One giant leap: For meteorology & climate communication

As a leading international expert in weather and climate and Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor of Geography and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Georgia, James Marshall Shepherd knows a lot about climate, and just as importantly, how to talk about it. We chatted with Marshall about the emerging problem of science delayism, being a black man in science, and obtaining the science EGOT.

This episode was produced by Zoe Swiss and Shane M Hanlon, and mixed by Collin Warren. Artwork by Karen Romano Young. Interview conducted by Ashely Hamer.

Transcript

Shane Hanlon:              00:00                Hi, Vicky.

Vicky Thompson:           00:01                Hi, Shane.

Shane Hanlon:              00:03                We’re going back to questions, or just quizzing you.

Vicky Thompson:           00:03                I just love it.

Shane Hanlon:              00:06                No, questions this week; we quizzed last week. If you could be a TV personality, what would you be? Or who would you be? I have no better explanation.

Vicky Thompson:           00:19                I feel like I want to have a daytime talk show. I want to be Drew Barrymore.

Shane Hanlon:              00:24                Oh my God. That’s exactly who I thought of first. Yeah.

Vicky Thompson:           00:27                Really?

Shane Hanlon:              00:28                What would your talk show be called? And what would differentiate it from other talk shows?

Vicky Thompson:           00:38                Oh my gosh. Why are you asking me these questions? Like I’m supposed to-

Shane Hanlon:              00:42                Because I was going to say I’m a journalist.

Vicky Thompson:           00:45                What would we be called?

Shane Hanlon:              00:45                I’m not a journalist, but I’m kind of a journalist. It’s my job to ask questions and to interview people and to interrogate.

Vicky Thompson:           00:51                Yeah, that’s true. Okay. I guess it would be called something. Oh man, that’s so hard. I want to have a really good, thoughtful, smart name because now I feel like if I say it out loud, then this is going to be my show. I can’t ever have another show.

Shane Hanlon:              00:51                Okay. Well, maybe we’ll come back to it at the end of the episode.

Vicky Thompson:           01:10                Okay, okay, I’ll think about it.

Shane Hanlon:              01:11                You think while we’ll record the rest of this today.

Vicky Thompson:           01:11                Okay.

Shane Hanlon:              01:12                All right.

Vicky Thompson:           01:13                Okay. I could do it.

Shane Hanlon:              01:18                Again, in the tried and true tradition of creating these prompts and then not actually thinking about them for myself, but I don’t know if I’d want to be on TV or even on video. I don’t get as squeamish, I guess, as some people do about seeing themself on film, lowercase film. I actually like what I’m doing. I like being a podcast personnel. That’s weird to say. But I do like it. I’d be on radio. I don’t know if I’d be good at live radio. But yeah, I don’t know, I like talking about science with you, if that’s corny.

Vicky Thompson:           02:03                Oh. Oh, it is corny.

Shane Hanlon:              02:05                Okay, we’re done. Science is fascinating, but don’t just take my word for it. Join us as we hear stories from scientists for everyone. I’m Shane Hanlon.

Vicky Thompson:           02:21                And I’m Vicky Thompson.

Shane Hanlon:              02:23                And is his Third Pod from the Sun. All right. Well, I asked you about being on TV because our interviewee today isn’t on TV, at least that’s not his full-time job, but folks often think he should be based on his profession.

Vicky Thompson:           02:43                Oh, so does he sometimes have a daytime talk show then?

Shane Hanlon:              02:46                That would be cool. I would love a-

Vicky Thompson:           02:52                [inaudible 00:02:52].

Shane Hanlon:              02:51                I was going to say a science-based daytime talk show host, but I’m sure that thing exists in the world. We are still in the sciences, not talk show host. And regardless of what folks might think based on our meandering introductions, so let’s just hear from him and get into the sciencey part of this. Our interviewer was Ashley Hamer.

Dr. Marshall Sh…:         03:21                I am Dr. Marshall Shepherd. I am the Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor at the University of Georgia and the director of the Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of Georgia. Been there for about 15 years. I also host a podcast myself for the Weather Channel called Weather Geeks. And I’m a senior contributor to Forest Magazine as well.

                                    03:41                Yeah, I was always that kid in the yard catching insects and down by creeks and streams looking at minnows and crawfish and those types of things, so was just always curious about what was going on around me. I was an only child, so I spent a lot of time, frankly, by myself out in the yard and just doing things to entertain myself. That’s always been my story as a science interested kid. I was particularly interested in being an entomologist until I got popped by a honeybee one day catching them in my yard and found out I was highly allergic to them. And so over time, I switched to my interest to a focus on weather and did a sixth grade science project on weather, and that’s how I got bitten, pun intended, by the weather bug.

Ashley Hamer:              04:22                Amazing. Wait, but how did that happen, going from bugs to weather? What?

Dr. Marshall Sh…:         04:26                Yeah, because the sixth grade science project fair was coming up, and I said, “Well, I can’t do my science project on bees anymore because they could kill me,” and so I said, “Let’s switch to weather.” And so I made weather instruments from things we had around the house, started taking weather observations and developed a little weather model for my community. And so it won the science fair.

Shane Hanlon:              04:50                We’ve talked about this before, but remind me because if I forget, everyone else probably forgets; what’s a favorite science fair or memorable science fair experiment that stood out to you in your youth?

Vicky Thompson:           05:04                Oh, yeah. I think when we talked about it before, I talked about my balsa wood tower that needed to suspend weight.

Shane Hanlon:              05:12                Oh, yes, yes. Okay.

Vicky Thompson:           05:12                Yes. I think that’s the only one I could remember. If there was anything else, I don’t remember.

Shane Hanlon:              05:20                What’s so interesting about this, because I do remember this discussion we talked about I would make bridges and things to hold up, but honestly, I remember two science fair experiments, and one was about sound and one was about magnets. But I’m sure that neither of them were interesting.

Vicky Thompson:           05:36                Oh, okay. I’m less excited.

Shane Hanlon:              05:37                But I’m sure we did many, many more. And considering me especially, I went on to be a, quote, unquote, “scientist.” Maybe that says something about why I’m podcasting in my basement now instead of actually researching.

Vicky Thompson:           05:54                Oh, boy.

Shane Hanlon:              05:55                But to get back to the interview, here’s actually the part of that interview that our, again, meandering prompt actually set up.

Dr. Marshall Sh…:         06:05                When I tell people I’m a meteorologist, people immediately ask what channel am on or ask me what the forecast is tomorrow. I’m like, “Only 6% to 8% of meteorologists are TV meteorologists.” There’s a whole nother world of meteorologists at the National Weather Service and in private companies like Delta Air Lines or energy companies or researchers in EPA, NASA and so forth. And so that was the side of the house I was always most interested in. I did not have any mentors that were telling me that, but I read a lot about Dr. George Washington Carver, who was a peanut scientist at Tuskegee Institute. And so he inspired me on the research side. And then I just started doing my research and homework and said, “Okay, where’s a good place I could go to college to study meteorology at that level?” And so turns out that Florida State University was one of the top programs, and it happened to be in the south. I’m from the Atlanta area.

Ashley Hamer:              06:54                Nice. You said George Washington Carver was an inspiration. Were there people that you wished you had seen for inspiration?

Dr. Marshall Sh…:         07:02                No, because as a young Black scientist, you just didn’t see that. And so that’s one of the challenges that I try to overcome for others today. And the demographic that I come from, the socioeconomic culture that I come from, people weren’t scientists. You didn’t see scientists, and particularly the ones that look like me, so I had to find a mentor through books in the library reading about Dr. George Washington Carver. Now, I knew about him because my mother went to Tuskegee Institute herself; she was an alum, so that’s how I had been introduced to who he was. And then I just read a ton of books about him for my inspiration.

                                    07:38                Even today, in terms of very underrepresented numbers in science, particularly my science, and to this day, and it was even worse back then. You just had to make your own way. And it’s still that way. And so I just started doing the things I needed to do to make sure I could get into Florida State and the prosper in a meteorology program because quiet is kept, meteorology is a lot of physics, fluid dynamics, calculus, and so forth, thermodynamics, and so you have to be really good at those topics. You have to take Calc One, Calc Two, and Calc Three, you have to take a lot of physics, thermodynamics, and so you’ve got to prepare yourself. I started making sure I was going to be able to withstand the rigor of an atmospheric sciences degree because even today, I have kids that walk out of my office saying, “Oh, I love clouds,” or, “I want to storm chase,” or, “I like hurricanes.” And I said, “That’s good, but that’s not what meteorology really is and atmospheric sciences.”

                                    08:28                But it is true that people just think we look at clouds or hold our finger up or some… The atmosphere is a fluid on a rotating body, so it’s governed by the same fluid dynamics equations that govern any fluid flow. And so it’s a lot of thermodynamics and fluid dynamics and atmospheric physics and quantum physics. And the models that we use for weather prediction are solving the Navier-Stokes equation, so there are integration problems involving calculus. It’s actually one of the more quantitative sciences on a college campus, but people come in with their own biases of what they think it is.

Ashley Hamer:              09:04                Right. What kinds of things are you discovering in your research?

Dr. Marshall Sh…:         09:09                I’ve been acknowledged with things like the Presidential Early Career Award at the White House and for the AMS Landsberg Award for the work I’ve done on how urban environments, how cities impact weather, particularly thunderstorms and rainfall. That’s what I’m known for in terms of my research. But I’ve also published something on hurricanes, something called the Brown Ocean Effect, which is this idea that hurricanes can re-intensify or maintain their intensity when they move over land if the soil is wet or if it’s over a wetland or a swampy region; that’s called the brown ocean effect. My research group is fairly well known for that. We’ve done research on climate vulnerability and risk, looking at who’s most vulnerable to climate extremes like heat waves, floods, drought, and so forth. We have some new research going on right now looking at who’s most vulnerable to or living in urban heat islands and why that has happened over the last few decades as well.

                                    10:07                Our research is not intended to improve weather prediction all the time, sometimes it’s just about improving understanding or building better models. But yeah, I guess you could say that. For example, the work we’ve done on how cities can create their own thunderstorms, now, that catches people off guard, but sometimes in the summertime, cities like Atlanta or Houston literally are creating their own thunderstorms. And so we know that from a research standpoint, so how do we better predict that?

                                    10:32                I just published a paper in the peer reviewed literature on some clues and signs about the atmosphere that can help determine that. But a lot of times, research is also just trying to improve models. I spent a good portion of my career at NASA working on large satellite missions that would help us better understand the weather climate and hydrological or water cycle system. Just from a purely understanding standpoint, how does a soil moisture in the land communicate with the atmosphere? That’s the side of the house I’ve always been on in the meteorological community, research and development, from the standpoint of understanding.

Shane Hanlon:              11:14                Vicky, did you know that cities could create their own thunderstorms?

Vicky Thompson:           11:19                I did not know that, but I feel like it’s one of those things that you just never ever think about, but it makes great sense. You can imagine the science behind it.

Shane Hanlon:              11:29                Yeah, ditto. Are we not curious people? Is that a bad thing? Or should we be more curious about things?

Vicky Thompson:           11:37                Oh, there’s so many things to be curious about.

Shane Hanlon:              11:37                True.

Vicky Thompson:           11:39                We can’t blame ourselves for not being curious about every single thing.

Shane Hanlon:              11:44                Fair enough. Yeah. And frankly, I didn’t know about this either, but to your point, yeah, when you started thinking about it, it does make sense. And Marshall, he talked a lot about the research he’s done, including some of the stuff he just mentioned, but frankly, things for him weren’t always that easy.

Dr. Marshall Sh…:         12:06                I remember one of the things that was really interesting to me is I met my wife in grad school, and to get a PhD, you have to take something called your comprehensive exams, and so I remember one time being concerned that I was going to fail those because I was trying to date her, and so spending a lot of time going out on dates and things like that. But no, luckily I did pass those.

                                    12:24                I’ve been pretty blessed in the sense that I don’t know that I’ve had major setbacks. You have setbacks in your career. For example, as a publishing scientist and professor, you submit research to peer reviewed journals, and oftentimes they get rejected. And so every scientist at some point in their career has to get over this idea that, oh, wow, that research that I just submitted, I thought it was really sound and methodologically appropriate and so forth, but then you got this anonymous group of experts that are saying, “No, you did something wrong there. You didn’t think about this.” And so I think that’s one of the biggest challenges for many early career scientists, including myself when I was younger.

                                    13:04                Another challenge I’ve just faced is, I alluded to it earlier, just being an African American in this field, I’ve had some challenges with people making assumptions about why I was in certain places, or did I deserve to be there? Or I had a group of people walk up to me, I was president of AMS at the time, and I was standing there with a group of people in suits, and they assumed I was the airport shuttle driver for whatever reason, not the other three people standing with me. Those were challenges that I’ve faced over the years as well. But

Ashley Hamer:              13:33                Yeah. Yeah, I’ve definitely heard stories from Black academics who are turned away at their own institutions when they go in on a weekend or something. It’s just ridiculous.

Dr. Marshall Sh…:         13:44                Yeah, we deal with those kinds of things. I’ve written in Forbes about an experience, a couple of experience that I had that. I was driving in a rental car when I was at NASA one time and was pulled over and told I matched the description of car thieves in the area. Yeah, those are just realities. And I don’t say those for people listening to just to say, “Oh, poor thing.” No, that’s not what I’m saying. I just want people to understand that I’m considered one of the top climate scientists in the world, and yet I still deal with things like that. It’s just important to understand so that we can all move forward.

                                    14:13                That’s why I wrote a book in 2020 called The Race Awakening of 2020: A Six Step Guide for Moving Forward. And I tried to just answer questions for people in terms of how we all can… No matter who we are and what our backgrounds are, how we can be better stewards and citizens of each other. I’m a big fan of ’80s music. You’re way too young and maybe even know who this group is, but there’s a group called Depeche Mode, and they had a song called People or People back in the mid-’80s, and if you just listen to the lyrics of that song, it really is how we should all live.

Ashley Hamer:              14:44                Oh, that’s great. I’m going to have to refresh my memory on that one. I know Depeche Mode, but that song-

Dr. Marshall Sh…:         14:49                It’s totally a song that is relevant, at least the lyrics are, to the times that we live in, particularly in a post George Floyd era, which was my inspiration for writing that book.

Ashley Hamer:              14:58                That’s great. Well, what about personal achievements that you’re most proud of? Do you have any of those?

Dr. Marshall Sh…:         15:03                My family. My personal achievements I’m most proud of is the fact that I have a beautiful wife and two healthy kids that are doing well. But I would say professionally, last year, in 2021, I got a triple whammy, I was totally surprised by it and that I was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences all in the same year. Now, most scientists, their entire career won’t be elected to any of those, and I was elected to all three, so that was stunning. And so that clearly is one of the pinnacle achievements of my career because I wrote a Forbes article trying to explain to people perhaps that aren’t our field or in sciences what that means. I was like, “That’s basically getting the Academy Award or Grammy Award in music for sciences or engineering.”

Ashley Hamer:              15:52                Yeah. Yeah, it’s like the EGOT of science or something.

Dr. Marshall Sh…:         15:56                Yes.

Ashley Hamer:              15:57                That’s amazing.

Shane Hanlon:              16:04                My question to you, Vicky, is do you think you could ever win an EGOT? The traditional one: Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony. Do you have those skills?

Vicky Thompson:           16:15                I feel like, well, if they lowered the standards hugely, then maybe. I feel like-

Shane Hanlon:              16:22                Emmy’s, show, Grammy’s, music, Oscars, movie, Tony, is performance, theater performance.

Vicky Thompson:           16:30                Yeah. Yeah. I used to do a little stage acting, high school musicals, except for not the musical, the afternoon matinee only, not the headliner. And I feel like I’m a natural entertainer.

Shane Hanlon:              16:48                You were in the ensemble of the matinee?

Vicky Thompson:           16:54                Yes. Just the furthest from the furthest to the back.

Shane Hanlon:              16:57                Yeah. Again, I’ve done all of the things that one could require, or or all of these things. But yeah, for me, the answer is hard no, hard no.

Dr. Marshall Sh…:         17:10                One of the things that I’ve really starting to get more into is we’re looking more at how urban heat islands, this fact that cities can tend to be warmer than surrounding rural areas, we’re starting to do some things that are more in the field, if you will, in terms of how these things are disproportionately affecting certain people living in them. We’ve already identified that there’s certain marginalized groups that are disproportionately exposed to heat in cities.

                                    17:37                But something that I think that’s going to be really exciting for me is we’re starting to now explore something called thermal hydrological heat islands. We know that cities are warmer because of all the pavement and parking lots and things, but when it rains, that rain runs off on those hot surfaces and pavement into streams. And so you have this situation where this warm water, because of the city is running off into streams, lakes, and the ecosystem and is affecting the ecosystem because that water is warmer. With this new line of research on these hydrological heat islands, that may actually get me closer to getting to streams and creeks, which is one of the things that I used to do quite a bit of as a kid, just go and hang out and play around those little streams and creeks. I also really want to get to the Amazon one day because it’s just a fascinating region to me, period, but it also has a very important impact on our global weather and climate system as well.

Ashley Hamer:              18:39                Yeah. Oh man, yeah, same. The Amazon sounds incredible.

Dr. Marshall Sh…:         18:44                Yeah, it’s really fascinating. We call it the Green Ocean because it provides so much water to the atmosphere that affects the global weather climate patterns around the world.

Ashley Hamer:              18:54                What do you see as one of the biggest challenges in science?

Dr. Marshall Sh…:         18:58                One of the biggest challenges I see today in science is the Wikipedia university, blog state university and Twitter tech. This idea that people actually think they know as much about or understand as much about science as the experts. I get people all the time give me these cliche, what I call zombie theories about climate change. I call them zombie theories because they just live on on Twitter and blogs, although the science has dismissed those things long ago. There are tons and tons of these zombie theories. Oh, it hasn’t warmed since 1998, or, you said it was going to cool and we were going to go into an ice age in a 1970s. Or scientists just are saying that it’s a hoax, they’re just saying this for grant money. Or it’s the solar cosmic ray from the sun, or solar radiation from the sun that’s causing… All of these things have been long refuted in the science. There are clear explanations for all of these zombie theories.

                                    19:56                I even have a TED talk out there called Slaying the Climate Zombies where I deal with some of these. And then my more recent TED talk is on three things that shape people’s perceptions of science. I invite the listeners to look up either of those TED Talks. There are also some really good websites out there, like skepticalscience.com, or I think it’s called realclimate.org that actually are sites that will answer and refute many of these zombie theories that are out there.

                                    20:26                I’ve heard them all in the Waffle House, I’ve heard them all at the highest levels, from the Waffle House to the White House. I testified before Congress. I’ve been at meetings at the White House, so there’s really nothing that anyone can say about climate denialism or skepticism that I have not heard at this point. And the new thing that we’re dealing with, just to circle back to your question about challenges, is we’re dealing with what we call climate delayism, this idea that you’ve seen the narrative evolve to climate change is not real to, okay, maybe it’s real, but it’s not that bad to now climate delayism, which is where certain groups are attacking the solutions and trying to delay action on the solutions that we know need to take place to beat back the climate crisis.

Ashley Hamer:              21:13                Yeah, that’s not one that I’ve heard. Yeah. But it-

Dr. Marshall Sh…:         21:16                Climate delay. I was just invited to the White House about three or four weeks ago for a special conference among 18 or so scientists to talk about how we can overcome climate delayism. And I think the earth is showing us that climate is changing in our weather and sea level and arctic ice and agricultural productivity, all the things that affect our, what I call kitchen table issues in our homes. I like polar bears, they’re cute, but this is not about polar bears for me, this is about food productivity and water supply and national security and our economy, things that are happening right now, not happening to the polar bears or not happening in the year 2080. Those are messages that I’ve tried to convey when we talk about climate change. And so we know that these things are happening, and I firmly believe we need an Apollo or Manhattan Project level effort on climate in the same way we tackle those problems because it’s here and now, it’s impacting us, and it’s likely only going to amplify.

Ashley Hamer:              22:12                Do you have any advice for a person who might want to follow in your footsteps?

Dr. Marshall Sh…:         22:18                Be sure to be skillful at writing, speaking, persuasive arguments, these skills that you may not necessarily attribute with being a scientist, because we have to move the science out of the ivory tower into the policy space, into practitioner space and so forth. That’s some of the biggest advice I would give today be. And also be versatile, don’t be very narrow. I think we are in an era of interdisciplinary science. Though I study weather and climate, I work with geographers and epidemiologists and hydrologists, social scientists that are trying to understand how people perceive risk and weather communication. Increasingly, we are in a world of interdisciplinarity, and so I don’t think the next generation of scientists should be as siloed or narrowly focused as perhaps what we’re going to need going forward.

Shane Hanlon:              23:24                All right, Vicky, bringing everything back around to the beginning, have you thought about what your daytime talk show would be called?

Vicky Thompson:           23:33                Yes, I have, but I feel like I need a marketing team to think it out with me. I have the first idea that we might put on the dry erase board, and then we can brainstorm it.

Shane Hanlon:              23:45                You’re really burning a lead here.

Vicky Thompson:           23:47                What?

Shane Hanlon:              23:48                You’re burning a lead.

Vicky Thompson:           23:49                Oh, that’s my habit. Something about Synapse. I feel like the space in between thoughts would be the theme of my talk show.

Shane Hanlon:              24:01                Would it be about science?

Vicky Thompson:           24:03                Oh. No, that’s why I feel like it needs a more… Maybe it could be. There could be a science segment.

Shane Hanlon:              24:08                I love that you would have a sciencey name that would have nothing to do with science. Yeah, I feel like the marketing department would either love this or just be like, “Vicky, what are you doing out of here? What’s going on here?

Vicky Thompson:           24:20                Get out of here. I’m taking your show away from you. Well, just something that would convey the space between thoughts, where. That kind of state.

Shane Hanlon:              24:28                It’s very clever. I do. I’m giving you crap for it. But no, that’s quite lovely. Maybe we’ll have a special episode where you’re in the lead, and we can have you have your title, and we can just treat it like a audio version of a talk… I love the fear in your eyes right now.

Vicky Thompson:           24:50                Well, I feel like my thoughts are so disconnected sometimes that I would need to draw a map that people could clutch while they listen so that they wouldn’t feel completely lost.

Shane Hanlon:              25:03                It’s why we edit this podcast, Vicky, for you and me both, and for all of our listeners. Oh, man. With that, that is all from Third Pod from the Sun.

Vicky Thompson:           25:14                Special thanks to Ashley Hamer for conducting the interviews, and to NASA for sponsoring the series.

Shane Hanlon:              25:20                This episode was produced by Zoe Swiss and me with audio engineering from Colin Warren, artwork by Karen Romano Young.

Vicky Thompson:           25:28                We’d love to hear your thoughts, so please rate and review us. And you can find new episodes in your favorite podcasting app, or at thirdpodfromthesun.com.

Shane Hanlon:              25:36                Thanks all, and we’ll see you next week.

                                    25:44                All right. Well, I asked you about being on TV because our interviewee today isn’t on TV, or at least that’s not his full-time job. But folks often think he should be based on his profession.

Vicky Thompson:           25:59                Oh, okay. Obviously in the science, might be on TV, sometimes on TV. Maybe a meteorologist?

Shane Hanlon:              26:09                All right, Vicky, you, you’re not actually supposed to guess it. We need to do this again.

Vicky Thompson:           26:12                Oh, come on.

Shane Hanlon:              26:13                No. No, because that’s-

Vicky Thompson:           26:14                Oh, because I want to say-

Shane Hanlon:              26:15                What do you want to say? What do yo want to say?

Vicky Thompson:           26:18                Well, because I want to say, because I immediately am thinking about Mr. Wizard. No, he’s always on TV, was always. Bill Nye. Do you know Mr. Wizard?

Shane Hanlon:              26:18                I don’t know Mr. Wizard.

Vicky Thompson:           26:18                Are you kidding?

Shane Hanlon:              26:18                Who’s Mr. Wizard?

Vicky Thompson:           26:35                I guess I am older than you. It’s okay, it’s just another thing for you to Google.

Shane Hanlon:              26:40                This episode’s just going to be outtakes. We’re just going to do it.

Vicky Thompson:           26:40                Oh my gosh, I can’t believe-

Shane Hanlon:              26:43                Who’s Mr. Wizard?

Vicky Thompson:           26:45                He’s Bill Nye before Bill Nye.

Shane Hanlon:              26:48                Bill Nye’s pretty old.

Vicky Thompson:           26:53                In age, but-

Shane Hanlon:              26:53                Just to be clear, we joke about age. You’re only, what, a couple years older than me? We’re not generationally split.

Vicky Thompson:           27:01                I’m barely older than you. Yeah. Mr. Wizard. Oh, yeah. Oh, okay, yes these are black and white pictures. He was-

Shane Hanlon:              27:13                You’re just older in spirit than I am.

Vicky Thompson:           27:17                [inaudible 00:27:17].

Shane Hanlon:              27:17                Mr. Wizard.

Vicky Thompson:           27:21                Oh. Oh yeah, it was from 1951 to 1965. He was a TV Bill Nye.

Shane Hanlon:              27:26                Okay.

 

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