> 00:45:41.754
Yeah.

855
00:45:42.195 --> 00:45:42.795
Did you film it?

856
00:45:43.215 --> 00:45:44.636
I filmed us.

857
00:45:44.896 --> 00:45:47.737
I filmed, like, the family with a camera on the ground.

858
00:45:47.817 --> 00:45:48.097
Yeah.

859
00:45:48.357 --> 00:45:51.959
So it's a tough situation.

860
00:45:51.999 --> 00:45:53.459
I definitely think we've lost something.

861
00:45:53.940 --> 00:45:56.581
You know, we can record everything, but then we don't experience...

862
00:45:57.658 --> 00:46:04.760
Everyone can experience pretty much anything in the world or in the stars through the internet, through books, through videos.

863
00:46:05.140 --> 00:46:11.442
But on an individual basis, we're experiencing less fully, I think, on a day-to-day.

864
00:46:11.462 --> 00:46:12.302
Oh my gosh, yes.

865
00:46:12.902 --> 00:46:19.404
And it's something I've been contending with myself, you know, with my own addictions with technology.

866
00:46:20.565 --> 00:46:20.865
Yeah.

867
00:46:21.506 --> 00:46:26.170
Did you feel, because obviously when you were on the blue flight.

868
00:46:26.411 --> 00:46:26.691
Yeah.

869
00:46:27.392 --> 00:46:31.355
Did you, and you're not holding anything in your hands.

870
00:46:31.656 --> 00:46:31.796
No.

871
00:46:31.816 --> 00:46:32.977
I assume for the whole flight.

872
00:46:34.635 --> 00:46:40.317
You have a GoPro, which maybe I wouldn't take next time, strapped to your wrist, which you can have that if you want.

873
00:46:40.337 --> 00:46:41.057
There's a next time.

874
00:46:41.937 --> 00:46:43.618
Oh, yeah, there's no next time, yeah.

875
00:46:43.818 --> 00:46:44.298
I don't know.

876
00:46:45.018 --> 00:46:46.799
Maybe my orbital rocket.

877
00:46:46.999 --> 00:46:47.939
Orbital flight.

878
00:46:47.979 --> 00:46:49.719
We'll get you tickets on Vast.

879
00:46:49.859 --> 00:46:50.660
Yeah, that's right.

880
00:46:52.880 --> 00:46:53.941
Yeah.

881
00:46:54.681 --> 00:46:58.442
So have you ever been able to replicate that feeling?

882
00:47:00.284 --> 00:47:02.385
Do you think it's impossible?

883
00:47:02.705 --> 00:47:03.546
Not impossible.

884
00:47:03.586 --> 00:47:05.727
You know, I think it's possible when you're young.

885
00:47:06.067 --> 00:47:09.128
There's a lot more moments, as Chris Huey says, awe.

886
00:47:09.168 --> 00:47:12.850
There's a lot more of those moments as you're growing up because experiences are new.

887
00:47:13.550 --> 00:47:17.992
In your 20s, I mean, Matt, think back when you went to university or when you got your first job.

888
00:47:18.653 --> 00:47:23.395
As you get into middle age, I think you've experienced a lot of things in life and you

889
00:47:23.755 --> 00:47:24.776
It's not that you're jaded.

890
00:47:24.816 --> 00:47:27.177
It's just that you have more familiarity with the world.

891
00:47:27.757 --> 00:47:32.921
So finding those kind of unusual – and for you, that was looking through a telescope.

892
00:47:32.941 --> 00:47:34.782
You're like, that was a moment of awe that first time.

893
00:47:34.802 --> 00:47:36.103
You're like, look what I can see.

894
00:47:36.263 --> 00:47:37.663
It was surprising.

895
00:47:38.384 --> 00:47:39.224
It was beautiful.

896
00:47:39.485 --> 00:47:41.406
And so it connected with you in a certain way.

897
00:47:41.426 --> 00:47:44.828
And I think that's what that spaceflight does.

898
00:47:46.389 --> 00:47:47.950
And there's not a lot of experiences –

899
00:47:49.206 --> 00:47:50.667
that can reproduce it, I don't think.

900
00:47:50.687 --> 00:47:53.610
I mean, seeing your own child be born, I think, is one of them.

901
00:47:54.911 --> 00:47:55.752
Yeah, I don't know.

902
00:47:55.772 --> 00:47:57.013
Put that on camera.

903
00:47:57.694 --> 00:47:59.095
Yeah, do not put that on camera.

904
00:48:00.706 --> 00:48:01.427
Oh, my gosh.

905
00:48:01.927 --> 00:48:02.367
Yeah.

906
00:48:03.248 --> 00:48:04.129
So, yeah, I don't know.

907
00:48:04.229 --> 00:48:04.829
It's interesting.

908
00:48:05.270 --> 00:48:06.631
Well, look, I want to respect your time.

909
00:48:06.671 --> 00:48:10.213
I want to hear about your new books and your new projects you got going on.

910
00:48:10.253 --> 00:48:10.553
I know.

911
00:48:10.754 --> 00:48:12.035
Are you still in school, too?

912
00:48:12.255 --> 00:48:14.196
I mean, you're still doing a lot of things.

913
00:48:14.576 --> 00:48:14.977
No.

914
00:48:15.057 --> 00:48:20.301
So I think, yeah, so my latest degree, I went to Johns Hopkins starting in 2022.

915
00:48:22.837 --> 00:48:26.778
And because I wanted to go to an American school because of the Canadian thing.

916
00:48:27.179 --> 00:48:28.599
And it was kind of funny because.

917
00:48:29.199 --> 00:48:32.360
So did you move your family all to Baltimore?

918
00:48:33.201 --> 00:48:33.941
We flew.

919
00:48:34.081 --> 00:48:34.621
I commuted.

920
00:48:35.161 --> 00:48:35.461
Okay.

921
00:48:36.002 --> 00:48:40.723
And fortunately, I just selected courses such that I didn't have to commute too much.

922
00:48:41.163 --> 00:48:43.744
Because the course is designed to be done while you're working.

923
00:48:43.824 --> 00:48:46.605
The master's degree is designed to be done one class at a time.

924
00:48:46.945 --> 00:48:48.446
And you can stretch it over five years.

925
00:48:49.562 --> 00:48:57.166
Um, but because I don't have a traditional job, I was able to complete it in three and a half years.

926
00:48:57.386 --> 00:48:57.927
But it's great.

927
00:48:58.207 --> 00:48:58.447
Yeah.

928
00:48:59.047 --> 00:49:07.131
And so I only, you fly down for, I mainly just flew down for my small satellite, um, development class, which was neat.

929
00:49:07.151 --> 00:49:10.313
Cause I was there with Lauren Savage and she was having a blast.

930
00:49:10.333 --> 00:49:13.355
So Lauren, if you don't know, is Jeff Bezos is, uh,

931
00:49:14.782 --> 00:49:38.311
she's in charge of the landers she's somewhere up up high and so she's uh she was leading or part leading uh the the cargo lander and crude lander um so she'd be really great to have on the show and so i met her and i didn't know her and we both sort of have channels that were about the same size at the time so we related over that but then she's like yeah i'm building a

932
00:49:39.403 --> 00:49:42.706
I'm building a runway on my property where we're going to build our own airport.

933
00:49:42.726 --> 00:49:43.427
I'm like, why?

934
00:49:43.467 --> 00:49:44.508
That's so cool.

935
00:49:44.909 --> 00:49:46.550
I wish I were doing something like that.

936
00:49:46.751 --> 00:49:49.974
Like you just said you're building your own stargazing park on a lake.

937
00:49:50.374 --> 00:49:51.916
I was like, Oh, Oh yeah.

938
00:49:51.936 --> 00:49:53.237
I guess we are doing the same thing.

939
00:49:54.124 --> 00:49:57.627
And so now we connect over social in that way.

940
00:49:57.767 --> 00:50:02.250
And then obviously at graduation, so we were sitting a couple, it was alphabetical order.

941
00:50:02.310 --> 00:50:03.591
So she's savage, don't read.

942
00:50:03.611 --> 00:50:04.572
We were a few seats down.

943
00:50:05.212 --> 00:50:08.354
And then ahead of us, a couple seats was Kat.

944
00:50:08.374 --> 00:50:10.776
And I forget how to pronounce her last name, the Mexican.

945
00:50:11.136 --> 00:50:12.297
Katia.

946
00:50:12.577 --> 00:50:13.238
Yeah, Katia.

947
00:50:13.658 --> 00:50:13.939
Yeah.

948
00:50:13.959 --> 00:50:14.740
So we all catch you.

949
00:50:14.760 --> 00:50:18.044
So we all graduated within like 20 feet of each other.

950
00:50:18.084 --> 00:50:18.765
That's pretty cool.

951
00:50:18.945 --> 00:50:19.246
Yeah.

952
00:50:19.366 --> 00:50:19.706
That day.

953
00:50:19.766 --> 00:50:20.207
But yeah.

954
00:50:20.227 --> 00:50:21.529
Cause I think she was in a different row.

955
00:50:21.549 --> 00:50:23.131
Cause she was just graduated.

956
00:50:23.191 --> 00:50:25.374
That was this year or that was last May.

957
00:50:25.394 --> 00:50:25.594
Yeah.

958
00:50:25.754 --> 00:50:26.215
Last May.

959
00:50:26.235 --> 00:50:26.435
Yeah.

960
00:50:26.856 --> 00:50:27.116
Yeah.

961
00:50:27.136 --> 00:50:28.037
And so it was, it was neat.

962
00:50:28.078 --> 00:50:29.219
It was like an all-star course.

963
00:50:29.239 --> 00:50:29.459
Yeah.

964
00:50:30.040 --> 00:50:33.081
And then our professors were all NASA mission folks.

965
00:50:33.701 --> 00:50:40.283
We had a few professors from Space Force, but most people were APL on deep space missions.

966
00:50:40.343 --> 00:50:40.663
Yeah.

967
00:50:41.163 --> 00:50:42.564
So that was really neat.

968
00:50:42.624 --> 00:50:44.284
So we had like the leads.

969
00:50:44.324 --> 00:50:46.425
Well, and Darren, who led Goddard.

970
00:50:47.372 --> 00:50:53.475
the deputy NASA, deputy NASA administrator of Goddard or anyway, deputy chief of Goddard space flight center.

971
00:50:53.956 --> 00:50:55.556
She was like my mentor.

972
00:50:56.157 --> 00:51:03.221
And then, um, yeah, all the folks just were like, Oh, I was the lead on new horizons.

973
00:51:03.341 --> 00:51:06.903
And then, and it was like, I read about you in national geographic.

974
00:51:06.943 --> 00:51:07.703
How cool is this?

975
00:51:07.743 --> 00:51:12.786
So you're my professor and the class sizes almost entirely worked out to be one-to-one.

976
00:51:13.406 --> 00:51:13.706
Wow.

977
00:51:13.987 --> 00:51:15.769
Of the people that actually participated.

978
00:51:15.789 --> 00:51:19.132
So a lot of people were there for their jobs because it was a requirement.

979
00:51:19.272 --> 00:51:19.512
Yeah.

980
00:51:20.493 --> 00:51:26.900
But of the people that actually went to office hours and things, that was almost entirely one-to-one for the entire degree.

981
00:51:27.140 --> 00:51:27.601
That's cool.

982
00:51:27.701 --> 00:51:30.204
Like you're just one-to-one with these NASA engineers.

983
00:51:31.105 --> 00:51:31.325
Yeah.

984
00:51:32.553 --> 00:51:35.474
And then the current crop are all working on Dragonfly right now.

985
00:51:35.774 --> 00:51:36.835
Well, what are you working on?

986
00:51:37.295 --> 00:51:37.755
More books?

987
00:51:38.416 --> 00:51:38.776
What am I?

988
00:51:38.896 --> 00:51:39.376
Yeah.

989
00:51:39.416 --> 00:51:40.937
How are you going to use this degree?

990
00:51:41.057 --> 00:51:42.137
And then the stargazing book.

991
00:51:42.157 --> 00:51:46.539
So the current book that comes out on in five days.

992
00:51:46.599 --> 00:51:48.600
So on July 7th.

993
00:51:48.680 --> 00:51:48.880
7th.

994
00:51:49.180 --> 00:51:50.301
Yeah.

995
00:51:50.361 --> 00:51:52.121
This one we did with Cyan Proctor.

996
00:51:52.161 --> 00:51:54.222
So they wanted, they told us to write it.

997
00:51:54.322 --> 00:51:54.963
And so we did.

998
00:51:54.983 --> 00:51:55.923
We had a lot of fun doing it.

999
00:51:56.363 --> 00:51:57.924
And so it took about three years.

1000
00:51:57.944 --> 00:52:00.225
Give us the name for someone listening to it on audio.

1001
00:52:01.068 --> 00:52:03.711
Yeah, so this is Baby's Guide to the Night Sky.

1002
00:52:03.731 --> 00:52:04.892
OK, very cool.

1003
00:52:05.212 --> 00:52:08.456
Which is written by Dr. Cyan Proctor and myself.

1004
00:52:08.496 --> 00:52:09.497
So we partnered on this.

1005
00:52:10.237 --> 00:52:11.218
And it was wild.

1006
00:52:11.439 --> 00:52:12.440
And it's absolutely beautiful.

1007
00:52:12.480 --> 00:52:17.184
The artist, Pumundi, she's in Toronto.

1008
00:52:18.025 --> 00:52:21.768
absolutely captured everything we wanted in the art.

1009
00:52:21.828 --> 00:52:26.972
So on each page, she's done the constellations that you can see at the appropriate time of the year.

1010
00:52:27.313 --> 00:52:30.375
And they're placed approximately in the sky where you would see them.

1011
00:52:30.415 --> 00:52:32.256
And we managed to do this in a baby's book.

1012
00:52:32.276 --> 00:52:33.437
In a baby's book, yeah.

1013
00:52:33.617 --> 00:52:34.758
Baby's Guide to the Night Sky.

1014
00:52:34.778 --> 00:52:36.159
So definitely the most...

1015
00:52:37.040 --> 00:52:51.978
scientifically accurate baby's book until my next round of 10 babies books that I just wrote comes out next year, which I did with Chris Ferry, author of Astrophysics for Babies, Quantum Physics for Babies.

1016
00:52:52.018 --> 00:52:52.478
That's cool.

1017
00:52:52.879 --> 00:52:53.840
And all those series.

1018
00:52:53.860 --> 00:52:55.862
So yeah, so I called Chris.

1019
00:52:56.563 --> 00:53:00.224
And I was like, you're the most popular babies book author in the world.

1020
00:53:00.685 --> 00:53:02.305
How have you not done the planets?

1021
00:53:02.605 --> 00:53:02.945
Yeah.

1022
00:53:03.366 --> 00:53:04.486
And he's like, I don't know.

1023
00:53:04.706 --> 00:53:06.107
And I'm like, well, let's do it.

1024
00:53:06.167 --> 00:53:06.887
And he said, okay.

1025
00:53:06.927 --> 00:53:07.967
That's fantastic.

1026
00:53:08.107 --> 00:53:11.188
And so he signed a contract to write those.

1027
00:53:11.249 --> 00:53:12.669
And that was probably two years ago now.

1028
00:53:12.709 --> 00:53:14.450
So it'll take another year to get those on the market.

1029
00:53:14.770 --> 00:53:15.430
That's amazing.

1030
00:53:15.570 --> 00:53:17.651
Well, I mean, it's exciting for me.

1031
00:53:17.691 --> 00:53:25.334
And I think for the people listening to see someone who, you know, went down the regular route of like responsibility.

1032
00:53:26.074 --> 00:53:35.397
get that job, go in the corporate world doing well, and then pivot when you found your passion, which I think a lot of people are afraid to do.

1033
00:53:35.417 --> 00:53:37.018
Yeah.

1034
00:53:37.478 --> 00:53:42.900
It was more like following my competence is probably more accurate.

1035
00:53:42.920 --> 00:53:43.200
I like that.

1036
00:53:43.400 --> 00:53:44.760
And following the gut.

1037
00:53:44.800 --> 00:53:45.400
Yeah.

1038
00:53:46.001 --> 00:53:49.562
Your gut, if you can listen to it, and having electronics to,

1039
00:53:50.704 --> 00:53:53.406
is, is doesn't help with that.

1040
00:53:53.426 --> 00:53:53.927
That's very true.

1041
00:53:54.047 --> 00:53:55.128
Again, this was pre-electronically.

1042
00:53:55.288 --> 00:53:58.830
Like you had a, I had a strong feeling that I was not on the right path.

1043
00:53:58.870 --> 00:54:00.031
Like really strong.

1044
00:54:00.912 --> 00:54:06.296
The same feeling like when you meet your wife and you're like, why do I have this?

1045
00:54:06.316 --> 00:54:06.596
Yeah.

1046
00:54:07.337 --> 00:54:09.499
Such a strong feeling that I should marry this person.

1047
00:54:09.519 --> 00:54:10.239
This is the one.

1048
00:54:10.259 --> 00:54:10.599
Yeah.

1049
00:54:11.140 --> 00:54:11.560
It's wild.

1050
00:54:11.580 --> 00:54:15.703
And so that same feeling that you had when you went to go, um,

1051
00:54:16.913 --> 00:54:17.794
proposed to your wife.

1052
00:54:18.074 --> 00:54:18.314
Yeah.

1053
00:54:18.514 --> 00:54:20.855
It's the same feeling I had about my career.

1054
00:54:21.356 --> 00:54:21.636
Yeah.

1055
00:54:22.076 --> 00:54:25.938
It was like, I need to quit my, I, I, I'm on the wrong path.

1056
00:54:26.278 --> 00:54:38.345
Step one, step two, following my competency as, um, as a writer or someone that I, someone that can produce books that help people is a more accurate way to put that.

1057
00:54:38.365 --> 00:54:38.685
Yeah.

1058
00:54:39.285 --> 00:54:40.946
So, no, I think that's brilliant.

1059
00:54:41.487 --> 00:54:43.688
What's kind of, we'll ask us the last question.

1060
00:54:43.768 --> 00:54:45.609
What is, um, um,

1061
00:54:46.595 --> 00:54:50.977
And we ask everyone this, what's the space inside yourself or out in the world that you're still reaching for?

1062
00:54:51.137 --> 00:54:53.878
Like, is there one?

1063
00:54:54.699 --> 00:54:55.079
Yeah.

1064
00:54:55.139 --> 00:55:01.942
So my gut now is telling me to get back to California, at least in the winter.

1065
00:55:02.442 --> 00:55:02.702
Yeah.

1066
00:55:03.263 --> 00:55:08.845
And connect with my scene there because Canada does not have a big space exploration scene.

1067
00:55:08.945 --> 00:55:09.566
It's budding.

1068
00:55:10.186 --> 00:55:11.306
There's a lot of activity.

1069
00:55:12.507 --> 00:55:13.728
But it's not mature.

1070
00:55:13.748 --> 00:55:13.848
Yeah.

1071
00:55:14.870 --> 00:55:29.667
So getting back with my people, my people, my space people in California, you know, I've, I have a lot of friends at JPL, at Astroforge, friends at Vast, friends at Planet, and friends at Rocket Lab in Austin.

1072
00:55:30.328 --> 00:55:33.131
And so it's like, or sorry, Firefly Aerospace, rather.

1073
00:55:33.331 --> 00:55:33.511
Yep.

1074
00:55:34.612 --> 00:56:01.083
uh rocket lab is is not not it's in new zealand and in the u.s but yeah so just getting back into that community getting plugged into griff griffith observatory with with my friends there and and all the connections i've made over the years putting these books together because it it takes a community to put a book together you know well we even had like star trek actor tim russ help out when we did 110 things to see with the telescope

1075
00:56:01.743 --> 00:56:04.465
You know, now I know the director of Griffith Observatory.

1076
00:56:04.865 --> 00:56:06.066
He's got our moon book.

1077
00:56:06.467 --> 00:56:06.807
That's awesome.

1078
00:56:06.827 --> 00:56:07.628
He's a big fan of.

1079
00:56:09.589 --> 00:56:12.551
But getting plugged into that community, I think, will really help it level up.

1080
00:56:12.872 --> 00:56:19.597
And the other thing I want to do, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to do it, but I want to take a year off of electronics.

1081
00:56:20.037 --> 00:56:20.157
Yeah.

1082
00:56:20.217 --> 00:56:26.903
And just, like, live on a horse ranch in California and take it back to the basics and just write books.

1083
00:56:26.923 --> 00:56:27.963
By hand.

1084
00:56:28.003 --> 00:56:28.604
By hand.

1085
00:56:30.045 --> 00:56:30.866
On a typewriter.

1086
00:56:31.206 --> 00:56:32.347
On a typewriter, okay.

1087
00:56:33.008 --> 00:56:33.789
Yeah.

1088
00:56:33.909 --> 00:56:35.250
I'll allow the paper white.

1089
00:56:35.310 --> 00:56:40.014
So there's the paper white that have computer keyboards.

1090
00:56:40.075 --> 00:56:40.255
Yep.

1091
00:56:40.575 --> 00:56:41.576
I think that's what I'll do.

1092
00:56:42.217 --> 00:56:42.977
That's my goal.

1093
00:56:43.338 --> 00:56:45.219
It's big and audacious.

1094
00:56:45.820 --> 00:56:48.182
Like a year without technology is a big challenge.

1095
00:56:48.202 --> 00:56:50.584
Yeah, and does that happen before or after the kids move out?

1096
00:56:50.624 --> 00:56:52.446
You know, that's the other big part.

1097
00:56:53.367 --> 00:56:54.708
I'm pushing, I'm pushing hard.

1098
00:56:54.888 --> 00:56:57.150
Like if I can make that a reality within the next couple of years.

1099
00:56:57.170 --> 00:56:57.430
Let me know.

1100
00:56:57.450 --> 00:56:58.331
We'll come out for a week.

1101
00:56:58.351 --> 00:57:00.052
It'll be like a cowboy analog.

1102
00:57:01.013 --> 00:57:01.533
Exactly.

1103
00:57:01.553 --> 00:57:01.713
Yeah.

1104
00:57:01.733 --> 00:57:01.993
Yeah.

1105
00:57:02.013 --> 00:57:03.294
So my wife does the horses.

1106
00:57:03.795 --> 00:57:14.242
Hopefully we can, we can, uh, grow the business enough, uh, to, to do the horse ranch thing, but that's our true North right now is to, is to, to be a writer full time.

1107
00:57:14.282 --> 00:57:16.304
But if I need to do YouTube,

1108
00:57:17.090 --> 00:57:24.154
I'll hire a camera person and I'll hire an editor, but I want to get away from technology to get back to those authentic experiences.

1109
00:57:24.674 --> 00:57:27.395
My wife with the horses and then, and then me with the stars.

1110
00:57:28.396 --> 00:57:28.776
Beautiful.

1111
00:57:29.256 --> 00:57:29.456
Yep.

1112
00:57:30.117 --> 00:57:35.299
And our goal is that we're hoping that this new book, the ultimate beginner telescope guidebook is the one that pushes us over the edge.

1113
00:57:35.859 --> 00:57:36.360
That's fantastic.

1114
00:57:36.380 --> 00:57:37.800
This is our masterpiece right now.

1115
00:57:37.820 --> 00:57:39.781
So is that out now or when's it out?

1116
00:57:40.142 --> 00:57:41.382
Yeah, this, this is out now.

1117
00:57:41.983 --> 00:57:43.964
Um, get it on my website, learn to start.

1118
00:57:43.984 --> 00:57:44.304
Awesome.

1119
00:57:45.104 --> 00:57:45.444
Stargaze.com.

1120
00:57:47.005 --> 00:57:50.809
If you don't trust my website, the nice hardcover is on my website.

1121
00:57:50.910 --> 00:57:52.371
Amazon's got the paperback currently.

1122
00:57:52.431 --> 00:57:52.772
Okay.

1123
00:57:52.832 --> 00:57:54.494
Working on getting the hardcover on Amazon.

1124
00:57:55.375 --> 00:57:55.795
Very cool.

1125
00:57:56.476 --> 00:57:57.177
Well, thank you, John.

1126
00:57:57.217 --> 00:57:59.039
I think we could talk another three hours.

1127
00:58:00.080 --> 00:58:01.522
And maybe we need to offline.

1128
00:58:01.622 --> 00:58:05.746
But I truly appreciate you taking the time today and sharing your story with us.

1129
00:58:06.880 --> 00:58:07.541
Absolutely.

1130
00:58:07.581 --> 00:58:11.226
And I can't wait to talk more and then to see you in person again.

1131
00:58:11.586 --> 00:58:12.187
Absolutely.

1132
00:58:12.768 --> 00:58:14.830
Thank you for listening to A Heart for Space.

1133
00:58:15.511 --> 00:58:20.077
If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow the show so you never miss an episode.

1134
00:58:20.518 --> 00:58:23.301
And consider leaving us a review to let us know your thoughts.

1135
00:58:24.002 --> 00:58:31.408
For more on my work in the pursuit of ambitious goals, visit aheartforspace.com and look out for my upcoming book, A Heart for Space.

1136
00:58:31.668 --> 00:58:34.110
Until next time, I'm Dr. Iman Jahangir.

1137
00:58:34.591 --> 00:58:39.875
And remember, sometimes the only obstacle to achieving an impossible dream is the courage to keep going.