The Planetary Society’s 45th anniversary with Bill Nye
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Happy New Year and happy 45th anniversary to the Planetary Society. This week on Planetary Radio. I'm Sarah Al-Ahmad of the Planetary Society with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. The season has changed, a new year has begun, and we're kicking off the Planetary Society's 45th anniversary with our CEO, Bill Nye. He'll reflect on our organization's first 45 years and what humanity has learned about space in that time.

Then, our chief scientist, Bruce Betts, joins me for What's Up and the first random space fact of 2025. If you love Planetary Radio and want to stay informed about the latest space discoveries, make sure you hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcasting platform. By subscribing, you'll never miss an episode filled with new and awe-inspiring ways to know the cosmos and our place within it. We live in a time when space exploration has fundamentally changed the way we understand and interact with our universe.

Our modern technology relies on space exploration, from weather forecasting to the global positioning satellites that enable navigation. Spin-off technologies have changed the way we build, how we farm and eat, our medicine, and the ways that we communicate.

Humans have had a permanent international presence in space for over two decades aboard our various space stations. Our robotic emissaries have visited every planet in our solar system that we know of so far, along with numerous moons, asteroids, and comets. Our spacecraft have even ventured into interstellar space.

We've looked out into the vastness of the universe beyond and discovered thousands of worlds, deep mysteries, and a meaningful scientific connection to all that surrounds us. But all of this could have been very different.

In the years after humanity's first space adventures in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, it was clear that there was enormous public interest in space exploration. But as NASA's crewed lunar exploration program, Apollo, ended, so did much of the funding for space exploration in the United States.

NASA's budget was cut over and over again, jeopardizing its programs and partnerships and the dreams of space fans all around the world. So, in 1980, Carl Sagan, Lou Friedman, and Bruce Murray founded the Planetary Society, a nonprofit dedicated to giving people all over the world an active role in advancing space exploration.

Today, our organization is the world's largest and most influential nonprofit space organization with a global community of more than 2 million space enthusiasts. For 45 years, we've been advocating together, shaping the future of space exploration and supporting the missions that matter so we can explore worlds, search for life beyond Earth, and defend our planet from asteroid impacts.

The Planetary Society is not solely responsible for pushing forward space science, but we've had such a profound impact that there's literally no way I could cram all of it into one show. Thankfully, we have our whole anniversary year to share stories. I am now joined by the Planetary Society's CEO, Bill Nye. You may recognize him from his science education shows, including Bill Nye the Science Guy, Bill Nye Saves the World, and The End is Nye.

Under his leadership, the Planetary Society launched our LightSail program and created the first fully crowdfunded spacecraft in history. Bill is a mechanical engineer, an author, an advocate, and someone I've come to call a friend.

Hey, Bill. Sarah. Or I guess as Matt would say, hey, boss. Yeah, sure, boss. No, really, though, I've been looking for good reason to bring you on to Planetary Radio again for an age. I mean, as my first interview- One age, a full age. Two years, that counts as an age, almost. Yeah, well. So, I'm a charter member, everybody. How did that happen? So, everybody understand, I took one class from Carl Sagan because-

I had finished my engineering requirements at Cornell University, and I took Astronomy 102 to relax, to have fun. And it was fun. And Sagan was a poet. People talk about him with reverential adjectives, but it's a worthy thing. The guy really was something else as a lecturer. And, of course, a visionary, and people like to point out he had quite a scientific background.

A record of scientific accomplishment also. But that aside, after you take a class from Sagan in 1977, when he and his buddies start the Planetary Society two years later, you end up on the mailing list. So I got a paper letter in the mail. I thought it sounded intriguing. And I joined. And I was the member that we still cultivate, which was I remained a member largely to subscribe to the magazine, the Planetary Report.

But as it goes on, you get more and more involved. I bought Lou Friedman's book about solar sailing, which I'm going to say was from 1985. It's in the lobby here at the Planetary Center. We can look at the copyright. I have a copy at home, too. Yeah. And I was very much intrigued by that because, coincidentally, my buddies and I in college would watch The Tonight Show quite regularly. Right.

And Sagan would be on there all the time because Johnny Carson was a fan of his as a guest. And I was intrigued, charmed, amazed. Then Sagan's kids by Andrean, Sam and Sasha Sagan, watched the Science Guy show. So then I was asked to be vice president.

Oh, that's how that happened. I used to be on the board rather, then vice president. Then, as I like to say, you leave the room and they take a vote and now I'm CEO. You've got to watch out. But I have been on this journey with the society since 1980.

But long before that, you already clearly had a passion for science. How did you initially fall in love with space? Falling in love with space. Well, let's say I fell in love with airplanes and mechanisms really early on. And the story I've told many times, my father...

had been a prisoner of war in World War II. Every time I think I have a problem, I'm just like, get over it, okay? He was captured from Wake Island, middle of Pacific Ocean, nowhere, on Christmas Eve, 1941. They were bombed on the same morning as Pearl Harbor, as part of the Japanese naval strategy, take over the world, something or other.

He became fascinated with the stars because they had no electric lights at night, and I guess they had very seldom that electricity. And he was the astronomy merit badge counselor for the Boy Scouts. And we had a telescope, and I've told this story a few times. It was made from the cardboard tube you use for casting pillars for a house foundation. Mm-hmm.

And the scoutmaster mounted his own mirrors and an eyepiece and this and that. And it was a very nice reflector because those tubes are very stiff. I mean, it's a solid piece of stuff. And I remember looking at the moon for the first time. And I'm sure listeners to this show, like the craters and the mountains, dude. It's insane. It's so cool. It's not a round thing. So these are sort of classic things.

to me, astronomical experiences that I hope everybody who listens to this podcast has had. So then when I take a course from Sagan, I'm like super transformed. Physics is cool. Mechanical engineering is all applied physics. I did well in electrical engineering and I say all the time,

If everything had been different, I would have gone into antennas. Antennas fascinate me. Big mechanical things controlling invisible fields. It's very cool to me. Anyway, but things weren't different. I ended up at Boeing, which was a cool, great first job. And I stayed connected. I was connected to the planetary site because I got this letter a few years after I started full-time work in the engineering workforce. Wow.

And then I got just more and more connected to the Planetary Society to now we're doing this podcast.

I did not know the Planetary Society existed until I had already graduated from my university with a full degree in astrophysics. I'm sure I'd encountered many of the things the Planetary Society had done, clearly, but it wasn't until I was at a star party and Gio Somoza, one of our- Oh, Gio. Love the Gio. Oh, my gosh. One of our best volunteers ever. He's a huge advocate for us, and he was out there talking about the Planetary Society. Where were you? Here in Pasadena? I was up at Griffith Observatory at a star party shortly after I started working there.

So everybody, Griffith Observatory, I'm sure Sarah talks about it all the time, but yeah, it's a famous, famous place, and it is spectacular. Where it is placed on the hill or mountain of Los Angeles is really spectacular. Carl Sagan and those guys put the Planetary Society here in Pasadena because of the Jet Propulsion Lab. And so when I was in class...

He would come back and show these pictures of Mars that were fresh from the Viking mission the previous summer, 1976. And it was just astonishing, man. I mean, I know people talk about this, but really, it was really something that no one had ever seen. And the thing about those pictures from Mars, even now, or maybe especially now, it's a place.

If you were dressed properly, the right space suit, you could walk around, you know, have a picnic, take a meet and play cards. It's just amazing that it's just an other world. But now we live in a day and age where you can just hop on the internet and pull up the latest image from Mars. And maybe it's part of that access that has made it kind of...

I know people aren't amazed the same way that they should be, or at least so I feel, until people who are deeply passionate about it sit down and they go, like, this isn't just a sweet image, dude. Like, this is a picture of another world, and here's what's going on. So, you know, I talk about climate change all the time. One of my claims or assertions or things for you all to think about is...

In the modern era, climate change was discovered on Venus. Trying to figure out what made Venus so hot. People trying to understand that realized it was carbon dioxide in the Venusian atmosphere. Comparing the climates of Earth to Venus, to Mars, then Europa and Enceladus, and something that Sagan talked about all the time, or often enough,

was the expression he famously used, you and I are made of star stuff. I like star dust. Dust is pretty romantic, but it really is something to think about. Stars explode because you tell me that gravity gets overcome by the fusion energy flying out and they explode. And then these bigger stars

atoms get created, bigger nuclei, and you and I are made of them, and the even numbers are more likely than the odd numbers, it's pretty, wow. It's weird. And when you think about the fact that our sun isn't big enough to make most of those chemicals, right? It can make up to carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, right? Oh, yeah, right. We all know that. Right, Sarah? But to get the crazy stuff, the calcium,

the iron, all of that, you literally need stars to be born and die, big stars, which means that there were stars that were ancestors of our star even that blew up and lived out their lives and exploded. And now you and I are here. We're deeply connected to these things in a way that makes me feel very important, but also very small and interconnected to something much larger than myself. Well, let's say we're nothing. We're nobody. But also in the scale of the universe, you and I are sitting here having a conversation.

conversation about the complexity of all of this and the value of spending time and money to try to learn these things, how many rocks out there in the universe are thinking deeply about their state of being? We are so important. Oh, this is the thing, Sarah. You've hit the nail headwise. I mean, it fills me with reverence every day. And as Sagan famously said...

We are therefore at least one of the ways that the universe knows itself. If that doesn't give you pause, people, what the heck does? It really is an amazing, it's just amazing. I get choked up thinking about it. How fortunate we are to live when these discoveries are being made. And along that line, Sarah, you are of a certain young age, right?

I very much hope to be around, but you will almost certainly be around when we find evidence of life on another world. And stranger still, something alive on another world. I hope so. And if we can find microbes under the sand of Mars or...

European fish people swimming around under the ice on Europa. It would just be it would change the world. And we do it at a fraction of what it costs to do so many other things governments around the world are involved in. It's a cup of coffee per person every now and then. It's just it's an amazing thing to be part of.

So I know our listeners are all into these things, but I am part of the beginning of the Planetary Society, and I am honored to still be here. Well, it speaks to both the value of this organization and all the advocacy we do for this, but also the side benefits of learning all of these things. I get asked pretty frequently, like,

Why are we spending all this time and money exploring other worlds when there are so many big issues facing humanity? But then as soon as we go off in the universe and start exploring things, we encounter that idea. I think Bruce Murray came up with it, the unknown horizon. There are things that we're going to learn that are going to improve our lives both physically

because we understand ourselves and our place in the universe better, but also because of all the spin-off technologies and all of the jobs. There is so much value that comes out of this. As an organization, I'm really glad we're fighting for this, not just that we can

personally know more about the universe, which is what I'm curious about, but also because it has so much value for so many other reasons. It changes the world. It really does. And so, as Bruce said all the time, people would say, why are you sending these spacecraft? Why are you building these telescopes? What are you going to find? We don't know what we're going to find. That's why we're looking. And so, I'll claim, and this is, I don't think is especially controversial, our ancestors...

Who did not have a curiosity. Who did not go over the hill to see what was in the next valley or what have you. They're not really our ancestors. They got out-competed by the tribes that did have people that did want to go looking, that did want to explore and make discoveries. And so it's deep within us. And I'm not saying...

That justifies unlimited expense, but it does justify investments. And objectively, the money you get out from space exploration overwhelms the money you put in, especially planetary exploration. There's still a degree of tribalism to the way that we go to space. Oh, man. Heck yes. But I do value that we're not just an America-centric organization. We do most of the bulk of our advocacy in the United States because...

NASA is a behemoth. It's the largest space agency in the world, and most of our members are here. But we're not dedicated to only that. No, heck no. We've been working on collaborating between all these different space agencies for as long as we've existed. And I think that makes us pretty special. Yeah, well, and people talk about LightSail, the success of LightSail. Understand, we work closely with guys from JAXA, Japanese Aerospace, who had given deep thought about the materials, how big it'd have to be, and

especially how to fold it up. I'm not joking, you guys. It is so cultural. You look at US-built spacecraft, a solar sail. It looks like we went to Home Depot or something and got some, everything's square and this and that. When I was at JAXA, Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, it's origami. They fold up their solar sail in these cool ways that we just don't grow up with in the US. It's very enlightening. Enlightening, that's a pun when it comes to solar sails.

And so we do do our best to work with people around the world who are pursuing answers to the same questions. Pluto is a great example of our contributions because the New Horizons mission to Pluto, I argue, probably would not have happened without the advocacy of Planetary Society members. So, you know, we gave Alan Stern our Cosmos Award, the guy who, he was with that thing from the 1980s advocating for that mission.

That spacecraft going that fast, and we were right there with them. Let's go, man. Everybody wants to know what's going on at Pluto. And when that thing launched, it was the fastest rocket to ever leave Earth. It was a very comparatively low-mass spacecraft on a comparatively huge thrust rocket.

And it went out there and it got a slingshot from the planet Jupiter and was the fastest spacecraft ever shot. And it went by Pluto and it changed the world. And I've heard those guys, the skeptics, the conspiracy theory people, why didn't they put it in orbit? What? Dude, it's going too fast. We didn't have the capability to slow it down and put it in orbit around Pluto. And everybody, I remind you.

Pluto is smaller than Earth's moon. It doesn't have a lot of gravity to capture a spacecraft going faster than ever launched and gotten slingshot from Jupiter. That was not possible. Cheer up. We did some cool things. And we advocated strongly to get it redirected to Arrokoth. And we did. We advocated strongly to get the Hubble Space Telescope

to find that target, the Arrokoth target, another body way, way, way out there. And the reason Pluto, 1980, was supposed to be a traditional planet was because it's so shiny. It's covered with that, you know more than I do, frozen nitrogen. And so from Earth, a telescope on Earth, it looked like it was a big old thing. But it's actually, as these things go, pretty small. But big enough...

to be a ball, has enough gravity to be a ball. And then Aircof, this strange object, it's kind of like a contact binary. We're finding these weird things out there. We sent that New Horizons mission out there for the cost of a cup of coffee per taxpayer once. And it changed the way we think about everything. And practically, if you look, I'm going to say from memory, episode four of the original Cosmos with Carl Sagan,

He just says something along with traditional planets. I refer to the ancient dinosaurs. I give that adjective, ancient dinosaurs, because we still have dinosaurs. Birds. Birds.

Chickens, turkeys, they're dinosaurs, let alone pigeons and bluebirds and whatever else you got. Cardinals. So Carl Sagan says roughly, well, they disappeared. Nobody knows why. Let's move on. So in 1980, nobody knew why the ancient dinosaurs disappeared. It was out when I was in the workforce as an engineer paying taxes and being a grownup and driving a Volkswagen bug and living my life.

that people realized, it was the Alvarez's, realized that it was an asteroid, almost certainly, that finished them off. There may have been some volcanism in what is now India. There may have been a pair of asteroids, whatever. It was an asteroidal event that finished them off. And Sagan didn't know that. Nobody knew that in 1980. But 1983, and now every school kid on Earth knows.

who's able, has access to education, knows this, of course. We are learning about asteroids. And I can tell you, as an earthling, do not want to get hit with an asteroid. And we got to be ready to do something about it. And one of the, changing it back to the planetary side, finally, one of the things we're working very hard to be involved in is Apophis.

Named at least by one translation named for the Greek god of anxiety, which is pretty good. That's pretty good. I honestly hope that it terrifies everyone, not because I want to instill fear in people, but because this is a really important thing that we need to grapple with. But it seems so disconnected from our everyday lives. It's like, yeah, okay, maybe the dinosaurs were killed by an impact 65 million years ago, but it's not going to happen to us.

It is inevitable that Earth is going to get hit by something again at some point, unless we take steps to prevent that. So we're pitching it as a global dress rehearsal for deflecting an asteroid. So everybody, if you haven't gotten the Apophis story, if you haven't listened to every podcast, which is weird, the Greek God of anxiety will come back.

closer to the Earth than the Global Positioning Satellite, closer than Sirius XM radio, let alone the moon, on Friday the 13th of April, 2029. So we want to, at the Planetary Society, we're working to get a mission to catch up with it, a spacecraft, or better yet, a pair of spacecraft, to catch up with it on the way in,

So, for those of you out there who are listening to this podcast, please support the Planetary Society. We're working hard to have a global dress rehearsal for deflecting an asteroid to save humankind. That's a big deal, saving humankind.

We have some lofty goals at the Planetary Society. Lofty. See what she did there? Lofty. Heavenly. But I think that planetary defense is a problem that we can solve in a relatively short time span. Finding life in the universe, maybe we'll do that in my lifetime, maybe, fingers crossed. But I think exploring worlds, that is a...

longer term thing. And if we go out to our even crazier stretch goals, right, knowing the cosmos and our place within it, that is a journey for all of humanity and every living creature for, you know, ad infinitum. Yes, there you go. Whereas figuring out whether or not there's something near us, we're going to need to monitor and track and characterize all of these near earth asteroids. And we've done a pretty good job so far, but probably

primarily because a lot of the work that we've done as an organization, we've been empowering people through the Shoemaker-Neo grant program, but also Neo Surveyor as a spacecraft, as an example, so that we can save humanity and all the life on this planet that might not have happened.

It would have happened without us. Literally all life on the planet. No big deal. Yeah, exactly. Could there be higher stakes? Yeah. So, Sarah, you're doing this good work of raising awareness of this. I had a wonderful time actually this year finally getting to go to the Day of Action in person. Oh, God, that's cool, isn't it? Everybody from around the world. It's a US-based thing.

But we had several or a few people from Canada who get a lot out of it and talk about the Canadian space program. Being there in person and going with all the people, seeing the impact that it had on the people in Congress was really motivational for me because I could see that these in-person conversations

change their minds in ways that, you know, sending letters might not necessarily, even though we've still changed a lot with letters. I think our members have sent something like more than half a million letters to Congress. Oh, yeah. So, no, really? Yeah.

over the years, Europa. I was there in 2013, the U.S. Congress, talking about that. And that was before we had as sophisticated a coordinated effort that we have now with Casey and Jack, our Washington, D.C., and political analyst guys. So everybody, this not getting hit with an asteroid is a big thing. We award grants for people who have specially sophisticated telescopes to look for asteroids.

The things that we've learned, not just about kind of like Earth-like worlds, but what's really been shocking to me in recent decades is water worlds. Worlds like Europa and Enceladus with these under, you know, these subsurface liquid water oceans that are sustaining all the way until now. I mean, it is quite conceivable that most of the life in the universe... Conceivable. See what she did there? Conceivable. It's possible that most of the life in the universe doesn't exist on worlds like ours. It might be under the...

Cracks, icy surface on these... How would they even... They wouldn't even be able to know that there were stars beyond that ice. How many creatures are living on these worlds not knowing? Or are there...

European fish explorers that have drilled a hole are gone to the fissures, the cracks in the ice and seen the stars and they come back down from above the surface. You wouldn't believe. I don't believe you. You're crazy. I just imagine a day where humanity actually walks on these other worlds and maybe we send humans to Mars someday. We'll be right back with the rest of my interview with Bill Nye after this short break.

Greetings, Bill Nye here. 2024 was another great year for the Planetary Society, thanks to support from people like you.

This year we celebrated the natural wonders of space with our Eclipsorama event in the Texas Hill Country. Hundreds of us, members from around the world, gathered to witness totality. We also held a Search for Life Symposium at our headquarters here in Pasadena and had experts come together to share their research and ideas about life in the universe.

And finally, after more than 10 years of advocacy efforts, the Europa Clipper mission is launched and on its way to the Jupiter system. With your continued support, we can keep our work going strong into 2025. When you make a gift today, it will be matched up to $100,000 thanks to a special matching challenge from a very generous Planetary Society member.

Your contribution, especially when doubled, is critical to expanding our mission. Now is the time to make a difference before years end at planetary.org/planetaryfund. As a supporter of the Planetary Society, you make space exploration a reality. Thank you.

We do have to go back to Mars and get the Mars sample returned back, which is something we're super working on right now. Yeah, we are super working on you guys. This is, here's an example of science crossing paths with politics. It was presumed that if you took these samples and put them in these cool tubes, somebody would show up and bring them back.

But it turns out there wasn't really a plan to bring them back. Not exactly. There wasn't exactly a plan exactly to exactly bring them back. And now NASA and these guys and gals are backtracking. Well, what we're going to do is think out of the box and come up with a whole new... You guys, it's going to cost, reckoned in U.S. dollars, billions. Just let's do it. Let's bring these things back. And so I started to mumble about this. Martian rocks land here often enough, right?

Mars gets hit with an asteroid-o object. Stuff gets tossed into space, and it falls to Earth on these so-called Hohmann orbits. Mars is orbiting the sun, so are we, and these rocks fall, except in space, as I like to say, there's no sound, and they land on Earth, and the place we find them is Antarctica. I've never been, but I've seen the pictures of

So you're walking along in the ice and there's rocks. Where did they come from? The only way they could get there is they came from the sky. It's really an amazing idea. And the rocks that make this trip are tough. They've been whacked off the surface of Mars. They've fallen all the way through outer freaking space, the vacuum of space. And they make it through Earth's atmosphere going at extraordinary speeds, burning up, and a part of them still makes it here. It's amazing.

But those rocks are different from the rocks that the geologists are collecting in the Jezero crater on Mars. They are so-called mud rocks. This is a place on Mars that used to be wet. If that area gets hit with an asteroid, they don't get tossed into space. They're not tough enough. It's sand. And so that's where there could be Martian microbes, either at one time in the distant past or maybe...

Under the sand, where it's salty and slushy salt, salt, slush, there's something still alive. I mean, what's methane about? I mean, all that methane, as if it's not like a tiny fraction of parts per million. But still, like we have detected things on Mars that really need answers that could be absolutely nothing or could be an indication of present day, extant life, life.

Listen to what she's saying, people. Say it again, Sarah. It's sitting right there. Let them hear you outside. What if we share a common ancestor with life on Mars or even beyond? If we send humans there too quickly before we actually do this science, we might corrupt our own ability to be able to answer these fundamental questions. So I am so old. How old are I? I was there for survey. I was there. I was here on Earth for a surveyor. Yeah. Surveyor. So-

First, smash some spacecraft into the moon to get close-up pictures of the moon. Then had the surveyor spacecraft land with disc-like feet, circle feet, to assess whether or not the lunar surface was this very feathery, light mass dust. And whatever you tried to land there would just sink like a swamp and disappear. So the surveyor spacecraft were put there.

Then astronauts years later drove, Earth years later, drove up to these things in one of the rovers and brought a piece of the surveyor spacecraft back. And it had microbes still alive. And they presumed that these microbes had lived for years on the lunar surface. And perhaps there's something alive. But then they realized it was just contamination in the Earth lab facilities.

And so we just don't want to do that on Mars. This is what you're talking about, right? Don't want to go to the interesting places on Mars and contaminate the place in such a way that we couldn't distinguish what we're looking for from what we brought by accident. When you send people, man, it is a dirty business. It is microbes. What are there some...

million viruses on your face. There's some crazy statistic like that. Oh, I don't want to think about that. Yeah, but they don't kill you. They're part of the deal. Yeah, they're part of me. I mean, honestly, there's some statistic. Most of us actually isn't even us. It's just the microorganisms that live inside of us. More bacteria in your tummy than there are humans on Earth. We're like a whole universe to those guys. That's wild. Right.

Really, though, I mean, as we're getting more samples from outer space, I mean, we went with many missions at this point to try to recall things down to Earth. We haven't done it with Mars yet, but we totally nailed it with OSIRIS-REx recently, another mission that we not only advocated for, but also Asteroid Bennu was named in a contest because of us. I saw it.

Mike Puzio. Did I tell you this? No. So I was at University of North Carolina. He comes up to me. He's weird with the beard now. He looks like a grad student. And he's a mechanical engineer. That's amazing. And he said University of North Carolina getting his degree. And this is the guy, everybody, in third grade who thought deeply about Egyptian mythology and asteroids and the spacecraft, the artist's rendering of the spacecraft, and thought it looked like a bird.

And this Egyptian bird, the mythic or theological, mythological bird, Bennu, he says, pretty good name. So the asteroid is named by a guy in third grade who's now in college getting a degree because of the Planetary Society and support from listeners like you. So thank you.

I've also spoken to other people like Abby Freeman, who are part of our- Abby Freeman, oh man, love her. Oh my gosh, the Red Rover Goes to Mars program. There have been these moments throughout TPS history where we've helped out with programs, kids get involved, and then years later-

They're leading missions. They're doing that work because of that impact we had on them. It's wonderful to see that legacy. And now that we have the Planetary Academy for Kids, I'm really hoping that we have a whole new generation that's been inspired by that. So, we, doing the Science Guy show 100 years ago, back in the 1900s, we had this very compelling research that 10 years old is as old as you can be to get the so-called lifelong passion for science. Right.

And that's the idea of Planetary Academy. If it's not 10, it's 12, or it's 8, or it's one of these numbers. Everyone's different. It's not 35. And so we want to get young people excited about space exploration, just as you and I were back in the day looking at Saturn through a telescope made of a concrete casting tube. Right.

Well, I was one of those kids. I watched your show religiously as a child. I love you, man. Well, man. But, you know, also my mom was a school teacher. And I think inadvertently, because I don't know how this happened, but your VHS tapes, I'll date myself here, your VHS tapes were in every single elementary school and middle school across the United States. You were basically the substitute teacher for almost every tired teacher out there. Apparently, I still am. Yeah. And it is an honor, and I try to get it, you all. When I meet people, I was in...

I was in Bayou, France, which is back east someplace. I think it's in another country. And this guy came up to me speaking French-English.

Said he loved the show. He watched the show. He learned English from watching the show. What? Whoa. People from Portugal, people from Brazil have come up to me, let alone people from exotic places like Milwaukee or what have you. And so I put my heart and soul into that thing. And the Planetary Society had a tremendous influence on the scripting

and performance of that show. Really? Oh, man. Because of my tradition with the Planetary Society, planetary science is the study of the cosmos, astronomy, and planets. So many of you listening may have taken earth science in, let's say, U.S. middle school or U.K. middle school. And in earth science, you might have studied the ancient dinosaurs, right?

Well, I organized the show. As the head writer, I organized the show, especially with a guy who's still a dear friend, Ian Saunders. We organized the show so that the study of ancient dinosaurs was life science. The study of astronomy and climate change and atmospheres and geology and geochemistry is all planetary science. But astronomy and earth science...

And atmospheric science were all grouped for me in planetary science, which would be the study of everything in the cosmos and then Earth. So three major topics, life science, physical science, planetary science, then each divided twice. General biology, humans, chemistry, physics, all astronomical bodies, Earth.

So it is the Planetary Society influenced the Science Guy show. See, that's one more example of the ways the Planetary Society impacted my childhood and my life path without me even knowing it. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do.

Cue this Twilight Zone music. Twilight Zone, astronomical reference, planetary science reference. Really, we could be here for the next year just going over the things that the Planetary Society has done. Well, you should have a podcast, Sarah. I should have a podcast. You should get guests on. Talk about stuff. And thankfully, we are planning out a lot of content over the next year so we can celebrate this 45th anniversary. But

it's also a moment for us not just to reflect on what we've done, but to look at our goals going forward. Because we do this thing every few years, we come up with a new strategic framework, the things that we're going to be working on in the coming years. What are you hoping that we're going to try to do in this next little period? Well, so we're arguing, discussing the mission once again. And you guys, as I'll tell you, as the head writer of the Science Guy show,

You got to agree, we must agree on every word. And people go, that's just wordsmithing. No, it's not just wordsmithing. It's the point. So when I say to people on the elevator before the door closes, we're the world's largest independent space interest organization advancing space science and exploration so citizens of the cosmos are placed within. Nailed it. Yeah, but it's a lot to take in. But what we want to do at the Planetary Society is,

We exist for the sake of humankind. We want to make the world better. We want the world for humans to be better. That really is the big thing. And I'm not sure you get that from that long-winded elevator speech, most independent space, the largest space interest organization advancing space science and exploration. Should it be...

Making the world better through exploration of planets. Should it be we are dedicated to the scientific exploration of the cosmos? If you say scientific, is that exclusive? Does that mean only scientists or scientifically inclined people? Or does it mean everybody? So this is a really important thing we're talking about for the next five years. But specifically for me.

Want to have some more missions. Want to go back to Venus, see what the deal is at Venus. Oh, man. I really hope Veritas and Da Vinci end up where they need to be. Hope's not a plan, so we're working on it. Specifically, want to go back to Venus, want to go to the south pole of the moon and see what the deal is with this ice. I presumed, having taken chemistry and physics and just screwing around with dry ice myself as a kid, I presumed...

That if you had ice in the icy vacuum, the bitter cold vacuum of space, it would just evaporate. There wouldn't be any ice. Sublime, I guess. Yeah, sublime. Change from a solid to a gas without being a liquid. But...

There's something going on with the regolith, whatever the moon is made of, and ice that's somehow osculating with the rock. And then the other thing, I really want to be involved with Apophis. Really want to be involved. These are specific things over the next five years. But generally, want to refine our mission, refine our...

purpose. Why do we come to work, Sarah? What is it we do here? We're trying to make the world better for all of humanity. It's not bad. It's not bad. And of all the topics that we could unite on as a human species,

As a group of tribes. As a group of tribes, as citizens of Earth. There you go. This is one of those things that we can work together on that is truly a peaceful endeavor that has nothing but benefits for us. I think what the Planetary Society does is very hope building because there are a few things that we can organize around that are just that fundamental and beautiful and meaningful to who we are as people. Right on. Right on. You should have a podcast. Yeah.

Well, also, thank you for enabling me to do this kind of work. It's the dream of almost every science educator to have a platform like this. And here I am stepping into this legacy, which you yourself stepped into, this thing that has been built from our founders all the way up through the work of so many dedicated people and

now I get to share what I love every day with people around the world listening to this show. And they get to share what they love with people because of what we do. And they feed back into it through their advocacy and their donations. It is a beautiful thing. And I...

I can't even imagine what the world would be like without the Planetary Society. There's some bizarro world in the multiverse where we never got formed and Starfleet's never going to happen. Well, we'll say that. But also, we wouldn't know anything about what's going on with these worlds and our connection to them. So you just mentioned Starfleet. Yeah. I got to say, on our board of directors is Robert Picardo, who plays the doctor on the new...

Star Trek franchise, Starfleet Academy. Yeah. And they're shooting it right now. I saw him this weekend. He was here for the board meeting. That's what he was doing. We're going to do an interview in the future. So that's what he was working on. But I mentioned this. It's not irrelevant, everybody. Star Trek has affected you. No matter where you are on Earth, this idea that Gene Roddenberry had

Gene Roddenberry and Sagan and Bruce Murray and Lou Friedman were all colleagues. Gene Roddenberry is a storyteller. The other guys were scientists and an engineer. This optimistic view of the future through science, that's what Star Trek is about. We have a letter here when you come to Planetary Society headquarters from Gene Roddenberry. He's in support. Love you, Carl, and so on and so on.

It's because these guys shared this vision of a better future for humanity through science. Planetary exploration. It's pretty cool. It really is something to be part of. Sarah, this has been a delight. Thank you so much. This has been so much fun. And here's to the next 45 years. Right on. Woo! Let's change the worlds.

Let's do it. Happy 2025 as reckoned by the Gregorian calendar. Thanks, Bill. We'll be celebrating our 45th anniversary all year. So keep an eye out for upcoming content and events. Thank you for coming on this journey with us and for all of the wonderful science, technology and discoveries that you've helped enable. Now we turn to Dr. Bruce Betts, our chief scientist for What's Up. Hey, Bruce. Happy New Year.

Happy New Year! And happy anniversary. I know. It feels so cool to be with an organization at this point in its history. I mean, 45 years is a long time, and fingers crossed I'll be here for the 50th. Yeah, that seems like a good bet.

Maybe. I mean, honestly, y'all are going to have to shoot me into the sun to get rid of me. That turns out to be incredibly difficult. It is shockingly hard to get to the sun because of the velocity we'll have to get rid of that you currently have on Earth. So you're probably safe. But we'll talk about that over the next five years. Well, you know, hey, we invest the money in shooting Sarah into the sun to get rid of her. And now we know how to do it for other spacecraft. So, you know, knock on effects. Yeah.

Why am I the one that finds this a disturbing prospect? I don't know. Maybe because you like me, Bruce. No, I think it's a waste of resources. Oh, yeah, I like you too. Oh, yeah. 2025, the year of being nice. Okay. Is that your New Year's resolution to be nice? Yeah, I think I've already had a straight over the line a few times and it's barely begun.

How long have you been working at the Planetary Society? You've seen a lot of the history of this organization. Hey, have I seen a lot of history? Let's just say when I came here, we were sending out our random space facts by chiseling into stone.

No, that is not true. I began working, so to speak, for the Planetary Society doing slave labor when I was a graduate student at Caltech because my thesis advisor was Bruce Murray, one of the co-founders of the Planetary Society. So I...

Did things. I did things. I can't talk about them. And then I went off and did a little kind of, you know, science career NASA headquarters tour and then got the call from the gang and they said, hey, you want to come on out and do this? And I said, yeah. What was your original job title? Were you chief scientist to begin with or did that change? Minion.

My job title when I came to the Planetary Society was Director of Projects. Director of Projects. And then at a later time, I became the Director of Science and Technology. And then I became the Chief Scientist. Those are all cool titles, man. They are cool titles. They make for a nice collection of business cards. What would you say over the years that you've worked at Planetary Society is your favorite thing that kind of changed about the organization?

I have to actually be thoughtful. Ow, it hurts. Sorry. I mean, I hate to say this because people might think I'm like them, but the team is really, the whole team as a whole, it really functions smoothly now.

Compared to some of the things that happened in the early years of big conflicting personalities that still accomplish things, but it was less pleasant to get there. And so it's nice with the, just we have a lot of really enthusiastic people

positive people like you, Sarah, and everyone's working together and pushing forward and doing great stuff. I think there also is a much greater sense of planning, coordination, all that stuff that you're supposed to do when you're like a business that grows and gets older.

and it helps you work more efficiently. So as much as I may complain internally, just don't let anyone else listen to this podcast who works with Plantar Society. It's a great team, good planning, good management, good stuff. It's a weird thing to work at a job where I feel genuinely happy to see everyone every day, even you, Bruce. But honestly, this is the best team I've ever worked with.

So anyway, it's been a long and wonderful voyage. And it's like any job. You get frustrated by the details and when I have to fight with other bureaucracies besides ours. But overall, it's nice. I like it. Right. We're so lucky to get to be here. Again, I will never say this again because officially I hate it. I hate everyone. Go away.

I promise I won't tell everyone that you love them, Bruce. Oh, oh, oh, oh, come on. Let's not go that far. All right. All right, on to the first of the new year, the first of 2025. Run, space, run.

So this just, I just, I enjoy this. So Saturn with its gazillion moons, most of them tiny weirdos, they've broken them into different groups. And this Norse group named after, you know, Norse language, Norse mythology and named after

Well, we'll get back to the naming. It's a large group of, they're all regular irregular satellites. I'm sorry, retrograde irregular satellites, which is how I'm sometimes described. They go really far out. They're really all sorts of inclinations. They're just, they're wacky, they're tiny, and they're crazy. But what I find particularly amusing is the Norse group, which the naming convention set up by the IAU is named after Norse mythology, mostly giants.

The largest of the Norse group, Phoebe. Phoebe? Which comes from Greek mythology. Yeah, that's right out. I mean, it makes sense because it was discovered long before the other tiny ones were, and they hadn't set up the convention, but it confused me. And the largest of the Norse group is Phoebe. I was like, how can Phoebe possibly be Norse?

They actually had a bunch of names suggested by the public not too long ago with more Norse giants. So there you go.

That's cool. And pertinent, too, because now that it's the first of the year, the quasi-moon naming contest that I've been involved in is finally closed, and that means a name shall be selected. I cannot wait. I cannot wait to see who wins. That's cool. Speaking of names, I do want to tie it to last year. I wanted a connective tissue between the years. Ymir, that we talked about last year, is the second largest Norse group moon.

Norse mythology is an ancestor of all of Jotun's or, oh, the frost giants. Yeah. Yeah. What is it? What is the word for that? Jotun? Jotnar? Something like that? Jotnar. There we go. Thank you. It's like, I should remember that. I live in various fantasy worlds.

Yeah, I learned that from a video game called Smite, which is also how I learned to pronounce Chang'e, that mission from the Chinese Space Agency. Well, you know, you go along with what I say. Video games are very educational. Really, though? It's true. All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about what your big video game obsession for 2025 is going to be. Or will there be multiple, as I'm sure Sarah and I will both have? Thank you, and good night.

We've reached the end of this week's episode of Planetary Radio, but we'll be back next week with Emily Calandrelli, the space gal, who recently became the 100th woman to go to space. If you love the show, you can get Planetary Radio t-shirts at planetary.org slash shop, along with lots of other cool spacey merchandise.

Help others discover the passion, beauty, and joy of space science and exploration by leaving a review or a rating on platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Your feedback not only brightens our day, but helps other curious minds find their place in space through Planetary Radio. You can also send us your space thoughts, questions, and poetry at our email at planetaryradio at planetary.org. Or if you're a Planetary Society member, leave a comment in the Planetary Radio space in our member community app.

Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by our members from all over the world. You can join us and help us shape the next 45 years of space exploration at planetary.org slash join. Mark Hilverda and Ray Paoletta are our associate producers. Andrew Lucas is our audio editor. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. And until next week...

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