Be Curious: Exploring Ocean and Atmosphere Questions

Do you have questions about the ocean? Or maybe about our climate or atmosphere? Maybe you want to know, do megalodons still exist? Or what's up with climate change? Is it actually real? or even mermaids. Are they real? These are questions that are all answered in the new book, Megalodons, Mermaids, and Climate Change. There are more questions because they answer questions for

the ocean and atmosphere. These are common questions and maybe some questions that are not so common that are here to help you and we have the authors Ellen Prager and Dave Jones on the podcast for today to help you answer those questions and discuss their book where they just help you know about common questions around the ocean and atmosphere. So I can't wait to hear from them. Let's

start the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by

taking action. Today is a very interesting day because today we're going to be talking about questions, questions around the ocean and atmosphere, questions that I feel people ask all the time, either myself, Dave Jones, who's on the podcast today as a guest, and Ellen Prager, who's also on a podcast today, to talk about their new book that answer the questions that you may have or that other people may have, or maybe you don't even think you have these questions, but you

need to know about them, or you want to know about them once you figure that out. And these are fun questions. Some of them are a little more serious. Some of them are fun. They have some snarky remarks to them. They have some fun remarks to them. They have some very serious remarks to them. But they're questions that

I feel like everybody should know about. And it's very difficult to kind of do a Google search on them, because as we discussed in the interview, which you'll hear in a second, you just don't know, you know, what information you're getting, if the right question is being answered

the proper way, or if it's being influenced by somebody or not. And what I love about this book is that Ellen and Dave have a huge network of meteorologists, scientists, marine biologists, marine conservationists, oceanographers to help answer those questions if they don't know it or even if they do but they want to know the updated information because all this information is changing as

research goes on and on and on. They have you know decades of experience, and they wanted to help out and provide a book That's a resource for you whether you're 12 years old whether you're 120 years old it does not matter They're here to help you out, and I just can't wait for you to listen to this interview So let's listen to the interview with Ellen Prager and Dave Jones on Megalodons mermaids and climate change answers to your ocean and atmosphere questions

Enjoy the interview, and I will talk to you after Hey, Alan. Hey, Dave. Welcome to the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Are you ready to talk about really ocean literature, which I'm really excited We're ready. Right on. I love it. I love this energy. This is going to be a lot of fun. Alan, this is a returning guest spot for you. I think you were like

my second or third guest on the podcast. It was one of my first. So hopefully I'm a lot better interviewer now than I was back back almost 10 years ago. But it's so much fun to be able to have you back. And Dave, welcome. This is the first time you're on the podcast, hopefully not the last. And we're going to be talking about a new book that you have coming out in October. It's called Megalodons, Mermaids, and Climate Change,

Ocean and Atmosphere Questions. I'm excited because I feel like this is a book that is almost perfect timing just in general. There's a lot of questions out there and sometimes the answers are not exactly what you'd expect or really hard to believe depending on what sites you're looking at or where you're trying to find those resources. So it's nice to be able to have a book like this in the way it's presented and everything. I think it's going to be really great. So

we're going to get into that. But before we do, let's just get reacquainted and acquainted with you, Dave, and reacquainted with you, Ellen. Ellen, why don't you just kind of Well, thank you so much for having us. Of course. I am Ellen Prager. I am a marine scientist by training, but I've had all these amazing jobs. Maybe some would say adventures in ocean science from teaching oceanography on shore for six weeks to out at sea for six weeks with Sea Education Association. I

ran a marine lab. in a very remote island in the Bahamas. I have all sorts of stories because that could be a whole other podcast. I worked for the U.S. Geological Survey doing research. I was the assistant dean at the University of Miami Rosensteil School. Was the chief scientist for the world's only undersea research station. Actually lived twice underwater for two weeks. But what I discovered was I have this real passion for how do we make science entertaining and understandable for

people of all ages who aren't necessarily scientists. Oh, and I almost forgot. This is since my last, oh, this is important. Since the last I was on with you, probably my claim to fame is I was a consultant on Oh, wow. That is cool! I did not know that. Oh, wow. So with this whole idea of communications, I started writing books. I started writing popular science books and children's books. I wrote some eco-adventure

novels. And so it's really been about how do we make science entertaining, understandable, and usable She works a lot, I'm sure. That I know. I can see it in the updates. I've been following you for a while and just seeing what you're being up to. I didn't know about the Moana thing. We're going to ask

some questions about that and how that works. I think that's really cool to be able to do that and just numerous speaking opportunities and engagements and being able to engage with people, like you said, who are non-scientists I feel is so important. I think it's one of the the front lines of conservation that we never really think about when we think about becoming marine biologists and marine conservationists. So definitely appreciate the work you do and have been doing and continue to

do on this. We really, really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Dave, let's get to know you a little bit. Can you just let us know who you are and what Sure. Yeah, I'm Dave Jones. I'm the founder and CEO of Storm Center Communications, and I'm going to have to step out of the ocean just for a little bit, but I'll maintain the vapor part. I'm a meteorologist, and so we do

a lot of forecasting of the atmosphere, right? So in my past, included working at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and their global modeling and simulation division when I was in college and then a little bit after that. Then I worked for a computer weather graphics company and I helped design computer weather graphics systems that broadcast meteorologists would

use around the country. and around the world. So I would travel to TV stations around the country and train those broadcast Mets how to put together their forecasts and how to put together graphics for their shows. And then I helped a company start up in the Pacific Northwest forecasting winds

for windsurfers. That was pretty awesome. And then I ended up working for NBC4 in Washington, D.C. I was a broadcast meteorologist myself for About 10 years in Washington, and that was really the source of a lot of our questions, I think, that we put in the book. Right. And so that's very interesting. And then in 2000, I

left NBC and started my own company. called Storm Center Communications, and that's what we're doing today, working on a lot of technology to help people share data, access data, and share it amongst other computers in a real-time collaborative environment. So we can all be on the same map looking at the same data, and we can help people understand the value of data

You said something at the end that was really important is that sharing of data. So before, was it just like, you know, different regions had their own silos in terms of they would collect the data, they would present it in their own kind of way. And then another, like the Southwest region, the Northwest region Yeah, Andrew, you have it. You know, it's a silo is the, is the key word there. And that's the way that many agencies work and organizations where they cure it, collect and curate their

own data. And it's very difficult for anyone else in any other science, or if you don't know, because you don't know a specific person, how to access the data, it's very difficult. And that's why we developed what we call GeoCollaborate, so we can access disparate data sets and bring them together into one map so everybody can see it in a real-time collaborative Yeah, and even, like, I would imagine the way it's displayed before,

when they're in the silos, probably displayed differently from region to region. Now it's all the same. So it makes it just uniform, really easy to make, you know, seeing the connections between the regions. Obviously, you know, the weather doesn't stop at borders or the weather doesn't stop within regions. So you're probably seeing a lot more, and it's easier for not only meteorologists, but also just Yeah, and it turns out that the weather has a little bit to do with the

Just a little bit. In the beginning of the book that we're going to talk about, we have a graphic of us having an arm wrestling and over my head I have a thought bubble says ocean and Dave over here says one says atmosphere. So we're, you And I'm sweating for some reason while I'm arm I love it. Well, you know, it's really interesting, too, because, you know, growing up, you know, wanting to be in marine biology, you start, as you learn, you

know, both fields, oceans, you have to learn climate. And when you learn climate, you have to learn oceans. Obviously, they're, as we mentioned, they're very, very connected. But, you know, what's interesting is both of you have had such a You walk that line of science and data, but you also walk the line of presenting it in front of people and taking that complex information and being like, here you go, this is what's happening. We'll start with you, Ellen. How did

you develop that skill set? to take the data, you know, talk about even coral reefs, right? Like, you know, you headed a research station, you know, you did a lot with coral reefs, you knew a lot of information. How do you learn that skill set to present it to people of

So, I think there's two things. One, I think you have a passion for it, an interest in doing it, and you, for me, and, you know, when I started doing a lot of public speaking and I Went on air to become sort of an on-air expert and I've been on CNN and NBC and all those. I didn't train for that. But what I would do is I would learn from my mistakes. And I made many to begin. But I think you have to pay attention. Like, oh, my audience, their eyes are glazing over. They have no

idea. And then I would change what I was saying. And so I had a passion for doing it. It turns out I think I have an inherent maybe strength because I really like people. I like interacting with people. I like hearing what they have to say and really listening to them. And so my skills have evolved over time, just because I've seen what works, what doesn't work. And I'm really trying to stay aware of that. If I'm talking to an audience and

I've lost them, I'm like, oh, I gotta shift gears. So it's not, you know, you can have some natural talent for it. But you have to learn. I learned a lot. Oh my gosh, I look back at my first appearances on television and I'm like, oh. But I have learned a ton by doing it and now I love it. But it's, you know, also as a scientist at the beginning I was so nervous because I was, I have to get every single technical detail right. And when I realized that the people I was talking to, I didn't have

to get those technical details exact. They could be right, but maybe a little bit broader, maybe not exact. And it was much easier. So I don't know, Dave, how about Yeah. No, I think that that's right. But although when you're a meteorologist, everybody thinks that you get paid for being right 50 percent So I was going to mention that. I was like, you're probably in the summer. You're probably the most like most loved person ever.

And then in the winter and you're like, no. And if you get the weather wrong or the weather changes, they're like, oh, we hate this guy. Like, why would Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And Lord help you if you get a Oh, gosh. Yes. Because that's going to change anything, right? Yeah. But it's interesting, too, because growing up as a marine, wanting to be a meteorologist, well, I can't even say it, weather person, let's just say. What is your thought process wanting to be in

that field? Is it you want to be in front of a camera and talking about the weather? Or you want to be studying at NASA, which you've That's a great question. Because, you know, my first, my first experience with weather was very electrifying. I was six years old, I was looking out my bedroom window, and I saw lightning strike a tree across the street. Oh, wow. And then I saw ball lightning, which is a ball of energy, right out across the street, sort of towards my house. And I was just

you know, six years old, I was glued to it. And and then all of a sudden it just disappeared in midair and went away. And so that was it. That's all from I was six years old till today. It's meteorology all the way. So that's Now, going from like presenting in front of people to doing like research on on sort of the climate. How did you sort of manage that? Like you obviously started off at NASA doing doing some research areas and then going into broadcasting.

It was really very, very interesting. I was very fortunate when I was in college. And maybe we'll talk about this a little bit about, you know, asking questions and being curious about things. When I was at University of Maryland, there was a classmate of mine in my cloud physics class. Oh, boy. And he said to me, he said, I was working at NASA at the time, and I was in class, and he said, hey, have you ever thought about doing TV? I intern over at NBC4. And

he said, do you ever think about television? I said, no, not really. And so he said, well, you ought to come over, you know, and just see what I do. So, you know, I was doing, supporting a research scientist at NASA. And then I went over to experience NBC, And it's a totally different pace, right? I mean, deadlines all the time. You have to be on at 5.15 and 6.15 and all that stuff. So I wasn't on the air then, I was just creating graphics.

But the pressure is there to create those graphics to be ready for the chief meteorologist at that time to go on the air. And so I just fell in love with, I love doing supporting research at NASA, but I love the fast paceness of news. And so I started to bring some things from NASA over to NBC, like 3D hurricane visualizations. And the meteorologists would put them on the air. And all of a sudden, the researcher at NASA got more funding. So

it's like, wow, this is pretty cool. So, you know, it's that research to operations transition that That's really cool. I love that. I love that aspect. Now, you know, over your both of you over over your times, like your career periods, we've seen a drastic change in our climate. You know, we've been predicting it. You both have probably been predicting it for a while. Hopefully we would never going to see it in our lifetimes. But obviously, it's here we see a lot of consequences due to

climate change. Dave, we'll start with you. From your perspective, did you get a lot, like, were you openly talking about climate change? Maybe not on NBC4, like during your broadcast, but was that a topic of conversation during your time, throughout your career? And Yeah, no, thanks for that question. I think I was exposed to more climate type data as I worked at NASA. And so I almost feel like I grew up at a time when the

discoveries were just happening. And so while I wasn't a scientist, I was, you know, did my undergraduate work, but I wasn't a PhD. like some people. And so, you know, I just would sit there and observe and listen to the scientists talk. And, and so

I knew there was something going on. And then of course, when I got in through college, and then I started doing other work with, you know, weather graphic systems and stuff and training broadcast meteorologists, I would end up teaching them maybe how to integrate some climate information into

their broadcasts. Not formally, but just saying, hey, you know, I mean, you might want to compare how many record highs we've been having with how many we had 10 years ago, you know, and giving them those kinds of ideas that they would take and run with. Love that. I love that. Now, Ellen, you've talked to a lot of people over your time being a science communicator and a marine science communicator. How has your message of climate change changed over

Well, that's again, that's a tough but good question. So, you know, I, when I was doing research, and in some of the labs that I worked in, I was very heavily involved in coral reefs. And I'm not sure, well, I shouldn't say this anymore, I would have said, I'm not sure there's anything that's more obvious, the

impacts of climate change, but that's not true anymore. Now with extreme weather events, What we're seeing, it's very obvious, but with coral reefs, I very early on saw the impacts of climate change and the just extreme consequences of prolonged higher water temperatures and having big mass coral mortality events. Got to the point where it was very hard for me to go diving in places where I had spent a lot of time in coral reefs and to go diving and just see rubble. And it's still very

hard for me. I love coral reefs. It's one of the things that got me into marine science. In graduate school, I worked in coral reefs. And after that, I worked in coral reefs. So I will say, for me, at first, I didn't want to talk about the extremes, because I thought that was too alarmist. I thought, like you said, we probably wouldn't see them in our lifetime, and we had some time to change

our path. But unfortunately, that's not true anymore. And so now I am very willing to talk about the extremes that we're seeing today and that we don't have any time left. We have to make changes now. And so, you know, because you used to hear that, oh, that person is being an alarmist. But I think people between wildfires, flooding, rapid intensification of hurricanes, what's going on with quarries, it's all

very obvious now, the extreme heat. So don't think it's alarmist anymore to say, how big And usually scientists are very conservative, right? They don't want to be on the right side of the bell curve, you And I think in terms of the scientific community, I think you've seen a lot more scientists You know, it's not just climate change is real, but it is dire and Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely more of that alarming messaging coming out from scientists, including myself, because

we have to, you know, because that's what we're seeing. It's really hard to we don't have to predict as much like, oh, it's going to come. It's like the droughts are going to come. The wildfires are they're here and they're worse than than ever. And I think, you know, one thing that I realized from, I think what's happening is people are getting personally touched by it. You

know, especially here, I mean, all over the world. But if we focus on North America, you know, I remember last, right before last year, in 2023, I was saying, you know, in Ontario, we're pretty good. You know, like, considering all the damage that's happened on the West Coast and on the East Coast, like, we're kind of protected a little bit. And we would find, of course, lo and behold, I should have knocked on wood

when I said it. You know, we had the wildfires of our northern barrier forest across Canada, and we started to get smoke from the north. And not only did we get it, but I mean, we saw the images of New York City getting it from northern Quebec, and all that smoke coming in. And now we're saying, OK, now we're starting to, we can't, there's no denying it now that

something's happening. But I find now, and we'll get into it just, because we're going to talk about the book in just a few seconds, I think this is a good segue into it, because you mentioned it on the cover, is you have the words climate change on there. And sometimes that can be a very polarizing phrase to give people, is we're going to talk about climate change now. And some people are like, oh, no, it doesn't exist. There's still some denial. There's still

some, oh, well, we've just got to live with it. We've seen the messaging change from various influences. But do you find, for both of you, and Dave, we can start with you, when you speak to people about climate change, do you find that just saying those words change the way the conversation goes in the first place. Do you ever omit those words and just talk about, look, we're seeing flooding, or we're seeing droughts, or Yeah, I typically don't, you know, go into a room and say, let's

talk climate change. But we do occasionally, you know, somewhat frequently go into places and listen to other people talking. Right. And we do something that would be great for everybody to do. And that is meet them where they are. So as they talk, they might be saying, you know, I, I don't know, I haven't caught anywhere near as many fish as I did this time last year. And you know, you know, we might say, well, what do you think is causing that? You

know, what's the what's the problem? I don't know. I mean, the ocean seems to be pretty warm. Maybe they don't like warm weather, warm water. And so, you know, you can start that conversation. You don't really want to start with a kind of polarizing term so they think that you're going to be trying to teach them something, but just talk to them and ask questions. That's the really key

thing about this book. And what we try to tell everybody we Well, and I think the other part is if we do bring up climate change and somebody says, oh, well, you know, I don't really believe that. And we say, well, Why not? Why not? And in a very, I think it's very important to be respectful and not condescending. And, you know, a lot of times we'll hear somebody say something and we're like, well, why do

you think that? You know, even if it's something we know is wrong on the data, we want to understand where did that information come from? Why is it that they are thinking that way? And so I think it's really important to ask questions and listen to other people and just have a respectful conversation. We've had several of those with people who, when we first started, were really skeptical. And then when, by the end of the conversation, they were like, well, you

know, I think, you know, maybe, maybe you're right. And so, you know, and again, it's also, being able to use the right language. We don't have to speak in science jargony terms to explain, um, you know, what are people's concerns? So all of that, I think we, we try and do that When I think it's really great. I've, I've heard this from, from a lot of other people lately as well. And I had a guest on a Janelle Kelman who she

used to be the mayor of city of Sausalito in California. And now she sits on the, on the city council and she's going to run in 2026 for the, uh, the lieutenant governorship, uh, of California. And she was saying the same thing in the city. She wouldn't mention climate change. She would just kind of like, hey, what's your concern? In your city, talking to her constituents, what's your concern? They'd be like, well, I'm worried about flooding, or I'm worried about wildfires, or I'm

worried about this. OK, let's see what policies we could put in place to stop that. And lo and behold, there would be policies that met up with a lot of the solutions. that you would see people propose for climate change, but you take the word out and sometimes, like you said, you meet them where they are, like, what's your concern? What

are you worried about? You know, and I think that we start to see the answers come out and less of a polarization and more of like, well, yeah, this is affecting you and me at the same time. Locally here, you know, we've been having some crazy weather, you know, as the humidity increases, we've had really, really hot weather. But we've been starting to get squalls, like squall warnings and flash

flooding. And people are concerned that their basements and their backyards and everything is going to continue to flood over time. So we need to make those changes. Forget about climate change. What do we need to do to make those changes? And how do we prepare for Sometimes I get conversations started by saying, hey, let's talk about the And that's when I say, excuse me, why don't I I love it. You never know when you might get that, right? You could be at MIT and somebody comes up and asks

you that. But this leads us great into the book because we talk about asking questions. We talk about being curious. And there are a lot of people who are curious but may not have the ability to get the answers that they want, and not just saying they don't have the intellect, it's trying to find the right answer to things. We were talking about this before we started recording. Social media and the internet has been wonderful in sharing information. But

it doesn't mean you're getting the right information. I remember I grew up without the Internet and in the mid 90s we started to get Internet to our houses and we started to learn more about the Internet. But I remember my teachers, my high school teachers saying, hey, don't always believe what you read on the

Internet. I think that's changed a lot where now we rely so much on the Internet and so much on information that comes to us that we believe sometimes we believe like the first thing that we see or that we Google search or that we, you know, wherever wherever you're searching or watching a video or things like that. It can be very difficult to get that source. And so you can ask that question, but are you going to get the right

answers? You have provided a solution for that by putting together, both of you, putting together this book called Megalodons, Mermaids, and Climate Change, Answers to Your Ocean and Atmospheric Questions. I think it's laid out perfectly. I think this is a book that a lot of people need. Now how, obviously using both of your backgrounds and your careers, what was the reasoning for this book? And like, why So we love to ask questions. I'll have to tell a

little story about Dave. Okay. Let's see, two, two years ago, and it continued this year, I will say, but two years ago, we were at the American Meteorological Society conference for broadcast meteorologists. And every time somebody would give a talk, at the end of the talk, Dave would go up to the mic, I have a question. And they'd be like, Dave Jones, Dave Jones, Dave Jones. So at the break, the moderator, the people organizing the conference at the break, came over to Dave and

It was perfect. The truth is, then a young meteorologist later in the conference got up to the mic, they had a mic in the front, and people wouldn't ask questions. The speaker would stop, nobody was asked. This young woman got up and she said, I'm really very nervous about asking a question, but hearing Dave Jones, I'm going to do it. We both feel that asking questions is really important.

Not only when you're looking at some information online, you want to ask questions and do some investigation, but when you're giving talks, we both do a lot of public speaking, We hate it when nobody asks questions. We want people to ask questions. They may make you look at a subject from a different perspective. They may test you to think in a different way. But it's how we learn. There's a, sort of in the dedication of the book, it says, questions are the lifeblood of learning. And

we really believe that. And so that was That and the idea that there's a lot of misinformation out there. And so we thought, what a great way to combat that misinformation by giving the answers to the questions that we and our colleagues most frequently we get. And plus, kind of have fun with it with using something like the zany questions or things. So we can make it fun and yet very informative. And having 26 nieces and nephews, I get a lot of zany questions too.

Wow, 26 nieces and nephews. That's awesome. That is, let's make family functions a lot of fun. That's a Field hockey. Weather. Weather, yeah, exactly. I love it. I love it. So now, you know, laying out this book, Dave, I know Ellen, you've obviously written quite a number of books. Dave, Well, this is so so here's the thing. I'm really excited about this one because it's it's I know it's going to be my bestseller yet. And okay,

I love it. Well, it must have been nice to because you had Ellen to help you out with the process, right? Like in terms of like, what? Oh, Careful there. She's great. She's awesome. I mean, you know, she would say, hey, I need to learn about thunderstorms and stuff like that. So I'd write something. I'd give her six paragraphs. And she said, We collaborate very well because we both recognize that the other person has expertise that we don't have.

We have the same sense of humor, which is really helpful. We can put in places where we know that they have to be more serious. Whenever we can inject a little humor, we'll put that in. We tend to collaborate very well in that sense. There are things that we each knew a little bit about, but we needed to do some homework on, so that was good too. And between the two of us, we have this amazing network of colleagues that

we could go to for questions. We had folks at NASA on space weather and heliophysics that we actually could contact and we talked to, we sent some sections to. We know this amazing climatologist who reviewed a lot of the science in the book. So that, and they I think that's awesome. Now, were you each the source of the questions for ocean and atmosphere? So Dave, did you ask ocean questions? Well, you know, we might have questions came from, you know, during, we

might have just shared questions. But I think one of the neat things that we did is we, we did talk to colleagues, and we invited colleagues to tell us what are some of the, you know, wacky or zany questions are most frequently asked questions that you get. And, you know, I have a a network of probably, like Ellen was saying, probably 1,500 broadcast meteorologists, you

know, and say, hey, send me some of your, you know, wacky questions. If we use them in the book, we'll tell a little bit about you and stuff like that. And, you know, we work with NASA and NOAA, like Ellen said, so we can turn to some of those, you know, folks that I mean, we got people from the Weather Channel. We got the director of the National You know, we, you know, some people that we know, we got them and to tell

us their favorite questions. And so, you know, there were questions that we've And that was, that was, it was really fun to be able to go out and ask people those, That's amazing. And now when you, when you get to the answers to those questions, you use your backgrounds, you use your colleagues' backgrounds and, and and the work that they've done and all the papers that have come out. You're probably having to search around for new information because obviously

everything's being updated as we speak. How do you put all that together in, you know, a succinct and like, as you mentioned, a little bit of humor at times, a little bit serious at times. How do you put all that together? So it's not one long drawn, you I mean, the good thing about Ellen is from the ocean, she knows everything. So So we, we very purposefully, made sure that the answers are not that long. In fact, in the beginning of the book, we have a little note from us and

tells us a little bit about each of us. But we also say this book is not meant to be a comprehensive encyclopedia about each of these topics. And then what we do at the end of the book for every chapter, we have reference material that we used. And so if people want more detail, they wanted to learn more, they could go there. We just wanted to include in there the essence of the answer. What's the essence of

Yeah, yeah. We didn't want all the professors around the world contacting us, telling us we didn't use the Clausius And then with the illustrations, we had a lot of fun. We would come up with an idea for, you know, an illustration that fit within a topic. And then we would send them to illustrator and we say, here's what our vision is. And she's done it back. We'd be like, she was, she was great. And then her name's Elise Burnbach. And

we'd send it back and we'd ask her, can you do this? And she, it was great working with her. And so we got where we wanted on each of them. And I think there's about 20, 21 illustrations. And then we have some, color Yeah. I mean, most of my questions to Elise were, could I have some muscles? Could you give me some hair, perhaps? That looks like my teeth, but it's really my mustache. So

Very deep, very deep. But it's interesting. I've had the opportunity to talk to a lot of authors where they put together, they collate a lot of information, and they want illustrations to be done. Can you talk about how important it is to have a great working relationship with also a great illustrator to understand the message

you're trying to portray? This one seems like you guys have a great sense of humor, seems like a lot of fun, some of the illustrations sound like they're a lot of fun as well, but it also has to be pertinent Not only do you have to have somebody you can work with, but you have to be able to go back and forth. And she was really good, because I think in our contract it says you have one redo. Right. And I'm like, oh, that's going to be tough. And that was not

the case. I mean, there were a couple at three or four. We have one about lenticular clouds, one of Gay's favorites, that people often think are UFOs, but they're really clouds. And she had the illustration. We just were like, that's not really what they look like. And so we'd say, can you draw them more like this? And we would send her photographs. And we'd say, here's, can it look more like this? And so

it's very important. And again, part of it, and this is also in writing, and when you get to the point of editing things, you have to take your ego out of it. You have to have a good relationship with an illustrator, a good relationship with an editor. It's not about, what you want or what you personally, it's what works the best. What's going to Yeah. And the first, the first time, uh, I met or saw Elise was at a natural hazards conference

in Colorado. And it was really amazing because she, there was a session going on. She was in the, on the side of the room, sketching out in real time, uh, the conversation. And by the end of the session, there was an entire summary with sketches of what we talked about. And it I mean, she drew ecosystems, she drew, you know, the sun and fish and birds and people interacting with Think about this. Think about like the speed and accuracy of the way she's able to do that. Yeah, in that time frame.

It's it's crazy. That's insane. Yeah, I love, I didn't realize how important it was to have an illustrator, I thought having an illustrator, you just have to have an illustrator, you know, but having that working relationship is so important, so it's great Yeah, and to understand your vision, I mean... Yeah. If she thought we just wanted straight illustrations, it probably would have been difficult. But when she figured out that we were looking for the humor bent in

it, it changed it. The illustrations changed a So we have a lot. But one of our favorite ones, and it gets back And so, you know, you want to make sure that the expert you have is really the expert in the topic that you're talking about. So we have an illustration of a cow. There's a veterinarian with a glove, you know, and So the vet Yeah, what do you think? And the vet Yeah. No, climate change isn't real. You know, he's got his arm up there. Yeah. And so it's like, wait a minute. You're not a

scientist or environmental scientist. Yeah. For sure. I love that. I love that. Speaking of that, who is this book designed for? We talked about people who have curiosity, but everybody has curiosity at every different age group. It's always good to – these books tend to target a specific age group and demographic and just audience. Ellen, typically your books in the past have done more like tween Yeah, so I kind of have a range of books. Okay. So I've written young

kids books, which are four to seven illustrated. I've written some middle schooler adventure novels, but I've also written quite a few books that are popular science. And that's what I would call this. It's popular science, which typically It's also there are some very ambitious middle schoolers who would like it too. One of the best audiences will be educators and science communicators, like informal educators, because we So, you know, the target audience is really, I think it's good, nice

and narrowed down range. I like that. But these are questions, I mean, these are questions that are asked by everybody within that age group, right? These are common questions where sometimes like for us scientists, we're sometimes like, well, how

do you not know that? But a lot of people don't know this kind of stuff. That information is not available and they need to know the Here's the thing, too, is that I would get asked this all the time, and it's actually not in this book, but I would get asked all the time, how did you become interested in weather, and how did you figure out it could be a job? Right, yeah. Okay, yeah, it is in the book, but people would say, I love the weather, I just never knew I could

make money at it. And so what I realized early on was that everybody at some point in their life probably wanted to be a meteorologist. Yeah. You know, because they're watching the weather. There's Yeah. It's really they want to be marine biologists. Well, maybe. Maybe. possible. They I have to admit, when I tell people I'm a marine biologist at like parties and things like that, they're telling me, Oh, I always wanted to be a marine, but

I didn't know you can make a career out of it. Exactly. So they're very And then I go into my speech about dolphins, and then they're like, oh, oh, no, I don't want to pay for But you know, it's also really interesting. So we have some wacky questions which we could talk about, but there are also some really important questions in

this book. And I'm going to give you an example, too, that's so related to It just came out that there was a storm in St. Petersburg, Florida, and a group of teens sheltered under a tree. tree got struck by lightning and one of those teens very tragically passed away. People have this misunderstanding that a tree is a safe shelter in lightning and we have a whole chapter on lightning and

a lot of it is about safety. One of the things we very clearly say is do not shelter under a tree because it conducts lightning and it threw the ground and you do not want to be there. So in addition to the wacky and the fun questions and you know, just some other, you know, things I think Oh, yeah. Yeah. And, you know, regarding lightning and trees. I mean, I think, I think a lot of people run under a tree to stay dry.

Right. And they don't want to get wet. But unfortunately, it's a thunderstorm and lightning likes to strike the tallest objects. And, you know, we've seen it. We saw it several years ago, just outside of the White House in Washington, D.C. Four people went under a tree to get away from a storm. Lightning struck And that should not be happening. And it's all about education

and awareness. And so that's, you know, we hope We're answering some fun questions and things that people are curious about, but there are also some really important things about hurricanes, lightning, climate change, all of that. Again, we always say we have a lot of fun, but we also have some really important topics in I think that also goes to what you mentioned earlier, Ellen, was to meet people where they're at. That's a common thing.

Right when you said that I think about you know a soccer field usually there's multiple soccer games going on you're in an open field there may be a few Trees that around a few large trees around you get the downpour people are running they're panicking they're either going to their cars or if they're not like You know they go under a tree and they wait under a tree and then you have some people don't stand on that tree no no it's

fine to stand on that tree no no don't and then you get the sort of the local lore of yes it is good or no it's not and these kids are gonna listen to their parents one way or another because that's their That's their safety net, right? That's what they go for. I agree with you. It's really important that these questions come out again and again and again, even though we think, oh, that's a simple question to answer, but people

don't know, just based off a couple of examples. That could be life-threatening at times, and we don't want to see that, obviously. That's Well, we have, we have sharks are in there. Jellyfish are in there. So is the question about jellyfish, you don't need to pee on somebody's foot Is that, that is a major question. In fact, we even have an, we even have an illustration in there and about that

question. And we explain the science behind why the answer is no. So Well, speaking of questions, like you seem to have a lot of really interesting questions, some fun and some, you know, obviously a serious, uh, Dave, I'm going to ask each of you this, but Dave, I'll ask you first, what was your favorite question

Oh, gosh, well, I did like them all. I think one that's really quite popular now, and it has been for a number of years, when people go outside and they look up and they see jet planes fly over and they see the contrails coming out of the jet plane. Well, there's a certain group of people who think that they are chemtrails. and that the government is spraying us so they can alter our minds to think a certain way. And

of course that's not true. Contrails are condensation trails out of the back of a hot jet engine and it's very cold up there. So you're immediately having the temperature meet the dew point, it creates a cloud, becomes a cirrus cloud made of ice crystals, and sometimes an airplane will fly through a pocket of dry air and so the contrail doesn't form. because it evaporates that moisture right away. But then when it hits air that's more moist and can support a cloud, it will re-show up, right?

And so some people say, aha, they're not spraying there now, but look, they are spraying over here. And so if they would just take a little bit of time to understand some science, then, you know, it might not be so pervasive. So would it be safe to say like a question that I just got from that, I mean, you could probably

answer these questions like all day. You know, you look at areas, say like Arizona, very dry area, is it still dry at those at the sort of the 35,000 feet of a jet that would that That's a great question. So Arizona is very dry at the surface, but the atmosphere, you can think of a whole bunch of layers, like a lot of layers. And each one of those layers can have moisture in them. And so that's what determines levels of clouds that you see

during the day. As a matter of fact, how moist is that layer of the atmosphere to produce a cloud? And where you don't see clouds, where it's clear, it's too dry, or the air is pressing down. That's why high pressures are good, because they're pressing down air and vertical motion creates clouds, descending motion gets So you can have different layers over Arizona and you can see those contrails

I got to get this book, because even I'm learning things off of this. Ellen, I'm going to ask you, and Dave, I apologize before, because I asked you what your favorite question is. Obviously, there's going to be a lot of questions in there that you probably liked, as you mentioned. So Ellen, I'm going to change this So the jellyfish one was one of my favorites. But one of the others, you

already actually mentioned it, is Megalodons. I do a lot of public speaking, and I know you and my colleagues get, you know, well, how do you know that they're not still alive in the deep sea? We've only explored less than 10% of the ocean. You just said that. How do you know they're not down there? And so I go through the scientific evidence as to how we know they are

not still alive. And one of my favorite, you know, there's several lines of evidence, but one is that, as you well know, sharks produce about 40,000 teeth during their lifetime. 40,000 during their lifetime like a conveyor belt. If there were giant sharks with teeth seven inches long producing 40,000 teeth a year, and we know that they liked productive waters in the subtropics, so they're probably pretty close to

shore, we would find some. The only teeth we find are fossilized teeth, millions of years old, so we know they're not still in the modern ocean. And so, you know, giving the actual scientific evidence how we know they're not still alive is really important. So that So the movie The Meg is not real, is what you're trying to It is not. It was fun though. It was fun though. I

watched it. I'm not against... It made a lot of movies. I'm not against those kind of movies where they are so kind of outrageously fun and they're not supposed to be taken as real science. Now, the other kind of things there are the mockumentaries Disclaimer, this is not real three point font going. Yeah, exactly. Nobody can Of course, yeah, cuz there was a famous one. I think we're probably thinking of the same one It was during shark

week. They had like, you know, quote-unquote Noah scientists on there and they weren't real They were just actors and I think they try to play a spoof on everybody and I just remember that the comments after on social media back I'm never going in the ocean again. I can't believe we haven't heard about this before. It's amazing the power of communication and what that can do from an advantageous point of view in education and then what it can do is just put the living fear in everybody from

The power of visualization. The more real you can make something look, the more believable you know people think it is and it's the same thing with with weather if you can we're work doing some work right now trying to make flood levels be as realistic as possible so people understand not their house might be above the water but the road and the critical infrastructure is all going to be messed up so they better evacuate you What I find really interesting to me, and I think this happens a

lot of places, not just in North America, but the amount of the lack of information when people buy houses or move into an area. We have people moving all over countries and halfway across the world now where you can work anywhere in the world. and you don't know where those floodplains are, that were either built over or they're still there, but there's infrastructure there, like you mentioned, Dave, that will get flooded, that's expected to

get flooded. Usually the people who know are the insurance companies or the government, but a lot of residences who buy certain land plots or houses or apartments or whatever that might be, or businesses, and all of a sudden they realize, hey, All of a sudden, my place is being flooded by five feet, or even if it's just a little bit of wet basement. We had a storm here where a storage place, the office got flooded five feet, like insane amounts, and that had never happened

before because those are designed for 100-year storms. But those are happening more and more now. So I find it really interesting how we don't get that. So having a tool like that would be really, really great for that availability for everybody And then you have a husband and wife and kids. They buy a house. They move in. The kids are playing in the backyard. They bring back a whole bucket full of seashells. And they say, look, Dad. Look at all these seashells. He's

like, we don't live near the ocean. What are they doing here? It's Now, this is a book that answers, how many questions do you answer? Do

you know the number? we actually have never counted wow no i assume it's quite a bit i assume it's more than a lot there's a lot yeah that's our answer a lot a lot okay so now obviously this is not like a finite amount of questions there are a lot of other questions that you can answer i know this is you know we're talking about releasing this as the as the first edition do you think you know is there a will and a want to do Another edition

and obviously it'll make make sure that after a lot of people buy this you'll probably like yes Let's do this again, but do you think there will be opportunities to follow up this with answering more questions? Well my thought in the beginning Since I'm not the main writer, I think we should do a whole bunch of them. In all seriousness, I think the book will kick off, hopefully, a

lot more curiosity and a lot more questions that people have. And I think that our networks between marine and ocean and atmosphere, I anticipate getting contacted by people saying, you should ask this, or you should ask this. And so hopefully, the momentum of the book will just kind of drop the second volume in our laps. And we just have to say, well, let's We'll see. But the publisher will come back and say, you have to do a After my last popular science book, I said, Dave, I

was exhausted. I was like, it's a lot of work. I was like, if I ever say I'm going to do another one of these books, smack me over the head. Then it was like two months later, hey, I think I have this really good idea. Didn't you say I should smack you if you ever said OK, now let's do it. I'm in. I'm in. Well, I love it. I think this is great. And it's available for pre-sale. It's coming out in October 2024. It's

available for pre-sale right now. I'm going to put the link to the Amazon link for everybody so that they can go buy

it. I highly recommend to buy this. I know I'm going to be buying a few copies and giving them out to some people because I think it's really interesting if you're a like I would say if you're a teacher if you're an educator and any kind of so these are great to buy not just one but by four students give them away share them with people because I think this is a book that's really really necessary I'm so happy that both of you uh... wrote this book and answer

these questions i know it it definitely you look at that range i was think all kids need to learn about this but here i am a scientist of forty five all turned but turned forty six be like now i gotta get this book i gotta read this kind of stuff i think this is uh... this is definitely needed, as I mentioned, and I'm really happy that you all decided to do this. And so thank you. Thank you for coming on and sharing this. The energy between you is awesome. I love having you on.

Feel free to come back. Let us know how it goes and other projects as well. I'd love to chat with both of you again. So thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ellen. And thank you, Dave, for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. The energy that these two bring to the table and to this podcast is electrifying. No pun intended,

but it is electrifying. You know, you have to admit if you've listened to that entire episode and you listen to that interview, you realize you're like, wow, these people are quite entertaining, but they have the knowledge to help you get

educated on a lot of these questions that people have. You yourself might have, other people you may not realize these questions needed to be answered or you didn't know the answer to them maybe and that's something that is really handy about this book so with that said I am going to put the link to this book which comes out in October 2024 but you can pre-order it and I highly recommend that you pre-order a couple because you want to give some of these away some of them

maybe to some you know nieces and nephews maybe you want to give away to your kids maybe you want to give away to your grandkids but if you have any child or anybody at any age who's curious about the ocean and the atmosphere, one or the other or both, I think this book is for them. So I'm gonna recommend it to everybody to go out and buy that book. The link is in the show notes or in the comments below, depending if you're listening to this on YouTube or audio-wise or on Spotify. It

doesn't matter. There's gonna be a link in there for you to pre-order. I highly recommend that you pre-order a couple and hopefully there'll be more books coming out in the future. There is an audiobook coming out too and you're going to love that as well. So lots of ways to purchase this. I can't wait for you to purchase this. Let me know what you think of the book and how excited you are for the book and please review it. But this is going to be one of those books that I feel is going to be

a resource for a lot of people in the future. So that's it for today's episode. You know, if you want to stay in touch, please follow, subscribe on your favorite podcast app and leave comments. I'd love to hear what you thought of the episode, whether you're on YouTube, Spotify, or if you want to get ahold of me, you can do so by going to my Instagram at howtoprotecttheocean, all one word, and just DMing me. Love to hear from you. And I want to also thank Ellen

and Dave for joining us as well, of course. And thank you for joining us on this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Have a great day. We'll talk to you