National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program

That was actually my undergrad project.

Um, I got a grant through the Space Gr- Space Grant program, which is a really wonderful, um, a wonderful program that gets undergraduates involved in science.

And, uh, instead of getting a science job, I got a journalism job, which was, it was my first experience really with what, what turned out to be my career path.

Uh, and the job was to interview old-timers at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and capture their stories.

Yeah

... which people didn't really know anything about the moon back when we started thinking about putting astronauts up there.

Uh, so it was just a lot of fun to do those interviews, and at the end of that Space Grant project, I, I went to my mentor, who was the director of the lab, Mike Drake, and I said, "I'd, I'd like to keep working on this." And so he kept me on for a couple of years and compiled a bunch of interviews, and eventually that turned into the book.

Well, the, the, you know, I've found with, uh, doing this podcast, it's so fascinating to sit with people and hear their stories, especially when it's, uh, so relevant to a subject, right? Like, here a lot of my stuff is, uh, around Grand Canyon and stuff, but that must have been a fascinating project to do your, uh, research and-