Following Your Curiosity | John Read

0:00 deputy chief of Goddard space flight center. She was like my mentor. And then, um, yeah, all the folks just were like, Oh, I was the lead on new horizons. And then, and it was like, I read about you in national geographic. How cool is this? So you're my professor. Welcome to A Heart for Space. I am your host, Dr. Imon Jihangir. 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. All right. Well, welcome to another episode of A Heart for Space. 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.

0:48 So thank you for coming, John. Thanks for having me, Eamon. It's great to be here. It's good to have you. So we'll jump right in. For people who don't know you, how would you introduce yourself at a party? What would you say you do currently? Oh, my gosh. So I have sort of two hats that I wear. 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. But otherwise, usually I'm just a space and astronomy author. 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. 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.

1:30 To think how long we've been looking at the stars and that market hadn't really been fully flushed out is pretty amazing. 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. Yeah, so that's what sort of new. That's pretty cool, yeah. Yeah. There have been lots of books on the market, like Nightwatch by Terrence Dickinson, Turn Left at Orion. Really classics, but even when I had those when I was getting started, it was just a little bit too complicated for me. And when I wrote my first book, 50 Things to See with a Small Telescope, I wrote that for me.

2:10 Yeah. And it took me a while before I learned how to put it on Amazon. 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. And this was around 2012, 2013. 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. I mean, it's interesting to think, because you're right. Now you pull out these like stargazing apps and they'll tell you what's above you. But 12, 13 years ago, that didn't really exist. Yeah. 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.

2:54 Yeah. You know, they'll be like, oh, these galaxies and nebulas and whatever. And yeah, if you've got a smart telescope, which is basically a camera, a high performance camera. Yes. Yeah. That can bring these things into view. 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. or what have you. And so my son and I were filming a YouTube video this morning where we go over that. And to make our point, we actually took the iPhone and we have a cliff on our property. We hiked up to the top of the cliff. We had one of my other kids at the bottom of the cliff. We hovered a drone beside us and we took our phone and we just hucked it off the cliff.

3:36 Like, it's like, this is what I recommend. Gosh, that's good. So saying, do not use the phone. 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. 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. Yeah, that's interesting. 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. 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.

4:24 We're within 30 minutes of a city. And fortunately, we're surrounded by a preservation area. And there's nothing to the south of us. And typically, you stargaze to the south. But people are like, holy cow. And I'm like, yeah, you see that? You see the Milky Way? Yeah, we see the Milky Way. You see that light patch there? I'm like, that's not a cloud. That's the Lagoon Nebula. And you're seeing that without a telescope. Yeah, with your naked eye. With the naked eye, yeah. Yeah. That's incredible. Now, you grew up in Nova Scotia. You can only get to that without, if you've been away from technology for about 30 to 40 minutes. Is that just because your eyes have to adjust away from the screen and the lights?

5:05 Got to adjust away from the screen. Yeah, some people can get away with red screen or they put red cellophane on their phone, but that's still a to-do. But plus it's that... 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. 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. I mean, if you, it was really when we introduced electricity to a lot of sense, right? Because then you could have these lights on much more rapidly.

5:45 And now, I mean, everywhere it seems like. And then with entertainment, because 150 years ago, your entertainment was live music or maybe a play or someone telling you a story. It wasn't sitting in front of the TV. Oftentimes it was probably enjoyed outside. Absolutely. And I think for the most part, for most people, stargazing is a catalyst for deep, deep conversation. And a lot of the time, the telescope is just a catalyst too. 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. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I think there's nothing as deep as the universe to make you think about life.

6:27 Yeah. And you've seen the stars perhaps even without an atmosphere in between. I've definitely seen the blackness. Yeah. Yeah. Now your eyes still need to adjust. So you had earth light, which is Cyan Proctor's favorite term, the reflected light from earth. You're looking down, it's hitting your eyes. And then your eyes still, I assume, would need to adapt to the dark if you wanted to see stars from suborbit. Was that your experience? Did you take the time to look away from the Earth, or were you looking at the curve and down? I took time to look away, but it was, as you said, too bright and not enough time to adapt. 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.

7:11 Yeah, I think they have to in the cupola, which is, I think, six windows and then a single... hexagonal window that they can actually be in. 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. That makes sense. And they use regular DSLR cameras. And what they do is, I think they've got this felt... 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 Now, it's been reconfigured, but so it really cuts it off from the rest of the station.

8:03 And you sort of huddle up there in the pitch black just with the Earth light. And then you can look down. That must be amazing. At the planet. Because the sun is typically, you don't want the sun shining in the window when you're taking photos either. So you're in the shade. of the space and of the station. That was the same for inspiration for as well. When cyan came up with this concept of earth light that she wanted to promote, like the space, the spacecraft is, is blocking the sunlight so that it doesn't touch the glass in the cupola. Yeah. And so the only light they're getting is Earthlight. And she was asking me where it was shortly after her space flight, because I've known her before she flew.

8:45 And we were driving in her, I think her white Mach-E for... Ford, the electric Ford Mustang, which I think was either given to her by Ford or she could back from space. For whatever reason, she didn't get a Tesla, even though she was a SpaceX pilot. But anyway, so we're driving in her car, probably back from Analog Astronaut. And she's like, I don't know why. Earthlight was so pleasant. She's like, it was just Earthlight. It wasn't sunlight. Why is this so pleasant? And she's like, I need you to do a bunch of math for me. And I was, you know, two years off my astrophysics degree. And I'm like, no problem. I'm like, I can do that math. Ended up taking me like a day. And it shouldn't have taken me this long.

9:26 This is before AI too. I actually had to get the textbooks out. And I figured out what the intensity of the light was striking the spacecraft reflected from the Earth. And then I was like, I got it in lumens or one of those light measurements. I'm like, what is this equivalent to? 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. Oh, yeah. With lots of leaves all around you. That's perfect. 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.

10:16 And, 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. And that's what the astronauts feel in these situations in the cupola. Well, I love that you went home and did the math to then prove that. Yeah, and then she used it on a slide. She put all my entire formulas on a slide. So far, for a presentation, so far, no one's come back to me and said, This was wrong. Yeah, you missed the power there. Well, so you grew up in Nova Scotia, right?

10:59 Is that right? Yeah. How do you think that affected your passion for all of this? And we can talk about what you did. We'll talk about what you did before because I do think it's amazing how you kind of shifted careers. Yeah. How did growing up as a kid bring you to where you are today? Yeah. So my upbringing was a little different. Born in Nova Scotia. But then my formative years were on Prince Edward Island. Ah, nice. Yeah, which is north of Nova Scotia. We used to have to take an icebreaker in the winter to go over. The icebreaker was called the Abiguit. And it was so big that you could fold up trains inside it. So the trains would... sort of coil themselves inside these, these big ships and they would go across the ice. 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.

11:50 And then these lightning bolts would shoot out in all directions, almost to the horizon. Yeah. These lightning bolts of ice, like on the ice. Yeah. And then it felt when a ship came down, it felt like an earthquake. It was like, and everything was loud and noisy. And one of the reasons I did that was just, that was the only way for me to stop getting from seasick. Cause I got fairly motion sick. Yeah. And, um, in 97, they built a bridge. So that experience is now lost to time, unless you're on a research vessel. 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.

12:34 But, um, 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. 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. Before that, I was surrounded by very rural sort of farmer type kids who played hockey and football and did things like that. 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.

13:18 When I joined this cadet program, I finally met my people for the first time. 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. And it's magical. It's like an emotional experience because they're like, there they are. There's the people that, that they get me. They, they get me. Yeah. So I had that experience in about 1997. And for that, it was airplanes. I loved everything about flying books about planes and the, uh, Space was sort of a tangent to that.

14:00 I met astronaut Julie Payette at a... I, like, won some poetry contest, and the school, like, drove me up to hear Julie Payette speak. So that was my first interaction with space, but aviation was really my thing there. And my first year... You go away for the summer. Keep in mind you're in middle school and high school at this point. 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. The next year I was in a marching band at Greenwood Air Force Base for six months. Sorry, six weeks. The next year I did an aeronautical studies course. Keep in mind, still in high school. The next year after that, I did a glider pilot's license, which was really neat.

14:44 So I now have 156 glider flights and that's when you get towed behind an airplane. And then the next year I got a scholarship to go to Moncton Flight College. And so I got up, uh, that was an eight week long course after ground school doing, um, basically your private pilot's license. Yeah. So it's single engine, non-high performance land aircraft, not at night. So very basic, but it was still a private pilot's license. Yeah. I mean, that's cool. Into an American pilot's license. So I was all up on aviation, but then I, I got into university at Carlton University in Ottawa in aerospace engineering.

15:24 And I hated it. I couldn't understand any of the professors. Yeah. I couldn't. My people weren't there. I just, that wasn't, that wasn't where they were. And it's possible I would have stuck to that if I went to another school. 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. And I ended up dropping altogether engineering and switching and getting a degree in finance because that's what my dad did. Very different. Still math, but... Yeah, it's still math. And so I even switched schools.

16:05 I moved back to Nova Scotia after that. I had enough of capital city. Yeah. But that's for a while with that math is where I really thrived. I'm like, okay, well, I'll do this math. And then what that enabled me to do after I graduated, there was a visa set up under NAFTA. 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. And so I immediately went down to the States. There were not a lot of job opportunities for finance people in Nova Scotia. So I immediately applied for a job in San Francisco and I went and interviewed And I think one of the reasons they interviewed me was because they got confused with my school.

16:50 So they looked at my resume and it said St. Mary's, St. Mary's, where I went to school in Canada. But there's a St. Mary's in Lafayette, California, which they pull a lot of people from. So I applied at the Clorox company. Because we knew someone there and they put it in my resume. But Clorox usually only pulls from St. Mary's in Lafayette, California. In California, yeah. Or Orlando. And UC Berkeley. Haas School of Business. Yeah. Not Canada. And... But anyway, so they were like, wow. They're like, you're really prepared for this interview. I'm like, yes, because it means a lot to me.

17:30 Yeah. And because this was, anyway. This was your shot. Your one shot. 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. And but anyway, it still wasn't space, though. And I work at this job. And you did it for a while. I did it. I moved to California. Yeah. It got me out on my own. I remember within two days of moving to California, as I moved there with just a suitcase, right? I went to As Is Auto below the Oakland Coliseum and paid $1,900 for a Mazda Protege Sport.

18:10 Nice. And I get back to the office with this car, and they're like, you went where? 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 You know, and coming from a place that had snow days to a place in Oakland that had civil unrested days. Yeah. So that was a bit of a difference there. And this was in the late or early 2000s then?

18:51 Yeah. Yeah. So the big events, we had the Occupy Oakland. And so we were, our building was ground zero for that. And then the Oscar Grant murder was there and some George Floyd stuff, I think. Anyway, there was a lot of civil unrest for various reasons. But that became the new normal for me. But I think in accounting... I knew something was wrong. My soul felt that I was on the wrong path. I didn't know what the right path was, but I knew that something's eating up my soul doing corporate work. And so I'm on the path of not here, which is something like lion trackers say.

19:35 When they're not tracking the lion correctly, they're like, this is the path of not here. I can just feel it. But then, yeah, so I was 27 years old. This is five or six years in. And we got, I say we have met my wife at this point. And we're either engaged or newly married. And I went to a Rite Aid pharmacy and bought a telescope for, I think, $14. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, Rite Aid pharmacy. That's not where I think of getting a telescope. No, no, no. It was like a, it was a toy. Yeah. But I set it up beside our apartment, beside the BART line, Bay Area Rapid Transit. And there was this yellow star. I'm like, that's cool. I'm going to point at that yellow star.

20:15 And I looked in the eyepiece and it was Saturn. And the telescope had a long enough focal length, probably about 700 millimeters. Yeah. 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. Yeah. And for me, seeing Saturn for the first time, it looked high definition. That's cool. It looked HD. Yeah. And I immediately, like, I was like, no freaking way. This is insane. Yeah. And I immediately bought another telescope, which wasn't much better. I bought a Meade ETX-60, if anyone is into telescopes. And that wasn't much better. But that was my first experience. I would set it up in front of our apartment and show other people things through it, like Jupiter and its moons.

21:01 And then they would go, like, wow. And this was in the city. So this is a good point that you can set up a telescope even with all the light pollution and still see things. Yeah, yeah. Like, a lot of things aren't affected by light pollution. Like, the planets, the moon, and a lot of double stars. Like, even the best double star in the sky, Albireo, I can generally find it in any sky conditions. Yeah. But then I realized that there's this, like, joy in showing people the stars. So I bought a bigger telescope. And now I'm like, I'm going to become an expert at this stuff so I can share it with other people. So I bought a 12-inch Dobsonian telescope. And it was way too big to even fit in our car.

21:43 And so I built this giant box, which I still use today. We mounted it to my wife's 1999 BMW 328, which was in its dying moments. That's crazy. Yeah. And then the base for the telescope fit on the back seat with the front seat pushed forward. So a really big telescope. And I learned my way around the Messier list, which is the list of 110 most popular stargazing targets. 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. Oh, interesting. Don't look at these things. Very difficult. Yeah. Yeah. Of course, his telescope is terrible.

22:24 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. Anyway. So I made my way through that list. And by that time, I had the confidence to actually join an astronomy club. And within a few weeks of joining the astronomy club, they were like, dude, you know your stuff. Come help us as we go to high schools and middle schools and teach how to use telescopes to all these kids. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what I did. And soon after I made the book, 50 Things to See with a Small Telescope. And if people are watching, it looked like- Yeah, why did you make a book? 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.

23:08 And so 10 things per season plus the moon and planets is 50 things. So I'm just like, here's the 50 things to see with a small telescope. Is this what you would teach kids in school? I mean, is this part of it? Yeah, exactly. So then I just made this reference guide for me. And you can see it's made in like Microsoft Word. Yeah, that's awesome. Which was great. Um, but I cleaned it up a bit after this and because I realized it was helping so many people. This is actually San Francisco in the background on the cover. 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. That's cool. Um. 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.

23:56 Yeah. More books. I had it translated into 10 languages. And so I went on Upwork which was a brand new thing at the time to find freelancers. And I just hired 10 people. That's awesome. And they didn't charge very much at the time. Upwork was fairly new. And so for maybe a few thousand dollars, I had this book now in 10 different languages. And this was probably 2015. And by the end of that next Christmas, I was like, The book made enough that I was comfortable quitting my job. That's amazing. Because I was on the path of not here. But not only that, I had found the path that I was supposed to be on. Yeah.

24:36 Which was astronomy. And teaching astronomy and astronomy outreach. Yeah. So at that point, I actually made it. I wasn't fully confident. Yeah. In, in being able to do this. So the book had made like X amount of money, which was like the minimum survivable amount of money. I'm like, okay, we have two things that we can do. I can either move to Canada and do an astrophysics degree or I can go work for NASA. Yeah. And so I was just for whatever reason, confident that I could just go into NASA. Yeah. So, hey, give me a job. Yeah. Which is probably like wishful thinking, but I didn't know that. I was still young. Yeah.

25:17 Well, 32 or something at this point. And so we put our house on the market. 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. Or if the house sells, I go work for NASA and just... be a budget analyst or something, but at least I'm on the track. Yeah. Anyway, the house did not sell. Really? Yeah, house did not sell. So I quit my job and we moved to Canada. Yeah. where there's no healthcare expense. And if you're not making money, you're not paying tax, right?

25:58 And university, I think my tuition in US dollars would probably be about 4,000 per year. It's amazing. And that's expensive for Canada. So like 6,000 to 7,000 Canadian. And you were getting an astrophysics degree at this point, like a master's or a bachelor's? 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? Wow. I guess, how did it feel to be like, okay, we're going to do it? Because this is a big leap of faith. You got a family. Yeah. You have a very stable job, probably paying you comfortably in a cool town, San Francisco. People like living there. Yeah. So I was actually... And then you're like, nope, we're just going to go.

26:40 I'm going to take this leap of faith. Yeah, it was actually quite well paying. So I had actually had a house in San Francisco, a four bedroom house. And we had a five bedroom house in South Carolina. Yeah, that's wild. And so I was doing a stint in South Carolina doing East Coast operations, finance manager stuff. And so for the clients, I was doing Lowe's, Home Depot, And if I recall, Dollar General, Family Dollar, those were all the clients. So I was the finance guy supporting all the salespeople, like calculating all their return on investments, making investment decisions. How did you not talk yourself out of this? I could see a million ways to talk myself out of this.

27:21 Oh, my gosh. Yeah, yeah. Oh, my. Because then I had two mortgages. Yeah, two mortgages. One house isn't selling. Two kids. Cats. Yeah, and my wife didn't work. She's a stay-at-home mom. Yeah. And the book brought in, I think, 40 grand that year. And I'm like, we can do this. And so the book makes 40 grand. We can do this. In Canada, we can do this. Not in San Francisco. In middle management and corporate finance at this point. I'm 10 years into my career, about to go into my 11th year. Yeah. And I leave it all behind. Wow. And fortunately, I'm like, okay, well, I can do the books and in theory support.

28:06 If we can grow the books like 5X, then we'll be more than happy. And so we wrote this next book, Things to See with a Midsized Telescope, complete success. bomb. Yeah, I mean, who's got a mid-sized telescope lying around? Yeah. It's either small or big. There's no mid-sized. My wife is like, you need to write a kid's book. Oh. And I was like, that's silly. That's brilliant. She's like, just do it. Yeah. 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. Yeah. And that Christmas, I think it sold 200 copies. Okay. Yeah. And so I went to a publisher and I was like, Hey, do you want to make this into a book?

28:51 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. 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. Yeah. And then, so that would have been 2018 around that. Yeah. And so at that point it was like, okay, we're good. I'm an author now. And then many other books followed. We did five textbooks. And then really proud of our latest books are by far the best. We can talk about that in a little bit. But I'm also curious because, yeah, you've become an author. You've done this. But you also kept getting degrees.

29:32 Like, why? Why did you go to Hopkins and get a degree? Well, you can't really get an astrophysics degree and stop. There's just more and more. And so it was challenging because we – I was doing the degree. I was raising my kids. Um, and then we had a third kid somewhere in there. I, about the time I graduated somewhere after the second undergrad. Yeah. And then, so three kids wife, for the most part is still a homemaker who is now riding horses as a hobby. The book sales are sort of coming off their high. Um, I'm renovating. We bought a hundred year old house.

30:12 I renovated that and still trying to do this book, this book thing. And I go to apply to a masters in Canada. Yeah. And basically they're like, listen, I went to the, the like chair of the department. He's like, you've only got a 3.7 GPA. He's like, that's not good enough, dude. He's like, we won't be able to get your funding. Yeah. And I was like, you're kidding me. Canada's off a four-point system, right? We're not talking 3.7 out of 5, right? No, it's a weird system. It's called CGPA or something. So you can get up to a 4.3.

30:53 Okay. That's a good reference point because we're used to a 4.0. Yeah, so 4.0 would be like... 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. It's a grade based for masters. They're like, it's probably not going to happen. And so I'm like, all right. So I basically go back. I start, I go and start a YouTube channel instead. So I start, learn to stargaze on YouTube, which worked out okay. Yeah. It's good marketing for the books. Well, I feel like you treat both of these like a business, right? It's not a side hustle. All of the profits you're getting from the book go back into the books.

31:34 And then now you've got the YouTube platforms Yeah, YouTube. So heavily invest in YouTube. And just, I mean, with anything, you've got to be in your very small niche. 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. Yeah. And And I realized that I think coming into the book, into the second book, like I got lucky with the first book. Yeah. But then, and then obviously unlucky with the midsize. I don't know what I was doing there. 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.

32:19 Yeah. This will work. Yeah. And we've done that repeatedly ever, ever since. So if you look at our latest book, this is the Ultimate Beginner Telescope Guidebook. Nice. There has never been any stargazing book ever. Better than this, like guaranteed. And never a stargazing book easier to use. Yeah. Guaranteed. Plus, we're up with the times and it includes smart telescopes as well. So anyway, that's the idea is that, okay, no one's done this at this level. Yeah. And so we're going to be the ones to do that. And the same thing applies to YouTube as well, which is more challenging because there's a lot of people in the space space. Space space.

32:59 It's easier to do a video than a book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the book takes about two years to do well, to do better than anyone else. It takes about two years, at least for me. And that's like full-time dedicated effort. 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. Wow. Whereas a book is probably, um, three to 4,000 hours of effort. Don't be discouraged. People listening, you can be an author or a YouTuber still. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, so a book, if we want to talk books, as long as you're consistent, um, 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.

33:50 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. And if I'm writing nonfiction, I make sure that I write a thousand words per day because nonfiction includes research and whatnot. 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. And so that's the Venn diagram of what it takes. Yeah. No, I mean, that's a great Venn diagram. It is that like consistency, small steps. It's consistency and power and like account. Yeah. No, I mean, it's right. When I wrote my book, I was like, okay, I want to do it in eight weeks.

34:31 Every week I have to write a chapter. So we'd be on vacation. Family would go to sleep. I'm like, all right, this is my time. So if this is really the goal I set for myself, then let's do it. So it is that consistency and just kind of, yeah, account keeping for yourself, like keeping yourself accountable. And writing a book, some of it's math, right? Like a book is generally 65,000 words. And so if you write 1,000 words a day and you only work weekdays and that's three months, right? And so sort of just thinking about it like that. And I think I've done... I published, depends how you count, probably about 20 books. That's amazing.

35:12 And, but that's only a fraction of what I've written, if that makes sense. Yes. Yeah. Because I do science fiction as well. Yeah. Which is a whole different thing. That's a whole different. It's a lot of fun though. Yeah. Because you can imagine it's not just you're creating the world. You're creating a world, although you're sort of like discovering it. 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. So for me, the world already exists. It's just the world as it is, but 80 years down the road. Fair enough. Same people. The people don't change. You're exploring that space, yeah.

35:52 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. So books have a lifespan, right? Like they hit the market, and if it's nonfiction, it might take a while to ramp up. 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. 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. And they're like, you need to be like Astro Backyard or John Stargazing. But I'm like, I've taken a lot of marketing courses and I've met with a lot of marketing people.

36:36 I'm like, I don't think that's going to work. Plus, that's like too much me. Like, what if I decide that I want to have other people on board or whatever? And I was like, the famous case study in business for naming things is Kills Weeds Dead. Because you know exactly what it does. Yeah, that's right. In the name of the product. And I'm like, it needs to be that. And so it's, I teach people to stargaze, learn to stargaze. Yeah. And a New York consultant I hired was like, no, that's the stupidest thing ever. I'm like, no. And it's available on .com, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.

37:16 That's wild. And then so I effectively spent a day buying up every domain and on Twitter. And so we're learning to stargaze across every platform, ignoring the New York consultant. Yeah. And so that was born. That was born 2020 or 2021. It was born during the pandemic. Gotcha. And then we hired Haley Davies, who's a cinematographer from the Trailer Park Boys. If anyone's ever seen probably the worst show on television ever, that people can't stop watching. Yeah. I think it's even where Elliot Page got his start.

37:58 That's amazing. 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. And he's like, why not? And she goes, you grow weed in the car that you live in. Anyway, and then she became an international superstar. Yeah, or now he became an international superstar. Yeah, he became, yes. And so we took their creative director because she was expecting a kid soon, and so she couldn't be on. That's awesome. She had her until she had Michael. And, and so that, that really springboarded the YouTube thing. And we're not, we're not a massive channel.

38:38 Like we don't have our play button yet. We're 80, 82,000 subscribers on. Pretty good. On YouTube. But like we use it to teach people to stargaze. And so we succeeded in that if you Google telescope or how to use a telescope, you get us. Yeah. Which which is what our goal is. 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. That's awesome. That's what it is. 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. And meeting them where they're at, because often it's just you have your phone and you're like, how do I start? You know, like I have a telescope here. How do I do this? Yeah, yeah, exactly.

39:19 But eventually, like we said earlier, you got to put the phone away and have that authentic stargazing experience without any technology. So do you leave your phones in the car or you're good enough to just put them in your pocket? I wish. I wish. No. So like most. Yeah. Yeah. So if I'm if I'm like trying to stargaze, then I'll try really hard. It's tough being a YouTuber. Yeah. In that space, because you get, you really do acquire a screen addiction. And I think that's something that I'm struggling with right now. Yeah. Especially when the person that makes the video is not supposed to be the person that posts it. But since my assistant moved on, I had an assistant the last year and she went on to Andy's East Coast Kitchens.

40:01 And so I'm like shaking my fist. Darn it, Andy. In your East Coast Kitchen? Yeah. So I haven't rehired an assistant yet. But she was great in that she would post the videos. But now that I have to do it, you sit there, you post the video, and then you watch the videos come in. I mean, it's crazy, too, to think in 2012. Was it 2012 when you got your first telescope? How long ago was it? Would have been 2010. 2010. We didn't have the phone addictions we have now. I mean, the iPhone was three years old. The apps were, they were there, but they weren't really flushed out. I mean, I don't remember. I was on a flip phone back then. I don't remember like sitting there and just scrolling all the time.

40:42 So just interesting to see how even in that time, like your relationship as someone who does this professionally has changed with your phone. I remember sitting on rounds and watching my attending be on his phone in like 2008 or nine. And I was like, that's so rude. Like, why is he taking texts while like the house staff is talking to him, you know, the trainees. But now that's like common. It's like common practice. Yeah. Pretty nuts. Yeah, I was thinking of doing a video where I need to hire someone to film it. But like where we go without screens for a week and see how it works for our stargazing. I was thinking of doing that with Nathan Harpst, who is a big TikTok star.

41:24 And we collaborate a lot on projects. And I'm like, can you? Because he's really addicted to screens. Yeah. You know. We all are. We all are, yeah. We all are. But it's funny because his screen time, my screen time, it puts me at like four hours a day. Yeah. His screen time shows up as greater than 24 hours. That's wild because there's multiple screens. 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 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.

42:13 But like, how are these mega constellations like Starlink and other satellites? How is that affecting us? How do you think that's going to affect our ability to view the sky? Some people say, well, the sky is so big, it won't really affect us. But I don't know what your take is on someone's thought about this. Yeah, at this point, like, astronomers don't like, like, professional astronomers don't like it. Astro photographers don't like it because you need to edit them out of your photos. Yeah. I think when dealing with the public, though, it's kind of exciting. Because I also like space exploration, right? Yeah. So, you know, now you can see. 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.

42:58 Like if it's a sun synchronous orbit, it's pretty amazing right over us. Right. Yeah. And so we see those second stage burns. 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. Um, You also, like, the Starlinks have gotten dimmer. They've also turned a little blue, I think. So they're doing something so that they're not as reflective. But now I've noticed a lot of satellites with a blue tinge, and I think they're Starlinks. Yeah, interesting. So that's been new. 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.

43:42 Um, but there's also two different hobbies within stargazing. Like one is astrophotography, which is where you are using technology. Yeah. And the other one is stargazing. And it's sometimes hard for people to grasp just how different those two hobbies are. And some people will go with a telescope. They'll bring their new telescope out and maybe it's just like a toy telescope. And they'll, you know, maybe they'll even come to me and they'll be like, how do I attach? How do I attach my camera? Yeah. Like, I'm like this. It may be fancy. It may be expensive. But this is for stargazing. Like there's no place to attach a camera. Yeah. Yeah. And so you have to have that conversation and then people will be confused.

44:23 Yeah. I'm going to put my iPhone up to it. And it's like, yeah, but that's not the same. 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. Which I'm going to argue we do all the time now with technology. You go to a concert, everyone's got their phone out. They're not looking at that. I mean, when we watch rocket launches, I don't know if you see these, but I often am like, put your phone down. Don't record it. Because you detach yourself. It's a very different experience. It is. And the other thing that's coming up this August for anyone that's traveling for it is the eclipse.

45:04 Yeah. And it is very hard to not try to photograph it. Yeah. I mean, doubly hard for... someone in social media. Cause like, like I'm being, I'm literally being paid to go photograph this thing. So how do I go and enjoy it? Yeah. Because at the same time, if you can just put a camera, that's just watching what you do. And get that very human experience of seeing an eclipse on camera. Yeah. Like, people are going to relate to that. Yeah. That's what we did when I went and saw the last one in 2024. It came through the U.S. Yeah. Yeah. Did you film it? I filmed us.

45:44 I filmed, like, the family with a camera on the ground. Yeah. So it's a tough situation. I definitely think we've lost something. You know, we can record everything, but then we don't experience... Everyone can experience pretty much anything in the world or in the stars through the internet, through books, through videos. But on an individual basis, we're experiencing less fully, I think, on a day-to-day. Oh my gosh, yes. And it's something I've been contending with myself, you know, with my own addictions with technology. Yeah. Did you feel, because obviously when you were on the blue flight.

46:26 Yeah. Did you, and you're not holding anything in your hands. No. I assume for the whole flight. You have a GoPro, which maybe I wouldn't take next time, strapped to your wrist, which you can have that if you want. There's a next time. Oh, yeah, there's no next time, yeah. I don't know. Maybe my orbital rocket. Orbital flight. We'll get you tickets on Vast. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So have you ever been able to replicate that feeling? Do you think it's impossible? Not impossible. You know, I think it's possible when you're young. There's a lot more moments, as Chris Huey says, awe.

47:09 There's a lot more of those moments as you're growing up because experiences are new. In your 20s, I mean, Matt, think back when you went to university or when you got your first job. As you get into middle age, I think you've experienced a lot of things in life and you It's not that you're jaded. It's just that you have more familiarity with the world. So finding those kind of unusual – and for you, that was looking through a telescope. You're like, that was a moment of awe that first time. You're like, look what I can see. It was surprising. It was beautiful. And so it connected with you in a certain way. And I think that's what that spaceflight does. And there's not a lot of experiences – that can reproduce it, I don't think.

47:50 I mean, seeing your own child be born, I think, is one of them. Yeah, I don't know. Put that on camera. Yeah, do not put that on camera. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. So, yeah, I don't know. It's interesting. Well, look, I want to respect your time. I want to hear about your new books and your new projects you got going on. I know. Are you still in school, too? I mean, you're still doing a lot of things. No. So I think, yeah, so my latest degree, I went to Johns Hopkins starting in 2022. And because I wanted to go to an American school because of the Canadian thing. And it was kind of funny because. So did you move your family all to Baltimore?

48:33 We flew. I commuted. Okay. And fortunately, I just selected courses such that I didn't have to commute too much. Because the course is designed to be done while you're working. The master's degree is designed to be done one class at a time. And you can stretch it over five years. Um, but because I don't have a traditional job, I was able to complete it in three and a half years. But it's great. Yeah. And so I only, you fly down for, I mainly just flew down for my small satellite, um, development class, which was neat. Cause I was there with Lauren Savage and she was having a blast. So Lauren, if you don't know, is Jeff Bezos is, uh, 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 I'm building a runway on my property where we're going to build our own airport.

49:42 I'm like, why? That's so cool. I wish I were doing something like that. Like you just said you're building your own stargazing park on a lake. I was like, Oh, Oh yeah. I guess we are doing the same thing. And so now we connect over social in that way. And then obviously at graduation, so we were sitting a couple, it was alphabetical order. So she's savage, don't read. We were a few seats down. And then ahead of us, a couple seats was Kat. And I forget how to pronounce her last name, the Mexican. Katia. Yeah, Katia. Yeah. So we all catch you. So we all graduated within like 20 feet of each other. That's pretty cool. Yeah. That day. But yeah. Cause I think she was in a different row. Cause she was just graduated.

50:23 That was this year or that was last May. Yeah. Last May. Yeah. Yeah. And so it was, it was neat. It was like an all-star course. Yeah. And then our professors were all NASA mission folks. We had a few professors from Space Force, but most people were APL on deep space missions. Yeah. So that was really neat. So we had like the leads. Well, and Darren, who led Goddard. the deputy NASA, deputy NASA administrator of Goddard or anyway, deputy chief of Goddard space flight center. She was like my mentor. And then, um, yeah, all the folks just were like, Oh, I was the lead on new horizons.

51:03 And then, and it was like, I read about you in national geographic. How cool is this? So you're my professor and the class sizes almost entirely worked out to be one-to-one. Wow. Of the people that actually participated. So a lot of people were there for their jobs because it was a requirement. Yeah. But of the people that actually went to office hours and things, that was almost entirely one-to-one for the entire degree. That's cool. Like you're just one-to-one with these NASA engineers. Yeah. And then the current crop are all working on Dragonfly right now. Well, what are you working on? More books? What am I? Yeah. How are you going to use this degree? And then the stargazing book. So the current book that comes out on in five days.

51:46 So on July 7th. 7th. Yeah. This one we did with Cyan Proctor. So they wanted, they told us to write it. And so we did. We had a lot of fun doing it. And so it took about three years. Give us the name for someone listening to it on audio. Yeah, so this is Baby's Guide to the Night Sky. OK, very cool. Which is written by Dr. Cyan Proctor and myself. So we partnered on this. And it was wild. And it's absolutely beautiful. The artist, Pumundi, she's in Toronto. absolutely captured everything we wanted in the art. So on each page, she's done the constellations that you can see at the appropriate time of the year.

52:27 And they're placed approximately in the sky where you would see them. And we managed to do this in a baby's book. In a baby's book, yeah. Baby's Guide to the Night Sky. So definitely the most... 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. That's cool. And all those series. So yeah, so I called Chris. And I was like, you're the most popular babies book author in the world. How have you not done the planets? Yeah. And he's like, I don't know. And I'm like, well, let's do it. And he said, okay. That's fantastic.

53:08 And so he signed a contract to write those. And that was probably two years ago now. So it'll take another year to get those on the market. That's amazing. Well, I mean, it's exciting for me. And I think for the people listening to see someone who, you know, went down the regular route of like responsibility. 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. Yeah. It was more like following my competence is probably more accurate. I like that. And following the gut. Yeah. Your gut, if you can listen to it, and having electronics to, is, is doesn't help with that.

53:53 That's very true. Again, this was pre-electronically. Like you had a, I had a strong feeling that I was not on the right path. Like really strong. The same feeling like when you meet your wife and you're like, why do I have this? Yeah. Such a strong feeling that I should marry this person. This is the one. Yeah. It's wild. And so that same feeling that you had when you went to go, um, proposed to your wife. Yeah. It's the same feeling I had about my career. Yeah. It was like, I need to quit my, I, I, I'm on the wrong path. 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.

54:38 Yeah. So, no, I think that's brilliant. What's kind of, we'll ask us the last question. What is, um, um, And we ask everyone this, what's the space inside yourself or out in the world that you're still reaching for? Like, is there one? Yeah. So my gut now is telling me to get back to California, at least in the winter. Yeah. And connect with my scene there because Canada does not have a big space exploration scene. It's budding. There's a lot of activity. But it's not mature. Yeah. 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.

55:30 And so it's like, or sorry, Firefly Aerospace, rather. Yep. 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 You know, now I know the director of Griffith Observatory. He's got our moon book. That's awesome. He's a big fan of. But getting plugged into that community, I think, will really help it level up.

56:12 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. Yeah. And just, like, live on a horse ranch in California and take it back to the basics and just write books. By hand. By hand. On a typewriter. On a typewriter, okay. Yeah. I'll allow the paper white. So there's the paper white that have computer keyboards. Yep. I think that's what I'll do. That's my goal. It's big and audacious. Like a year without technology is a big challenge. Yeah, and does that happen before or after the kids move out? You know, that's the other big part.

56:53 I'm pushing, I'm pushing hard. Like if I can make that a reality within the next couple of years. Let me know. We'll come out for a week. It'll be like a cowboy analog. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So my wife does the horses. 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. But if I need to do YouTube, 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. My wife with the horses and then, and then me with the stars. Beautiful. Yep. 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.

57:35 That's fantastic. This is our masterpiece right now. So is that out now or when's it out? Yeah, this, this is out now. Um, get it on my website, learn to start. Awesome. Stargaze.com. If you don't trust my website, the nice hardcover is on my website. Amazon's got the paperback currently. Okay. Working on getting the hardcover on Amazon. Very cool. Well, thank you, John. I think we could talk another three hours. And maybe we need to offline. But I truly appreciate you taking the time today and sharing your story with us. Absolutely. And I can't wait to talk more and then to see you in person again. Absolutely. Thank you for listening to A Heart for Space. If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow the show so you never miss an episode.

58:20 And consider leaving us a review to let us know your thoughts. 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. Until next time, I'm Dr. Iman Jahangir. And remember, sometimes the only obstacle to achieving an impossible dream is the courage to keep going.