We All Love Space. Here's Why

When you talk about your influences, it's hard not to feel deeply inspired by Carl Sagan. I mean, back in the 80s, he was out there explaining space science missions, describing the Voyager missions, producing television shows, writing science fiction books. And he founded the Planetary Society, which has gone on to do advocacy work around the world for science and space exploration. And to this day, the Planetary Society is continuing to have an impact and an influence on space policy, on just sharing the good news of space exploration and science with the world. Well, my guest today is Matt Kaplan, who is the long running host of Planetary Radio. This was originally a radio show from the Planetary Society and then became a podcast hosted for 20 years by Matt Kaplan. And then about three years ago, he retired from the podcast, but has continued on at the Planetary Society now as the senior communication advisor. Matt is one of my inspirations for space communication. I've followed the Planetary Radio show for years now, and often he will have these guests. He will interview somebody. I was like, how did he get a chance to interview this this person? I'm so jealous. And so I finally got a chance to sit down and talk with Matt Kaplan from the Planetary Society. Matt, it is great to talk with you. We've we've talked, I think, briefly, but I don't think we've ever actually done a proper interview either way. That's true. Not like this. Nope. Nope. So and I think you interviewed Pamela on Planetary Radio, but but now I get to sort of return the favor and have you over here on on Universe Today. So I would like first, what's your job right now? Because, you know, you were the host of Planetary Radio and, you know, a huge inspiration to all of us podcasters. What do you do now? I am whatever they let me be, basically. Yeah, you're right. I mean, I had about two years at the Society before I convinced them that a radio show—remember radio? No, but sure. It's kind of like Wi-Fi, but analog. Anyway, later. They let us try this broadcast, public broadcasting radio show, and it got real big, real fast. And then along came podcasting, and we added that and actually for a while did two versions of the show, podcast and broadcast, and did that for 20 years in total until I finally went to them and said, you know, 20 years is probably enough as a particularly as a one-man band, which makes it all the more amazing to me, Frasier, that you have the output that you do. My God. Anyway, that we can get more into that later. But since then, which has been now about three and a half years, they gave me the new title of Senior Communications Advisor, which really is kind of a catch-all. I do live events. I do the book club, our monthly Planetary Society member book club, which becomes part of the Planetary Radio podcast feed once a month. I am working right now to help upgrade our television studio, which was not a studio at all. Our headquarters is a former bank branch, and so we have almost a studio in the former vault, but we had to take the door off. We were so upset about that that we wanted to keep the door. But we're about to upgrade that, and I'm very involved with that because I've got a big TV background and I built several studios, so I'm very involved with that. And basically, you know, such other duties, this may be a sign. But when you, when I'd heard that you were searching for a new host for Planetary Radio, I think I, and like many people, I was like, okay, that's it. Matt is retiring. And, you know, more power to you. I mean, you've been doing this podcast for 20 years. It's, you know, it's time. But no, no, you are not retired. You are still working maybe differently, but they're still keeping you super busy at the Planetary Society. So that's great. I mean, I think you get to properly transfer the reins to the next generation and still stay in their hair, right? Yeah, exactly. You're exactly right. And we were so lucky. You know, we had the right person on staff to take over for me, which I can talk about more. I mean, Sarah, who's doing, I think, a great job. But you're right. I get to stay very busy. They say I am the worst retirement that they've ever met at the Society, and that's okay with me. And then I'm doing some volunteer stuff on the side. I'm doing a different podcast, although not very often, very much occasionally, that is more in line with other stuff I do. I got permission from Planetary Society leadership to do this other podcast for a different nonprofit that is aligned with science literacy and climate change and evolution. And it's very rewarding for me. Yeah, it's got to be tough. I mean, on the one hand, you want to be consistent. You want to show up every day. You want to do the job. And when you're doing a job, it's like a podcast or some kind of radio show that you are producing this on deadline, then there is no bandwidth left to do the other stuff. And yet all these ideas are always percolating in your mind as you walk past these other projects and interesting stuff. And you're like, oh, I got to do the podcast. I got to do the podcast. And it sounds like you're getting a chance to take some of those other ideas and go, you've got the blue sky space to go, hmm, I wonder, you know, what would this look like? I don't think I could get away with absolutely everything. But they're very generous. And Sarah's very generous. She has, I don't think she's ever turned me down when I've come to her and said, hey, Sarah, I think I have this chance to do this special feature for the show. Are you interested? And she says, oh, yeah, that'd be great. And I'll get a break. She'll get part of a partial break that week, which she appreciates. So you're right. It's a pretty good position to be in, though I do miss the weekly opportunity that you still have to talk to my heroes, the scientists, the engineers, the astronauts that, you know, you know what I'm talking about. Oh, yeah. I mean, your list of interviews is a who's who of the space industry, planetary science, astronomers, astronauts. So, man. So there's one memorable interview that you did about, I'm going to guess, about four years ago with some people from the Japanese Space Agency. And I had been sort of mildly obsessed with the Japanese Space Agency and was thinking about like a really enjoying like Hayabusa and and the upcoming Mars Phobos mission. And. Yeah. And that interview helped me understand that they're made of different stuff, that there is a level of kind of risk taking and excitement and enthusiasm in that agency that's very different from NASA and other space agencies. And it was just it was a complete eye opener to me. So but a lot of your interviews have just been terrific. So, I mean, where do we start? Who are there some some stories that you can tell of of interviews that you just I mean, for me, it's like I cannot believe I am talking to this person right now. Yeah, there certainly have been a number of those. And it's so hard for me to think of them when they ask the question. And I apologize. I should have known that that's such a brutal question. Well, no, man, I should be better prepared because, you know, it's the kind of question we get asked a lot because there have been so many wonderful people over the years, you know, from every field. Ray Bradbury was was always great fun to talk to. A true visionary. Buzz Aldrin, strange though he may be sometimes, was I mean, my God, he's Buzz Aldrin. And then to be able to ask Buzz, hey, Buzz, which would you rather be remembered for your work on transfer orbits, the Aldrin orbits, or being the second guy to walk on the moon? Oh, no, there's no question, the orbits. Yeah, the Aldrin cycler. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. People like that. Amazing scientists. Oh, Lord, I'm going to forget now. The guy credited with the first discovery of an exoplanet who was working in Europe. Nobel Prize winners, you know, people who have reached the pinnacle of work in science and are just the nicest folks and want to talk with you and share their, you know, what Bill Nye calls the PB&J, the passion, beauty and joy. It's so rewarding. Lots of other astronauts, you know, getting to ask an astronaut who's been out on EVA about the smell of space. That one is always stuck in my mind. And they say, yeah, yeah, there is a smell. Well, it's really just from, you know, the solar wind and other radiation particles hitting their spacesuit and ionizing things. And you come back in and you smell a little toasty. But apparently everybody who's been on EVA senses that. Anyway, fun stuff. But it's not just the interviews, it's the special experiences that we've been able to do. You know, the live events in front of audiences, going up to the ALMA high site in the Atacama Desert, you know, with my little can of oxygen because you had to take hits off of it every few seconds to keep from passing out. Standing next to Bill Nye when LightSail 2 was launched with a microphone under his chin. And, you know, stuff like that. It's just irreplaceable. Getting to do a zero-g flight just last year with like two days notice because they had an opening and turning that into a feature. It's just I've been very fortunate. Yeah, I get less of those. Unfortunately, I wish I've seen one rocket launch. I watched OSIRIS-REx take off. I was there for the space shuttle like it's the second to last launch of the shuttle, but it didn't take off. It had a delay. And so I was, I saw it on the ground. I had the same shuttle experiences. Three scrubs. Yes. Ended a trip, never saw a shuttle launch. Yeah. But you got to go, Fraser. That's amazing. My, yeah, my, my thing I always say is that you never book a return flight from a rocket launch, right? You know, you go out and then you may just wait there for the better part of a year, but, but you know, it launches when it launches. Yeah. But those, those kinds of experiences, yeah, are, are amazing. And there are so many big observatories that would just be incredible to actually get a chance to, to see. And you know, that's the downside of me living on a, on an island off the coast of Canada. It's a little harder for me to reach out and get to those places. Yeah. But you get to, after being in the groove for hours at a time, no doubt, you can walk out into that forest. Yes. Oh my God. I'm so envious. Yeah. Chainsaw in hand. Yes. So, yeah. So, so let's talk a bit about the Planetary Society because, you know, there's, there's some pretty great people there. The person who I interface with most regularly is probably Casey Dreyer, who is doing all of the advocacy and lobbyist work. And it's weird to use lobbyist as like a positive. And yet that's how it's viewed in, in DC. When our guys come up to them. I mean, Jack Kearly is our, our government relations guy now. He's been elevated. We actually have an office. I don't think it's on K Street, but we have an office in DC and Jack does most of that lobbying work now. Casey is left to be free to have big thoughts and write all kinds of wonderful articles and do the incredible research he does. I'm glad that you guys get to talk. Yeah. Yeah. No, he's, he's a well, and it, because it's such a sort of inside baseball specifics about, you know, how these laws come together and where the funding comes from and how you can actually pull this together. But, you know, that kind of work has been instrumental in helping to, to keep funding going during some of the, the dry periods. And one of, one of my experiences, it's funny, you know, you'll be at a party or at a social group and people say, Oh, what do you do? And I'm like, Oh, I'm a space journalist. And they're like, Oh, I love space. Right. And I, and the answer I always give is like, well, of course you do. Everybody does. And is that the perspective on, in the Capitol that, that for, despite their political differences, they all love space. You know, it's not far from the truth. And, and I sure hope that this holds up. We helped to, in the formation of the planetary science caucus. And that is, there are very few caucuses, which are these more or less informal groups of members of Congress, members of the Senate who gravitate toward a, an issue that those members care about a lot. And a lot of members are members of many caucuses. And so the planetary science caucus is one of the few though, that is both bicameral at Senate and House and by bipartisan, where you have both Republicans and Democrats joining into this because they believe in space and they believe in space science and they believe in space exploration. And it has been very successful. And when we do our annual events, although we're doing two this year, and I think we did two last year, where we have our, our day of action, as we call it, and we pull in people from all over, from all 50 states, regular folks who go out there, get like a half day of orientation from Jack and Casey, and then they go to see their representatives. And so they are the constituents coming in to tell these representatives and senators and their staffs, you know, we believe in space. Here's why it's so important for you to support this and continue to support it. And, you know, our guys here all the time in DC, how great that is, because it's not some corporate lobbyists from K street, who's getting paid a zillion dollars to go in there and talk, talk up a topic they may not really care about. These are people who are there as volunteers. In fact, they pay their own way to get to DC and stay there. And it makes a big difference to representatives. And, you know, it's one of the things I think that our membership feels the most strongly about, that we have been pretty effective with this, this advocacy work. And are there, like, specific wins that, you know, things that, that you've been able to help sort of encourage a vote in the, in towards more science? I think so. I think we've had some pretty good influence. You know, last year, when the current administration tried to cut space science almost entirely from the NASA budget, as part of a huge overall budget—Casey's the expert on this, of course—we started going to work at Congress. And I like to think that we had a small role in Congress saying, no, you're not going to do that. We want space science approved of or funded at the level it was last year. And that must have been frustrating for people at the Office of Management and Budget, but that was what happened. And of course, that's the fight that's still going on this year, as the administration tried to make the same kind of cut. And as you know, not just to space science, but, you know, science across the board is in big trouble. And we're fighting for that. And I think we're definitely contributing on the right side. That's, that's interesting. Um, yeah, I mean, the, the initial budget request from the White House was absolutely brutal, and was going to cut, I think, like 70 missions, like it was madness, in development or already operational, and, and sort of shut down, essentially, the US space science for decades to come. And Congress and the Senate turned around and and kept the budget normal and, and, and stopped those cancellations from happening. But it was pretty scary for a little while there. And then I think at this point, now, I think you've seen this game played out a couple years in a row. Now you can sort of, I guess you can never let your guard down. But if you can feel like, okay, the winds are moving in the right direction, and that NASA is seen as something that's very important, space science is seen as very important, as you say, across political lines. Hopefully, we can, you can keep the conversation going with the people to, to allow those continuations of the budget. Absolutely. And, you know, there are other organizations who are fighting the good fight, who we have partnered with recently. And I don't think it hurts at all to have a NASA administrator who knows what he's doing. I mean, he's got a fine line to walk. And so you may not hear a lot of stuff overtly. But all indications are that he believes in science. And that that's an important part of the NASA mission. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure you can't comment. But I have been genuinely impressed so far with with with Isaacman. As a NASA administrator, I was sort of I was skeptical in the beginning, because he didn't have that sort of practical bureaucracy experience, you know, entrepreneur. But, you know, clearly enough of a space nerd to actually pay for his own flights to space, propose missions that actually could really be done like the Hubble rescue mission with Polaris. But, but so far, the kinds of decisions that they're making, and the action they're taking seems so far, you know, I keep saying so far, so far. I am provisionally. Yeah, I am provisionally encouraged at the direction that NASA is taking. And it's tricky. Like, I think most people, it's funny, you read the comments and people like, NASA should just give all their money to SpaceX, because they're the only ones that can pull this kind of stuff off, right? Well, NASA does give a ton of money to SpaceX, because they are the customer. NASA has regulations, it has rules as to follow from handed down from Congress. Do people understand sort of how space exploration functions in the US? Not enough people, not too few people. I, and I think too few people, even if they get excited now and then about, you know, Voyager, as it will in November, maybe, I hope they'll get excited about it, reaching one light day distance, or, you know, a flyby of an outer world, like New Horizons passing Pluto, people do get excited about this stuff. But do they really understand how it fits in, how space science is an important component of getting humans out there as well, and that we just have so much to learn, and the search for life that is advancing so rapidly now, that, you know, people like you and I can actually hope that we'll be around when we find some pretty good evidence? No, I don't think a lot of people do understand that. And I, you know, it, and, and even just the overall role of NASA. I mean, how many times have you been asked, have you said, why are we doing all this stuff in space? It's costing so much money, and then, you know, problems on Earth. Yeah, exactly. And the classic question of, you know, that you ask these people is, well, what percentage of the federal budget do you think is being spent on, on space? And, you know, they always come up with like 5, 10, 15 percent, when it's like half of 1 percent. It is, you know, it's not the Apollo days anymore. And, you know, I wish people were better informed. And of course, that's part of our mission. It's a part of, if you'll indulge me, of the shift in the mission of the Planetary Society from its initial days, when we were very focused on the people out there, the sophisticated space science nerds, who really get into the nitty gritty of this stuff, to being more, we still love those people, and we're going to try and serve them too. But recognizing that the vast majority of folks out there, who after all are paying for this, don't share the excitement that we do, largely because they're not always exposed to it. And that that's a part of our job, is to make sure that they get that exposure. As we, what's our mission? I'm looking at it now, empowering the world's citizens to advance space science and exploration. Well, if we're going to empower them, we have to, we have to inform them first. So you get a chance to see a lot of interesting mission ideas. Are there, if there's a series of mission, of videos that I tend to do about missions that never was, never were, missions that never were. What are some ideas from the past that you got a chance to do interviews about, or watch sort of come together, but never, you know, what do you wish had launched, but never did? I just had Kevin Hand on, because we featured his book written six years ago, Alien Oceans. I think it's behind me. Yeah, I'm not surprised. Mine's on the Kindle. And I think I have a printed copy over there somewhere. It's a great book. It's so well written. And I had him on last week. We do a month of reading the book and talking about it. And then we bring the author in, which makes me think of a whole bunch of other people that I'm very happy to have spoken to. One of the things I wanted to talk to Kevin about, because he was a big part of pushing for a Europa lander. Of course, we have Europa Clipper arriving in 2030, I think it is. But getting down there and actually digging into the ice would be so cool. And there's just no funding for that right now. You know, getting out to Uranus and Neptune. I've seen so many proposals. I've talked to so many, you know, would-be PIs who have these wonderful concepts to visit these two magnificent worlds that we've only flown by once with one spacecraft. And high priority, of course, in the decadal surveys from the academies. I don't see anything moving forward very quickly on those either. Maybe if you go to China. Well, that's what I was going to say. Yeah. The Chinese are planning potential Neptune, also nuclear powered, like fission reactor or something with a boatload of power that could actually stick around, explore and bring a lot of instrumentation to the game. So that would be, that'd be great. I mean, if anybody, I don't care who goes, somebody go to Neptune. I care somewhat, but yeah, absolutely. Well, I get to be more neutral. I'm Canadian. So, you know, I can straddle this, this line. Hey, well, I got two great colleagues who live in Toronto and just outside Toronto. So I don't know. We have a Canadian presence too. Anyway, it's the big one, I guess, is Mars sample return. So yes, that's, that's the one that just makes me so sad. It kills me. These tubes are sitting up there, the best sterilized objects probably humans ever created, full of Mars and gunk and we can't get them home. Yeah. The evidence of life on Mars could be in those tubes right now, waiting in a nice package, ready to be sent home to be studied in the biggest labs on earth. Yeah. And there are so many other concepts. I was just listening the other day to, you interviewed one of the NIAC winners. And NIAC, like you, NIAC is one of my favorite NASA programs. I used to go and do the webcast at the NIAC symposium every year. Now, Sarah does it. And it was such a delight to talk to these wild and crazy people about their ideas. And you just had that fellow on, and I guess just the first of many that you may talk to. Oh, Jeff Nasnov, yeah. Yeah. And that NIAC is, do you just look back over what they have funded over the years? And there are so many wonderful programs, some of which look a lot more possible and practical than others, but still it's just so, it's thrilling to look at all these things and wish that they could all be funded. Yeah. You look at the star shade concept that came from NIAC, a lunar elevator came from NIAC, the solar gravitational lens made it through three NIAC grants and essentially graduated out of the other side of it. And yeah, I wish NASA did more of that. Like if it were up to me, like if I was running NASA, I would put a lot more energy into opening up the world's ideas and seeing if they can solve any of these problems. Because NASA really shouldn't be about solving problems or doing work that's already been solved. Like they're out there right at the bleeding edge, exploring, building solutions to the problems that may affect us in the coming years. That's the place it holds in my sort of heart. Absolutely. Leave that other stuff to SpaceX and ULA and all the people who want to build commercial space stations, things like that. I want to see NASA on the bleeding edge. And and I just hope that, you know, the administrator and others keep seeing the value in programs like that. Yeah, me too. And like the price, I mean, whatever it is, they, I think at 18, this round, they pay a couple hundred dollars per one, it's like a couple of million dollars to, to cover all of these ideas and just inject some, some new ideas and some just new people into the bloodstream of NASA. Yep. And, and then that will sort of encourage out of the box thinking you've got this larger toolkit that if you're like, Hmm, I want to try and build something that can operate autonomously on the surface of Venus. Let me look at the Ford NASA night grants where someone had developed high temperature, robotics and, and circuitry and things like that and see if there's a solution in there. Yeah, yeah. Couldn't agree more. So I guess you sort of magically, I guess you sort of almost half answered my next question, which was just, what are the places that you would love to see explored at all? Where we've never been at all. We've just never been. Yeah. Yeah. Well, whatever that world is that's circling Proxima Centauri, but yeah, interstellar, that's what you'd like as an interstellar spacecraft. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I got to talk to Miguel Alcubierre once. And I remember your conversation about, you know, warp drive and all that kind of stuff. And Miguel worked it out, except that it probably can't happen. Yeah. It requires all the energy in the universe and requires negative energy. Yeah, exactly. Which we don't know if it exists. And you know, he's, he knows that, but it was still fun to work out. Okay. So more within reach. I do want to see the habitable worlds observatory, which is far from a sure thing, because that will actually let us look at these earth-like planets and say, oh, look at that. They've got oxygen or CFCs in their atmosphere. That would be outstanding. But closer to home, you know, our own neighborhood, I want those sample tubes back, but we've been there, done that. Right. I would like to see, you said it, a rover on the surface of Venus. Crawl around there for a while. I want to see a Europa lander. You know, no matter what Bowman said in 2010, the tepno-landings there, let's give it a shot, you know. More than anything, maybe Enceladus. And it was nice to hear Kevin Hand say the same thing. Since we have a Europa Clipper, let's send a Europa Clipper out there to fly through the plumes of Enceladus, as Cassini did, but it wasn't really equipped for that. You know, its spectrometers weren't, they didn't have the bandwidth to be able to pick up, okay, yeah, this looks like, you know, a piece of a fish. Yeah. Yeah. Like if you're open, if sort of an Enceladan fish bonks into Cassini, right, then they might've been able to detect the change in its velocity and work out the mass of the fish that hit it. But apart from that, yeah, it's just not equipped. Yeah, it's the same thing that you mentioned before, that, you know, everyone is obsessed with going through the plumes at Enceladus. And so there have been many mission concepts, people have explored this idea from many different directions and angles. And it's like, yeah, like rovers that might hop back and forth over the plumes, rovers, flybys that could go through the plumes and carry a astrobiology toolkit on board that they could try to sample these plumes and get a sense of their ideas to actually go down into the plumes. Like there's a lot of just great ideas and it's just a matter of, and back to sort of NIAC, like being able to gather together, you know, a whole collection of very low technology readiness devices, strap them together and send them on their way. And that is the problem is you just like, you want to do what with what? You just made me think of a NIAC mission that I was really excited about and I wish it had happened. And it was a Mars airplane, but basically not a Mars orbiter. It was a free return Mars airplane that would dip down into the atmosphere, gather up some atmosphere and bring it home. Yes. Yeah. Mars sample return mission through aerobraking. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Uh, and I just thought that was brilliant and probably, you know, cost a fraction of a lander. Yeah. Uh, and, and I'm sorry that that didn't happen because who knows what they might have found in that airspace. And it would work with Titan. It would work with Venus as well. Ah, that's true. Right. So all those, like just step one, bring a little atmosphere home. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and, and, you know, at least with Titan, we can look forward to Dragonfly. Yes. Please, please, please work. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for me, I want to see a submarine on Titan. Yeah. Uh, I want someone to explore Iapetus because it's just such a weird world. Um, and there are a lot of these Saturnian moons are, are very different. Um, and then Triton out of Neptune is just, you know, you got this flyby Voyager two, it looks, it takes pictures. That's great. It takes images, images of Triton, detects geysers, you know, these sort of dark geysers that are some kind of cryo-volcanism. Like the first sense that there was cryo-volcanism in the solar system and then the flyby is done and nobody ever goes back, you know? Uh, just, just to have like a 4k camera, uh, at Triton would be so cool because that is just such an amazing world. Yeah. Potentially a captured Kuiper belt object. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, please. Okay. Matt, what are you obsessed with right now? What am I? We've covered so many of my obsessions just in this conversation. I mean, I'm, I'm obsessed with the forces of pseudo science and disinformation. It's why I do that other podcast. Uh, I'm obsessed with finding out our place in the universe, you know, answering the two great questions. Um, where do we come from and are we alone? Uh, and, uh, I'm obsessed with still being here when we find life somewhere across the solar system or elsewhere. Uh, that really is an obsession. I'm obsessed with continuing to support all of this work. Uh, you know, uh, free plug. It's why I'm a very tiny subscriber to universe today. Uh, because it's, it's, it's such an important mission, uh, and why I support some of the other people that we know who are some among the best science communicators. Um, it's very important. Um, I'm obsessed. Oh, go ahead. Are you giving me one more? Oh, one more. I'm obsessed with having a society that is devoted to real science and gives young people the opportunity to find their future in science or engineering. I don't know if it's going to last, but my now 10 year old grandson, uh, says he wants to work up there. He wants to work on a space station. He wants to be an engineer on the international space station. Well, it'll be gone. I tell him by the time you can do that, but there'll be others. Uh, and you know, I want that to remain a possibility. Right. So what is your favorite answer to the Fermi paradox then? I'm sorry to, did you say the Fermi? Yeah. What's your favorite, what's your favorite response to the Fermi paradox? Oh God, there's so many. Um, my favorite. Well, like the one, like, yeah. Or maybe the one that you consider to be the most likely is, you know, you said, are we alone? Yeah. Life should be everywhere. We don't see it. It hasn't, it hasn't just, you know, showed up yet. Right. So why? I think I hadn't thought about this before. You know, even though I've talked like you to people who have their own explanations, I guess my number one would be that space is so damn big. Uh, and that our SETI searches, even though they've been going on for 60 years now, more than 60 years, have still only scratched the surface. That we may not be looking in the right places at the right frequencies. Uh, there's been some talk about that just recently. Um, and, uh, that we just haven't found it yet. Uh, I, I, I find it so difficult to believe, as so many do, that this awful waste of space. Right. Exactly. And, you know, who knows? I mean, yeah, we could just be under observation. They're waiting for us to, for Zeph from Cochrane to develop warp drive and then the Vulcans will drop in. But, um, I doubt it. Um, I, I just think that it's, I hope that it's ahead of us and, and I hope we're around to see it or hear it. Me too. I cannot wait. So whatever the, if a UFO turns out to be true, I'm on board. Absolutely, man. Yeah. Just show me that good evidence. Yeah. I want, you know, I want to have that alien walk up and go on worldwide television like Disclosure Day and, uh, you know, tell all of us, Hey, you know, radical empathy is the way to go humans. Uh, but you're doing okay. You know, that's, there's some good stuff down here. That'd be great. Well, Matt, again, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me. Congratulations on an incredible career as a podcaster. You're not done yet, but, uh, and I look forward to everything you're going to be working on in the future. Thank you, Frazier. All the same back to you and, and the amazing work that you and your team do. I truly don't know how you do it, the output that you managed to maintain, but I'm very, very grateful for it. Well, it's an amazing team. Like that's, that's the beginning and the end of the answer is just how good the team is. Yeah. Awesome. We say the same thing at the society. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Take care. You too. Bye-bye. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Matt Kaplan. Uh, you know, maybe put a face to a voice that you're very familiar with. Obviously you're going to want to go and check out the planters as Ivy signed up for planetary radio. Now Matt is no longer the host, but you can go back into the catalog and in here, all of the work that he has done. Now, as always, I had a longer version of this interview. In this case, Matt and I talked just about the challenges of being science communicators in this modern age. What can we do to help spread the good news about space and encourage more people to have more faith and trust in science and understand the process and the challenges that people who are scientists are going through right now. He sees the collateral damage that's going on when he's talking to two people out there in the U S and other countries. So it was a very interesting conversation. The, that longer version of the interview was available over on Patreon, but you don't have to pay anything. It's completely free and it has no ads. So we're going to link down the show notes. You can go and check that out. I'm going to give you some final thoughts, but first I'd like to thank our patrons. Thanks to Abe Kingston, Andrea Pergetti, Brian Bowdoin, Caribou and Chuck Hawkins, Commander Bailick, Darkfinger, David Gilton, David Matz, Enthralla Reading and Math for Toddlers, Evan.pro, James Clark, Jeremy Madden, Jim Burke, Marcel Smits, Michael Purcell, NASAOceanGuy, Nordspace, OneStepForAnimals.org. Please follow my nephew at vbrick6994, Rinkaidu, Richard Williams, Sean Sargent, Stephen Foundland-Munley, Team 49, Telescopes Canada, Vlad Sheplin, Wolfgang Klotz, Zelda Fraser, blink twice if auto is making you deny the aliens who support us at the master of the universe level and all our patrons. All your support means the universe to us. It was great to talk shop with Matt Kaplan. Uh, you know, our careers have been very similar, mostly that we've got a chance to talk to our heroes, to spend hours every week in deep, thoughtful conversation, following our curiosity with the people who are actually out there doing the science. And you can see it in like, he doesn't want to give up this task. I enjoy this task. Uh, you know, if you are on the fence and you're wondering, boy, is science communication for me? If you have stories to tell, if you have an excitement and enthusiasm for science, you want to share this with other people out there. Boy, science communication could use your help. Uh, please let me know if you are doing a podcast, you're doing a show. If you're on YouTube, if you're writing articles, you're just trying to explain the processes of science to a wider audience, to get people out there, enthusiastic and excited about what is going on. Our understanding of the natural world, our search for whether or not we are alone in the universe, trying to reveal the mysteries of the cosmos, the body, the engineering materials, everything around us. The scientists are busy. They need more help with communicators. So, uh, if you are, thank you. And if you want to become a science communicator and you, my advice is just start doing it behind some stories that you want to tell. And when you've told those stories, let me know. And I will try to amplify the work that you're doing. All right. We'll see you next time.