Here Be Dragons - Exploring the Unknown with NASA Ames Chief Scientist for Innovation Dr. John Stock

(upbeat music) - Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works and why it matters to you. (upbeat music) - My long was friend. Chris, hi. - Hi. - Hi. - We just spent some time together, man. - And it's been a little bit. - I know, it's been, it has. I know, I missed you. - I missed you too, man. - I told you that. - I'm glad to see your background not much has changed. I'm glad to see you. - What do you mean? - What has changed? - I'm glad to see you. - You know, I'm hoping that you didn't take down all your system and you set up, but I'm glad to see it's still like, you know, normal back there. - I am in a remodel state though. I'll tell you that right now. - I know, I know. - So this area behind me is the only clean area in this room right now. Because I have so much stuff like. - Like, Chris and Jenny get a bee in their bonnet. They don't spend any time waiting around. They can have for it. So I'd imagine it's an interesting place. - My tractor broke down by the way. - Oh man, sorry to hear that. With the whole one. - Because I'm handy. - I'm handy. - I'm handy. - Yeah, okay. - Yeah, of course you are. - I'm a handy guy. - Chris, okay, I want to know, okay, Dr. Jonathan Stock, Chief Scientist for Innovation at NASA Intelligent Systems Division, probably one of the, maybe not the fancius, but one of the fancier titles that we've had. And one of the more thought-provoking conversations we've had on Planet U, I think that's my takeaway. What did you, I'm very curious to hear your take of our conversation though. Like what is your need your reaction? What are you most excited about after that? - 100% agree with everything you said. I think that, I guess my takeaway is that, so he's in Silicon Valley and he is surrounded by people that think differently than you and I. And so when he gets people in a room or, I think the rooms that he's in, those are not rooms were in. (laughing) Like we don't, at least I don't find myself in a room like that a lot. - No, you're not going to do, you know, you're quantum mapping of gravity fields every day. - That was interesting. - I was stunned by, all right, you know, you got a geoscientist room and that person knows what they're talking about. They identify a problem. They have no idea how to solve the problem, right? And I think like his ability to bring people together that can look at it in a different way and say, well, I have an idea about that. You know, I think to me that was exciting and in terms of what is exciting to you, personally Jesse, which is entrepreneurship in the geoscience field. And it opened up a new avenue for thought for me in that regard that I haven't had before. - I agree that I think there's some really interesting, I think his outlook is sort of, I think is bullish about the geoscientists, like very positive in the future for the value of geoscientists, geoscientists, and geoscientists in a bunch of different avenues. And yeah, the thought provoking aspect of like, you know, why was the United States Geological Survey founded? What's the value add here? And how do we, how does that chain has NASA taken over some of that sort of mission in the modern era? And if so, how do we rethink the previous institutions? Like, it's really, I love this kind of high level sort of philosophizing about the point of it all in some way, shape or form, right? Especially in this time where there's so many geoscience problems we have as society from critical moments to prediction and landscapes and he touched on several of them. I just left. - Yeah, I had another thought too, Jesse. I wanted to ask you a question. You know, you ask a lot of it. You ask John about it. You think a lot about it. Like, why is geoscience lagging with entrepreneurship and problem solving in this way? Like today, I don't know, I guess like I had the thought of it's newness, you know, these, like, all right, you go back to your education, even in your postdoc and all this stuff, right? Resources and these needs, these problems that we have. That wasn't what we were thinking about 15 years ago. And we've been thinking about cancer for a long time. - That's true. - Right, you're telling the right answer. - And solving that problem. - That's a really good point too, Chris, because you know, the field of, let's say, biology and molecular biology is pretty old compared to the paradigm of plate tectonics that kind of revolutionized geoscience, you know, a couple, not too many decades ago, let's say. So it's a pretty young scientific discipline in that regard as well. And the problems are young too. And so the solutions are maybe in preparation or in progress. So yeah, I think it's, I just, I don't like him. Like it's just an exciting conversation. He's clearly a brilliant guy. Lots of interesting thoughts, you know, some of them maybe contrarian views or maybe some that, that not everybody would agree with necessarily, but they're thought-provoking at the very least. And I'm just excited. I'm excited to see, you know, what is a role at NASA and what the innovation and sort of plantar exploration leadership he brings, you know, what the fruits of that labor will be over the next several years and how innovation is kind of the through line here. I'd imagine there's going to be all sorts of really interesting technologies and data sets that come out of work that him and others are doing at places like NASA. So it's exciting. - Absolutely. - Hey, one thing can be guaranteed. This is an interesting discussion. - That's exactly right. All right, Dr. John, this dot coming at you. If you want to know more about the geosciences, head order or camp geomobile, first link in your show notes, lots of visual podcast series there, archive episodes with images, audiobooks for sale. You can also follow us on all the social news app planted geocast, send us an email. There's a contact us at our website, plantjocast.com. And you can follow us on our YouTube channel as well now. So plant geocast at YouTube. Cheers. Peace. - Looks like a shirt breccia on over air war, but I can't tell for sure. (laughing) - You got a pin, don't you? - Look at you. - Over here. No, this is pine point lead zinc ore. - Okay, it's a breccia. - Yeah, yeah, this is a valley type. - Oh, Mississippi, California. - All right, it's the iron ore deposit that up in Canada and Northwest Territories that supplied most of the iron for I think the World War II production of airplanes and things like that. So yeah, it's a huge deposit. Actually, first year grad school, we went up there. So it's beautiful Gillina crystals and sfowl and all this beautiful stuff. So carbonate-hosting things. - All right. - It's a carbonate breccia with mineralization in it. - Yeah. - We're like closer, look, we can. - There we go. (laughing) That's better. (laughing) - I love it. It's blurry, but I can see it. Yeah. Oh man, look at that. So one of the things that impress me most about reading the summary of wars is that they represent the most improbable geologic places, right? They're like an allum zest of improbability focused in one place. - Yeah. - They're remarkable things. - Or deposits in general? - Yeah, right, 'cause you think about like, okay, what's deaffish in an ore? Well, it's the most concentrated form that you can find of the thing you want. And so it's inherently an end member and it inherently improbable, right? - I think, okay, well, let's get, let's start, let's start the podcast on that 'cause this is a really interesting thing. Welcome Dr. Jonathan Stock to Planet Geo. Well, we'll gotta dive in from this. I mean, well, first of all, we got a backup a little bit. God, I love this ore conversation thing 'cause geoscience is full of these anomalies, I think, maybe. But what got you into geoscience? What got you down this path? Was there an aha moment? Chris and I both have aha moments. I mean, Chris was my aha moment in many ways. But what was your early introduction to geoscience like? - So I'll answer that question by telling you a brief story and then I'll actually answer the question. - Think you're perfect. - I work in NASA now, right? I'm surrounded by people who got into NASA because the parents stick them out under the night sky and there was a light moving across it. It might have been Sputnik, maybe it was one of the Gemini. And they asked like, what's that and the parents would say, that's the world changing, right? And for me, that equivalent moment for geology was when my dad took me out to a place in Nevada called Berlin Ictia Saur, which is not surprisingly where you find Ictia Saur bones. And so I was young and I discovered that I liked being outside searching for things, which is what fossil hunters are. And so, it wasn't a light in the sky. It was a thing on the ground. I was looking down, not up. - As many of us were. - So that was it. That was your like, okay, I'm hooked. And then you're into dinosaurs as a lot of young kids are. And then you're like, was there an Indiana Jones kind of hooked there too at some stage? Or was it, uh. - Well, by the time I'd gotten to high school, I loved the idea of being able to combine being outdoors in some remote area with technology, right? And in the late 80s and early 90s, that was the beginning of large scale. Let's call it digital economy and digital world. And so that into that ecosystem, you could take some of your science challenges that we had and very slowly and inefficiently, take them into that digital ecosystem, right? So that is so cool. - John, did you ever lose that moment that you had as an early kid looking at an Ixia Saur? Did you ever question that later on? - No, I don't think I did because the fundamental. I have a proposition there is that it's a big world and you're searching for things, right? That explorer's urge is a common denominator to a whole bunch of science, right? It's a common denominator for astronomers, for physicists, for chemists, for geologists. The common denominator of I am searching for something. I don't think I've ever lost that common denominator because as you guys know, you go outside and all of a sudden you're confronted with reality and it's way different than you idealized it and you always are surprised if you are looking, right? And so you guys know this better than I do. If you go, any field trip you go on, if it's a good field trip, there's always a couple people there with you who are going, not about your interpretation of that. I have a different one. - And I'll find that totally, totally. And the uncertainty is both disconcerting and exciting at the same time. Like, oh, crap, you know, there's a lot. We gotta figure out here yet. This is unexplored fog land, which is just exciting. For those with the mind of yours. - Not a key view, humble, because if your eyes are open, you know that you know almost nothing. (laughing) - Yes, yes. So, okay, on that note, when did you hit that? 'Cause that for me, you just said that recognition. For me, it was like the, oh crap, the textbook is wrong in a whole bunch of really important ways. That recognition was for me like, first second year of graduate school. And I was probably a little slower than your average person at this recognition. - We didn't hit that bad, - We didn't hit that bad, Josie. - Yeah, that's not true. That's not true. (laughing) - But like, when was it for you, that kind of recognition that like, you know, what you taught in under, I'm assuming you have an undergrad, you all undergrid degree in two science of some type, is that right? - Yeah, yeah. - So, and then your graduate school, was it where you're at Berkeley, that you're like, oh wait, this is really exciting, 'cause there's all this stuff we don't know, or is it scary at that point? I mean, for me, it was kind of a combination of both. - Interesting, okay. I would say it came for me when I was doing a senior thesis at UC Santa Cruz or Dimmeri undergrad. And there was an encouragement there by the faculty to explore, and so I made my own 10 sections, which I love doing, like that was such a great way to, if you're puzzled about a rock, making a 10 section, you know, I was taught by this old Marine Corps veteran, Eugene Gonzales, and we say he could make a 10 section, I have a cigarette, but like, that's how good you've been yo, Wes. - That's a lot of, he taught me really craftsmen of 10 sections of me, the guy. - I was cutting slices of rocks, that's awesome. - Yeah. - And so I was making 10 sections, large format 10 sections, like big glass plates, not the wee small kind, but the big kind. And I was trying to understand how church, and particularly the Monterey Formation Church that hosts a bunch of California's oil, formed. And it turned out that we had a UV microscope, a microscope that you could essentially get biologic material, the Floresque it. And so when I put those thin sections under that UV, it was a whole different world. There was all different structures because the biologic material reveal the multiple different generations that you couldn't see in plain light or cross-neck those. Meaning, that's when I discovered that if you can observe something in a new way, it will completely change the story. And of course, that science done right is, and that's when I, I would say the aha moment for me, which has informed the rest of my career is, if you can see something differently, it allows you to ask different questions. Yeah, that's really, I love the way you put that, because it's new types of data, new instruments come online, I mean, I'm in Geochemist, so new mass spectrometers, and all of a sudden it's like, "Oh, wow, we have this completely new insight into the world that we did not have before, because the data is just kind of better or different." That's super interesting. You can tell a different story, and stories are of course, are how we instantiate value, right? So if you have new sensors, new ways of seeing things, you can tell a much richer story about a rock, it's in section, a landscape, and then into that comes the value that you give to it. That's really interesting, Jesse. You're looking like you have a question. I have a question, Jesse, this is actually for you. I wanna know, I wanna know, Jesse, when did you reach that point where you realized, Bullhice taught me all this bullshit. It was all wrong. When did you get to that point? - I think it was, yeah, it was early on in graduate school. And I think there was this huge textbook at some point, that it means a huge volume, and it was written as a special paper, I don't know, I'm making it up, 25 different papers embedded in the special volume, and it was all about like mantle plumes, and a huge branch of the work was-- - It's a huge, yeah, was lentils. - Well, plumes, mantils and peritams, right? Is that what you're talking about? - Exactly, it's that one. And in the end, it was edited by somebody who was not on the, it was on, in the mental plumes don't exist, these sort of style thinking. And so I was reading this, I'm like, "Hold, wait, hold on, "mental plumes don't exist, wait a minute, "this is completely different than everything "I learned up until this point in time." But then I took it to grad school, and then one of our, we had this professor who started there, he was very senior at the time, but he'd been recruited to University of Alberta, and was on my PhD supervisor at community. He was like, "Oh, wait, here's the backstory "of that whole huge volume, Jesse, "is that this is in his view a kind of a biased look "because it was edited by this one person "who's kind of an outlier view of mantle plumes." And it gave me a window into like this huge textbook. First of all, presented me with a model that was very different than what I learned at the intro level. But then the counter to that was, there's this huge volume of very fancy, very professionally written stuff that could be completely wrong. And so it was just kind of back and forth that I felt very buffeted against the winds a little bit of the scientific conversation. - That's that instantuating value in stories, right? So they were trying to tell a story about these observations that was inconsistent with the mantle hypothesis. - Yes, exactly. - And the plume hypothesis. - The plume hypothesis, exactly. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. And we're in a historical science that storytelling, right? At this most base level, it could be a data rich story but it is storytelling. And it's a really exciting place to be. So I think we, I can tell already John, we have the capacity to spend way too long talking to you. Much longer than we have. So I gotta keep moving along. But how did you go? So you were for NASA now, you're just mentioning this. Tie that thread from PhD at Berkeley to NASA Innovation scientists or innovation, forgetting the other, innovation officer. What's the thread there? What's the through line? - So undergrad at UC Sanctuary's in Quantity of Gemr mythology. Master's degree at University of Washington and more quantitative gemrothology. GSC at UC Berkeley and even more, spent way too long in graduate school. If I could go back and give myself advice, it would be like, get out. - Get out, oh man. Yeah, I feel yeah, okay. Yeah. There's a, we need to come back to that, I think, Jesse at the end. - Okay, yeah. - You know, that whole thing. - Seriously, I think we do, yeah. - Agreed. And then the advantage that when I came out, I had lots of published papers and I'd done, I would say some seminal work on a couple of different topics. Bedrock River incision, Paleo Reliefs, Debrisso Formation of Versailles. - Get out, a quick question, John, can you, what is the qualifier quantitative gemrothology mean for your students? - In my case, what it meant was that we were measuring landforms with Lidar and with surveys and we were constructing mathematical laws that we were attempting to connect to that shape so that the classic story of that, of course, is Gilbert, GK Gilbert's convex steel slope and his soil flux is proportional to gradient proposition, right? - Okay, so it's basically that, just still that down for those of us who like metamorphodox. - Yes, I would, I would metamorphodox. - I'm being a loose person now. - I'm very happy looking at Rebecca and Sloffer Bay. But anyway, so that, the story there is what Gilbert did and he was one of the early US Geological Survey, scientists and early quantitative geologists. Gilbert showed that if you, if you came up with that fairly simple flux law that said that the quantity of the mass of soil per unit of a hill slope was, if the rate of movement of that was proportional to the local gradient, that that ultimately resulted in a convex hill shape. And you can imagine why if you start a bucket brigade at the top, you just have to move a little bit of soil that you've made from the underlying bedrock and not much from up slope. And you don't need a big slope to do that. The further you get on the hill slope, the more buckets you're trying to move. And therefore, the steeper the slope has to be to move those buckets. So that, that flux proposition then turns into a shape. And so the quantitative germophology that's, that it's core should be asking the question, what is the relationship between the flux material and the shape of the land form, right? Now there are other, that's a very simplistic and reductionist definition of it. And there are, it's much more broad than that. But I'm feeling simplistic today, or as you're in parker walk. Chris is always feeling simplistic, so you're in good company. Thanks for that, Jesse. Appreciate that. I'll have to appreciate that. Yeah. All right, so then just to finish that train, which got derailed there, I'll put it back on the track. - Yeah. Thank you. I got out of that. I got out of UC Berkeley my hands and knees after a far too long at BHD I didn't really good work and I went to the US Geological Survey as a postdoctoral fellow I was lucky enough that men and all there Great, okay awesome. Yeah worked on alluvial fans and again a a theory for alluvial fan formation and then from there about 2010 or so I was sitting here at Menlapark which is the Sarasilika and Valley. The Valley is known worldwide as an innovation hub a hotspot where both money and opportunity come together to make new technology and I felt rightly wrongly at the time that the US Geological Survey outpost there our Western Regional headquarters was a monastery in this sense. We were doing great science but we were inside the walls of that monastery writing illuminated manuscripts doing great reports and outside there was this burgeoning ecosystem of new technology that we were not engaged with this is what what year did you say 2010 is what we said? Roughly 2010 is really 2012 by the time things came together and so this is the advent of mobile devices and smartphones and things like that is the revolution a little bit. Yeah so the world is information is now beginning to be connected throughout the world right like the printing press we are now in this disruptive technological world where information is way more mobile than it used to be way more accessible all kinds of information that true stuff and the untrue stuff right. It looks already mad out so we were in this explosion and we weren't connected to it and so I went to our director at the time along with some other folks and said gosh we should have a national innovation center at the survey's job would be identifying national challenges that we have a stake in and then work with outside technology providers in industry academia and other governance these to solve it. So I became the director of the USGS National Innovation Center that was a great job all lasted at some point our executive leadership team had other priorities I'll just put that in late. Yeah it was time for me to go to NASA and essentially do the same thing on a much larger stage and so I've been lucky at NASA as the chief scientist for innovation at NASA aims is intelligent systems division was the home for autonomy and a lot of other things and the job now is very much like it was at the survey in the sense that identify national challenges and then work with technology partners every once in a while some Google and Vidya and SpaceX and all you know to all them right. So it's pretty interesting. Sorry for the long disposition. No no no that's no that's an excellent I think through line and you know what it we got you and I got introduced to to another through somebody's started a company that we've both we both know mutual acquaintance and this was the center our conversation and I had a great time talking to you offline and it was all about centered on this innovation thing so I could take up so much of your time talking about the future of geoscience and this innovation stuff but I don't want to dominate it so Chris like I think maybe way in or forever hold your mouth it would be so Chris way in or forever hold your peace here because like I know I'm a little nervous about this yeah but before Jesse before you do that John can I just ask so you left the USGS and you went to NASA has the USGS evolved though since then in the right direction I don't know if you can answer that so that might be a loaded question yeah here's how I answered it it was fairly clear to me that the my priorities the things that I thought a national geological survey should be doing were not the priorities of our executive leadership team and they made that fairly clear to me because you know ultimately there wasn't a lot of support for the innovation center and that meant that I was at odds with leadership and the right thing for me to do is hang up my hat there and move on because they're the ones out of the responsibility for lean the agency not me right and so what are those I mean the view the views of the value because this is one thing that really stood out to me in our offline conversation was the value to the nation of a geological survey and how what's your historical take on that and what is your forward looking take on that what what what what what you what was it and what is it now and what should it be in the future and this is all personal opinion we can caveat that yes yes I would say this is a view of the of the reason the US geological survey came to be informed by the fact that I've read much of the early writing from the survey from the 1870s all the way to 1900 and it's formative year is that it was created to fill in the blank spaces on the map of the west right think about a blank space in a map right it dragons be there right it's a place that you don't know what the risks are and so if you're sitting back in Washington DC and you've got some money that you want to invest whether it's an agriculture building a railroad water resources whatever it is the blank spot is a threat to you right so the survey was invented and you can find this in the early descriptions the survey was invented to find mineral resources to the west and interestingly the Hayden surveys which were one of the four predecessors if you go and look they were initially chartered to find coal for heating because the pioneers were literally I did not know that so these were blank spaces in the blank spaces carried risk and they carried opportunity right and so the the surveys job was in essence fill in the blank spaces with maps make them topographic maps make them geologic maps tell us where the resources are and tell us where the hazards are right and those are the things that we need to do this is this is like de risk the rest of the country that's unexplored basically de risk that area for us and find opportunities yeah right I mean just pure exploration that's actually like a incomplete exploratory institution that's awesome so that that was and by the way there were state surveys doing the same thing right so that the early on there was attention and some of the state surveys predate the US Geological Survey right so the USGS was put together in part because Congress was looking at these four different surveys the Wheeler the Powell the Hayden and the King's surveys and saying like gosh we've got all these alpha alphas out there running around the west like they would be the that's crazy a prioritize things I mean you need your famous names this is Hayden of Hayden Valley in Yellowstone I'm guessing and and Powell right John Wesley Powell of Grand Kenney geology grand staircase all that stuff yeah okay interesting thing Jesse because like to be asked with you if I had to guess I don't think Hayden I don't think he personally was that interested in that I think you just wanted to know things I don't know just yeah I don't think it's a poly really out that's right Hayden was if you read the surveys or you read his own sense it far less organized to the point where he had to go to Powell in later years when Powell ran the USGS and asked for help getting these publications out oh really else I yeah we do it like you know so I was very generous to to hate and help Taden get his last all the publications out if you look at the breaths of Hayden's publications they're far broader than any of the others because he was like yeah if it's out there I'm interested right Powell scared that that sort of passion King and Wheeler were far more focused Wheeler on the military side King for other reasons very focused on resources so those were more focused explorations and both Powell and Hayden were far more what's the word I'm looking for if there weren't broad right everything from the Smithsonian Institute to antiquities and resources water so very different flavors of exploration no okay so so John I think that's a good segue into my next question then well I got so that's I want to know what's the future that's that's what it was constructed for what's it yeah yeah yeah how and what's the forward looking so that this the survey ran into the problem that it eventually did fill in in large part the map for the existing technologies it completed the topographic mapping of the nation at you know in the 50s and 60s it completed that in essence Alaska is always a frontier and so there's always some lots of stuff left to do and then is with all organizations at some point you it's mission is essentially fulfilled and you have to ask like okay what is your new mission right and that is what the debate has been for you know about over half a century with the survey it's like great what's our new mission right and the different elements within the survey known as programs have now come to represent different answers to that question the earthquake has his program as an answer to that right we want to tell you probabilistic earthquake hazards right because we can't predict when they're going to happen but maybe we can leverage geologic knowledge same thing for volcano hazards program the water resources program so each of these are answers to that question of what happens after we filled in the map right so my my proposition was that we've gotten to the point where each of those programs I think had become comfortable with the technologies it was using and the rate of progress and scientific knowledge is slowed down right and so as they went back to congress repeatedly they were increasingly having to struggle for a small amount of resources frankly given our national scope and I always you know I always thought we should be able to go to the hill and basically have a case that both sides of the aisle be like oh yeah we got to do that right and so one of the one of the big questions Hawaii was thinking about saying that the geological survey and I don't think they did but I thought that was a great opportunity to explore how would you make a modern geological survey one of the attributes of which would be you could go to an authorizing legislature that folks that provide you with the money and have an easy time making your case. I would love to be in the position where we could do that. So that was my starting premises like what kind of case could we make to the nation that would have both sides going oh yeah yeah we should do that that's not right. My proposition was given the fact we have all these great state geological agencies that do handle lots of local things. I thought the survey should be a technology leader. I thought we should be exploring how technology reduces the cost of making the kinds of observations we need to make and allows us to make new observations and that that technology we should then flow out to industry and to the state surveys and that that would be a compelling case for a national geological survey as well as some you know some off-world roles that I think are appropriate. That was the case I was trying to make with the National Innovation Center but it was you know I think I think that I'm exactly a leadership team at the time basically disagree with that case and yeah they were the leadership they get to the side that. Interesting. What is the well okay Chris I think you probably have that I interrupt you a little bit there. No you didn't interrupt me but but John actually I don't want to ask the question I wanted to originally ask do you have a different question now. No. So no it's so with what you just said do you you have a clear vision of what that looks like? Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Can you describe that or do you answer? We should we should be able to collect high resolution, light arts, demographic data at a tenth the cost we're currently collecting with new either from orbit or from the stratosphere. We should be able to fuse that with high resolution airborne data that would image the nation and all of those you know all of those assets would reduce cost industry and increase access for these kind of things. I need to plug my excuse if you want to run it here. Yeah. Right in the middle of my juremiad my power cord goes right there. So I think there's a ton of ways in which we could reduce the cost of acquiring data, improve its quality and therefore increase access to it. Another one that I almost this is probably one of the ones that got me show we say bad reputation to survey was I was a fan of using in-sare to create a readily accessible database of land level changes that could be used to detect problems before they happen. Now it turns out that NASA has gone ahead and essentially done that which is great but it doesn't have the reach it should into infrastructure. You can chart out a whole series of ways in which investments and technology can improve our observation capability and reduce costs in our science. That's what a national agency should be pioneering and the return on that investment should be there then transition that to industry for execution at scale and move on to the next hard thing. So I kind of on that note is there do we just got me is sort of a you know geophysical mapping for black of a better word probably or geophysical observations maybe is that dynamic that you're describing of maybe a hesitancy or resistance perhaps do you think that's changing at the moment because we I feel like we're in an environment right now where there's a few things that are unified at the congressional level at the hill maybe and things like critical minerals are one of them that a lot of people are on board with and to me you know you pick up the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times Washington Post like there's geology honest to god geology on the front page people know what gallium is for Christ say exactly this is new this is not this has not happened in the last 50 40 years maybe so is that inciting some changing perceptions maybe and maybe moving people in a mindset that's a little bit more like like what you're describing or is that not accurate do you think well I think that yeah you're right that the supply chain disruption from people's Republican China and they're they're sort of hammer lock on a whole element a set of critical minerals that impact our national security has changed a lot of minds the the dynamic I was talking about which is that you use technology to reduce the cost of doing something and then improve capability what that also does is it creates a whole bunch of new observations that you need trained geologists to interpret right the one of the value propositions for the in-sare data set was gee do you think if we find a whole place a bunch of places that are subsiding where we didn't think they were we're going to need some engineering geologists and other kinds of geologists to go and explore them remember we started off with talking about if you see the earth in a new way through a thin section it changes your narratives that new technology has the ability to enrich our understanding and our vision of the earth and so we're not getting rid of geologists we still need guys and gals we're going to go out and do the things but what we are doing is we're reducing the cost of getting the data that then is going to direct them so they spend their time way more impactfully on the thing and the thing might be hey where where's the next sinkhole going to happen oh the in-sare gave us some lead indicators and we're going to go and do a detailed survey with GPR to you know illuminate exactly what the dimensions are likely to be so what a lead to more geologic involvement rather than less but if we yeah go ahead sorry I mean to know I think you're you're I mean you're you're there's a bit we're in an echo chamber here you and I because I feel similarly about this sort of innovation and the future of and the the potential for geoscience to become more than what it is from an innovation and company creation and a sort of value GDP value ad perspective let's say and geologists specifically but you work at NASA now and I'm guessing NASA's full of a lot of engineers whereas the USGS is a bunch of geologists and some engineers and I think that's probably you're dominated by engineering space is there a big mindset difference between geologists and engineers with regard to entrepreneurship and innovation I'm guessing there is and so then the answer is why is that like why do you think that is and what what could we do in the geological education system culture to shift that that mindset I guess it's a great question because the question I started to ask myself when I was running our national innovation centers how do I bring engineers technologists and scientists into the same room and get them to come out with something that's progress right and the way I handle that with the I used to run a series of national innovation center workshops would choose a theme like water one year or you know earthquakes another year and I'd ask the scientists to get up and talk about something they couldn't measure or see or a capability they needed right don't tell us how you solve the problem tell us what you wish you could do that would really bring this new vision right back to the UV fluorescence of the church how can we see the problem in a different way with new sensor so we would get the scientists up there to say that once you ask a scientist to dream about a new way of seeing something any creative scientist is going to have about half a dozen ways where they would love to see something right yeah yeah absolutely then you've got a bunch of motivated engineers and technologists in the audience what are those folks want they want a demand signal they want to know I need something so this mind just goes I really need this thing here's why here's why it's important in the engine goes yeah I think I can do that right that is the way in which those two communities can be right reconcile natural polarities that's a Jim Mantisqv that's a way there's not the only one a way to reconcile those communities because each one then is given the thing that it wants the scientists want to observe more richly the phenomenon to so they can explain it and and have a richer story about it the engineers and technologists want an important problem that they can be creative in their own sense right because the best engineers and technologists are deeply creative people that problem right now in my opinion and this is another Jim Mantisqv I seem to be fold in tonight is that organizations get the behavior they reward for right so now ask yourself what have we set up the reward system to do in organizations right I don't think we are rewarding or scientists who are trying to be innovative what do you mean by innovative because I think you know innovative research sense that you know my job is let me very incentivize for me to be creative in research less so in technology adoption by industry less so on company creation that so what do you mean by innovative the I adopted this definition for the purposes of the national innovation center the survey went in existed which innovation is the serendipitous repurposing of existing technology to solve an observation our capability gap okay so what say that again and say that again the serendipitous repurposing of existing technology to solve an observation or capability gap hey I can't do something I wish I could hey I can't see something I wish I could oh let's look around and find we're not going to reinvent lasers or you know we're looking for existing technology that we can then turn to our use yeah it's she wants to measure something in this guy has a device on the shelf that if we tweak it this way can do that measurement we just need to get them in the room together talking okay great example I can't resist sharing it you may recall that the the space shuttles had issues with their heat tiles where they would have damaged them and that of course led to a very unfortunate explosion NASA invented a handheld scanner that you could put up a scan the tile and you could essentially determine down to a fraction of a millimeter any damage that has been done right so I want to work with some folks repurpose that to be the highest accuracy bulk density gainer that one could imagine, right? So we could repurpose that. So we could do less than 50 or 100 kilograms per cubic meter uncertainty in our bulk density for granular material, which is incredible, right? That's a there and dipitus repurbicine of existing technology to solve the challenge of which birth materials will dilate when they shear and therefore come to a stop and which ones will essentially not be able to dilate and so then they build up poor water pressure and go running away debris flows. Okay, oh, interesting. So you could just map the pit. Okay, wow. Potentially, right? So there's an example of innovation. Now, if you go and try and get NSF to find something like that, at least when I was trying to do it, like good luck. Like there's half a dozen skeptic out there that will be like, this will never work. So we are not we have not created the situation in which like venture capital is quite content to take risks on stuff like that if they think it'll go to scale. In the earth science community, I don't think we're doing that. I think we are using proven old school technology that we're not rewarding. There's no reward incentive or very small one for developing new technology to view things differently. So, John, that's that's the answer to your earlier question. Sorry, taking a long time. That's incredible. So like I have a question, I've so much to ask actually after you said that. It was a long thing and I had my mind went in a million different directions. But, John, your description of getting a geoscientist into a room with a diverse set of other minds that can support that. You identify a problem and then you have these people around that can say, well, I have a different way of looking at that. That's that's an amazing thing. But I think to Jesse's like what's burning at him is this seems to be different with geoscientists as opposed to like biomedical people or the chemists or these other the other fields of science that seem to have more maybe credibility. And they have this more of an entrepreneurship mentality that geoscientists don't have. That's a reward signal. Yeah. And why is that? I mean, I've kind of brought it in my head as and I've seen some people have sort of written about this that that with regard specifically to entrepreneurship. But is that in geoscience, we're kind of we come, you know, like your story of the aha moment, you come into geoscience with like an appreciation for nature and want to study natural systems and our industries that employ geologists in industry are often extractive and you know, perhaps quote unquote bad oil and gas or something are kind of quote unquote dirty industries. Whereas science research, academia, for instance, is like the sort of pure version of geology. I mean, I'm I'm I'm paying you. You're making the strong man argument. Yeah, I'm making the strong man argument as like maybe that's one reason why the entrepreneurial connections are not there because in biotech, people are trying to solve cancer at universities and in companies and everybody's on board for solving cancer, right? Like that's a good goal. Well, I'm wondering if that cross pollination is not there for some reason. But I think that's that goes that I go back to the reward signal part. You get the behavior award for. So in the industries, you just mentioned, if you come up with a technological innovation way of doing something you get rewarded, right? What's the equivalent that we're making in the neuroscience community right now? What's the equivalent? What is the equivalent we could be making? What we'd be doing now? What's the answer? Well, so that yeah, NSF were to were to want to do this and it's had several stabs at it, right? But in my opinion, they've been I don't think they've been successful stabs. The NSF folks know more and they could probably prove me wrong, fair enough. But I don't see the culture in our science changing. And that's where your mind is headed. How do we change the culture? And I think that part of it, you're right that there's been a disconnection from from the national need. I'll put it that way. Like that the surveys of the West didn't get paid for scientific curiosity alone, right? There were some of that, right? So the other the other reason we went into the West, which I didn't talk about, but it's almost equally important is that we wanted to understand our origin. So if you look at the USGS books of the 1880s and 90s, they are full of paleontology. We were trying to understand where we came from and whether Darwin, well, was on the right track. And so it was it was fill in the blank spaces and tell us where we came from. So there was a resource and hazard perspective that was economic. And then there was almost a almost a religious exploration of well, where do we come from? Right? What are our ancestors looked like? What do fossils mean? Interestingly, I realized NASA has now inherited those two missions. Right? Fill in the blank space and the solar system and tell us where life came from. Interesting. Okay. Right. So the sort of the sort of Star Trek frontier exploration, that's that's NASA now. And our magnets, NASA's SpaceX, Bloor, and like. So they've inherited the surveys old missions, maybe appropriately. So I didn't ask your question, though, which is like, you know, how do we change the culture so that innovation that you see succeeding and enhancing our ability to understand the micro world and biology so that we bring that into instantiation in the Earth science world. So I took a shot at solving that with the Innovation Center and I wanted to create a war scene. I created like a two-page proposal for 100K. And if you show that you could do the work in a year with your industry partner, then there was more money at the other end. And that started to go someplace. But people didn't want it because it's disruptive. It disrupted what was there. So we're run by a bunch of folks. They're afraid of change in my opinion. Wait a minute. So when you say people didn't want it, who are you referring to? I'm referring. I told you earlier, like that my view of the survey and the executive leadership's view was different. And they're leaders. So they eventually said time for you to go stock. They didn't say it in, you know, they didn't say those words. But, you know, it became clear that this was not a priority for them. If they're not there running, they were running the agency. But where I was going with that is we need leadership who is going to protect Mavericks, yet another a man's quote. And we need leadership who is going to create reward signals for the kind of risk-taking that geoscientists would do with new sensors and instrumentation. Until we get that leadership, we'll put in place the reward signal. We're going to have the culture we have right now. And you know, this is one of my at least initial for many people's initial frustrations with the the sort of academic research side is there's great incentive for taking risks later on in your career after tenure. But the first like critical, you know, seven years I just got tenure last year. And so the first critical seven years, you actually can't do risky stuff, right? Like, because you need Pratt, you need published stuff at the end of it to kind of establish your credibility. And so you're actually de-incentivized from doing risky, the coolest stuff I want to do would have taken three years and probably would not have worked out. But if it did work out, it would have been transformational, right? And I didn't do it. And now it's too late, you know, I'm not going to do that anymore. Oh, go on. That's too late. That's too late. Yeah, that's all right. Yeah. Things have shifted, you know, interests have shifted. There's, I think there's more, maybe there's a different, there's more interesting stuff to do now. So I think the answer to your question is that you need a leadership that understands how to reward the behavior that you're describing. We currently do not have that leadership. Do you think that industry and all of these startups, it feels to me, and I, this is a qualitative statement, but it feels to me that the geoscience startup environment is very vibrant right now and has been for the last five years in a way that it wasn't before. Do you think they are doing a good job of it? And at a personal level, would have you considered working for any of the, any number of these really interesting startups that I'm sure you've had opportunities to talk about? I'm very impressed with some of the startups I've seen, probably some of the similar ones. I'll mention an Australian one that I've just been just very delighted with. A company called DataRock that's essentially dedicated to in-c2 characterization of war bodies, and then the use of AI to look for patterns that coincide with war bodies, or as my good friend, Andrew Scott at BHP used to call it, find the usual suspects or guilt by association. You just drive the AI guilt by association, which is the most distinct definition of it I've ever heard and I love it. I like that a lot. Multi-dimensional pattern matching. Okay, it's going to be like, yeah, guilt by association. Yeah. So John, do you see this changing, this whole entrepreneurship and so on? I mean, look, what's the incentive now? I mean, resources is on the front of everybody's tongue. You know, this has got to change the game, right? And yet we still have a discovery gap for some elements, don't we? Yeah, we do. But this is so new though, right? I mean, why do we have a discovery gap? Describe that in, you can be more specific what you mean there. Okay, I'll take the one that's on everyone's mind right now, which is copper, right? So you say, yeah, right. You guys know that it takes, but depending on where you are, the U.S. is amongst the worst, it can take anywhere from three to 20 years or more sometimes to go from, let's call it an or body characterization to opening up a mind, right? So you know, you've got something that's at the current market value is worth is an or is worth taking out. And then three 20 years later, maybe you have the infrastructure you need to take it out. So that means that if you want to look at where a coffer is going to come from 20 years from now in the US or, you know, let's call it 10 to 20 years, you have to look and see where the discoveries are, right? And so we don't have enough discoveries right now to fuel our future coffer demand. And that's got a lot of people sort of running around, right? Coffer's not the only thing we have a discovery gap on. You could argue that, you know, the rarest, as you guys well know, are typically byproducts processing large amounts of other things, typically coal, but sometimes others. We have a discovery gap there, too, in a sense, right? Are there rare at the deposits that don't require us to mine or process mountains of coal? Yes, there are. But we have been very slow in finding them. So we have all these discovery gaps. The majors have outsourced, have been comfortable throughout the last century, outsourcing the risk to crazy people and hats that run around the landscape. And, you know, 49 of them die in the 50th one finds the, you know, finds the thing and then solves its industry. And that's the way exploration has been. That's exactly right. I've heard exploration geologists described as guys who want someone to fund their cool field work. And they, so they go raise money from doctors and lawyers in a pure speculative play. And then they go fly around and flip like looking for shit. And that's what they do, right? And that's their life. And everyone's also has somebody find something. And that's the life exploration. And many of them are very competent and are using new technology. But, but the technology they're using is not optimized to do the thing they want. The, the subsurface remains an undiscovered country for the most part, more undiscovered than the surface of other planets. Okay. So touch on that. Touch on that because the thing I love about geology and I'm extremely excited to be a geoscientist at this moment in time is because exactly what you said, the third dimension going down in depth, we know very little about and we have very, we're very incapable of predicting what's down there. And also time, we have this time aspect that is, you know, is what makes geologists special. And so I think we're kind of specially qualified to do, to answer this question, but is that the, the final frontier of geoscience like it, or is it prediction, you know, like landscape? Is there, is it forward looking or is it downward looking that is kind of the future hurt frontier in your mind? Right. So both are frontiers forecasting is will always be a frontier. It's just a question of improving forecasting, right? You never get to, it's like Zeno's paradox. Like you always take half a step towards the destination, right? You never get there, but is the engineer with that? You got close enough. Yeah. There's a guy there, but I'm not going to repeat it. So yes, forecasting to frontier, the subsurface is a frontier. And right now that my focus at least at NASA amongst some other focuses there is in the notion that if the space community and the mining community come together, there are common denominator technologies that they both need to succeed, right? Technologies that broadly could be classified as sensors, platforms, and enabling technologies. So an example of a sensor would be a quantum gravity gradiometer, which is a fancy word for a very fancy machine. That essentially can measure absolute gravity gradients. So you drop two clouds of cold atoms separated by a distance, you measure how fast each is falling gives you a gradient, right? Because you have a distance and the difference in rate. The amazing. It's unbelievable. The AMO folks have done like just incredible science and engineering to get there. Those now are going out into the field, right? Those companies like Q control, AOS and spectroatomics and others that are entering that market were now making a gravity sensors that are incredibly sensitive, right? They can measure tiny differences in gravity, the impact how we navigate over the earth with IMUs that allow us to detect at far distances dense objects. That's a game changing sensor, right? And there's also quantum magnetometers. There's a lot of photonics work that we can discuss. But those are game changing sensors. Just like the UV light was for me early on with the monorate formation sin sections, those sensors can change our view of the subsurface. A platform, well, we've got lots of different platforms. One of our challenges is big expensive platforms are big and expensive. So how can we take sensors like that and deploy them to measure the places that have the most impact that would be called payload directed flight? And by analogy, if the lawn, if I want to take my uncrewed aerial system with my quantum gravity-gradierometer on it, I don't want to fly it everywhere. I want to fly where there's a gradient. If there's no gradient, I don't want to fly there, right? It's a waste of time. So I tell the onboard algorithm, hey, I'd like you to go find all the gradients and fly them and ignore the places with no gradients. I'll go. Right? So now you've got a platform, the UAS in this case, the uncrewed aerial system, a sensor of the quantum gravity-gradierometer, and the enabling technology, which is that payload directed flight, it's the brain onboard that says, don't bother spending a lot of time in the areas with no gradient. Now you can do it at scale, right? Because you're thinking humans out of the loop. So now you have a Chen of them and you go fly them over an area and you have an incredibly detailed gravitational map of the subsurface that allows you to improve on your subsurface block model. Maybe it helps you with your or body definition. Maybe it helps you to find an offset that delineates a fault that you didn't know about. Is there a, I mean, the argument I've heard that makes some bit of sense to me is that, where you're kind of describing is a taxpayer-funded entity doing this type of work, which ultimately is hugely beneficial to business. The argument would be, why isn't business doing this? Why are exploration companies funding this? Oh, yeah. So make the counter-argument. Yeah. Yeah. And you guys know this answer already, but I'll say it out loud is because most of the major mining companies don't want to disrupt their workflow. It's making money for them. And if they disrupt that workflow, then they're in danger of losing money and none of them have a huge margin. They don't have huge sacks of cash like Google does that they can just go, oh, well, we blew a couple hundred million, oh, well, right? If you're a BHP or Rio Tensio and you blow a couple hundred million, like you better go find a non-aligned country to hide in. Yeah. Yeah. And starting a mine is an incredibly risk-averse process. Oh my gosh. You know, it's big, it's debt-financed, right? Whereas the exploration is pure speculation. So there's huge, like the wasond curve, right? There's this value of death and funding, which I've been excited to see kind of hedge funds and venture funds get into that space, people who have 20-year money that they can put into exploration and not see for 20 years or something, right? So yeah, patient capital. It seems like that's kind of flowing into it, which might shift it to, but that's a good good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good argument. Yeah. So the mining companies don't have a strong incentive right now to change the workflow because there's a lot of risk to doing that. So the role of governments is to buy down that risk, in my opinion, because ultimately what governments want to do is being the position of providing high-quality raw resources at the least possible cost while not destroying the environment. Because if you do that, if you reduce the cost of energy and raw materials, then all of a sudden, all of the downstream benefits of that mean you can grow middle class, right? So everything gets better if energy is cheaper. If you can reduce the cost of energy and raw materials, then you can grow economies that you can't. And we're currently in a position where affordability is going to be one of, if not the major issue in the upcoming midterms. And that's for a good reason. Things have gotten way less affordable. There's over 20% inflation over the 2020 to like 2023 or four, I can't remember what the time span is, but things got like incredibly expensive and our salaries didn't go up. It's like, yeah, everyone's doing a little grumpy about that. We lost a chance of our purchasing power. So that tied back into power and raw materials in sustainable way. Sustainable means you don't create a bigger problem downstream that you've got to spend more money to solve afterwards. I saw an economic analysis. I forget who published it. It might have been the AGI or something like that, which was about the sort of economic benefit of geological mapping. And this was mapping in a very traditional sense, I'm sure you know, like, you know, and the return on the investment was massive. It was way bigger than I was thinking. I mean, at the minimum, it was like seven X return on the investment and up to 35 X return on the cost of creating a geological map at some scale at the state, state or federal level. And it just blew me away and it made me think that, you know, mapping, as you're describing these these frontiers, the, you know, at depth, getting down at depth is going to have a exponentially bigger return on the investment. I would love to see a renaissance in geological mapping where gals and guys maintain the role that they play. I'm not a person who believes that AGI is going to replace geologic mappers. Just not that person. There's a lot of reasons why now that doesn't mean AGI can't be useful tool in the pursuit of geologic mapping and it should be, but its role should not be to replace people with history behind their brains, right? Because everybody knows that no two people map make the same geologic map. Why is that? Why do no two people make the same geologic map? That's for you guys. It's a good question. I think about it. Why do you know two people make the same geologic map? Because they have different past experiences and recognition patterns of rocks previously. Maybe because it wouldn't be the same. the same map. Okay, that's cheating, but I'll, it's a story. You're telling a story in map form, right? And none of it until exactly the same story because it wouldn't be the same. So I would love to see a renaissance in geologic mapping. It goes back to my premise that if we can improve the quality of our data coming into and form that mapping, subsurface and surface and reduce its cost, they will create more opportunities for geologic mappers to play impactful roles. Yeah, I think that's right. I'm happy to hear you say that about AI because I think that geological intuition, that sort of experience, the sort of shots on goal of seeing the world and the creativity required to do this in a complex three-dimensional, four-dimensional space at scales that our computers and nations cannot achieve is really powerful sort of mind-time. Well, let's go back to where we started our conversation earlier with, you know, to answer the AI question, which is where or bodies formed? The world's least geologically probable places. What did AI depend on? Trading data. Lots of numbers. Lots of, yeah, train to find an improbable place. And this is actually that's kind of funny, because it's kind of the inverse of what economic geology is a story, but an economic geology thing, the fraction of economic geology studies who focus on the world's biggest x deposit, is huge, right? Compared to the average geoblo deposit, right? That people don't study because it's not the big one. So it's kind of inverted. Yeah, that's an interesting point. I got to think through that one a little bit to be honest. Yeah, so it doesn't mean that AI isn't useful. And there are mental deposits where it's like, if you find the signature of that particular mental deposit, particularly for geochysical security, like, you know, we've been exploring the USGS mineral resources program, share with me some interesting data on they've gotten what looked like noise in their gamma ray survey. And then when they went and looked at the noise and more detail, it turned out to be an unusual deposit that was in or net. And so they're like, well, can we take that signature, the noise signature, and then examine the rest of our course data for it, and use that as a tip in queue so that we, oh, let's go queue some assets to look at that in more detail. So the harmonious union of machine and human is the efficient factor we need to restart discovery gap, not one or the other. No, I think that's right. I like you're now the geophysics example is a good one as a very useful approach, but the geologist still has to be in there. We don't like fundamentally, there's ideas, but we don't know what the differences between why the Andes have so much copper and Japan doesn't, right? It's broadly similar. Like, what's the difference here, right? Those basic fundamental things are still sort of missing in our understanding of the earth system, which is, to me, exciting. So, yeah, couple, couple softwares for you, John. They really are. They actually are. So you're in Silicon Valley. This is way, this is so far away from Jesse and my realm. What's it like to be a geoscientist in Silicon Valley? Well, now I'm somewhat conflated because like am I still a geoscientist? I don't even know if I can still hear my card now that I let the USGS in content. Yeah, you're quantitative geomorphologists. Of course, you get early. You can carry that card for the rest of your life. Come on. I'll take it. I'll take it. What's it like? You're surrounded by new ways of seeing things. So it's a constant excitement and the challenge is to prioritize because otherwise, it's sort of like the retriever in up. You're just like, there's this whirl around every corner, right? So you go over to Nvidia and you look at their incredible sim environment and you're like, wow, you mean, I could, if I could instantiate geology into the sim environment, I could train AI agents to go and find the things I want using that payload. The plate we talked about earlier, but they're like, oh, but I, or I could go over to that quantum folks and improve on our ability to map the subsurface with gravity radiometers. And so it's a squirrel around every corner. And the challenge is which of those squirrels is aligned with a national challenge that there's a demand signal for right now, right? So examples of national challenges, reduce the discovery gap for critical minerals or reduce supply chain on certain things in critical minerals or tell us how we can improve our prospectivity maps for the moon or Mars for volatiles that will represent the rocket fuel that SpaceX might need to get the ship back, right? Yeah. Okay. So you have this diversity that maybe we don't have, right? in Silicon Valley of mentality of thought of attacking problems and solutions. That's a larger ecosystem. I'm always red isn't to say that there isn't diversity in smaller ones because some of the best ideas often come from places where people actually are can really focus on something. So I'm red isn't to say that. But I didn't think larger ecosystem and because it's a larger ecosystem, they're more opportunities to collide with like-minded people, I think. How are you as a geologist, whether you carry that card around actively or not? How are you perceived? Because I think as an our experience as geologists here, you're kind of always perceived as like, oh, that's weird or oh, that's really interesting. And it's neither it's either one of those not like anything in the middle. Like it's either, oh, that's weird. I don't want to talk to you. Oh, hey, that's interesting. I want to talk to you all night. And so is there a do you get that reaction? People reacting to you or not? I don't want to follow up. I asked you Jesse some more questions. I know. I do too. I have so much I want to ask about this Jesse. Like, I have a lot to say about this. No, I think Jesse is actually your personality. I think it's a me problem. Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. That could be true. I'm not sure. Okay. So what my answer would be is that I usually find people are really interested because it's a little bit of a rarity to find a geologist out talking to engineers and technologists. We tend to stay in the monastery where we're comfortable. And again, that's a culture thing that's like what's the reward signal? Well, you don't get rewarded for going outside the monastery. Like it's dangerous out there, right? Yeah. Yeah. I get a positive reception from people. And then if I don't understand what they're talking about, I say, I'm just a simple country geologist. That's right. You can always fall back on that. I'm not following. I just look at rocks. I'll say, I mean, I don't know what you're talking about. That's a great. That's a good one. So what is your, I mean, we've talked a lot about some really interesting sort of future forward looking things. What? I mean, do you have advice if you had sort of one thing that current students, whether undergrad or graduate students, one thing that they should be thinking about that you that they're not? What was that? Do you have something that? Well, first of all, I would not claim to be an authority because I'm, you guys are more tightly coupled in that ecosystem than I am. You know more than I do. So I'm somewhat removed from what the current academic sort of environment is. But if you're asking me, like if I were to give an unfounded foolish and naive advice to young parents, that's the best kind. Yes. I think I would really be focused on common denominator technologies that will allow you to be flexible in your career choices. Right? And that's the truism, I think, for many young folks now because there's so much disruption going on in the workplace. It's really challenging to figure out what the right road ahead is. Like there's people telling you that, "Hey, it's going to replace all your jobs." So you might as well hang up your rights, not true, but it will disrupt things. And so I tend to think that if you're an undergrad, for instance, that you should really make sure that you think carefully about some technologies that you can take some courses in and get some competency in that allow you to work in fields outside of necessarily your own. Because you may need that later on. And if your graduate student, you should definitely be thinking about some unusual skill that you can acquire that differentiate you from someone else. When I was back when I was coming to age in the 90s that, Berkeley, I got really good at processing light our data. I wasn't going to process light our data forever, but it did allow me to see the world in a different way and have a differentiating skill that someone went, "Oh, yeah, that's great." So having a differentiating skill that you can, you say, and having some common denominator technology, either courses or some achievement you can point to gives you flexibility in your future career because you never know where you're going to wind up or know you should wind up in NASA. You never thought you were going to wind up here, huh? This was not your career. This was on your flight. I thought I'd be in. I thought I'd just carry out my time in the survey, you know. Well, John, so first of all, I have to say, you need to carry your card with more pride. You are a geoscientist. That's a little offended. You need to be a little bit more like out there. I mean, represent. John, so thank you so much for your time. You've been so generous with it. We'd like to end with the question we always end with, which is what has been your favorite best day, best experience, best memory as a geoscientist? Oh, that's such a great question. Can I do two? Yes, you may. Please do. All right. The time when I felt the most all as a geoscience. was in the near the Tiroca Gorge in Taiwan. We were there after the Gigi earthquake with the UC Berkeley folks. We had walked up this huge valley, and there was like rock slides, kilometer scale rock slides everywhere. We got to the head of the valley, and we were expecting just another big talus gun. And instead, there was this 100 meter high, three meter wide, like, bedrock canyon, that curved over on itself. - Oh, wow. - In other sea? - The area, like, theater headed, like, you know, section where you could walk just in, and the lights were shining down from above, reflected off all the glenching rocks. And I remember just falling down on my knees and awe at that place, 'cause I don't know, you know, it was off the beaten track. I don't know who sees it, but it was, it was, awe at that place, 'cause I don't know, you know, it was off the beat. - Do you have a picture of this? Hold on, Jesse, do you have a picture of this? - That, so Chris, I wish I, I'm sure I have a slide, 'cause he takes slides back then, if anyone knows what those are. And I'm also-- - Well, I do. - I do, of course. - And I'm also Chris, I'm Chris. - Justice to that moment, because as you guys know, like, and anyone who's been out in the wild knows, you spend a day hiking through the back 40, and there's just, you know, there's the emotions of discovering things, that the physical exertion, and then all of a sudden, you're confronted with something completely unexpected. It's an emotional state that explorers have, and anyone who goes for a hike and is potentially an explorer. So, impossible to recreate, but it lives as a neural, that's a good one. - That's a good one. It was the second one. - The second one is, I spent a number of years on Molokai and the Hawaiian Islands, that's one of the smaller islands. And the challenge there was that people spend a billion dollars a month coming to Hawaii to get a blue waters, right? That's why they come to Hawaii. It drives the Hawaii's economy along with the military, which is about another billion. And a number of disturbances on Hawaii's islands have been driving essentially terrestrial erosion that was polluting the reefs. So, I was there to map the source of the reef pollution, the fines are pulling the reefs, estimate the rates which they were eroding, and then make a sediment budget, which is a way of prioritizing which areas are the worst, therefore, the most impactful for mitigation. And so, at the end of, like, we would spend, like, you know, seven in the morning until seven at night days, installing instruments. And I remember at the end of one particularly long day, we hiked down and all of a sudden the clouds part and there was the Molokai channel and everything the reefs were shining. And it was like a godwink, right? It was like (laughs) like Leviathan coming up from the deep, the wanket you and go, there are powers beyond yours and understanding beyond yours. And here's a brief glimpse of what that might feel like. - Oh, that is so spectacular. I mean, the things we get to see as geoscientists and going out as you said, that sort of explore mindset. I like you way you said that. I'm gonna steal that one. Anybody who goes on a hike is an explorer in some way. That's great. - Right. - Love that. - Right? That's spectacular. - You're right, you're 100%. - We're 100%. - Absolutely. - Well, Dr. Jonathan Stock, thank you so much. Chief Scientist for Innovation at NASA. This has been a super compelling conversation. I love hearing about all the innovations stuff. I love your perspective and I'm excited to see how it goes over at NASA. And I'd love to pick, I'm gonna follow up emo and pick your brain about some innovation entrepreneurship stuff here soon. So expect to follow up emo. - Thank you guys for the gracious reception. I loved your questions. And I just enjoyed the conversation. I feel like we go on for a lot longer, but. - We definitely good. We'll hear for part two here sometimes soon. - Maybe. - We'll see you in the future here. So thanks, John. We appreciate it. - Yeah, thank you so much, John. - Thanks, John. - Take care. - All right, take care. (upbeat music)