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Transcript

PlanetGeo LIVE at Grand Valley State University · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_03: Dr.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_03: Remick.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_03: Get that mic just really right up close to your face, you know, for Chris.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_06: You know, Jesse, I I have to get my radio voice rolling.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_06: You do.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_06: And does that sound good right now?
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_03: Get it nice and deep.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_03: Adorable.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_03: Just are you ready?
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_03: We're tuning in with Chris and Jesse.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you know what, Chris?
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_03: Let me interrupt you right there, because my wife does not listen to this podcast very much at all.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_03: And I was editing.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_03: Wait a minute, what?
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_03: She she thinks she's determined that she hears enough about rocks in her normal life with me that she probably doesn't need to in her free time as well.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_03: But I was editing some of our podcasts.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I can't remember what it was.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_03: A couple weeks ago, I was editing one of them or re-listening back uh footage.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_03: And she was like, Wow, Chris really has a great voice for radio.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_03: And I I said, I said, Yeah, he does.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_03: Well, what do you think about me?
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_03: And she goes, Well, you don't really pronounce your words very well, so you could work on that.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_06: Well, okay.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_06: So hesitate to say this because I don't want to give Dr.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_06: Remake a complex, but Jenny thinks you sound a little bit like Kermit the Frog.
• 1:34
  unknown: Like Kermit the Frog.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_03: That's a really funny one.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, I have never heard that before.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_03: I am gonna I'm I'm gonna get a bit of a complex about that, I think.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_05: Well, I'm sorry, I didn't I don't I don't want to do that because now we don't need that.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_05: But do you remember when Mrs.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_05: White had her AP environmental class listen to our plate tectonics episode and box questions?
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, they also did a vote, and you had the better radio voice.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_03: That's true.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_03: Remember, that's true.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_03: And I think so.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_04: Hang your hat on that.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_03: But apparently I sound too much like Kermit the Frog, and I need to enunciate my words a little bit better, apparently.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm gonna work on that.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_03: We're a work in progress, Chris, aren't we?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_03: At the end of the day, we're just always trying to continually improve.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, so this week's episode was uh is a fun one, really cool.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_03: Uh this was I don't know, an honor and a privilege and really fun to do.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah, I I I Well, set the stage.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_06: What what do we got going on?
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_06: What happened?
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, just say it.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_03: So we were invited to give a seminar by the AAPG, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists student chapter from Grand Valley State University, which is Chris, your alma mater.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_03: And we were invited to go there and and sort of, I don't know, give an hour-long discussion seminar where we talk about a variety of things, mainly focused on this podcast and the origin of this podcast with you and I.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_03: And so this was super, super fun.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_05: We did this Yeah, let me interrupt you.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_05: It was a lot of fun.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, you and I had no idea what to expect.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_05: We get there, and they have two comfortable chairs sitting up on top of a stage and a little cute little table in between us, and it was very quaint, you know, and then there's this auditorium in front of us, and a lot of people showed up.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_05: It was really cool.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_05: Totally fun.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_03: Took some great questions from the audience and kind of talked about the origin story, which Chris, I I'm just I was recognizing this as we were doing it, is that we never really talked about this in uh the podcast form.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_03: Like, how did we start this podcast?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_03: Why did we start this podcast?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_03: What's the origin story?
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_03: And that all came out in the question and answer period uh of of the seminar that we held.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_03: So, Chris, let me just I want to for the for the listener here, the audio's not as great as you're normally used to.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_03: Like, our audio has improved a lot since we started uh this podcast.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's not quite as great.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_03: The room, there's a lot of room audio there, so you'll just have to bear with us on that for this episode.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_03: But Chris, I want to know from you what was it like doing this at your Elma Mater?
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, uh it was cool for me to go there, but you went to school there.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_03: You this is where you like really learned geology and got turned on by geology.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_06: That's right.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_05: I uh have a very soft place in my heart for Grand Valley and especially the geology department.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_05: They treated me so well when I was there.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_05: They nurtured my curiosity.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_05: It was just the best experience I could ever imagine.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_05: And then to be asked to come back and and do this was very cool.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_05: Of course, only one of the professors that taught me was in the audience, but there were many professors in the audience that I have a very close relationship with today.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_05: And then, of course, many of my former students, many people that I know.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_05: It was just a very cool experience for me.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_05: It was it was special.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_05: This was m one of my favorite things to do because you and I got to spend time together, you know, face to face, and that's so much better than oh yeah talking on the phone or on Zoom.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_03: Definitely.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_05: And you know, getting to talk about this thing that we're so passionate about at this place that I am so passionate about was very cool.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_05: And then to get to, you know, afterwards, you know, they invited us to go out and have a have a beer and eat some pizza and just you know, just talk.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_05: It was a great experience.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_03: I loved it.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_03: It was great, it was totally great.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I and um, yeah, I would imagine a big honor to to sort of be invited back to the place we're an alumni of and and you know have a still have a close relationship with.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_03: So totally cool.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I think Chris, we should just get to it.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_03: But the ha first half of this discussion is really Chris, you and I talking about the origin story, a little bit about our personal origins and geology, which we've covered on this podcast before, uh, but but kind of cover it in a little bit more detail.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_03: And then there's a question and answer period, which I was actually very impressed by the depth and um uh the depth and level of questions that people asked.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_03: So some of them were harder to answer than others, I'll be honest.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_03: But that's right.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_03: They were good ones.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_05: And the the degree to which the questions varied.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_05: Um it there was nothing that was off limits, and that was kind of a cool thing too.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_05: It it switches directions many, many times.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_05: I thought that part was fun because we didn't know what were you know what was gonna come our way.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_05: But again, I would just wanted to reiterate this too.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_05: Please excuse some of the audio.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_05: It's not as good as what we're used to putting out, but we thought that this was important.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_05: So here you go.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_03: Planet Geo Live coming at you.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know how that feels.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_05: I still struggle with nature blinds.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_05: No, you don't.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_05: No, no, you don't.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_04: That's true.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_05: So I guess I'll go ahead and get started.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_05: Like Lauren said, my name is Chris.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_05: I actually am a GPSU alum.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_05: I graduated with a degree in geology in 1994.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and one of my favorite professors is still in the room here, Dr.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_05: Kevin Cole.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_05: So um I came about where I am uh in a, I suppose, an unconventional way.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_05: I did not go the earth science route.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_05: I went, you know, straight up geology.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_05: I graduated and I moved out, I got married and moved out to Oregon to work, and then just worked out that my wife needed to be a little bit closer to home.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_05: So we moved back to Hudsonville where we're from, and that's when I decided to turn things around.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_05: And uh I still wanted to do geoscience.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_05: I wanted to be in that field.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_05: I I knew that was not ever gonna be um, you know, I I was always gonna do that.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, and so then teaching popped into my head, and so I went back and got my earth science degree.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_05: It was two more years of school, had to do some more chemistry and some earth science things.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_05: And in looking back, I mean it was it was definitely the long road for me, but I wouldn't want to trade that for anything because I had to do all the hard stuff, I had to go to field camp, I had to take structure and sed strat and all this stuff that that the earth science majors didn't have to take, and I just feel like that made me so much better equipped to do my job.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_05: So I started off teaching earth science and then again chemistry, and as soon as I could shovel off the chemistry, I did, and my quickest avenue for getting rid of the chemistry was starting up a geology course.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_05: And so our philosophy at at Hudsonville was always if you can fill it, then you can teach it.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_05: So I proposed the course, proposed a budget, and um I got enough, I got the bare minimum to sign up for that class.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_05: There were 12 kids in my first section of it ever.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_05: And uh what year was that, Greg?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_05: That was nine, no, that was 2001, I think.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_05: Steve, is that is that right?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_05: 2000, it was either 2000 or 2000, I think it was 2000.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_05: And anyway, um patterned the class after physical geology here at Grand Valley.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_05: And so my kids at the time, my 12, my original 12, were uh they were griping a little bit about how hard it was.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_05: And and so they asked, why isn't this AP?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_05: And and I I'd never really thought about it.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_05: And so I did not know Dr.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_05: Maddox at the time.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, and I I think I called Kevin and in a roundabout sort of way, Kevin put me in touch with Steve Maddox.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_05: And so we just got to talking, and it just kind of led to this relationship that has gone a long way for a long time, um, which has kind of evolved into uh many high school kids in the state of Michigan being able to get college credit for taking this geology course.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_05: And so that's how it started with me, and that's how I moved into just full-time geoscience education, you know, getting rid of the chemistry.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and then recently, too, in the last five years, I've also uh started an astronomy course.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_05: So I have a good job.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, I'm Jesse Rymick.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_03: Uh as Lauren said, I graduated from Huttsville High School, had Chris for earth science in ninth grade, geology, the geology class as in 11th grade, I believe, then went on a summer science trip that basically when you teach it, it's field geology.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_03: There's that's the only science that's really covered.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_03: I just forgot to mention that course.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_03: And uh and then I did uh independent study with Chris.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_03: But then I um went to Hope College, got a geology degree there, geology major, biology minor, bachelor of science.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_03: Then I had dreams of doing something else for a couple years, and but that didn't work out.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_03: And so I worked at a vice manufacturing plant for a year and did some substitute teaching.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_03: Realized I did not super like babysitting ninth graders.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and so then I went to grad school.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_03: So I went to grad school at the University of Alberta at Edmonton, Canada, mainly because I didn't get into more name brand schools, but it was good that I went there.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_03: I started in a master's and then transferred into a PhD before completing the master's program.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_03: And I got really into research.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_03: I always kind of liked metamorphic igneous rocks, the hard rocks, the pretty rocks, the interesting rocks, I think.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um for those of you who study soils.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_03: I pity you very much, but um I was like metamorphic rocks and igneous rocks, so I got to do some pretty cool field work in remote northern Canada, and that really hooked me, and so I decided to stay for PhD there.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_03: So I was living in Edmonton for five and five and a bit years.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_03: I was a little bit over five years, but doing a PhD, uh graduated in 2015 with a PhD, and I started working at a nonprofit research institute as what's called a postdoctoral scholar.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_03: And uh the postdoc position, uh, just a little bit of background, is really if you're interested in the in a research, a research-heavy track, um, you typically do a PhD, which is your thesis, but you're sort of under some sort of supervision by a faculty member.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_03: And then a postdoc is really a time when you are meant to go out on your own a little bit more, experiment with your own research initiatives, raise your own money to do research, kind of lead your own, lead yourself really.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_03: And so I did that for four years.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_03: I did it for four years mainly because I didn't get any of the jobs I applied to during that four-year period.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_03: Applied to every faculty position I I really could and and thought that would be interesting.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_03: And then in about 2018, just when I was uh sort of running out of money to keep doing the postdoc, these postdoc positions are kind of temporary gigs, so it's like you know, one or two or maybe three years of funding, and you kind of go contract to contract with that.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_03: Right at the end, as I was running out of money, I got a job at Penn State.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_03: So I was lucky enough to get offered a job there.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_03: So I started there in 2019, in August of 2019.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm just finishing year four, coming up on year four.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_03: There in terminology, if you're not familiar, assistant professor is basically a non-tenured professor.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_03: You're on the on the path towards getting tenure, but you're not tenured yet.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_03: And at Penn State, that's a six-year process to get tenured, and then you become what's called an associate professor, and then there's one more you know, step up to becoming a full professor after that.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_03: So these are the kind of sort of benchmarks along the way.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_03: So since 2019, I've been an assistant professor.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_03: My research, I continue to like the old, beautiful metamorphic rocks.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, I study kind of broadly continent formation.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_03: When did continents form?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_03: I look at really old, very tortured rocks with a lot of geochemical techniques.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and at Penn State, I've set up a geochronology lab facilities.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_03: So I kind of mainly manage a research group.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_03: I've got a lab manager, a postdoc, three PhD students, one master's student just finished, probably four undergrads, um, all kind of working the lab group.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_03: So that's a lot of people to keep track of.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I mainly fundraise and then make sure I'm not dropping the ball.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_03: They mostly keep me in line, really, is what happens.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_03: But we do geochronology, so we date minerals, date rocks, and look at geochemical signatures to figure out when rocks formed.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_03: So I think is that it?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's it.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_05: That was a long answer right there.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_05: So I the I think the next thing that we're gonna talk about is Planet Geo.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_05: We've been doing this for three going up.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_05: It's been in the works for three years now.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_05: So you can give the backstory, and it was really his idea, but he calls me out of the blue.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_05: This was right when the shutdowns happened and uh right at the beginning of COVID.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_05: I think everybody that has ever thought about starting a podcast started it at that time.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_05: Um, it was not the best time to really start this this process.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_05: Lots of competition.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_05: Anyway, he calls me, and that's all he says.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_05: Chris, what do you think about doing a podcast with me?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_05: And I I didn't even know where to begin answering that question.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_05: Um, so I started with the first thing, and Andrew.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_03: Chris is old, so he said, What's a podcast?
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_05: So my the first question that popped into my head is Jesse.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_05: Well, this is not really a question, this is more of a statement.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_05: Jesse, you are notorious for not replying to phone calls, not picking up phone calls.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_05: You don't answer texts for two weeks.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_05: And I said, if I'm even gonna think about doing a project like this with you, I need 100% access to you.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_05: You better take my calls, you better answer my texts.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_05: And he was like, he was shocked by this.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_05: He he was completely hurt, he was hurt by it actually.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_05: Um I actually said if you think I'm off, then you need to call Andrew.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_05: Andrew back me up 100% because we've had lots of conversations over this, and so that's kind of how it all that's my backstory, and like, whoa, why don't you go ahead and give your thought process on that?
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_03: Uh yeah.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_03: Well, um, the lead up, I guess, starts with a little bit, go back a bit further.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_03: So I was a high school student in 2001 to 2005.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't know how old you were when you were a teacher at that stage.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_03: 30 30s, okay.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_03: So I like after college or near the end of college, we kind of became friends.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and Chris has always been a little, you know, a mentor in the geoscience trips and things like that.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_03: Lots of rock collecting trips, camping, uh, have a a beer or two, perhaps.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_03: And so we became friends, and then when I was in grad school, whenever I would come back to Michigan, we'd hang out or get together.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_03: So we kind of we had this relationship, and I was talking to well, we've had many conversations about how geology or geoscience is really undervalued by society, you know, biology, people kind of know what biologists do, or physicists, they have some idea of what an astronomer does in their day job, or at least some idealized version.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_03: I would go around Michigan here, and I'm sure many of you have similar experiences.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_03: Like you say, I'm a geologist or I'm getting a geology degree, and people would say, Well, what the F are you gonna do?
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_03: Are you just gonna look at rocks all day, right?
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, when I went to Canada, in Canada, there's a huge mining and uh oil and gas industry.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_03: So I'd say I'm a geologist, and people would just say, Oh, cool, and then move on to the next topic, which I found kind of refreshing that geoscience is kind of in the public mind.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_03: And we'd had many a rant about how in the US, especially geoscience is kind of undervalued.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_03: Now that's changing, and maybe your generation is is much better at that with climate change being so in the public eye, but I've lost my train now.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, now the podcast.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, yes, we're back.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_03: So what had happened was two things.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_03: Really, my sister had started a podcast before COVID, actually, and she had been talking with like her friend, an older mentor, like a much older mentor, kind of like Chris and I, like 40 years in between us, basically.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_03: He's um so wow, they had um they'd started a podcast and it was like, oh, it was a relationship-driven thing.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_03: But then I was talking to my best friend from graduate school who's very smart, and he was saying that the only podcast he listens to at all is two guys who they're high school friends, and all they do is review movies, and they're not movie critics, but they just talk to each other.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_03: And he was like, the interesting part for me is the relationship.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_03: I feel like I'm part of their relationship.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_03: And so that was kind of like, okay, well, Chris is extremely passionate about geoscience and very good at explaining it, very good teacher.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_03: We have a relationship, maybe that's like a good idea for a podcast, and there's no geology podcast out there or really geoscience podcasts that at the time was searchable on podcasts, for instance, or you know, really came up in any search term.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_03: So that was kind of the thought process behind it was okay, Chris, you're a great educator, you're horrible with technology, so how about I sort out the technology and sort of leverage your talent into this podcast thing?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_03: So that's kind of the backstory to that conversation.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's the basics.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I think so.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_05: Um, you know, and this has been a struggle for me throughout my entire career to keep geoscience in the high school level, at the high school level.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_05: You know, it happens and I have a fight on my hands for uh a number of years, and then it goes away for a number of years, then it comes back again.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_05: I feel like it's rearing its head again, and um, it's something that I don't understand.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_05: We only have this one planet.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_05: The more we know about it, the better we are we're equipped to take care of it, and that's what geoscience is all about.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_05: You know, how can this not be something that is is valued or you know, it should be overvalued.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_05: We just don't understand that, and that that's the litmus test that we run it by for our podcast.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_05: All right, is this is this something that's important?
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, you know, I try to keep I try to keep uh my mom in mind.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_05: My mom knows nothing about geology.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_05: Um, she wasn't even listening to my podcast.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_05: I found this out like two months ago.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_05: My mom was not listening to my podcast.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_05: I walk in, I try to go over there every Friday and visit with them for an hour or two.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_05: And my mom is sleeping, and my podcast is playing.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_05: Like, what the heck?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_05: Her name is Joyce.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_05: I'm like, mom, what are you what are you doing?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_05: You know, and and so I I I said I I've given you shout-outs on the podcast.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_05: I've I've talked about you, Joyce.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_05: She says, I haven't heard any of that.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_05: I'm like, because you're not listening.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_05: But we try to keep my mom in mind when we're we're explaining things.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_05: We don't do a very good job of that, but that is the goal, like for for us to like teach about this planet on a level that can be understood by many rather than by the few.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_05: That's that's our objective.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_03: So I think that's a good I mean, and then probably all of you in this room who are interested in geology or professors in geology of some kind.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's like uh you you probably experienced the the flip side of saying of people saying, Oh, what are you gonna do with your life?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_03: Look at rocks, is that the other half of the people say, Oh, that's really weird, or that's really interesting.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_03: Like, tell me more about that, right?
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's it is a different thing, especially in a place like Michigan where geoscience industry is not massive.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_03: So I think that's something we've uh discovered throughout this process, maybe is that there are a lot of people who are, for whatever reason, they like collecting minerals, or they took the one geology class in college back in the day and their business majors or something and run a business now.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_03: They but they kind of liked the class.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of like curiosity around the geosciences, and like you mentioned, the sort of climate change and sustainability issues have repositioned geoscience from the center.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_05: Also, when we when we started this talking about the podcast, I I asked Jesse, I said, So, do you have an answer to the question, why is geology important?
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_05: Why is this important?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_05: And I know there are a lot of students in here, and I'm really speaking to you when I say this.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_05: As as somebody that's interested in geology, you you really need to have a good answer for that.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_05: You know, why is this important?
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_05: And I struggled with that when I first started teaching, right?
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_05: Because it's kind of ingrained.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_05: Chemistry is important, physics is important, biology is important, geoscience is is kind of taking a back seat.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_05: And that's always been my impression and perception of this.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_05: And it took me a while.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_05: But I've got an answer for that.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_05: Circumstances are different every time I get the question, but it's just something that I think that anyone that is passionate about geoscience and and keeping this open to the masses needs to really have a well thought out answer.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I maybe that's a good time to sort of ask open it up for any questions at that stage.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_03: We have some more stuff, uh but I are there to get anybody have any questions at this stage?
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_03: Anything at all related to geoscience or us or yeah, go for it.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_08: So I kind of want to get uh backtrack to when you said uh the kind of the many, uh hoping that many understand geoscience rather than the few.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_08: But do you ever and this kind of goes back also to you being a high school teacher with kind of a traditional geology degree, do you ever find yourself having to almost bite your tongue or you find that you have to oversimplify in just for the many to understand?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_08: Or do you try to really hopefully that they can kind of come back to it to understand?
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_08: Like for the high school kids, I can understand how they you can get back to them, but you wouldn't, you know, as a science communicator, if you're only going to see them once, you have to sometimes find that you're oversimplifying a concept.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you for that question.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_05: Um it's a great question.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_05: So I teach several different classes.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_05: I I have an earth science class for freshmen.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_05: My curriculum is different than my geology class, which I'm the only one that teaches my geology class, so I can do what I want.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_05: I can make it as easy or as more as difficult as I want to do.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_05: And I pattern it after my own education at Grand Valley and talking to you know, Steve Maddox has written the exam.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_05: So everything I do in my geology class is for that.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_05: So earth science is for freshmen.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_05: They're 14, 15-year-old students.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_05: My geology class are juniors and seniors, so they're 16 to 18 years old.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_05: So I would say the only reason I would ever water something down is that a fair way of characterizing it.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_05: It would be because a time standpoint.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_05: Because with my Earth science, I have to get through some things because there are five other people that teach that same class.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_05: And so I have to keep up, if you will, with words with my geology class.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_05: If I think it's important, and and if I'm feeding off the students that are in the class and they're asking questions, I'm not going to water anything down.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_05: I'm a firm believer in analogies.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_05: And and so I keep laughing.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_05: I use analogies a lot in class to simplify it so that then I can go deeper into the weeds, I guess.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_05: So I don't water things down much in my geology class.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_05: I don't bite my tongue hardly ever.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_08: So do you ever find like students coming back to you?
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_08: Not I guess I should say like within the same year, even and being like, oh, I I understand that concept more because maybe you led them to uh read something about it.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_05: I I think so.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know how to answer that.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_05: Um in my geology class I get a lot of juniors, mostly juniors, and then in my astronomy class, I it's only seniors.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_05: And so I get a lot of the repeat customers, if you will.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_05: I guess I get some of that.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_05: And for sure, uh on the in the field course out west that I teach, there's a lot of oh, this is what we were talking about in a class, and now we're sitting in the best class on the planet outside.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_05: I get it, I can see it.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_05: So yeah, there's that for sure.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_03: That's a great question.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, just to sort of um tag along on that, I guess, is I that's something I've learned a lot from Chris is how to stay out of the weeds or to simplify like a lot of geology concepts are really complicated.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you know, the it takes a lot to understand, you know, silicate weathering, CO2 drawdown, right?
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_03: Like you gotta cover a whole bunch of basic concepts to get to a point where you could talk about that nuanced, very nuanced conversation, but there are good ways to kind of cover the bases to get the main concept without getting lost in the weeds.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_03: And I tend towards being in the weeds.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_03: And Chris is quite good at staying out of the weeds.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so uh it's always a about it is a tug and push and pull.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, hard news.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: We break we break up every once in a while about it.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_05: We have almost broken up several times.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_07: So some of us are graduating soon and uh maybe don't have things lined up for next year and are kind of looking at a gap year.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_07: Uh, what are the advantages or disadvantages to not going straight into grad school if that's what we ultimately want to do?
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_03: Gap years are great.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_03: I think gap years are an awesome thing at most stages.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_03: I think, okay, there's so many different aspects to this, but I think gap years are great.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, no matter kind of what you're doing, as long as you've thought through what you're doing.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, you don't have to even work in geoscience necessarily to make your sort of your resume or your application stronger to graduate school.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_03: If that if you're worried about what your application looks like, do something that you are passionate about and do something, you know, don't sit at home.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_03: Do something and be able to clearly articulate why you did that something.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_03: And it does hasn't have to have anything to do with geoscience.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_03: When I'm looking at grad student applications, for instance, things I look for are I, you know, we rarely look at grades these days.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um I mean, grades matter, but not a ton.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_03: The GRE scores, we don't even consider those anymore.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so these these sort of traditional metrics are not under consideration.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_03: It's more of like a holistic view of a person.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_03: And a big part of that is are you passionate and can you do stuff?
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_03: Can you get stuff done?
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_03: Can you learn on your own?
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_03: Are you sort of self-motivated and a self-starter?
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_03: Do you have that sort of grit sort of X factor thing?
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_03: And have you done something?
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_03: Like have you seen something through to completion?
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_03: So if you're taking a gap year, go do something for a year and see it through and then tell me why you did that and how you did that.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I also think that graduate students who start after, especially having a professional thing, like going to work nine to five or something for a year, they start graduate school and hit the ground running much faster than people who go right from undergrad to grad school.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_03: Because grad school is not school, it's an apprenticeship.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so it really is you gotta treat it like work to be efficient.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_03: I did a horrible job of that, and I spent too long in graduate school because of it.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um I had to play catch up a lot later on.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_03: And the the students who are are are quite successful in graduate school are ones who kind of approach it with a bit more of a work-like mentality.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm uh weighing here other people who've been to graduate school as well about that, but uh he took a gap year.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, and that's when he found out that he didn't want to be a teacher.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_05: His dad, you know, and that was the natural course for him.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_05: His dad was a teacher at that where I work for 30 plus years.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_05: And that's when he found out you didn't want to do it.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_03: That's yeah, I always kind of struggled with this too in in in uh college.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_03: I struggled with I liked research, I thought.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't really know what it entailed, but I did some undergrad research projects and I thought I liked that, and I thought maybe I'd like to go to school.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_03: I always liked, thought I wanted to be a teacher of some kind, and a professor who could do some research sounded interesting too.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but I struggled with that.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_03: I often I often sort of thought that maybe this geology thing is just like a hobby that went awry.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_03: Like I like collecting rocks, and so maybe that just got too big.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_03: I did.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_03: That's what this is what I struggled with.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_03: I did in college.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, I remember sitting down with a mentor of mine uh at Hope and being like, Sometimes I think this is just a hobby that's gotten too big in my life, and I don't know what I'm gonna do with it.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so the the year off, I often kind of thought maybe I should go teach high school because I know that.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_03: I know there's something there for me.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_03: Like I I can go do that um and I know what that is.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_03: But then this year off, A, I figured out that manual labor in a vice plant sucks.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_03: B, I figured out babysitting ninth graders in math was really not for me either.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_03: And so it was a great experience.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't, you know, that neither of those like really built my resume, uh, but I'd already gotten into this at graduate school in Alberta, so all I did was defer a year.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so you know that wasn't really necessary.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_03: I was saving money for graduate school, is really what I needed to do.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_03: So anyway.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_03: It's a tough question and it's a really personal one.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_03: But I would say if you're if you're really considering a gap year, gap years are great.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_03: Don't shy away from it.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_03: And just think through what you're doing.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_03: And it does not need to be, don't stress about being in geoscience.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_03: At least that's you know my opinion.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, great question, though.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_05: I think everyone you ask is going to give you maybe a different answer to people are afraid, well, if you take a gap year, what are you gonna buy?
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_05: Because everything you buy ties you down.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_05: You know, makes it more difficult to go back to the college life.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I've listened to some of your podcasts and I really appreciate that you guys you tackle difficult subjects and you get the geology right, and I think that's really important.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm just wondering, is that something that you do without trying too hard, or do you have to work at getting the geology right on certain subjects that you may not have expertise on?
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: So kind of how much background research goes into deciding what to talk about.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: And and how do you get the geology right?
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because as you say, it's complex and you have to get pretty deep to get things right and and then communicate it at a at a pretty simple level.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: It seems like a delicate balancing act.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_03: Uh that's a great, great question, I think.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_03: And I'll answer first, I guess, is that we uh it takes a long some scripts take a lot longer to write, but we do script things out and do research, you know, ahead of time, especially on topics that we're not as comfortable with.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_03: That's really fun too.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_03: Like I've learned so much by doing this about, you know, Chris wanted to do the geology of sand.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, really?
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_03: But actually it's super interesting, and you dive into it and you're like, oh crap, this is super interesting.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_03: Like, sand is such a huge commodity in our economy and all this stuff.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_03: So it's like I bring stuff, I teach the physical geology class at one of the sections at Penn State.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_03: We have 250 students in that particular section I teach.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_03: I use stuff that I learned by putting together stuff from the podcast all the time in that class.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_03: So there's a big feedback uh between the sort of traditional professional development and this exercise of creating scripts.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's not painless.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_03: We fight about stuff a lot.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_05: We don't fight much anymore, though.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_05: We used to fight a lot.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_03: You listen to me a lot more.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_03: Almost better.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_03: But the uh But yeah, I mean there are times where we'd be like, I just don't get it, Chris.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_03: Like I don't get this geology of sand or something like that.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_03: Or I wanted to do one on nuclear reactors, or he fought me on that.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_03: But I yeah, I don't know.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think?
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_05: First of all, I'll be the first to say that I'm 100% positive we have not gotten all the geology right, but we do we do our best.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_05: And it doing a podcast is a ton of work.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_05: And you know, we f when we started, we were doing an episode every other week.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_05: And then I called them just out of the blue.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_05: I'm like, Jesse, we need to do short episodes.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_05: So we're putting something out every week because we wanted growth.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_05: And then the shorts have turned in we're pumping something out every week now.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_05: And it's just a lot.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_05: It's it's very time consuming, and it it it snowballs into something that you never would have guessed that it would turn into.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_05: But some touch on what he said.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_05: This is hands down the best professional development I have ever been a part of is doing this podcast.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_05: It has made me a better teacher, it has made me better in the field.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_05: Um I I have to curate what I can talk about when I'm in front of students because I have way more than I that than I would like to talk about and bring in depth that I just don't have time for because we've learned so much doing this podcast.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_05: Um so it's a lot of work, best PD I've ever had, and plus it is just a lot of fun.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, our personal relationship is it's always been a we've always had a good relationship, but you know, now with if I go a day without talking to Jesse, it's a weird thing.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_03: He calls me because he misses me.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_03: So I think I mean the other thing is that there's an edit button, right?
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, some things we don't get right, and you know, couple when we're listening to it again, we're like, hey, that didn't, you know, either you misspoke or we didn't really nail that part of the script and lit upon listening to the the you know draft version of the audio, it doesn't quite make sense the way we explain it there.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_03: So sometimes we'll just cut that block out and piece it back together.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_03: So the edit button is a very powerful thing for fixing mistakes.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um and we have like just little like work from home setups that we can just sit down and hit record and the audio is the exact same every time.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_03: So it makes it easier to kind of fix those those types of things.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_03: And we've gotten more efficient at that, but it's still we still make mistakes.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_05: So no, we don't just it doesn't just pop into our heads.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_05: We have to, when we come up with an idea, we have to pitch it to each other, we have to sell each other this is a good idea.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_05: And we argue about that sometimes because we take it seriously.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_05: We want to put out a good product.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_05: We do less of that now, we did a lot more.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_05: I but the number of times I said just listen to me.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, just trust me.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_03: Trust me, Jeffy.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_03: Just trust me.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I think that's a good maybe intro to like what what we've learned a little bit and how I guess what there is else to learn, I suppose.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_03: Like we're you know, the place we're at, I guess, is we're getting uh you know, a healthy number of of listeners, I guess.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_03: And we get random emails from various people, probably I don't know, five, ten a week or something like that, various questions.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_03: And some people are extremely into geoscience.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, they'll find news articles about some press release about some research about the core, you know, circulation patterns changing.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_03: They'll send us an email about hey, you explain this, or you said this in your podcast episode, but you know, it doesn't fit with what this article says and what's the difference, what's going on here?
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_03: And so some of those take a long time to dive into, and we've sort of learned to filter through that a little bit.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and meaning not filter through, but working on more things at once.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, what's interesting and what's not.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_03: Like tease apart, how do you explain how do you go, how do you talk about the core and the important parts about the core without getting lost in the weeds of this like really niche research that some science daily article is being written about?
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_03: So that's an exercise that we've gotten better at and we need to get better at, I think, too, a little bit is there's room for improvement of figuring out what's interesting.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_03: Is this gonna put my mom to sleep?
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_03: It's a good one.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_03: It's a good one.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's the that's a good uh tool.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_03: So I mean, yeah, it's a lot of work, it's super fun.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_03: We wouldn't still be doing it if it wasn't fun.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_03: And if because, you know, if it's not fun, what are we doing this for?
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but I think, yeah, that's kind of where we're at.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_03: I we started really slow, like Chris said, there's by the time we launched, we had the idea, and then we figure out all how to do it, and then record a couple episodes, then get them edited.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_03: By the time we like publish, within a month from doing that, there was probably half dozen other geology-like podcasts out there.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_03: Most of them have stopped producing regular content, I would say.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, it takes a long time to grow some of this stuff.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_03: So I like I I was I worked with um some people in the communications department at Penn State who uh are interested in podcasting.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_03: And so there's this like group of people on campus who have a podcast or who do stuff related to podcasts, either production or hosting.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of undergrads who are interested in starting a podcast.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_03: And the the universal advice that the people, the communications professors give is like, you know, start it for your own internal benefit.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_03: You're not going to become Joe Rogan or fill in the blank person.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, it's it's extremely difficult, and you're competing for people's time, which is extremely limited.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_03: So I think that's one thing we've definitely taken away.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_03: Although for us, the success metrics are not am I making money or not?
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_03: It's really like how well are we communicating passionate about is really a metric.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_03: We've also realized that there's a lot of people, Steve Maddox included, who are very gracious with their time, who are experts in something, and we're constantly blown away by the amount of access people will give us for an hour, hour and a half of their time to come join us over Zoom and talk about their thing.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we've talked to curators at the Smithsonian, talked to top folcology researchers, we've talked to professors, we've talked to industrial ecologists who studies, you know, recycling of metals in the environment or in society.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, really interesting people, authors, a lot of authors.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_05: Publishers send us their their people, and we just got another one today that they want us to interview this author, and that's just in their cool thing.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_03: Totally amazing.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_03: Like the amount of people who are willing to donate their time really to sort of talk about their what they're passionate about is super cool.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_03: So I've learned a lot from that.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: So it sounds like you have guys have done like a lot of um extensive background research for a lot of your episodes, and that there's been like a lot of rabbit holes or deep dives that you you've had to go into.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: Are there any particular segments that have been um a lot of fun to do a lot of background research on, or for that matter, ones that have been more difficult to like rack your head around in the geosciences?
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_03: You want to go ahead and tackle this.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_03: You need to unthink.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, I can do that.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_03: Uh for me personally, my my um the ones that are most fun for me.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_03: I I know I think uh I might portray this this way.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_03: Chris is very good and very driven by the passion aspect and like the we don't have a planet B.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that is your one thing you say a lot, and it Chris is really motivated by that.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_03: For me, I love the economic footprint of geoscience as sort of the thing that that you know we don't appreciate as society, right?
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_03: And both things are are are very important, but I lean more on that side.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_03: So I love the episodes where we're talking about like the geology of neodymium and how is neodymium used in magnets and like where is neodymium found on Earth?
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_03: Neodymium is an element that's near and dear to my heart as well.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_03: But lithium, learning about that, those are really fun deep dives for me.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_03: So the sand, talking about sand was really interesting because you realize, well, crap, this is a huge commodity and massive part of our economy that nobody talks about and I never knew about, and I have a PhD in geology.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_03: Like, so those things for me are the most fun.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_05: Well, uh no, I'm gonna actually go with the hard one.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_05: Um for me, every listens the the the hard ones are always the interviews because I want the person that we are interviewing to know that we've done our homework on that.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_05: And so that's really important to, you know, how do you how do you make them know that?
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_05: Well, you have to ask questions that that go deeper than just skin level.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_05: That takes time.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_05: You have to watch interviews that they've given, you have to read papers they've written, uh, they've been in the news, you know.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_05: So I think those those take a lot of time.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_03: I think for me the hard ones are the big concepts, the carbon cycle.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's hard for me to think, okay, how do we do this in 45 minutes?
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_03: You know, play tectonics type things.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_03: It it's really hard for me to distill down a massive concept with a whole bunch of rabbit holes into like a coherent thing that flows and is easy to listen to for 30 or 45 minutes.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_03: So those are the ones that I have a harder time wrapping my head around, probably because of my inclination to get lost in the weeds a bit too much.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, that's what I find difficult.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, which which ones do you like the most or do you hate them?
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_05: No, I I I love them all.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_05: Uh I don't know.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_05: The ones that I've liked the most are the ones that I didn't expect.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_05: You know, your your favorite thing in geology was the ancient nuclear reactors.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_05: Like learning about that.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_05: I had never heard about that before, so I had to get ready to do a podcast.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_05: I have to be ready to talk about this like I know what I'm talking about.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_05: I'd love that.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_05: That's the thing, is I I've learned so much doing this because I have to, but I enjoy it so much.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_05: I enjoy the process of learning, especially learning about geology.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_03: So it's like a tough assignment, you know, sit down and say, okay, write a script about something.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's like a homework assignment that you have to do, and you have to.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if we compete really, but when you're having a conversation, somebody else could say something off the cuff, and Chris does this to you all the time.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, well, Jesse, what uh how does that thing work?
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, that's not in a script.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I didn't prepare for that, you know.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_03: Like, why are you asking me that question?
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_03: So there is that like potential.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_03: So you kind of always want to overprepare a little bit.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um, that's like at least my instinct is to do that.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_03: So it's uh but but that adds some fun to it.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_02: I think I heard you say that you look at grad school applications yourself.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_02: Is that correct?
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_02: So, what is a trait that you look for that will set me apart from another student?
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_02: Or when you're looking at many grad school applications and you've narrowed down the ones that you think would be best, is there a trait that you instantly look for to see if that would set them apart?
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_02: I guess will be a great question.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_03: Um Is there a trait?
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_03: No, I would say there's no trait that would set you apart, but you are very unlikely to get into graduate school if if you don't have like a person who's on the committee who like might be your supervisor who is your proponent.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_03: So the way grad school entrance works is it's not like undergrad.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_03: You don't just apply and they look at all the files and then say, okay, these ones are the ones we're ranking high.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_03: What happens?
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: Is at least at Penn State and in every institution I've been exposed to, basically what happens is there are professors who don't have any money for graduate students.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_03: There are professors who don't want any more students.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_03: I'm fully loaded with students.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_03: I can't take on any more graduate students.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_03: I don't have the time.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_03: So I didn't accept any students this year.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_03: So if you are interested in igneous petrology at Penn State University, you're just not getting in because I'm the only Igneous petrologist and I can't take another student on.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_03: So timing is a huge one.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_03: Funding is another one.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_03: I could really want to take on another student, but I don't have money to support the student, so I couldn't take on another student.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_03: So if you just sent like a blanket email to a thousand faculty members who could supervise you for graduate school, 30 or 40% would not reply to you, meaning they're not interested or they don't have money or they're overloaded.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_03: Another 30% would reply, but probably not have the funding or the time to take students on.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_03: And then you know you'll get a response from 20 who are interested and you could have a meeting with them and make a personal connection.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_03: And we could talk about, if you're interested, we could talk about how those go.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_03: But the point is, is if you just blanket apply without talking to anybody, you're very unlikely to get in because you don't know if there's an igneous petrologist who's interested, who has funding and is interested in graduate students at that time.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_03: So that's the only thing I would say is like a definite need to have is make contacts.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_05: How would a student gain that audience with a s with a potential supervising professor?
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_03: Spam emails.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_03: I get probably 30 a year at least of just random emails saying, hi, Professor Rymink.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_03: I'm interested in your research program.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_03: Are you accepting students?
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_03: If so, could we meet for half an hour?
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's the ideal email.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_03: Like I would say, if this is what I tell the undergrads working in my group of how to approach graduate school, is send an email to them personally that is constructed for that individual person.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_03: You know, hi, Dr.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_03: Bauer.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_03: I was on the University of Wisconsin website and I noticed your research program.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_03: I was particularly interested in this, this, and this, fill in the blank, their lab group or their techniques, or some paper they published that caught your eye.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_03: Be honest and genuine, like you got to do your homework.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_03: And then give a little blurp, two sentences about yourself.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_03: I'm finishing my undergrad degree at Grand Valley this fall.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_03: I've done some research on fill in the blank, and I think I could be a good fit.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_03: Are you accepting graduate students fall 24?
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_03: And if so, would you be willing to meet with me for half an hour over Zoom and we could we could make a connection.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_03: I could ask you some questions.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_03: They would ask you some questions too at that point.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_03: And if you don't get a response, email them again in a couple weeks.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_03: And if you don't get a response again, email them one more time in a couple weeks, and then leave it.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_03: I had a graduate student, one of my graduate students who was working with me now, it just got lost in the inbox.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_03: Like my emails, I lose emails on, and so she had to email me a couple times, and she's great.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_03: She's awesome.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_03: I'm super glad that uh she emailed me the second time because she's great.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_03: So that's how I suggest advice going about getting into graduate school.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_03: But you also have to apply to a bunch of different places because you never know.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_03: And not getting into a graduate particular program is no reflection on you.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_03: It's the vast majority of the time.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's circumstances.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_03: So, okay, let me finish.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_03: What happens is there's a graduate entrance committee.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_03: I sat on ours for a long time.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_03: Six faculty members, one of them's in charge of the graduate program.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_03: They basically say, okay, we have 20 TA ships that we can distribute.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_03: So there's good candidates everywhere.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_03: We want to take as many as we can in.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_03: We need to find out how to fund it.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_03: Dr.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_03: Rymink has an NSF grant and has a student who would be great.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_03: So that person is accepted.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_03: This faculty member does not have funding and needs a TA ship to support a student, but they've got this really great student, so that person will get accepted and go and be a TA to support their program.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_03: And then so they kind of play this like game of mix and match, depending on who has money, who doesn't have money, who needs departmental money to support students.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_03: And then whose turn it is?
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_03: If I had a TA slot last year, I'm not going to get another TA slot, me being a faculty member.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_03: Like there's limited TAs, and there's probably one for every two or three faculty members.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_03: So you kind of go back and forth between different faculty members.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_03: So that's how the system sort of works.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_03: So you can see why there's no like trait that would say, yes, you're going to get in.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_03: You know, my personal take on graduate school is like I said before, grit, show me that you are like determined and you're a self-starter and you're you learn on your own.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_03: Like that's the biggest that you're interested.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_03: Like you don't need to be a great writer, you don't need to have great grades, you don't need to have research experience.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_03: If you can coherently tell me why you're interested in my program and somehow show me that you are like somebody who does, who like gets stuff done.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_03: There's so many ways to do that, but that you know that's sort of the the signals that I think are interesting to look for.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_08: I was wondering if you thought there was a difference between so not since more for towards Chris, I guess, since you're a teacher and now you've done a podcast as well or have been doing one, between kind of science teaching and science communication, or if they're kind of one in the same uh, you know, is one an umbrella term for the other, or are they both anonymous?
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_05: That is a great question.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_05: What are you gonna say?
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_05: I don't that's a tough one.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_05: I don't find myself a great situation very often.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_05: Um definitely there's a difference.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_05: With geoscience communication, we get to pick what we do.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_05: There's no structure, and we do that on purpose.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_05: That was uh we we've had arguments about this when we were doing our startup on is do we want a structure to this?
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_05: Do we want to go through and and we settled on deliberately, no, we want to be all over the map.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_05: And so we get to pick that.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_05: Sometimes we we want to talk about things that are uh geoscience in the news.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_05: Um and sometimes we want to stay as far away from that as as possible, like with this this terrible uh uh earthquake in Turkey.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_05: We didn't feel like we had anything to offer to that conversation.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_05: You know, we just so we deliberately stepped back from that.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_05: But I think that's the thing about it is that uh as a teacher, I have to be structured, I have to be organized, I go through things in a very systematic way.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_05: I I think that I know how a geology 111 course should be taught.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_05: I know the the order that it should go in because it's something that I've thought a lot about and that process works for me.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_05: But with geoscience communication, I think it's the freedom to pick and choose and go in directions that you want to go in that are interesting just because that catches your eye.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_05: And I love that.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_03: I love that about it.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_03: I think I would add one thing to that is that you know, with classes, I mean, students are contractually obligated to sit and listen to Chris, right, for the time.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_03: And in g in college level classes, like I determine what grade you get.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_03: So I kind of have a lot of control of the situation as a professor when you're up on stage, right?
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_03: Like you kind of can do what you want a little bit more.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_03: With the science communication, people can hit pause and leave whenever they want.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_03: So there's a little bit more I find it slightly harder in a way because there's like a you know, a two-way sort of evaluation always going on.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_03: They don't need to listen for a grade or any other reason, it's just for pleasure.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_03: So you really kind of have to.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_03: We try and maintain like a very positive, dynamic attitude.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_03: Even if we're cranky, sometimes we'll just be like, we'll start at 15 minutes in, they'll be like, stop, Chris, you are not enthusiastic enough right now.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you gotta pick it up here a little bit, man.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I don't care what your day was, we gotta pick it up.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_03: And he'll do the same to me.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so there's like a little bit more of that aspect.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know what that aspect is, but entertaining or kind of harder hitting quicker because people will stop.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_03: And we noticed this, we've noticed this a couple times in episodes where you can kind of see where listeners drop off in an episode.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_03: Where do they stop listening and go away and not come back?
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_03: And certain episodes When did Joyce fall asleep?
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_03: When did Joyce fall asleep?
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_03: We don't know that, but we know when people hit stop and went to the other podcast.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_03: So I you you could see that in some episodes where it's like, oh, that you know, that transition, that five-minute bit was uninteresting because people went away.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_05: Thanks for hey Chris.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_03: That's a wrap, man.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_03: You can follow us on all the social medias.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_03: We're at Planet GeoCast.
• 52:19
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• 52:22
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• 52:28
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• 52:30
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• 52:33
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• 52:35
  SPEAKER_03: Totally cool.
• 52:36
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• 52:42
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• 52:44
  SPEAKER_03: Check it out.
• 52:45
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• 52:47
  SPEAKER_06: That's right.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_06: And we also asked one of our favorite things, please share Planet Geo with somebody that you think might enjoy it or should enjoy it.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's exactly appreciated.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_03: Cheers.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_03: Cheers.