12: Scientific Curiosity & Success in Podcasting (w/ Agustin Valenzuela)

Here we are. Augustine, my good friend. Thank you for coming. This is incredible.

This is great. This is great. We were at a holiday gathering with our good friends, and we were talking, diving in.

I was talking to you about your podcast and just catching up, and I was like, you know what? Be a good first episode of the year. You. That’s nice.

You told me, do you want to be in a podcast? You know, you’re like, why? You say, like the OG? I don’t know about that. But, yeah, sure. You’re the OG of podcasts and our friend group.

That’s for sure. Oh, yeah. That’s for sure.

So you have your own podcast, and I’m gonna do my best because I don’t speak Spanish. I speak more Turkish than Spanish. But it’s curiosity.

Scientifica. Yeah. And you go ahead and say it.

So it’s. You nailed it. Curiosity.

That’s scientifica. Podcast sounds so much better when you say, yeah, sexy Latino. Right? But what does that translate to in English? Scientific curiosity.

Boom. So, for me, that hits home. Science is beautiful.

The method, the scientific method, the process of science, the humbleness of it. I love how you have curiosity right in the name. It’s all about exploring and understanding our world.

And so it’s awesome because when we got to know each other, we’ve. We’re now great friends. You’re like family to me, and I didn’t know that you were doing this podcast until later.

And I’m like, dude, of course we connect. Of course we click. And so it just.

It means a lot. First off, your friendship, and second, your endeavor with your podcast. And I kind of want to start there and dive in on, you know, what made you start your podcast almost five years ago.

Yes, almost five years ago. I believe my first episode was March 2019. So it’s gonna be five years in, like, three months.

And first of all, thank you for the invitation. Even though we’re really, really good friends, not everybody’s into this stuff. And every time, literally, like what you said, I remember in our backyard, I invited you to my house, and we were having barbecue or something, and we just start nerding out about the signs and this and crossing and blah, blah, blah.

And suddenly, you know, we are really nerdy guys. And then we ended up talking about, you know, a lot of things. And for some reason, I never.

I don’t know, I never passed my brain talking about, oh, yeah, yeah, I’ve been doing this for so long, and I have books out there and whatever, but, yeah, I literally start doing this because I always been a pretty nerdy guys. So literally the title of the podcast is because of that. Because I’m curious about the science.

Because even if you’re a scientist, like your career is being a full scientist biologist or whatever it is that starts with you wanting to know something, that curiosity on you. For me, that I’m not a trained scientist still, I was curious enough to just go out and, and look into papers and books and read. And then I, at some point, you know so much about this, but you cannot just be in a barbecue and talk about, oh, let’s talk about quarks and atoms, black holes, black holes to everybody and try
to explain how freaking, you know, quantum physics work.

Cause they’re gonna be like, well, I was talking about, I don’t know, those girls in the Instagram football, and now we’re talking about the origin of the universe. Exactly. So I was like, well, people need to know this, especially since I’ve been a really, really big fan of reading and reading science and science fiction and fiction books.

So I think that get you there, like, if you start, like, because when I was a kid, it was like Star wars was the big thing, and that’s like space and science fiction and spaceship, and even my brother ended up being a pilot because of that. And I think those influencing in those years were the big thing. And then suddenly you discover that oil, you’re reading something that is pretty cool.

This sounds beautiful. And then even in science fiction, like, oh yeah, let’s go with the warp drive. And it’s like, can we actually bend the space? And you start having these questions and let’s Google this.

Well, Google now. When I was a kid, it was like Britannica, you know, encyclopedia or whatever. But now it’s pretty easy.

And I remember, to be honest, still, in high school, I was a little nerdy, but not that good in science per se. So I remember going to college and in the car, somebody said something in the radio about whatever galaxy. And even though, like in school, you know, that, oh yeah, there’s a few galaxies, you actually.

I was shocked, like, oh, actually, yeah, there is a lot of galaxies. It’s not just the Milky Way and whatever. And from that point on, I remember I got a book from, it was called Journey of the universe.

I think it was two writers, Evelyn Tucker and I don’t remember the other guy. It was like Thomas or something. Thomas whatever.

And that was that. Explain everything about life from the point that the big band all the way to how the stars are created and the planets and things like that and how the forces works. And I remember because right now, when I do my episodes, I talk about, like, the, you know, like the age of the universe, and it’s like everybody saying 13.

814 billion years. And in that book it says 13.7.

So that was a pretty old book. So, you know, like, from that point to being really into it, I decided, like, well, there’s a lot of programs and shows about signs like the great Neil degrasse Tyson and Bill Nye and all these guys, but there is not a lot in Spanish. So spanish people need to know this stuff because usually, you know, most spanish and maybe center, well, even everywhere, but most Latinos, you don’t see that many Latinos today.

It’s more common to see many more experts in certain things, but usually in the states, how many, you know, compared with, you know, like, more american or north american, I should say people that are more professional than the opportunities that, you know, in countries like my country in Puerto Rico have, you know, so because Europe, it is not that catchy, you know, the science that talk about science, like, in other countries, like, even Mexico is way better than Puerto Ricans talking about
science. Chile is great for astronomy, but Puerto Ricans are. That culture is really, really small.

So it’s awesome. So I’m gonna clarify, because, and you kind of alluded to it that your podcast is specifically targeting spanish speakers. You know, so it’s.

It’s in Spanish for the most part. You’ve interviewed some in some English, but ultimately, you’re targeting people who need it kind of most, you know, where it’s like, there’s this void, and I’m going to fill it because I’m curious and I want to pass that curiosity down. It’s.

It’s kind of like the Carl Sagan Neil degrasse Tyson philosophy. And that’s. That’s admirable because you could.

You’re obviously speaking English to me now. You could do it in English and probably have a bigger viewership, but you’re specific to wanting to connect with the people who need it. And that’s the way that things blow up in other countries or in a country that not in a country is Puerto Rico.

Well, technically, it’s a country. We’re just territory of the United States, but it’s a country from Puerto Rico. Yeah, but part of us.

Yeah, we’re part of the US. It’s interesting. It’s like, if you talk about Philippines, right? Philippines, yeah, it’s a country, but it’s you know? Yeah.

But it’s really admirable what you’re, you know, what you’re doing in general, talking about science, because that in itself needs more attention. It’s so interesting, the lack of focus on the beauty, the elegance and the power of the scientific method and what’s going on in science. And I think priorities could use a little shifting when it comes to that, because it’s the reason why our computers are working right now and these microphones are picking up, our voices going into other people’s
headphones.

It’s the reason why these lights are on, et cetera, is the scientific method and understanding how the world works. And so it’s just. It’s great what you’re doing in that regard, just talking about science, but then bringing it again to a demographic that could use it the most.

That’s the way that those things get sparked in areas of the world or in people who need it most. It’s very powerful. And I know you have a wonderful following.

You have such a diverse amount of guests within the scientific community on. I know right off the bat, I want to talk to you about, you got to interview Neil degrasse Tyson. And I’ve been following him for a long time, and he’s like, our new Carl Sagan.

Carl Sagan’s my hero. If I could have interviewed him, that would be my dream. He’s one of my top heroes.

And Neil degrasse Tyson actually met Carl Sagan when he was a child and got inspired by him and stuff. And he’s definitely carrying that torch. So I want to know, what was it like interviewing someone of that caliber? And I’ve obviously watched the interview, and you did great.

And I’m like, whoa, there you are, Augustine, interviewing Neil Gross Tyson. How cool is that? What was that like? Well, first of all, I have to say thank you to Ruben Ahmed. He was my partner with that.

But one day, like, was like a Saturday or something, at night, like eleven, and he texted me, hey, for your show, he’s my associate. So for your show, didn’t want to interview Neil degrasse Tyson. And I was like, what do you mean if I want to interview? Is that a question? Is that even a question? I was like, okay, Leon, are you gonna send the emails? Whatever, blah, blah.

And I was like, sure, let’s go. Literally, next day, like a Sunday, the whatever manager, Neil degrasse Tyson, said, oh, yeah? He said, yes, just send, like, the info. Like the, you know, like.

So I sent all my info out the place I have. You know how many people play their show? So it’s not a bullshit show or whatever. It’s a real show with real people playing and whatever.

So they like the numbers and they say like, well, yeah, you’re doing good. What about Thursday? And that was Sunday. And we’re like, what, this week? Thursday.

Oh, my God. So. But the main thing because of that is because I believe Neil is part of the board on the NSF, the National Science foundation.

So I think, like, every time they gonna decide to do something big about science, like, if we need to put money into this new program, we don’t have that much money. Sadly, the government don’t give that much money for the science and all the resources and STeM programs. So most of the money goes to the military.

So the little money that the science get, you have to be splitted between everything. So you have to decide what, you know, what experiments or things you’re doing that you have to cut so you can create this new program. So there was observatory, the biggest observatory in the planet until China, like three years ago they did a new observatory, but still it’s not better than the one we have because that observatory, a radio observatory they have in there, you only can receive radio waves.

So it’s a big plate, so they receive a lot of it, but they cannot talk back. Or observatory, you could send a voice back, you know, like radiation back to just hit something like kind of like what the bats do, like kind of resonance. So you can.

And we found most of the asterisks that we find is because of that. But the thing is, like, when they stopped giving that money to that observatory, it just got damaged, damaged and damaged. And into and 2020, the observatory just collapsed.

So it was a really sad story. And literally you were talking about Carl Sagan. Carl Sagan and Drake, those two scientists were the ones who actually started this project because they were trying to find life outside the planet, outside our planet.

So literally, Carl Sagan was one of the big stones to create that observatory in Arizibu in Puerto Rico. So because of that, we wanted to talk about that, like, what happened and how did it work? Because you listen to the show, so it’s kind through there. So that was the reason I want.

We sent him that reason. He said, yes, I really wanted to talk about this. So awesome.

We have like two days into pre production, we look for images. If you see the thing in YouTube, you will see that we have images about, like the radiation spectrum, all the videos of the satellites falling and all that observatory falling. So it was, like, two days, the pre production until morning, all the questions, and we looked for a little bit of history, and we got together a few times for meetings when it happens.

We were so nervous. I can’t imagine. I don’t know if it happens to you guys already, but believe me, it’s gonna be the point when you do a lot of podcasts that you’re gonna remember to hit record or you hit record, and suddenly something happened that you lose that episode.

So we were so scared, like, man, what if we cannot record this? This is not gonna happen again. And a lot of questions about that, and by the time that he shows up, that suddenly he’s in the screen, we’re like. I was literally, like, a little bit of shaking under my desk.

I even bought, like, a new camera just to look. I don’t blame you. Yeah, I feel.

I feel those nerves. Like, this episode. Like, I keep just checking my computer.

I keep checking over there on Jordan. Hey, we good? I don’t want to lose this. This is precious.

And that’s the thing. Like, I know a lot of physics, but this is the Carl Stegan of my time. Yeah.

So, man, like, in two minutes, he was just like, no, no, no, call me Neil. It doesn’t matter. Of course, I was like, doctor Tyson.

Doctor Tyson decided, no, no, no, call me Neil. Like, in the first ten minutes, they just started, like, oh, yeah, yeah, thank you for remembering me that. And then, like, oh, yeah, yeah, thank you for remembering me that.

Guys, you’re good at this. And then at that point, you’re like, oh, God, we’re doing it. Good job, good job.

We’re doing. Good job. I know the dump.

How exciting, though. I mean, how meaningful. And I know that you’ve had lots of other scientists and renowned, you know, people on, so it’s just.

It’s incredible what you can build and. And attract that, and it’s awesome that Neil degrasse Tyson, he’s got a packed schedule. I can’t imagine, like, looking at his calendar, and he fits you in, and you guys fit him in, and he appreciated that just as much as you appreciated him.

Oh, yeah. Cause you can tell he’s a humble guy and he appreciates his time wherever he’s at. And I respect that a lot.

And so I encourage everybody to. Obviously, we’ll have your show, your podcast, in our show notes, and they can search that one in particular. Yeah, I imagine that that was one of your pivotal moments where you’re like, wow, how legitimate of an operation have we created here? This is real.

I mean, sure, I’m sure it was real before that, but really real. Exactly what you mean. Yeah, like when somebody that big validates you, even though you don’t need validation from nobody.

But, I mean, it feels good when somebody tells you you’re doing a good job. And he did. So.

It was amazing. Yeah. Well, that’s awesome, man.

I mean, when you told me that, I was like, no way. But. And it was really cool to watch that interview.

You did a great job. And it was super interesting and it was very, like, specific to talking about that observatory and so super informative. So we talked about a highlight, right.

I like to talk about adversity. So now that we’ve been up high, you know, talking about the podcaster’s journey and your journey, you’re published, too. You’re a published author.

I’m sure there’s lots of difficulty in writing. I understand that. I’m going to be working on a book eventually, but got plenty of other stuff in the way.

But I want to know what’s maybe one of the biggest setbacks during your podcasting journey, where it’s like, man, I don’t know if I can, like, get past this or, you know, and, and maybe talk about that and how you got through that. Because the big thing here, just like our podcast here, every first and third Wednesday of the month, we’re putting out an episode and we’re going to have a guest on, and we’re not going to stop that consistency, but it’s also hard to keep going. Um, so, you know, is
there any time where you didn’t think you could keep that consistency up? Cause you do it more.

You do once a week, right? I do once a week. That’s unbelievable. Sometimes I bring couple episodes, but usually every Monday.

Yeah. That’s amazing. So what would you say if you, what’s a setback that you faced and how’d you overcome that? How’d you get through it? Well, in everything, including writing, but especially podcasts, I even have a patreon where people go and pay me to read stories, like two stories a month, too.

I think the big issue is that at the beginning, you cannot forget why you start doing it. I didn’t start doing this because I want to be rich with whatever. I start this because I really, really believe that education and just know that I don’t want everybody to be a physicist at all.

But if I can create objective thinking, scientific thinking, that will change a lot of things. Because most people today is doing most things, just like out of their feelings. And today, with all the news and the media and the cell phones and the Instagrams and tiktoks, everybody want to be that or this or that, and nobody have patience.

And at least things that I see that are more famous that they get, like thousands and thousands of is whatever is in our road rage and things like that. And then suddenly, to answer your question, sometimes you see this, and I have a lot of friends already that they’re in the media and they’re pretty famous, but they talk about, like, the Kardashian or the whatever or whatever, the bad Bonnie artist, whatever, and you feel like, wow, I’m doing something really, really important, meaningful, and I
feel, like, meaningful. And you feel a lot of times like, are you sacrificing time and hours? Because I don’t talk about what.

I see a video of this singer jumping out of a. Whatever. I have to sit down and read and learn and look into papers and websites and go to the college from college to publish papers and read and try to understand.

So I can explain it in a. In a video or a podcast of 2030 minutes. But you spend hours reading and learning.

Now that I’ve been, like five years pretty much into it, but more than that, because I’ve been reading and learning science and physics for a long time. But doing the podcast right now is easier to get to, like some, you know, whatever. I’m gonna talk.

Cause everything is kind of connected. Like, if I’m gonna talk about, like, string theory, I know why string theory is about, you know, we don’t really have answers about the string theory, but I know it’s because of. Because particle physics and Einstein, relativity cannot explain gravity, and 100% when it goes to a singularity in a black hole.

So that’s why they introduced the, you know, the string theory. But I have to actually grasp, because if you don’t understand that, even if you have an idea what it is, if you don’t really understand it, you cannot explain it. Yeah, literally, you can read thousand books, but if you don’t really understand it, that you can explain it in a way that I can tell you, well, this is how it is in a way that I can explain with a everyday object.

Like, yeah, in your bed, if you put a bowling ball and it’s gonna make a hole in the. In the sheet and the bed, you know, to look at it that way. And then suddenly, the first two years, to me, the first two years, you see, and you have 20 plays per episodes.

But still, I never quit, but sometimes you think about why the sheet is somebody really care about this. And then you remember that you’re not doing this because you want to have a thousand plays. You’re doing this because if one person played this, maybe that person won’t change the world, but then maybe he will pass that to somebody else.

And maybe in 100 years we have the new Einstein or Newton or whatever. So even if it’s like one person, and then like two years and something into the. Into the show, I think that’s when Neil degrasse Tyson came in.

But a little bit before that, I have people then start writing to me in my instagram or whatever about like, hey, man, I was about to quit college, and then the professor was talking about me. And I didn’t know that because of your podcast. Now I know that I can do astrobiology.

I didn’t knew that we couldn’t do biology in space. And I’m like, well, that’s a good thing. Now we probably have an astrobiologist in the future just because he hear my podcast and I was talking about astrobiology.

How powerful is that? That’s really powerful. And then from that point, everything, even writing. Because writing, people think, and a lot of people think, like, when you’re gonna do something, especially, I know I have a musician next to me.

You just don’t get inspiration. You sometimes have to sit down and lose 2 hours and then nothing come out. But you have to sit down.

You really have to sit down. I have a lot of friends that. They’re like, well, yeah, I gonna write my book and maybe this and that.

It’s like, well, if you wanna write, you have to clock in. Yeah, you gotta commit. You gotta commit.

Even if it’s one day a week, you get there and you spend 3 hours and nothing comes out. All right, but you sit down. But sometimes in 2 hours that day, you write a freaking 4000 words that day and you’re like, oh, God, I accomplished something.

And that didn’t give you that boost in your brain. And yes, I accomplished something. And you get excited and suddenly when you realize that you have a book or story out there.

But yeah, I think it’s. That is the moments that you think about, what am I doing this? If I could be watching Netflix or whatever, who cares about this? But people do care. And with time will show.

Yeah, yeah, it’s clearly showing. I mean, how special is it that you’re now getting feedback like that? I mean, you changed someone’s life for sure. Oh, there’s a lot more of that but I mean, like, I remember that guy who told me, I didn’t know it was like astrobiology.

And I was like, yeah. And then after Neil degrasse Dyson, then they called me to go to the TV, television, so because of that too. So, yeah.

Oh, that’s fantastic. Real quick, who would be your next person that you’d want to interview? I saw in our gift exchange you had put Brian Green’s books and got a couple of his. Who’s next on your dream list? Oh, God, I would love to have Brian Green.

Actually, I actually just finished like three weeks ago, his book about the elegant universe. I would love to have him on the show. All right, Brian, if you’re listening, talk to Augustine, please, and then you can come on this podcast as well.

Yeah, I’d love to have more science based entities figures within our show. That’s actually one of the four target demographics that we’re trying to target with the business, you know, is science based and education, because that’s what I care about. It’s meaningful.

It’s meaningful work. And, you know, I mean, speaking of that, for this interview, I prepped. I know you, but I still did a little prep, but nothing like, okay, I gotta really learn this nuance of string theory in order to properly have a discussion with this physicist.

It’s a different level of commitment that you’re diving into. One thing that I noticed with, like one of the first podcasts that I ever produced, I was talking to people about climate change, denial, and talking to a scientist, or a former meteorologist, researchers about it, and I thought, wow, these are powerful conversations. And when I put it out, when I press publish, I’m like, these are important and world changing.

Then, you know, like 30 people listen to it. I’m like, really? And, you know, obviously you have to break through the noise and it takes time. And that’s the thing about consistency and not stopping.

And those are still out there on YouTube. It’s called the belief books. But man, does it take commitment.

So it’s great. It’s also that feedback. And now knowing that you can get a Neil degrasse Tyson on Brian Greene, I’m sure is next on coming on, you know, so it’s like that gives you some fuel, is reassurance that, hey, what I’m doing works.

It is connecting with people. But sometimes, like being a business owner or this podcast or a musician, you are working alone in like a silo in silence without that immediate feedback. There’s not that immediate gratification or reassurance that, hey, what you’re doing is meaningful.

You have to believe in what you’re doing truly to power through that, to know that in a year someone might listen to this podcast and stay in college because of it. There’s something really special about that because you believe in what you’re doing, you know, it’s meaningful and you don’t stop. And, I mean, I know that your character, I know because of our friendship, and I know that that’s the kind of personality that you have.

And I just wanted to kind of, like, illustrate it fully for our listeners. But it’s very meaningful. That’s actually the story of science, too.

I mean, it’s the story of art as well. I mean, how many artists pass away and then their art sells for a million dollars or whatever? Then they’re appreciated. Same with scientific advancements.

We’re doing this experiment and it might not be put into practice, into an iPhone or a microphone or whatever, a light, until I’m well, gone. But I contributed to that greater good and there’s a lot of meaning to that. There’s also a lot of integrity and belief, and what I’m doing is purposeful and meaningful, and I’m pushing humanity and society in a forward direction.

And, I mean, that’s the power of science and the people behind it, they just. I don’t know. For me, I find myself consistently frustrated because you were talking about all the noise out there, you know, I mean, and there’s.

Entertainment is fantastic. I produce things. I want to work on films and do fun stuff and entertainment, but I think there’s a need to refocus and shift our priorities a bit to really appreciate science and the people who push humanity forward.

Truly, I don’t know how you feel about that or if that frustrates you as well. Obviously you’re in that realm. But.

But to me, in these years I’ve been doing this, I noticed, like, or maybe it’s because I’ve been really involved in it now, but I noticed that there is more science and people talking about science and try to look smart. And I think that’s a good thing that I thought before I start this show, and then suddenly you connect with people that then out of nowhere, because that’s the thing. It is a huge thing to have, like Neil deGrasse Tyson and maybe a Brian Greene or all of these big guys.

But then you notice, like, you get love and opportunities with people that are actually Latinos, like from Spain. I have people from Spain that just contact me and I’ve been in their show and things like that. Scientists engineering from Chile.

Then suddenly, oh, yeah, I have interviews with a lot of physicists and astrophysicists and astronomers from Chile and then Mexico. There’s a huge group of people from Mexico that are doing great things. Astrophysicists from Mexico.

I. And then suddenly, oh, yeah, I interview an engineer from NASA and he said, oh, yeah, he’s Puerto rican. That, oh, God, we have an engineering Puerto rican that I just have in my show. And then suddenly I have a particle physicist that is another Puerto Rican.

And then you ended up noting, you know, you see that, okay, then you’re not alone in this stuff. And believe me, I love to sit down and watch Netflix. I’m looking to the instagram and watch, you know, like, I don’t know, UFC or the cooking with Omi or whatever.

But still, I believe it’s more about like, oh, yeah, yeah, this is important too, you know, and at the beginning it frustrated me, but when those first two years, you have like 20 plays, but then suddenly something just click. Even after Neil degrasse Tyson, I still have like 300, 600 plays per episodes. And now it’s different.

It’s like 6000, 7000 plays per episode. And then suddenly you talk with anybody back in the island. Yeah, that’s the guy from the curiosity scientifica or, oh, yeah, that’s the guy from whatever.

And then you kind of get into, oh, wow, so people actually are listening. And to me, it is a little frustrated, all the noise out there, but I believe it’s just to realize that, oh, yeah, I’m doing it. And there is these other people, these people in Spain, these people in other countries that speak Spanish, Argentina, that they’re really great doing this, too.

And you notice, like, well, there’s still people doing it. There’s still people putting this information out there. There’s still people caring about teaching the science.

And even that was one of the reasons I signed up with the NASA program. It was because they will give me even more things that you didn’t, at least I didn’t knew when I started doing the podcast. And then suddenly you connect with more people and they told you there’s a program like a NASA solar system ambassador that you can sign up and see if they hire you.

You can just go to the schools and do talks about this, about the space programs and all that. And the beautiful thing about that is you don’t know how powerful that is until you do your first talk. And suddenly, oh, wow, the room was full and full of people from hitting 90 years old, really older people and then college kids and younger high school kids and you’re impressed like, oh wow, these people care about, I’m talking about the James Webb.

Oh my God, that’s kind of impressive. And most people believe like old people, they don’t know and they are really, you know, whatever belief, their own belief. And no, actually even these older people and people my age, your age, you can get knowledge, it doesn’t matter what age.

And you can have that haha moment and then suddenly you go to your grandkids and tell them that, how do you know about that James Webb space telescope that is out there? Oh, that is a space telescope. Yeah, yeah. There is telescopes in space and they’re doing this for over 40 years, 50 years.

And it works, you know, and sometimes it feels frustrating when you begin because I think the problem with humans is that we want results now. Yeah. Especially in podcasting because you’re doing it right now.

There is patience, you have to just keep going. And suddenly it could be like three, four years that maybe you have over 100 plays. But then suddenly one day you’re gonna have one episode that oh wow, that hits a thousand place.

Now that’s cool. And go back to 2300, then goes back to, oh wow, this got 2000. Oh, another 2000, another 2000.

Oh God, 5000. Wow. People might probably like this.

Wow. And suddenly you’re up there and people will text you if you don’t come out with the episode, the days that you release it, they will text you. I, dude, I was waiting for your episode.

Oh dude, whatever. So people are craving, people craving your content. Yeah.

You have to keep going. Yeah. You just have to be aware that this is important.

I told you when you start your podcast, I listened to at least the first three episodes. And well, since episode one, I text you like, dude, I love this conversation you have. It feels really nice.

Your voice is like calm, I’m patient, I like it. And then episode over episode, like the feel good episode, the other band episode that, then they ended up playing, then the PM Tiger episode that I was here live. I enjoy it because it’s just like, I don’t know, like you will appreciate people talking about their own experiences and at the same time you can connect like, oh, so I’m not the only person that goes through this.

Yeah. And another thing is like then suddenly people will start sending you a video of, I don’t know, like a metal band. And you’re like, wow, why is he sending me a video of a metal band? How? Cause they become a really, really big group of people that love what you do, and they know you better than you know you.

It’s like, ah, they know that you like coffee. They know that you like whiskey. They know that you like metal rock.

They know. They know everything about you. And then you will create this community.

And that’s the crazy part. Like, the community of people that. That will be there for you.

And pretty much every episode, you have somebody saying like, hey, dude, this was great, or whatever. Oh, wow, I didn’t knew that. Or engineering.

The other day, I record an episode with engineering that he does turbines. So that was an episode that I was like, well, maybe not everybody like turbines or don’t understand it, but then you hear a lot of people saying, oh, my God, I didn’t know that. That is so specific.

And the measurements and the heat and the quality of the engines, and everything can go wrong. Everything can go wrong. Totally.

For some reason, it works. Hi, I’m Miles sales, and I appreciate Josh Naiman for coming into our school and teaching us about podcasting and podcasting production. I feel that there’s a strong importance on real world experiences in the classroom, and having an expert come in and teach us at the behind the scenes was not only a fun, but informative and intriguing lesson.

I’ve always loved podcasts, and I’ve been interested in the production of podcasting, so I’m incredibly grateful for the experience I was given and the opportunity to learn more about the space I want to get myself involved with. So, thank you again, Josh Naiman. So, first off, you know, we have a smaller listenership.

It’s pretty cool, the community that we have, but you’ve always been a supporter from day one. It’s always cool. Like, you’re looking forward to our episodes.

It’s really neat, and it means a lot. And so I appreciate that, especially coming from, like, a seasoned podcast where you understand the effort that it takes. But going to what you just said with, like, you didn’t, you know, the person who you interviewed about turbines, that’s kind of like, the beauty of what you’re.

What realm you’re in with science. I feel this way about all my guests. Like, this conversation.

We’re able to, like, peel back the onion on, like, cool stuff that we didn’t even think about before. And in the science realm, I mean, you could press play on any of your episodes, and your brain is just like, whoa, it’s open. That’s a beauty of science.

You could talk about anything. You mentioned bats before, and I read one of Richard Dawkins books, the blind Watchmaker, and he talked about bats and that, and I learned some stuff in that where it’s just like, whoa, I didn’t know that. And it sticks with you.

And now you know the world better. How powerful is that? It is super powerful. Knowledge is huge power.

Yeah, it’s amazing. So speaking of scientific advancements and how incredible it is, didn’t know right now, what’s the thing that you’re most interested in within the scientific realm? Is there an advancement that’s happening that you’re just like, whoa. Or a discovery that has recently been made or is about to be made? Yes, there is a few things that actually happened really recently.

There is a pro, it’s called Parker probe. It is crazy to think. Well, there is crazy to think about a lot of things, man.

We have rovers in Mars for over 30 years and we have like a few of them now. And literally we can see another planet. Think about it.

Think about it for a second. We’re here, I were standing here. Imagine that there is another thing floating in space, thousands of millions of miles away, and we have something that we send, that we create engineering that didn’t exist, that we calculate because of Einstein relativity, and even though Newton’s relativity, of how gravity attraction works, movement, and we notice like, well, that planet’s a little smaller, so maybe have less gravity on it.

And then suddenly we figure it out with math, math that actually Newton had to invent because it didn’t exist. A guy that just invented this and it works, always freaking works. And then suddenly we send a few rovers there, but then we realized like, well, we need a bigger one.

But the problem is like that planet is smaller, so they have a smaller gravity, but because of that, it has less air on the planet because it escape. And the core of the planet is cold already, so it doesn’t have electromagnetic field, so the atmosphere and the electromagnetic field doesn’t really exist. So you have to find a way to stop that rover, to just crash into there.

So you have to invent something. Not just, you already have the rover, fine. This took 1315 years to create engineering that didn’t exist before.

And now it’s like, how are we gonna park that thing in there? Ah, maybe we can use like a crane. Come on. A crane? What you mean a crane? How are we gonna have a crane up there? Well, maybe we can have a crane and just lie loose a little bit like the rubber just in there.

But how are you going to hold that? I might be a crane with some turbines floating in there. So we calculate, create, send equipment. And it’s the second rover that is big enough that you need to put extra stuff because the ones before, they were so small that you just throw it inside a ball and then, and bounce around and then open.

And there you have it. No, this one, you cannot just crash into the planet. And we have, we have equipment in another planet.

Think about it. Another planet that we know everything just because observation from this planet, no human has been there. And we do this.

And not just that, we put a helicopter on that rover that is flying and it’s in his hundred and something fly on that planet. So we already flying the planet, a planet that barely have particles to hold, like in here. You know why? Like in the movies, you see the helicopter that can go over that mountain because it’s less dense, the, the air in there, because there’s less particles to hold that, that’s the same thing.

So we do this. That’s amazing. And this just happened like two years ago or something like that.

Then a year ago we have a telescope, because the human eye can only see like visible light, but it’s a range, huge range of light. And probably, you know that because you work in creating websites and probably work with colors and the spectrum of colors and things like that. So that’s where the spectrum of colors comes, you know, like from the ultraviolet gamma array, blah, blah, blah, x ray visual visible light and then radio and infrared.

But there is a light that is the light that everything that have particles on it emits. And it’s the infrared light. So we were like, oh yeah, we have a telescope that is great, Hubble, great telescope.

We can see galaxies hundreds of thousands of years away. But then suddenly we decide to create a telescope that actually looks with ice into the infrared, so everything that have a temperature we can see. And we literally just got one year actually in December it was when it launched.

So literally the first images doesn’t even have a year yet. So we launched a telescope that another beautiful thing is like to have a three body problem. Three body problem is like to orbit three different bodies in space is kind of hard.

So it was this guy Lagrange 100 years ago that he calculated like, well, these points that according to word, how massive is supposed to be the sun, how massive is the moon and the earth and whatever. And maybe there is a point around the orbit of the planet that we can put something there that it won’t go away because we need to like kind of figure out and calculate that that is stable in that zone. They calculate that, and we put that telescope 1 million mile away from the earth that is orbiting
there, that it has a shield to protect from the heat of the sun because it’s an infrared, so everything that have a temperature will catch, so it will damage the images.

We figure all that out even better than that. When you think about that, even that telescope, we have beautiful, great telescope. But suddenly they say, we need something that is strong enough.

I go to iron. No, no, no. We know science so much, and we know kimic so much, that in the periodic table, there is an element, barium, that is like the fourth element.

It’s a really simple element, but that element that is simple is way stronger than iron. It have only four protons. Iron have like, 26.

So it’s a heavy element. And we figured that out, and we make. We make glasses that are the size of a hair that we put in there so we can catch all the radiation we want.

And we figure that out. And right now, like, two months after this telescope in space, we got to look into a galaxy that is 13.5 billion years away from us.

So this is almost at the beginning of the universe. These are some of the first galaxies that exist. This is crazy.

That’s wild. So, believe me, there’s a lot of things that is crazy these few years. We just created a spaceship that create.

We create a shield to protect from the sun because we just touched the sun. We have never touched the sun. This just happened.

Parker probe. Parker probe. Literally, we create a spaceship that went into the atmosphere, pretty much, of the sun.

We touched the freaking sun. We have never touched the sun. Recreate that.

Wow. That awesome is the science and things that we’re doing right now. I knew.

I knew that this question would get you going. If you could see him, if we had a video component of this podcast for all of you. His hands are all over the place, and I’m sure Jordan’s gonna have to decrease the gain on this a little.

Got you. Go. No, it’s fantastic.

I knew it would. It’s meaningful stuff, and it’s awesome. That’s the beauty of science.

Like, you talk about this stuff forever because it’s fascinating. How in the heck are we doing that? It’s wild. And there’s some stuff that we’ve been doing for a while, which is pretty incredible to know.

But I love the perspective of, like, what you’re hyped about right now, because we also got caught up on some of the newer, newer things, just like this. Snippet about us touching the sun is quite incredible. There’s a cool movie called Sunshine.

I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but the world is going to die if we don’t kickstart the sun. And so they have a one way trip, and they have to kick start the sun. It’s a really intense movie.

And the audio, the sound on, that’s incredible. Wow. But look at it.

Time flies. Because we are deep into this interview. I look down at my timestamp, I’m like, holy moly.

I’m sorry. No, no, it’s. No apologies.

First off, we could do whatever we want. We could talk about this for a day. I’ll put out a 24 hours podcast if we have to.

But, you know, time is of the essence. I want to respect your time, which I just appreciate you coming in and aliens, but I wanted to get to our rapid fire. I wanted to ask you, how do you say rapid fire in Spanish? Fuego.

Rapido. All right, there it is. And I have some questions.

I have one special question that I want to ask just particularly you, but these are questions that I ask all of our guests. Since you’re one of our. Our frequent listeners and a supporter, you kind of already know it’s coming, which you cheated.

The rapid. Note, that rapid fire, you’re a fan of it. It’s kind of funny.

You always laugh about it when we talk about it, but. All right, so we’re going to start, you know, what’s coming. What is your biggest source of inspiration? Man, I should say I really don’t know exactly if it’s one thing, because I think it’s more than one thing in my life that happens, and then suddenly I just find this beautiful work.

And then after you start knowing about this, that’s the source of inspiration. Like, the best example I can tell you is when I got deep into talking a minute ago, I get excited to know this. The knowledge is just.

God, of course. I have to just keep going. So knowledge or, like.

Yeah. The discoveries, the discovery, the curiosity about how things work, about why your cherries, the color, it is like, have to do with particles and absorption of light. So it’s crazy.

Yeah. Oh, that’s awesome. It’s beautiful.

Makes a lot of sense coming from you. All right. Specific to you, what is your favorite planet in our solar system? Our solar system, man.

I have to go with Saturn. Saturn, why? Well, best planet. Planet earth.

Saturn. But it’s because Saturn is the planet that have. Well, other than it’s the most beautiful if you’re looking through the window and you could just see it, which you can probably do with binoculars.

You can see it. But the thing with Saturn is that it have a few moons that. Well, Jupiter, too.

There is specifically one moon in there that is called Titan. That actually, that’s one of the titles of one of my books. And in that moon, you have such a thick atmosphere that there is liquid flowing in the planet and mountains and hills and valleys.

And we actually landed in there and we have pictures of that. The difference is, like, there is. It is no water.

It’s methane. So there’s rivers of methane. And the atmosphere is so thick that if you put, like, plastic wings, you can fly in there.

So it is crazy. But that’s the thing, because people think about words, you know, like a world or whatever, and they think about a planet and no, actually, you can have life in moons. The only reason they’re moons is because, you know, they orbit a bigger body.

But literally, there is one moon like Europa from Jupiter. That moon is believed to have water all the way into the core. Like, it’s a huge ocean.

And you know what happens when there’s water? There’s life. Every place in the planet that we find water, even if it is, like really, really cold water or even hot water, there is life. So incredible.

Yeah. So that’s those sweet spots. We’re in the goldilocks, goldilocks zone for incredible life.

But doesn’t mean that there are other goldilocks type zones on a moon, you know, our satellite planet. Yeah. Because the thing with that is like, the gravity that pulls those moons, like, let’s say, like, to Jupiter, that they have, like, that fight, like, pulling and pushing, it creates temperature because it creates whatever.

I forgot the word. Friction. Friction create friction, and the friction turns into temperature.

So inside that moon, like that one that I talked to you, the ropamune, because of that friction and pulling and coming and tearing and pulling and pulling, the gravity, it creates friction and creates temperature. So it’s believed, like, the center of the planet is just water. Like liquid water inside the shell of ice.

That’s crazy. It is crazy. Yeah, it’s crazy universe out there.

So speaking of the universe, what’s your favorite book in the universe? Oh, God, that’s so hard. I know. I know.

You knew it was coming. I know it was coming, your book, but. Oh, yeah, my books, I hate them.

They’re so hard to write. I’m kidding. But, man, then I should say, like, the book that actually got me here, but there’s so many good books like Michel Kaku, like physics of the impossible, that you read that and you think like, ah, science fiction.

No, that’s possible. You have Neil degrasse Tyson. There is pretty.

Pretty simple understanding of how it works. There is Sean Carroll books. They’re great.

Actually, you know what? There is this book from, actually, one particle physicist that I interviewed like, twice already. Uh, is called, um, questions of God. Anyway, their name is Daniel Whitestone and Jorge Chan, but it’s, uh.

We have no idea. That’s the name of the book. We have no idea.

Uh, journey through the. No, it’s not journey. Or whatever it is, we have no idea because they’re there.

Horace is a cartoonist, so you have a lot of really good cartoons and things to explain the physics of it, and then pretty much the book is about, we have no idea, explaining you what we know, and we don’t know this. And this is what we know, so we don’t know this. So I think that’s a really, really good book to start in that marine.

Like science and physics. Cool. That’s a good name.

There’s a great quote that. That reminds me of that once I heard it, I never forgot it. And I feel it so hard as I move forward in my life in all sorts of ways.

And it’s, the more you know, the more you don’t know, the more you learn. You realize how much you don’t know. And it’s pretty wild, especially in the scientific community, there’s always questions that will need answered.

I quote that in my first book. My first book is a science book, science, physics based, really basic book about science and physics and the concept. And the last page that I closed the book, literally quoting my quote, was, it is so hard to know, to realize how little we know.

Of course, in Spanish. Sounds different, but you got the idea. It’s like, it’s so hard to know, to realize how little we know.

Yeah, right. But the more you learn, like, for instance, about websites, or for me, graphic design, or, like, composition, the principles of design and art, once. Once you understand a grasp of, like, even simple principles, then it opens all of these doors and black boxes where you go, this simple thing, it’s like a clique.

And then. But you put it in all these contexts, and now it changes, and now we’re on a tree that’s branched out from this tiny concept. It’s incredible.

And the same with science, like a math, you discover math or a particular equation, and what do you do with that? Is the power and it just opens the universe up. I have a professor, like, when I graduated from it, I have a professor that I’ve been always really about charging with whatever work I do, like, how much I should charge for this. And I remember he said, like, well, you don’t charge for the job.

Like, if it’s easy for you, it’s easy for you, but you don’t charge for the job. You charge for the knowledge, because they don’t know what to do. And I remember he called with a story and he was saying, you know what? Sometimes they call me because the system is down.

So I get there and I look, and then I turn off the switch and I go and grab a coffee and then go back and turn it on, and that’s it. But they don’t know that. Right.

So you charge for that. Totally. All right.

I know kind of the musical realm you gravitate towards, but what’s your favorite musical artist or album? Wow. Right now, because it always changed because there is so much good music that I listen to, but right now there is this guy, and I’m gonna plug it because he’s a puerto rican singer. It’s called Lorna Shore.

That’s dead metal. So have you listened to Lorna Shore? The singer is will Ramos. Will Ramos.

Puerto rican guy. All right, cool. They’re destroying out there.

Like, bands have to catch up to them. They’re literally. I don’t know, man.

It’s crazy what they’re doing. Cool. Yeah.

Metal is an incredible realm. I. My drums are in the studio because we got practice later tonight. But I’m looking at it and thinking about myself playing metal.

I’m like, I just don’t even know where I’d start. I mean, I just. I’ve never even really attempted.

And I grew up with really great friends playing metal, and I just watched them. I go, how? One of them is now playing for one of the top country artists. And I seen him live several times, and I go, I feel the metal in you.

You want to go, what about your favorite scientist? Oh, wow, man, I have to go to. Well, there is so much great scientist because I love particle physics. It was this guy way before Christmas in old Greek called a democrito.

He talked about atoms. Wow. Back there freaking over 2000 years ago, and now we know the atoms are not the smaller piece of the world, but they were thinking about these things.

But I have to go with Newton because we didn’t have the math. These guys just create something that. Well, we have some math and geometry.

We were pretty good in that, I think, before and Egypt and that. But the algebra, we didn’t have that. This guy just create something that revolutionized.

And I know everybody will think about Einstein and this and that, and he just explained a few things, but this guy creates something that literally didn’t exist. It wasn’t a concept about. It wasn’t.

You cannot just explain that if you don’t put the numbers down. It’s unbelievable. It’s so fascinating to think about that.

It’s weird because the math is there, ready to be discovered. It’s there, but it takes the person and the mind and the curiosity to, like, connect to, oh, two plus two. Like, then there’s four.

I mean, that’s super watered down, obviously, but it is quite incredible. But it’s weird because it’s right there in math that we haven’t discovered particle physics or quantum, the quantum realm. The quantum string theory is like, it’s there, and we’re just.

We’re just scooping it up and figuring it out. But it’s all figured out. It’s all figured out.

It is in the universe. The universe is working because those laws or rules on Thursday, it is working. It’s incredible.

We just need to find a way to explain it. And this guy was really good. Trainer.

Yeah, pretty good. Pretty popular, dude. You’re right.

All right, last one on rapid fire. How do you define success? Wow. That’s a question that every time I listen to your podcast, I think about it and I always switch a little bit.

My answer. But I realized that success is when you start and finish something and you feel so good about it that you can actually do that forever, even if you don’t become rich or great or famous or whatever. Literally, the feeling about, at least for me, the feeling about sitting down and start writing, even recording, or that sense of, oh, I’m doing something that I like.

So I think maybe the shorter answer would be, like, when you’re doing something that you really, really like, that you’ve been doing for six, seven, eight years, and you actually feel like, God, this still feels so good. When you find that. That thing that you feel so good doing, even if it’s the same thing for years, that’s success.

You find what you make you happy. You still have to do other things, sadly, to live. But when you go back to that thing that make you feel satisfied, and eventually it will make you money or whatever you need, whatever.

Yeah, I feel that very strongly. I don’t do what I do because I don’t like it, you know, I chase the things that I enjoy using my time for. That’s what it’s all about.

And everybody’s answer is different to that. You and I share several things and we get along so well because of that. But I resonate very strongly with that definition of success.

So you win rapid fire. Now you. Everybody wins.

Everybody wins. Everybody wins. And maybe not Doug because he took so long on his answers, but other than that, Doug is the second episode, right? Correct.

I remember you guys making fun of him. I just always poke fun at him. Good man, though.

I love him. All right, well, to conclude, just a couple of things. Where is Augustine in 510 years? What does your podcast look like, man? I’m pretty sure because of what the answer I just did about what make you feel accomplished.

And I know I’m not just that, like the NASA, the presentations I do when I go to schools and I see these kids getting excited about seeing images about space and things like that, and I know that changed at least a little bit. And if I can, you know, I know I can just keep doing that because I know I’m doing something. It was a little shady before because you don’t know that’s the thing that you will know that you just keep doing that because you like it, because you don’t get paid for it for
years.

So you do this because you love it. And even though I could get paid now and I get a little paid now for what I do, I cannot live with that. But still, I keep doing it because I love it.

So I know I love this so much that I see my podcast just going and keep going and the way it’s been multiplying, it will grow more. And the way I just keep writing, I have four books out right now. I will just do and keep doing that and hopefully maybe will see you promoting a picture, a movie or something about one of the stories in the other books and the science fiction books or whatever.

But I see me doing that and specifically just keep with NASA going to schools because I know this is really important and it’s something that I don’t, I don’t care. I don’t get tired of just going out and share this, shared the excitement of, but we’re doing. So, yeah, I probably see me doing this and hopefully some sponsors come in and I don’t have to keep working.

So I will do what I love for sure. Full time. Yeah.

Oh, you’ll get there. And sooner than later. I think.

That’s awesome, man. I can’t wait to stand alongside you along all that, man. I will.

Yeah, we’ll share in that. Okay. So last thing we leave people with is what is the best, biggest piece of advice you could leave? Someone listening? Anybody listening.

There is always time for everything because we just get a little lazy sometimes. You get out of work, and I know it’s hard and maybe you have a long shift or whatever it is, but it’s just, you just have to start doing something to change the way you think. Even if it’s like, I don’t know, like waking up every day and I don’t know, like getting your bed ready or waking up and.

Or in the night, just get your kitchen clean or whatever. Do something that you will keep doing. Like every morning we brought short it and people don’t think about it the same way.

And then it’s gonna get to the point that you will be doing actually what you like. If it is like going on jogs, you know, jogging or feeling better about yourself or reading or take that time to read because there is a lot of time. And I remember this older guy.

This was years ago. I was getting into elevator and he was rushing a little bit, but he was a really older guy with a cane. So I just hold the door and he was like, oh, it’s okay.

You. Can I take the next one? I was like, no, it’s okay. So I wait.

And then I said, he said something that my answer was like, yeah, life is short. And then he said, no, life is not short. We lose a lot of time on it.

And there’s a lot of time. Even if you work 8 hours, 10 hours, it’s 24 hours day. Even if you spend 1 hour and a half watching a movie and then an hour making dinner and then 2 hours with your kid, still it’s like 09:00 p.

m. still you have time. And still, even if you will sleep the 8 hours and work 8 hours, you have 8 hours.

So even if you dedicate 1 hour a week, not a day, and that’s without counting the weekend or you have days off, that you will have 16 hours, if you are removing the eight hour sleep, you always have time to do something. And if you like it, the only way to do is start and sit down and clock in. And what I mean by clocking is not literally go and clock in, but if you like to read or write or feel, I don’t know, even if it’s like half time to watch a movie or series, just take that time.

For you, it is always time. There is always time. That’s fantastic.

Speaking of time, two things. I really appreciate you taking the time. Thank you for this.

It means a lot, and your friendship means a lot. And I look forward to all the time we have together in the future. There’s a lot of time to spend together and a lot of great moments ahead of us.

And I look forward to all that, man. So I appreciate what you do very much. I look forward to supporting you and I appreciate your support with all we’re doing.

Means a lot. Thank you. Thank you.

You’re great, man. I love you. But you too.

I love you too.