Kevin Horek: Welcome back to the show.
Today we have Jeff Bennett.
He's a scientist, educator, author, and speaker.
Jeff, great to chat with you again.
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: Great to talk to you also.
Kevin Horek: Yeah.
I'm excited to have you back on the show.
I think what you're doing is actually really innovative, but maybe before
we get into all that, let's get to know you a little bit better and
start off with where you grew up.
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: Well, I grew up mostly in San Diego.
Um, nice.
Had bounced around a bit till I was about seven years old, but then landed there.
Kevin Horek: Okay, so you went to university.
What did you take and why?
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: Uh, so I went to, uh, uc, San Diego for my undergraduate,
and I majored there in biophysics, um, because I really loved the physics.
Um, I loved the biology also, and uh, but I also loved teaching.
I was working in elementary school while I was an undergrad.
Okay.
And based on that, right around the time I was graduating, Carl Sagan's
Cosmos came out and I saw that and I thought if I wanna be in teaching and
education, I should, should switch from biophysics to astrophysics.
So I did.
And I went to the University of Colorado to get my PhD and I've been living
here in Boulder pretty much ever since.
Interesting.
Kevin Horek: So what got you interested in physics at such an early
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: age?
Well, I'd have to say I'm, I'm a child of Apollo, I think.
Okay.
Since I, I was about 10 years old when people landed on
the moon for the first time.
And, uh, all the buildup to that with the space program and that happening
just really got me excited about space.
And space I think kind of naturally leads you into, uh, science and physics.
Sure.
No, that makes a lot of
Kevin Horek: sense.
So walk us through your career, maybe some highlights along the
way up into what you're doing
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: today.
Well, it bounces around in some, some sort of unusual ways, but I, I went
to grad school for astrophysics at Colorado and one of the things I did
while there was a big educational project, um, building a scale model,
a solar system on campus, um, which we now have a similar model in Washington,
DC and many other cities around.
And, uh, that got me to the attention of the university as someone
who was focused on education.
And so right as I finished my PhD, they were starting a new math curriculum and
they hired me to create this new math program called Quantitative Reasoning.
. And so I did that for a couple years and since it was a new program, I
had to write all my own materials.
And that actually led to my first textbook.
So my first, uh, college textbook was actually a math textbook.
Um, and we just had the eighth edition come out.
Uh oh, congrats.
And that's huge.
Yeah, thanks.
And, uh, they, uh, then I got a chance to go work at NASA headquarters.
Um, in one of these positions they call a visiting senior scientist.
I was brought into focus on education in the astrophysics division.
So I went there and spent a couple years doing that, working on Humble Space
Telescope and other missions that are run by the astrophysics program there.
And my job was really to try to bri bridge the gap between the
research and education communities.
Uh, so I did that and then I went back to Boulder and kept teaching
and kept working on my textbooks.
I also got my astronomy textbook started around that time.
And, uh, Kept teaching until the early two thousands, and by that time the
writing was getting so busy that oddly enough, even though my main work is
writing college textbooks, I'm not teaching the courses myself anymore,
although I have co-authors who do.
And so I have my college textbooks in astronomy, math,
uh, astrobiology and statistics.
And then I, when I have free time, I write kids books or
books for the public for fun.
Okay,
Kevin Horek: interesting.
So do you get to apply any of the quantitative reasoning in kind of your
work and, and life today and, and maybe even some of that into those kids books or
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: not, or textbooks.
Yeah, absolutely.
Um, so my textbooks, the, the commonality between them, even though they're in
four different subjects, is they're all aimed at non-science majors.
Okay.
And so a lot of times it's the same students taking those math courses
and quantitative reasoning and the astronomy or astrobiology course.
So you wanna make sure everything's really well integrated and the same ideas, the
kind of math you need for everyday life, the building a cosmic perspective so that
we understand our place in the universe.
Those are the ideas I wanna get across in everything I do.
So I definitely work those into my kids' books, um, and my public books as well.
Kevin Horek: Interesting.
So do you wanna walk us through some of the books you've written?
Because there, it's definitely a unique take and, and.
People have presented them.
You have some pretty cool examples, so I'll let you tell 'em.
I don't need to spoil it.
. Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: Thanks.
Well, on the kids side, um, I have seven books now for kids.
Wow.
Kids, including the new one.
Um, the first was Max Goes to the Moon.
And, uh, that had been something I'd been wanting to do for a long time.
And finally the opportunity rolled around, uh, with teaming up with some of the
people from my college textbook publisher.
And the idea behind it was to try to get kids really excited
about science, who wouldn't maybe necessarily be excited to begin with.
And one of the things when I was teaching elementary school that I
recognized about Science Books for Kids was they tended to sort of just
be, um, they were pretty much pure nonfiction and a little bit encyclopedic.
Yeah.
Um, some of them had a little bit of a story that went along with them, but
nothing that really took you through.
you know, a, a fictional story, but presenting all the science clearly.
So that was my goal.
So I send my dog to the moon.
It's the story of how we go back to the moon, um, for the
first time since the Apollo era.
But I build in on the sides of the pages, these detailed science boxes.
I call 'em the big kid boxes to make sure that kids.
you know, enjoy the story when they're very young.
But then as they get older, they can start to really understand the science
and those boxes as well as their teachers.
And their parents might learn some science from those boxes that they can then answer
questions that kids might be asking.
So I started with Max Goes to the moon, then I did, max goes
to Mars and Max goes to Jupiter.
Uh, then I did a book on global warming for kids called The
Wizard Who Saved the World.
And then I got a call one day from uh, a woman named Patricia Tribe, who had been
the head of education at the Johnson Space Center and an astronaut named Alvin Drew.
And once they convinced me, they really were who they said they
were, they told me they wanted to take Masco to the moving up into.
And I said, well, that, that would be very cool.
And that was the start of what they started called the Story Time from
Space Program, which is now launched, uh, 20 or 30 books by a variety
of authors, including all of mine.
Wow.
And, uh, the, they started taking those books to the Space Station
and the Space Station people came to me and said, you've written Max
goes to the moon, Mars and Jupiter.
What about Max goes to the Space station?
Oh yeah.
Okay.
And, uh, and I said, well, it turns out in Max goes to the moon.
The opening scene is a parade where he's come back from the Space Station.
That was just a plot of ice I put in there, um, to explain why my dog was
the one chosen to go to the moon.
And so I said, sure, that'll be the prequel.
And so I wrote, max goes to the Space Station.
Uh, then I wrote a, my, uh, most recent until this new kid's book
was one called I Humanity, which is the story of how we know what
we know about the universe today.
And then I have this new one called Totality on eclipses.
Kevin Horek: Okay.
So what made you decide to write a book on
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: eclipses?
Ah, so, um, you know, my big focus is education and outreach.
And from a science standpoint in general, and especially from
astronomy, there's really no bigger opportunity than an when it comes
over a place like the United States.
So in 2017, that path crossed over millions of people and, you know, tens
of millions more drove to the path.
So all of a sudden you've got this huge media attention
around an astronomical event.
And so from my standpoint, that means you have an opportunity to make it, not just,
oh, that's really cool, I saw it, but to actually teach people something from it.
So before the 2017 eclipse, I was looking for a way to really hook
people in, uh, to spread the word.
And it turned out nobody had done an app to help people find.
Their way to the eclipse and learn about it.
So I decided I wanted to try to do that.
I teamed up with one of the world's premier eclipse code writers, a guy named
Zapier Hub, who's, he actually lives in France, so he wrote all the code.
Um, I got an app developer.
I helped them with the interface and put in all the learning
content about eclipses.
And, uh, it was really fun and I thought it'd be fun to write
a book to go along with that.
So that was the origin of, of this new book.
Okay.
Kevin Horek: Very cool.
So when does it come out and, uh, how pe how will people be able to get a copy?
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: Uh, well, the, uh, the official publication date is actually,
uh, two days from now, the 14th, which I timed to be 13 months to the day, uh,
before the October 14th, 2023 annual eclipse coming across the United States.
Um, and just briefly, an annular eclipse is kind of like a total eclipse
except for the moons farther away, so it doesn't completely block the sun.
You'll still see a ring or an annulus of sunlight around it,
so it won't get completely dark, but it'll be really cool anyway.
Um, and then there's a total solar eclipse on April 8th, 2024, which
will be even better than the 20 17 1.
So that was how I timed the, uh, the publication of this book to make sure
people have it in time to make all their preparations for the 23 and 24 eclipses.
And as far as where to get it, um, it should be available at lots of
bookstores and, uh, on Amazon you can go to my big kids science.com
website and there's a discount offer on there and links for purchasing it.
So it should be pretty easy to find.
Kevin Horek: No, very cool.
So I, I'm curious.
Like I, I've always kind of been fascinated by, by space and I, I think
obviously like a large majority of the population, but 2017 seemed like
almost everyone was interested in it.
Do, do you agree with that?
And why do you think that was such a popular space event?
Well, eclipses
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: have such a huge long impact in human history.
There's lots of stories about, you know, eclipses changing the course
of history because they used to come unexpectedly right back before
people knew how to predict them.
They used to be considered these very frightening events.
Right.
The suns disappearing right in the middle of the day.
And so I think they just have this long connection to human history that makes
people naturally interested in them.
They're also something that at least if you're outside, uh, when
one's going on, you can't miss it.
Right.
You can go outside.
Yeah, sorry.
Night and not ruby look up, which is what a lot of people do, particularly with
city lights and everything else that make it hard to see things in the night sky.
But that eclipse, you know, you can't miss that.
And so there was a lot of excitement building towards it.
Um, I think, yeah, like you said, almost everybody got.
Excited about it.
And I think there's gonna be even more this time because there were
many millions of people who traveled to get to the path of totality.
And I think every one of those people who was on the path of totality wants to
go back and they're telling every single one of their friends and family members.
So I think we're really gonna get an enormous turnout on the
path of totality this time.
Um, and of course, the rest of the United States, if you don't get to travel, you'll
still have a partial eclipse on both of those dates in a, in, uh, October, 2023.
In April, 2024.
Kevin Horek: Right.
No, that, that makes sense.
So when you talk to adults and kids about space or science or kind of
anything related to all the stuff you've written about and you, you know, written
textbooks around, is your approach kind of the same, different, a bit,
a bit, a bit of both and, and kind
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: of why?
It's really the same basic approach.
It's just a matter of, um, adjusting the level that you're presenting at it at.
But, um, you know, one of my mantras about teaching is brains are brains.
And sometimes we get people who think teaching adults is very
different from teaching kids, but the learning process, whatever goes on
physiologically in the brain when you learn something, has to be the same.
It might happen easier in younger kids.
90 year olds, but it's still the same process going on in the brain.
And so to get someone to learn something, you can't just present what you want
them to learn, the content, you also have to present it in a way that
makes them want to learn it, which is what I call the perspective piece.
And that's because I think that you learn something or you're excited about
learning something when it makes you go, oh wow, I never thought of that before.
So it changes your perspective and then it should also inspire you to go further.
So I always think of it as education perspective and, and
inspiration as the three pillars of how you teach successfully.
So I'm gonna do the same thing whether I'm talking to young kids or to people at a
retirement home, which I do often as well.
Okay.
Kevin Horek: Can you maybe walk us through why obviously kids learn probably
faster in a lot of cases, some of the stuff than we do as maybe adults?
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: Yeah, I mean, that's actually a really good question
and the subject of, of lots of research.
But, um, my personal guess is just that, you know, their, their brains
are sort of less full, right?
So they're right.
It's easier for them to absorb the, the new information.
But a again, you're still gonna go through the same process
ultimately to, to learn something.
And then the, uh, converse to that is that adults have more background information.
So when I'm speaking to adults, I can sort of resume that there's things that they
know that when I'm speaking to kids, I can't assume that they're already gonna.
Kevin Horek: Right.
But then when you're talking to adults, how do you make sure you're not kind
of like talking over or kind of like a over somebody's head or kind of
insulting them by , you know, kind of talking to them like they're a child.
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: Uh, so those are the things that you want to avoid, right?
Both those two things.
And so basically you have to be conscious about avoiding them.
So make sure that you always review everything that is
prerequisite information.
Even if it's just a very brief thing, like, you know, the sun is a star.
If you don't say that and you assume people know it, they might not.
If you say, you know, the sun is a star, um, some people might not
have known it and now they do know.
So they're on the same page with you.
And those people who already did know it are like, well, you said
you know it, you didn't insult me.
Right?
Right.
Um, you, you complimented me on what I already know.
So it's that type of approach that I think can reach people in a way that.
comes across so that they get all brought up to speed, but it doesn't
sound condescending to anyone.
Right.
No,
Kevin Horek: that, that makes a lot of sense.
So I, I'm curious then, because you've been doing this for so long and you've
written stuff for obviously so many different age ranges, um, walk me through
some advice that you would give to people a as maybe like earlier in their writing
career or stuff you wish you knew earlier.
Because obvi, we, uh, like as people that have written books before, it's
really, really challenging and very,
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: very time consuming.
Are you talking on the writing side or, uh, generally, or
on the science writing side?
Well,
Kevin Horek: probably both
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: Really.
Okay.
Yeah.
Well, if it's.
Yeah, the, the sci for the science writing side.
Um, I have a book called On Teaching Science, and I lay out kind of strategies
for teaching and writing is really a form of teaching, at least when you're
doing it for a science writing thing.
So I would follow those strategies.
For example, focus always on the big pic picture.
Don't get lost in the details.
Make sure you audience always knows what's the goal that you are aiming at as they
read along, as you're writing for them.
Um, make sure that you always start with concrete examples
before you go to abstractions, because the brain works that way.
We learn concretely first and then learn to abstract later.
Don't use jargon that people aren't going to be familiar with.
Uh, don't use acronyms because people have to translate those in their head
even once they're familiar with them.
So just spell it out if you're writing from a more general writing perspective.
. You know, I think that the key is just you have to get disciplined
to get things done, right.
The easiest thing to do as a writer is to, uh, get a block and not write, but you can
always overcome a block if you say, I'm not getting up until I've done something.
Um, and I think that's the way to go.
And even if you do something that's really poor, because you can redo it, and I go
through so many drafts of what I write, um, I don't think in any of my books,
there's probably not a word in there that I haven't gone over at least 15 to
20 times by the time it gets published.
Kevin Horek: Interesting.
Okay.
So I, I'm kind of curious, what does a, a typical day look like for you?
Because you have so many things on
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: the go.
Oh yeah, it's, it can be interesting.
Um, most of my day is spent at my computer writing.
Um, but I'm often juggling several books at once this year for odd timing reasons.
All of my, all four of my major subject textbooks were up for, um, revision.
And so I've been working on all four of those at various points over the years.
So I have to juggle, you know, make sure, making sure I hit all my deadlines
and, uh, but it's actually really fun by switching between projects like that.
I think it keeps me from getting bored in one or the other.
So I'm always, you know, changing gears and thinking, and then I'll.
Throw in the kids books, um, where I can to do something like that, try
to do some extra outreach with shows like yours or speaking at schools.
Um, I, before Covid, I was doing a lot of, uh, speaking at schools.
By the way, I do have a free program for speaking at schools and communities
across the country that's been on hiatus for a couple years due to Covid, but I'm
starting to back up and the information about that is on my website if people
are interested in having me come o Okay,
Kevin Horek: so, sorry, let's stop there for a second.
Give us some more details about that.
What, so obviously you go to a classroom or school and talk, but like what
do you talk about and, and how do.
People get in touch with you
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: about that.
So for elementary schools, I usually do two assemblies.
One for the kindergarten through grade two, and one for grades three to five.
So with those two assemblies, I hit the whole school.
Um, for this next couple years, I'm gonna be probably doing Max goes to the moon
with the younger kids and totality about the eclipses coming up for the older kids.
Um, if it's a local school for me, you know, where it's a
short drive, I'll just do that.
Um, go into the school and do those, takes me a couple hours.
If it's an out of town visit, then I ask people to put together a
program where it keeps me busy.
So I might do a two schools in one day and a teacher workshop in the afternoon, and
a public talk in the evening for grownups on either eclipses or global warming.
Uh, possibly talking to a college if there's a college there to the faculty.
About teaching to grad students.
Um, and, uh, yeah, on my website, um, it's I think posted on both my websites,
but on jeffrey bennett.com/events, there's the information about how
to get in touch with me and the kind of program that I'm looking for
if people wanna put that together.
Sure.
Kevin Horek: So, I, I'm curious, I, I know this is kind of a controversial
topic, obviously with like climate change and everything that's happening,
but what advice do you give to people that are really wanna make a difference?
Like what can we do at home, maybe on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis to,
to maybe like start caring about it?
Cuz I think a lot of people want, want to care more about the environment
and climate of climate change, but they don't really know where to start.
And I think a lot of people just don't really wanna spend the time and
or have the time to actually do the research to see what they can just do.
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: Yeah, well, there's a couple things.
Um, you know, the first is from a teaching standpoint.
So for all the teachers out there, I think the key is what I like to call,
uh, teaching with inspiration and not fear, because really, particularly with
young people, but it's becoming the case.
I think, you know, according to polls, the vast majority of close to 90% of
Americans now accept that climate change is real, and it's happening to us and.
Common reaction to that is, is a fear-based reaction to think, oh,
we're, you know, the, the way the media tends to portray it, our
future is either bleak or bleaker.
And that's not a very inspiring message for kids or anybody to go
out and do something constructive.
So you wanna turn that focus and think about, okay, if we do solve this problem,
what kind of world will we live in?
And it's really a pretty incredible world because you don't have air
pollution and water pollution anymore.
You've got lots of energy for doing all kinds of, you know, great things,
eliminating poverty, going to the moon and Mars, uh, so many other things.
So we wanna make sure that we teach the real science and the fact that this is
a very serious issue, but also that it is solvable if we all work together.
um, to address it.
And that brings us back to the other part of your question of what can people do?
And I'd say there's two things.
Number one, on an individual level, you wanna do what you can
to minimize your personal impact.
So that's things like, if you can, uh, switch to an electric
car or an e-bike, or take public transportation and things like that.
Um, if you can, if you can't, then figure out what you can do.
And then secondly, all those individual things are great, but global warming is
a global problem, which means we need policy decisions at the governmental level
that will move in the right direction.
And so for that, I'd say vote, um, and make sure that your politicians know
that you care about this issue and that they should be on the side of trying
to solve it as quickly as possible.
Okay.
Interesting.
Kevin Horek: That, that's good advice.
I, I, you said something that I want, uh, clarification on.
You said it could potentially end poverty.
Was that, did I hear that correctly?
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: You did.
Um, you know, the, there's, uh, when you look at economic data and
what's going on, what cause, why is there so much poverty in the world?
And of course, poverty's actually been going down the world's been
getting a lot better on that front over the last, uh, several decades.
But really the, the key to eliminating poverty in a lot of ways is energy.
If you have enough energy to supply people, uh, with.
You know, the, the energy resources we like to use to have a car, to
have electricity, to have, uh, fresh water, all those kinds of things, with
enough energy, you can supply that.
And most of the places in around the world where there's still high poverty
are places that are also energy poor.
They don't have that infrastructure.
So by creating better, cleaner energy, we create the opportunity
to address global pro poverty.
Now, it doesn't happen automatically.
You'd also have to put policies in place to deal with that, but without the
energy, it's very difficult to deal with.
If you have the energy, then you can in principle deal with it.
Interesting.
No, I,
Kevin Horek: yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense.
That's pretty cool.
So why, like, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here, it seems like some science
and technology and stuff aren't taught in.
in every school or it's less schools.
I Is that true and we need to do more or, or where are we kind of
at in the education space actually teaching some of this stuff.
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: Um, there is definitely a shortage
of, of science teaching.
In fact, I mentioned that story Time from Space program started by
Patricia Tribe, who had been the head of education at Johnson Space
Center and Alvin drew the astronaut.
And their main motivation for starting that program was research showing that
the amount of time spent on science had gone way, way down as reading came up.
Right?
And reading came up because we saw that there were literacy issues and therefore
we needed to spend more time teaching kids working on reading with kids.
So that's a good thing.
But then they were like, Where did that time come from?
It was coming from science.
So they thought, well, maybe if we can put the science and
the reading together by using science-based stories for the reading.
And that was the whole concept behind story time from space, having
astronauts read science-based books to kids from the space station.
So we do need more science than the schools.
Um, my own personal view is that the weak link is in middle school.
And I guess I'll put a plug here too.
I have a complete free earth and space science curriculum for middle sch
school students posted on the web at grade eight numeral eight Science.
Dot com and you can use that as basically your textbook for middle
school Earth and Space Science.
It's all free and uh, because I think middle school has been the weakest link.
Elementary teachers have a lot of good activities.
High school, it's a pretty set curriculum, but middle school,
we've been kind of dropping the ball a bit, not having good resources
available for teachers to work with.
And that's what teachers need.
They need good resources.
So that's what I tried to create with that project.
Very
Kevin Horek: cool.
And we'll also post links to all the books and your resources on
learner.co for people listening.
So I, I'm curious, because you are so involved in kind of teaching other
people basically all day long, what are you learning about that's outside of
kind of science and technology and then maybe kind of what you do during the
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: day?
Um, well, I'm learning a lot of the science and technology all the time.
Um Sure.
Cause in order to be teaching other people about it, and particularly for my
textbooks, I have to be keeping up with, with everything that's going on out there.
So I've been super excited about seeing the new images from
the James Webspace telescope.
Totally.
That
Kevin Horek: sounds awesome.
Do you wanna talk about that quick, just for people that don't
maybe know what that is yet?
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: Uh, sure.
I mean, luckily that's gotten great, uh, media attention.
So I think most people are recognizing those images now.
But the James Webspace telescope is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope,
capturing already these incredible images, even though it's only been
operational for a couple of months now.
And we're just gonna be seeing just astonishing things from this telescope
for the next, uh, decade or two.
Um, and then there's perseverance on Mars, uh, the.
Mission that's been delayed and launching to, to the moon here a couple
times, but it should be going soon.
There's actually a really cool mission that most people have never heard about
called Dart, d a r t, uh, that NASA launched a couple years ago, and it's
going to try to deflect an asteroid by crashing into it on September the 26th.
So just like two weeks from now, um, back two weeks to the day.
So be watching for that.
It should produce some really great pictures.
But the idea is, uh, if you're, if anybody saw the movie, don't look up,
you know, or an asteroid's coming at us.
The idea behind this mission is to learn what we could actually do about it if
that kind of scenario happened for real.
Okay.
Kevin Horek: How, how does that kind of work?
Like it's gonna crash in and hopefully change its course.
Is it?
It's probably more complicated
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: than that.
No, that's basically how it works.
Now.
The course change is gonna be very, very tiny.
You know, like millimeters change in, in the position that you would get initially.
Because it's a very small spacecraft and a relatively large asteroid.
But it, the idea is to see, does it actually shift the course of the asteroid?
Because one thing we don't know about some of these asteroids is really
like, whether they're solid or not.
Um, it could be that the spacecraft instead of like crashing into it and
making it move, will just sort of sink in, um, without affecting its orbit.
So the goal is to see exactly what happens, and the measurements will be
precise enough that even though it's not a kind of shift that you'd ever notice with
your eyes, the scientists will be able to measure exactly how much the orbit changes
and use that to inform future, um, plans if there were ever a threatening asteroid.
This is a non-threatening asteroid that, you know, we've had a, the
NASA has had a fly out to picked because it's non-threatening and
easy to, to do this mission with.
. So
Kevin Horek: is, is it just kind of a, basically a trial mission in
case we actually need to move one in the future so it doesn't hit earth?
Is that, is that kind of what they're
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: trying to do here?
Yeah, that's, that's exactly what it is.
The, the, actually the office at NASA that's responsible for this mission is
called the Planetary Defense, um, office.
So it's basically their job is to figure out how do we protect the planet, um, if
we ever find an asteroid coming at us.
Kevin Horek: Okay.
No, that's interesting.
So Greg, John and I were talking kind of earlier before, um, you got on
about a lot of the people that are have read or will read your books,
probably some of them will end up in space at some point in their lifetime.
Do you agree with that or what are your thoughts around
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: that?
Absolutely.
Um, yeah, I hope a lot of them will.
And, uh, you know, I think one of the things to keep in mind,
like with Mars for example, is.
We're probably still at least 10, maybe 20 years away from going to Mars.
And when you do that math, it means basically the first people to walk on
Mars are probably in elementary school right now, or middle or high school.
So, you know, you should be looking at your students for all the teachers
out there as the potential first person to walk on Mars and making
them think about that, that's a possibility for their own future.
So
Kevin Horek: realistically, in your opinion, how far are we away from,
you know, maybe getting P people into space or on Mars, or, or what are
your thoughts about, you know, kind of the average person getting into.
Well,
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: for the average person, you know, it's a cost issue.
Sure.
Right.
Yeah.
We would have to get the cost way, way down.
Um, you'll, if you go through my books, you'll see in, uh, my third
max book, max goes to Jupiter.
Uh, when that happens, they get to their spaceship by writing up in
what's known as a space elevator, which takes you from the earth equator, all
the way up to geosynchronous orbit.
If we built the space elevator for real, like the one that's in that book, um,
then people could go to space for a few dollars because it would be quite
inexpensive in terms of the energy cost of getting up there versus using
a big giant rocket to get yet there.
Um, so I think it probably will be a while until the average person is able to go.
Right.
But certainly there'll be some space tourism from wealthy people, and I
think there's gonna be a lot more science, uh, opportunities for, you
know, basically NASA astronauts, you know, right now there's.
a hundred, maybe 200 NASA astronauts.
I can imagine that a decade or two from now, NASA's gonna need thousands to
do all the things that we'll be doing on the moon and on Mars and so on.
Okay, so
Kevin Horek: what, what do you mean by that?
Like, like, okay, you have a couple hundred people.
Like what types of potential careers do you see in the future
for the astronauts of the future?
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: Well, I do think that we're gonna end up with a moon
base, um, hopefully fairly soon.
And I think there's a lot of important reasons for having a moon base.
Okay.
Um, you know, I think for me the biggest is actually the intangible reasons.
Um, I think it's very important that it be an international moon
base where people from all over the world are working together.
And I like to think of it as, you know, kids anywhere in the world at that point
would be able to look up in the moon, which everybody can see and say, gosh,
we're all working together up there.
Why are we having so much trouble down here?
And that with that thought process, people would learn to work better
together down here and we would have less conflict and more and more tolerance
and openness, um, here on Earth as well.
But then there's also resources we can.
From the moon.
You know, going back to that energy thing we talked about in poverty,
another big issue for the earth is all the mining that we do, right?
That destroys the environment separate from global warming, right?
Um, if we had plenty of energy, we could just launch missions to the moon,
dig up the resources on the moon to bring back here, and then turn most
of earth into basically a national park so that we're no longer having
to tear up the environment that way.
Um, going on to Mars, there's all kinds of things we could learn by
studying Mars, including about the origin of life, finding out whether
there is life on Mars, and then using it as a base to keep exploring.
So all those things are gonna take lots and lots of people both in space
as astronauts and on the ground doing all the science, all the engineering,
all the teaching, all the medical work.
Um, pretty much any career can end up having a space component to it, if that's
something that you're interested in.
That's fascinating.
Kevin Horek: That's, that's really cool actually.
So how soon do you think we'll have like a little thing on, on the moon
that, you know, a bunch that you just outlined, that a bunch of countries come
together and like, are we 5, 10, 20, 50
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: years?
Well, you know, that's a great question.
If you had asked me that when I was 10 years old, when Apollo 11 landed on
the moon, I would've said five years.
Okay.
Um, and it's 50 years later now.
Um, it's all a matter of, uh, basically political will because this is a
matter of budgets and so on, I think.
Okay.
Um, I would like to see it all done through international collaboration.
One of the things that's actually pushing it along right now is international
competition with the Chinese in, in particular, and the Indians who are
both talking about also building moon bases and Mars bases and so on.
Hopefully, rather than just competing, we'll work together.
Um, but I think the push is there now and, you know, if things go smoothly,
I would say within a decade we could have a good operating moon base doing
astronomical research from the moon, which I forgot to mention before.
The moon is a great place to do astronomy from.
One of the things that makes something like a James Webspace
telescope so expensive is it's floating out there in space.
So you gotta design all this complicated stuff to get it
to point in the right place.
Whereas when you build a telescope on the ground, that's pretty easy to do and
have it on a nice, stable base to point.
So you could build huge telescopes on the moon much more easily than
putting telescopes out in space once you establish that moon base.
So you have people there to work on it.
So it's a great place for astronomy.
Okay, so then would
Kevin Horek: you u almost use it as a receiver basically,
and then send it back to earth?
Yeah,
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: well, same way the, the James Webspace telescope Okay.
Is actually much further away than the moon is.
And all that information comes back via radio wave.
So yes, you would send the, uh, information back via radio signals to the
earth, the way we get all our information from all of our space missions.
Kevin Horek: Interesting.
Now that's, that's really cool.
So I'm curious, because you're, you've done so much in this space, do you have
any other advice or predictions for kind of our future in space, outside
of what you just kind of mentioned?
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: Well, I think that the, the key thing is, We have
to remember that space is something that we can do if we choose to do it.
And if we all work together in positive ways.
I mean, one of the greatest things about space is, is that it's a
positive use of our technology.
It's not doing something to blow things up or that harms anybody.
It's all aimed at the improvement of our understanding of ourselves and
the universe, um, and the human race.
And so space is a very positive thing for everyone.
And I think if we just focus on we can do this, we can, instead of
always having conflicts, we can work together to build a positive future.
That's what I hope everyone will focus on when they're thinking
about what they can do with their lives in general, and as well, why I
think it's useful to go into space.
Interesting.
No,
Kevin Horek: that's, that's really very good advice.
But we're kind of coming to the end of the show.
So do you have any other kind of final thoughts or advice to people that are
maybe, you know, either looking to get into the space or, or just because what
you're doing is very entrepreneurial
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: as well.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I think the key particularly for kids is
if you're interested in this, you've got to be well educated.
You've got to learn.
Um, you, if you wanna be a scientist or an astronaut, you gotta focus
especially on science and math.
But you need to know everything.
You've gotta also know the arts.
You've gotta know your, your reading, your language skills, your cultural
skills, your hi understanding of history.
So focus on your education.
That's the, the most important thing.
Um, one of my favorite quotations, my single favorite quotation is from HG
Wells a hundred years ago, and he said, human history is more and more a race
between education and catastrophe.
And I think that's very, very true.
If we.
With all the technology we have, we can do great damage if
we don't use it in good ways.
Right.
Um, and the way we learn to use it in good ways is by becoming educated
about everything, including, like I said, history, science, all of it.
So become educated, learn to think, think critically, and make sure that you help
us build a positive pathway to the future.
Kevin Horek: No, I, I think that's really good advice.
And you mentioned a bunch of free resources on your own stuff, and
we'll post them on the learn.co, uh, website, and there's a ton of
also really good courses or material on YouTube and around the web
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: fair to say.
Yeah, that is absolutely.
Just make sure you find the good stuff and not the bad
Uh,
Kevin Horek: is there any advice for kind of weeding out some of that?
Because obviously there's, like you just said, there's good content and bad
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: content.
Yeah, well, the best way is to, to go to sources that, you know, you could trust.
Like if it's a NASA video, for example, right from the American Museum,
natural history, something like that.
Uh, one of the things I did in that middle school curriculum that I posted,
that I mentioned, um, is I did a lot of that for the teachers, right?
I've already gone through and picked out the things that are legitimate
and good to use in your course.
So, but yeah, stick to the reputable sources.
Perfect.
Jeff.
Kevin Horek: Well, how about we close out the show with mentioning where people
can get more information about yourself, all the free stuff you mentioned, and if
actual teachers or or schools actually want you to show up in person and, and,
uh, do a talk and, and maybe read them.
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett: Yeah, the best place to go is the Big Kid Science
website, so big kid science.com, b i g k i d s c i e n c e.com.
Um, you can get from there to all of my various other pages.
So the events page there has my school program for visits and so on.
The books page lists all of my books.
There's a, uh, eclipse page that lists our free Totality app.
Um, there's a link there to the middle school, free middle school
curriculum page, so you can get to everything from big kids science.com.
Kevin Horek: Perfect.
And, and like I said, we'll also link, uh, in, in the show
notes, notes on uh, learner.co.
Well, Jeff, I really appreciate you taking the time outta your day to
be on the show, and I look forward to keeping in touch with you and
have a good rest of your day, man.
You bet.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Okay, bye.
Bye.