Curiosity and the Cosmos: Paul M. Sutter’s Path from Science to Space

0:02 Hello and welcome to no Wrong Choices, the podcast that explores the career journeys of interesting and accomplished people in pursuit of great stories and actionable insights. I'm Larry Samuels, and in just a moment I'll be joined by my co-hosts, tushar Saxena and Larry Shea. But before we kick off, we have a small favor to ask If you enjoy what we do, please take a moment to support us by following no Wrong Choices on your favorite podcast platform, such as Spotify, apple Podcasts or YouTube. We also ask that you connect with us on LinkedIn, facebook, instagram Threads and X, or by visiting our website at norongchoicescom. On our site, you can sign up for our subscriber list or explore our blog, which digs into each one of the episodes that we're putting forward.

0:49 Your support helps us keep bringing these great stories to light. Now let's get started. This episode features the theoretical cosmologist, paul M Sutter. Larry Shea is the person who brought Paul to us. Can you please tell us what that means? I can't at all, and I'm going to make sure that Paul tells us exactly what it means. Look, we've been trying to get somebody on the show for a long time who's like this right, whether that be an astronaut or a theoretical cosmologist, whatever the case may be, I'm fascinated with the universe. I'm fascinated with the way the universe works, the physics of it and, funny enough, you know, we reached out to do this booking and we're thrilled when he came back and said he would do it and the day I got confirmation of the booking, I'm watching one of my favorite programs called how the Universe Works, and who pops on my screen?

1:45 But Paul M Sutter, giving his opinion about, you know, dark matter. It was meant to be Dark matter and space and time, and yeah, so this guy is going to be super cool. We're going to have a really good time. He's super smart and really personable, we're hoping, so. I'm hoping he sheds some light on this fascinating career choice. I have to admit I don't know about you guys, but I'm kind of intimidated to speak to this guy because he is so smart. That's probably going to be one of the first questions I ask him Are we smart enough to actually speak to you? Because, let's be honest, you know he's mulling over the questions about how the universe started and it's it's so rare to have the opportunity to speak to someone of such a caliber, um, and kind of, you know, literally pick his brain about hey, how did you get into this?

2:34 What does it mean to get into this? And in a lot of ways, you know, I gotta be. I'd have to think that he was always the smartest kid in the room. Uh, you know, even at this, this moment. So what's that like? Well, definitely in this moment. Oh yeah, you're right, speaking to us three, absolutely the smartest guy in the room. But you know, for the most part, you know what's that like to be the smartest person in the room, like all the time. Well, let's find out. Here is Paul M Sutter Now joining. No Wrong Choices is the theoretical cosmologist Paul M Sutter. Paul might be the busiest person on earth, or at least close to it, as he A advises NASA and the Department of Energy, hosts a variety of science shows on TV and digital, is an author, hosts a successful podcast, contributes to countless publications and is a globally recognized leader in the intersection of art and science.

3:30 And, believe it or not, I left out a ton of stuff. Paul, thank you so much for joining us. Oh, thank you so much for having me, and I always have time for wonderful conversations like this All right. So, Paul, before we actually get into your background, the one thing we were talking before we got out, before we started speaking to you, was are the three of us collectively smart enough to speak to you after looking at your resume? No, I it's. This is weird because there is, I will admit, in academia, among scientists, I admit, a certain degree of snobbery. It's not easy to get a PhD in physics or astronomy or any of the hard sciences, and so we do like to wave around our PhDs and our doctorates.

4:14 But where I find a lot of my fellow scientists failing when it comes to science communication and sharing what they've learned and engaging the public with what they've learned is assuming that other people are dumb and that they are empty vessels that you simply pour scientific knowledge into and then they will. Once that task is complete, they will come to the correct conclusion. It turns out that people are very intelligent, very smart, know when they're being lied to, know when they're being talked down to and spoken down to, and are very complex and come to their beliefs and their knowledge through a bunch of complicated twisting pathways, scientists included, and so I have a great deal of faith in the intelligence of my fellow humans.

5:07 Obviously, you've not spoken with us before. Okay, yeah, that may be broken. That may be broken. You know, this is a hypothesis that I test with every interaction. I love it. I love it All right, so let's start with. You know yourself better than anyone, obviously, so why don't you take a second and just describe to the folks what it is that you do for a living, professionally? Who is Paul? M Sutter professionally. If I had to summarize it, it would be I am a searcher and a sharer. So I am deeply and intensely curious about the way the universe works. I've just always been fascinated by it. I know we'll dig into this. I've always been curious.

5:47 I like to say. Scientists like myself are people who refuse to grow up. We just maintain that childlike curiosity. So I'm always asking. I always love learning new things and then I also love the sound of my own voice and I love talking and I love sharing and I love teaching and I love igniting a spark in other people and sharing that passion with them and seeing them get all ramped up and like, oh my, tell me more, I want to learn more, how can I find out more? And like that's a very, very special place for me. And so in my professional career I have tried to develop both of these sides of me, both the searching side, which I accomplish in my science and also in my writing, and then in the sharing and just getting it out there.

6:38 All right. So let's take it back, then, to the beginning. As you said, you're an adult who's never had the chance to grow up. So then at some point, when you were a child, looking up at the stars, you said wow, you were just fascinated by what you saw. So what was that moment like? And? And at that time, and how old were you? And at that moment did you say to yourself this is kind of what I want to spend the rest of my life doing, even as a young child? yeah, yeah, as a young child there, there was no point like that. There was no moment. I was a super nerd growing up and what I remember about my childhood is I would read nonstop. I was devouring any book I could get my hands on.

7:21 I was reading nonstop science fiction novels, but then I was also reading any book about science, any nonfiction book about history, about astronomy, about paleontology, about genetics. I just remember books being this source for me. Um, where I, you know I go, I go to school, I would learn and, you know, I would take the test and I would just want to know more. I just always wanted to, you know, expand a topic just a little bit more. I just wanted to always want to dig in a little bit deeper, and books were my avenue for that. But growing up, uh, I was fascinated by the night sky, but I was also fascinated by dinosaurs and optics and chemical reactions.

8:09 The usual kid stuff, all of it. The usual kid stuff. And throughout my childhood, though, I grew up in rural Ohio, a town called Lancaster Ohio, southeast of Columbus. First I lived in Cleveland, then, when I was eight years old, we moved to central Ohio. It's just a rural town, decent-sized city, but not exactly connected to the rest of the world, especially high-powered academia and science. When you think elite science institutions, you do not think Lancaster Ohio.

8:51 Sorry, lancaster Ohio, you're wonderful in some ways, but that is not one of them. I never, growing up all the way through my teenage years, made the connection that I could be a scientist. I just had this curiosity. I loved reading, I loved learning, I loved putting together new thoughts and having new thoughts wash over me, but I never thought that I could be a creator of new knowledge, that I could be one of those people. I always thought, assumed that scientists were just other people, smarter people, more capable, just different people.

9:34 But being the nerd that I was, I ended up majoring in computer science. I wanted to be a computer programmer or software engineer. I've always had a thing for computers, for programming, an affinity for it. You know, joy and digging around in computers is one of the things I enjoy doing and I thought, oh, that's a job that people create software. And it wasn't until my third year of college I was like 20, 21 years old I took an elective, an astronomy class. It's one of those things where you have a list of options that you have to take to fulfill your major.

10:15 I'm like, oh, astronomy. I remember astronomy. I remember reading books. I had a backyard telescope as a kid. I thought this would be fun. Turned out it was really fun and I was really enjoying myself in the class. I was talking to the professor. I remember this. I was at the time I was at California Polytechnic State University. That does mean I got as far away from Ohio as I possibly could At the moment I turned 18, I was gone, gone and I was taking this class and I actually entered cal poly as a computer science major. It's a very well renowned, uh computer science, uh, university. They have a wonderful department program there, uh.

10:57 But then I just took this astronomy class with I remember his name, professor john polling, and I was, and I was what like two, three weeks in, and Professor Poling pulls me aside. We had been chatting a bunch about astronomy. He was like Paul, you seem to really enjoy this subject, this topic. I'm like, oh yeah, this is so fascinating. This was my first time that I had dug into science as a mathematical discipline. I had always approached it from popular science, from books, where you describe these high-level concepts. But it turns out actual science is grounded in mathematics. It is a mathematical exploration of nature, and this astronomy course was my first exposure to that.

11:42 Like, oh, you're not just describing stuff in the universe, you're not just thinking about it, you're taking these and boiling it down to its mathematical essence and then you're using that to make predictions and understand things at a deeper level. And so this was mind-blowing to me. And Professor Polling says well, you know, we have a physics major here at Cal Poly. You can just switch majors if you want. This is your third year of school. Third year of college, wow, wow, third of seven, yeah, third of five. I finished in five. You're on the five-year plan I forgot how your leg thing's at.

12:22 And I went back and started thinking about it, putting the back of my mind, you know. And then you know there's a midterm coming up, you start focusing on other stuff. A week later I wake up one morning and just my brain explodes and in that instant I became a scientist and I went to the admissions office or office or whatever office is in charge of that. I dropped two of my classes, I added a physics class and I switched majors to physics and I never looked back. I had no plan. I had no idea what I was going to do with it. I had no long-term career trajectory and dream of being a professor or a science communicator.

13:06 I just wanted to learn more about physics. The very next semester I regretted it, partially because I had to start taking some very, very difficult physics classes. You know the kinds of physics classes that only the physics majors take in, the kind of classes designed to make you cry, designed to make you regret and like filter you out and weed you out, like no, this is, this is serious business. Um, you know, not serious like doctor or like lawyer or government serious, but like serious physics. So we're gonna leave you out camp. You went to physics boot camp, essentially right. Physics boot camp. It felt like that. But I got over that, you know.

13:48 The tears came and went, moved on, and then I just found more and more joy doing this and then it blossomed into my career. What are some of the like. When I think about physics and I think about science and the type of work you do, your whole world sort of changes when you begin to understand some of those things. You know what were some of the early shocking revelations for you as you dug into physics and dug into science things I remember was from undergrad at cal poly, was um one being introduced to quantum mechanics.

14:30 And quantum mechanics is fun and spooky and weird and it's great to talk about, uh. But then having a mathematical treatment of quantum mechanics where you start to play around with some of these fundamental equations, you're like oh and and. Then it was just like this evolving step. The more I got into the mathematics, the more things seemed very, very cool and powerful. I remember taking a class an introduction to general relativity, and we'd get homework problems like how long does it take for two black holes to spiral together? Or, if you were to pass through the event horizon of a black hole, calculate how long it takes for you to hit the singularity very common questions.

15:11 I got those all the time, yeah I know I know this was before the weeder class, right, this was before that. This is for the everybody, the jed ed class, um. And I remember just feeling like you know those montages in superhero movies or animes where, like you know, they're like working out or they're getting new weapons and or like they're getting new tools. I felt like I was getting armed with new tools to approach the world, like, wow, I don't just talk about black holes, I'm able to calculate and make predictions about black holes, I'm able to make predictions about quantum mechanics, I'm able to say what's going to happen in this scenario, and just that unfolding of a deeper understanding of the way that nature works, where I can go out and enjoy a beautiful sunset and then also I can go back and I can calculate the diffraction and refraction of the light rays at different wavelengths and understand why the sunset has different colors, and that allows me to appreciate the sunset at an even deeper level and just the magic that we're even able to grapple with these kinds of concepts.

16:29 And then it culminated. This train of thought culminated in graduate school, where I remember taking my first cosmology course with Dr Brian Fields, and this was at the University of Illinois, at Urbana-Champaign and I remember taking that class and now we were taking this, you know, mathematical description of nature to its ultimate expression, where we are writing down equations that describe the entire universe. Come on, wow, I mean 13 billion years of cosmic evolution, the expansion, this, the breadth, the scope, the forces involved, the gravity, everything, and we can boil it down to a single equation.

17:15 We can say, aha, yes, so if you go out and measure this property, in this property this much, you put it into this equation and out pops an age of the universe and just the fact that this, these like vast time and distance scales, is like barely comprehensible scales, uh, that don't fit inside of a human mind. But then I can, I can write down an equation and I can. I have a tool that I can use to grapple and wrestle and interrogate the entire universe. Yeah, it was in that class that I became a cosmologist. Did you believe what you were discovering? You know, like, you're going through these equations and it's like how do you know that it's 13 billion?

17:57 Like, did you believe it? And what convinced you that this was right and accurate, if that's even the right phrase to use? here concept of what we call first principles, which is, everything starts from the barest set of assumptions possible and then from there you unfold, you unpack, you develop the theory and you let the evidence lead the way. So in this case, in the case of cosmology, the cosmology class didn't start with hey, by the way, the universe is 13.77 billion years old.

18:48 The cosmology class started with okay, we're going to start with general relativity. We are going to start with some basic assumptions about the universe. Here's how we're going to test those assumptions. Now that we've verified those assumptions, we're going to fold those into the mathematics and see what we get. And then we're going to derive some evolution equations and then we're going to unpack those further. And then we're going to take more observations, more data, and fit them in here. Say, ah, when you make this kind of observation, it fits into this parameter in the equation. You make that kind of observation and it modifies this parameter in the equation, and then we put all those together and then the end result 13.77 billion years it doesn't matter.

19:36 It's just the number that pops out of the machine. But what matters are the observations, what matters is the equations. What matters is that this accurately describes the universe. That's what the class was about. The actual number that pops out at the end, that's a matter of debate, that's a matter of observation, that depends on the universe we live in. What we care about as physicists is do we have an accurate mathematical description? And so, because everything starts from first principles, I remember, exam after exam after exam, they would ask you a question and you don't get to start with the end. It says begin with first principles, where you have to start from the very beginning and re-derive everything and then be able to present your answer.

20:20 And that is what matters present your answer, and that is what matters. And so, in that sense, I do believe that the equations that we have developed to describe the history of the universe seem to be relatively accurate, because they seem to be doing a good job of describing the actual universe that we observe. And then the number that pops out is the number that pops out. Wow, you're using the term, so I I want our education to continue as well. A theoretical cosmologist is different from an astrophysicist. How? great question. So there are lots of fields and subfields within physics and astronomy and there are a lot of overlaps in these fields.

21:01 So a traditional astronomer is someone who is highly focused on instrumentation, on how do I build a good telescope, how do I gather high quality data, how do I make sure that what I'm producing and the images and the data and the spectra and all the stuff that I'm creating, how do I assure that I understand the uncertainties in it, the noise in it? How do I build a better telescope? That's like a classical astronomer. Then there are the astrophysicists. These are people who apply our knowledge of physics, the laws and theories that we have developed, and apply to all sorts of scenarios out in the universe, like, oh, we just saw a star explode.

21:46 I wonder how stars explode. I wonder what physics happens to make that happen. Oh, our sun is really hot. I wonder why our sun is really hot. What are the physics to make our sun really hot? This is the job of the astrophysicist. Really hot, this is the job of the astrophysicist, and I've certainly done in my career a lot of astrophysics research. And then a cosmologist is a very broad term that describes someone who tries to understand the universe as a single physical object. So we are less concerned with the individual galaxies and stars that appear in the universe. We are less concerned with the individual galaxies and stars that appear in the universe. We are more concerned with the overall evolution and history of the universe.

22:29 What was the universe like in its earliest moments? Why is it so big? Why does it have the size that it does? And within cosmology, again, there is this two sides an observational side and a theory side. There are people who are more aligned with traditional astronomy, who are trying to build massive surveys or maps of our universe, trying to get data of a very old light that is filtering through the cosmos and I've certainly participated in surveys like that. And then there is the more theoretical side, which is trying to develop theories of how the universe has evolved and what the universe is made of, and especially where I like to fit in, is trying to match up those theories to observation.

23:18 So how do we test these ideas? How do we find new ways to validate? When you come up with a new idea Like, oh, I think the universe does this, or I think there's this component in the universe, or I think this happened, how do we match that with the observations that we do have, the data that we do have? How do we pick winners and losers in this kind of game? And that's where I like to fit in as a theorist of generating ideas about the universe and then going to the observational data and finding interesting ways to test those and validate those All right. So we were going to ask you a question. It's a question we kind of ask all of our guests, essentially like well, you're a good student in school. Now the obvious portion here is that, yes, you were a good student in school.

24:03 Now the obvious, the obvious portion here is that, yes, you were a good student in school, but before you even got to college, were you a student who challenged your teachers? In that sense, were you, were you that kind of a student that was so, such a voracious learner and wanted to know so much that in many ways, your own teachers probably couldn't keep up with you in your, in your, in your want to learn? Teachers probably couldn't keep up with you in your want to learn. That is certainly true, and I don't want to brag about myself. I was not the top GPA in my class. I was not valedictorian, I didn't have the highest scores. I was an A student. Like in almost every single class, I would end up getting an.

24:44 A. What was your worst class, by the way we? We thought it was jim. We thought it was. We thought it was. Uh, we thought it was jim. I was pretty terrible in pe I'll give you that um, but, uh, I actually I can't remember in high school what my worst class is, but I do remember in college my worst class was chemistry. I got a C in chemistry and, I'm sorry, chemists, you do wonderful work and you're you're a fantastic scientist. I, I could not care about college level chemistry. My late father was a chemist. Okay, my respects about college level chemistry. My father, my late father, was a chemist. Okay, um, my respects. Noble, noble and honorable profession amongst humanity.

25:30 But I gotta see in that class and and and. So what I do remember from high school is, yeah, being bored a lot and I would absorb the information. I would listen to lectures. Usually I would get all my homework done on a Monday night at the beginning of the week. I would look ahead in all my classes, see all the homework I had to do. I would read ahead in the math book, in the world civilization book, et cetera, et cetera. I would read ahead, do all of it, get it all done on monday night and then spend the rest of the week playing video games. Um, I, I was not very, like, strongly motivated and I was not very, uh, challenged.

26:14 In high school I did have some teachers who did recognize like, oh, I think there's something about this kid and they would give me extra stuff to read, extra stuff to engage with, especially especially my computer science teacher, which is one of the reasons I picked computer science as a college major. He was able to create some extra. This was Mr Winstead. In high school he gave me extra projects to do, extra things to do let me explore on my own. So he was able to accelerate me in that sense. But a lot of the other teachers, they don't have a lot of flexibility because they're teaching to the entire class, they're trying to meet certain state mandated standards and so I ended up just being bored a lot.

26:56 I didn't misbehave, I would just kind of sit in the back corner. I didn't misbehave, I wasn't. I would just kind of sit in the back corner, read the book, do the assignment, stare out the window, get my homework done as quickly as possible, play video games. Test time rolls around. I would prepare, over-prepare, for every test, because I would always be nervous I was a terrible test taker and then get the test race through it as quickly as possible. I would almost always be the first one done with a test, and by like like half the time, or the next person, and, but not necessarily but other people would get higher scores on those tests than me. But I would just simply know what I I knew what I knew and I knew what I didn't know.

27:37 And so I just go through the tests. I'm like, okay, I know that answer. Okay, right, okay, right now, that's it. I don't know that one. Okay, skip that, know that one, that, and that would just be done and I wouldn't bother going back to like a zoleo that okay, who was it? Oh, who was at the battle of agigor? Who was it was? you know, I wouldn't bother uh, because if I didn't know, I didn't know, and so I just turn my test in right away and get like an A minus or so and be fine with it. And it wasn't really until college like that that difficult physics classes in that I started to feel truly challenged and actually have to stretch beyond my limits and actually sweat it out and actually have to work with other students to figure out the right answer.

28:23 And then grad school happened and it was like the hammers the bag of hammers just came down and I was crushed into oblivion. So how did you focus all this stuff? You're pushing yourself in physics, you're exploring, you're dreaming, you're discovering. The world is flipping upside down as you knew it before. How did you start to focus all this stuff on a next step, on a path, on a journey? That's the thing. Looking back, I had an incredible lack of vision which actually I think, served me very well. Because now, looking back, I, especially as an undergraduate, I didn't know what I wanted to do with a degree in physics.

29:05 Lots of people go into industry, a lot of people go into graduate school. Some get a master's, some get a PhD. There's, you know, there's like 100 PhD institutions in the United States alone. I'm like you don't know what you're going to do with that, right, and I had no idea. And then finally, like junior year comes around, or you know, fourth year, fifth year, getting close to graduation, I'm like, oh, I wonder what I should do. And I had found I had done some research. I had an advisor, an undergrad, dr Senefmi Tanaka, and with him I wrote my first research paper, published my first research paper, and I actually enjoyed this process of discovering new things.

29:48 I really, really enjoyed opportunities to do research, undergraduate research. I had an internship at University of Rochester for a summer. I was able to do research with faculty at Cal Poly. I was really starting to enjoy this process of discovering and learning and creating new knowledge. So I'm like, okay, I think I should apply to graduate school. What am I going to do with PhD in physics? I don't know. I'll figure that out later. But then I get into graduate school, start working on a PhD, and then it was in that time, within the first two or three years, that I did start to focus, and this was to my detriment of I know I am going to have a research-based career.

30:37 I am going to be a research scientist at a top-flight university. I'm going to be a research scientist at a top flight university. I'm going to have graduate students and postdocs working for me. I'm going to teach. This is what I want to do, and the good thing about that is it did give me focus and it did give me drive and I did know what the next steps would be. If you want to follow the academic path, here are the steps you take. Here's what you do. So it did help to focus that. The downside is that we drastically overproduced PhDs in physics and astronomy. We produced about 10 PhDs for every one open faculty position, and that includes pure teaching positions, not even research-based positions.

31:25 So that wasn't exactly on the brochure and still isn't, and is actually a major problem. In my latest book, rescuing Science Restoring Trust in the Age of Doubt, I actually get into this how we are lying and misleading young scientists about the potential career opportunities in astronomy and physics, astrophysics, cosmology all mushed together. If you want to go on an academic path, if you want to become a research scientist, you get your PhD, which takes between six and eight years. Then you do something called a postdoc, which is short for postdoctoral research appointment or research fellowship, and this is anywhere from a two to five-year position, usually two to three years long, where you just work for someone else.

32:19 You get your PhD under one advisor I got mine under Professor Paul Ricker and then you go work for someone else for a few years and they pay for you and you do research and then, in physics history, you usually do a second postdoc, so you move somewhere else. You do another two to three years and then you're considered seasoned enough to be in Enough for what? Salty, you get salted. Salty, that's right. You are considered. You know, if you've demonstrated a solid track record of research, you can start applying for faculty positions.

32:59 And this was a very, very delicate time for me. I did one postdoc at the Paris Institute of Astrophysics in France, working with Ben Wondelt, and I had a wonderful, wonderful time there. It was like the peak of my research productivity. And in fact that's true for, like any scientist, their first postdoc, because it's all you do. There's no teaching, there's no advising, there's no committee work. You are just doing research full time. You're getting paid nothing. I'm like next to nothing. You know, half of a stale baguette a week. I was going to ask that question at some point because, in my mind, your student loans are racking up like mad.

33:42 So the student loan thing in physics and astronomy and this is true amongst hard sciences uh, undergrad full loans, the whole deal, uh, in fact, I just paid them off a year ago and but graduate school is paid for in in most of the hard sciences. Um, you apply for graduate school and it's very competitive. Programs will carry anywhere between like two and maybe 20 or 30 students a year and they will provide a stipend, they will pay your tuition and they will provide a stipend in exchange. You have to teach, so you're teaching at in your graduate career. If your research advisor once you find a research advisor, if they're well-funded, if they have grants coming in, then they can take over paying you, paying your stipend and paying your tuition.

34:33 So you don't have to teach and you just devote yourself to research. So, no matter what, I was going to get paid in graduate school it's not much, I got paid. Gonna get paid in graduate school it's not much, I got paid. Uh, I was in graduate school between 2005 and 2011. I got paid I think 15 000 a year. Uh, stipend, wow, which was fantastic. Uh, living the life there in champaign, illinois I can only imagine what that was like oh well, there was this Indian vegetarian buffet that was very cheap and specifically catered to graduate students, and we would hit that place up a lot.

35:14 But we put that guy's kid through college at the University of Illinois. But then, a year in, I did receive a fellowship, and a fellowship is an award from either a university or government that steps in, gives you a much larger stipend, also pays your tuition and gives you total independence. So you're not tied to any one particular advisor, you don't have to teach, the fellowship just pays for everything. And this fellowship came from the Department of Energy, a program called the Computational Science Graduate Fellowship. So you know how I switched majors from computer science to physics. I never left computer science behind.

35:56 I still love computer programming. I still love developing software. That's still something. Computer programming. I still love developing software that's still something I enjoy. And it turns out, almost all of modern science is done by amateur computer programmers and I was one of them, except I had some partial training from two and a half years at college and so I leaned heavily and I still do in computational science. So developing simulations of the evolution of the universe and developing analytical tools that can comb through the data and find interesting combinations like a lot of computer-heavy work. I applied for this fellowship and I was very, very honored and privileged to win it.

36:40 It's a very competitive program still runs today. Usually there are between 400 and 600 applicants every year and there are between 15 and 25 awards. Oh my God. And I know those numbers because now I serve on the selection committee for the Computational Science Graduate Fellowship and and so I'm very, very lucky that I can give back to this program. That really changed my the trajectory of my career. So I I didn't have any loans coming out of graduate school itself. I still carried forward the undergrad loans which I deferred throughout graduate school, which is why it took me so long to pay off.

37:23 And so I show up in Paris, I start paying off my student loans. I'm getting paid half a stale baguette every other week and I'm having like the time of my life. We developed this like really vibrant research group centered on these vast empty regions of the universe known as cosmic voids, becomes a cornerstone of my research and something I carry forward. Even today I still research voids and study them, and I go from there to Italy, trieste, italy. I won a fellowship position from the Italian government there for a two-year postdoc, and it was during that position that that was the time to government there for a two-year postdoc, and it was during that position that that was the time to start applying for faculty positions.

38:07 That was the time to start uh, aiming for, you know, gunning for one of these top tier uh research institutions. That was also the time that I started my podcast, ask a spaceman. And this is something that, um, I'd wanted to start a podcast for a really long time. I'd been listening to podcasts for years, so this is in 2012, 2013, like in that time frame, and podcasts were relatively new, but but, and and there were some science podcasts and there's some really good ones, but as I would listen to them and think I would think, I think I could do this, I think I could do this better Um, I think I can make a podcast.

38:52 And so, just on a whim, I buy a microphone, the exact same microphone I'm using today. Which microphone is that? By the way, it's a blue Yeti. Everyone uses the blue yeti, and this is one of the og ones. It's like the old school us like the, the big usb connector that I need adapters for now and everything we all do right, yeah, of course um, I bought this microphone, I downloaded audacity. I look google search like like, how do you record a podcast? Like what do? you actually do and I remember recording seven episodes, like scripting out seven episodes, recording them, putting them out there, emailing every single person in my contact list with a personal email saying hey, I just started a podcast.

39:41 It's a fun little experiment in science communication. I'd love for you to share it. And very quickly the audience got a very uh, sizable audience and it became very fun and I was doing two episodes a month and the more I was doing it, the more fun I was having. The podcast became large enough that it started to attract some attention from some local media. At the time, even though I was based in Italy, my ex-wife my wife at the time lived in Columbus, ohio, and so I was going back and forth a lot and so I was very tied to the Ohio State University.

40:25 They gave me a guest appointment there so I could have a desk when I float back and forth, start to get the attention of Columbus. Space Media started appearing on Good Day Columbus at 7.30 am and, like, let's talk about the latest, uh, you know, discovery in astronomy and, uh, you know, started doing radio interviews, started writing a little for spacecom. Uh, just like I started to grow more media contacts and as I was doing this, uh, the faculty that I would interact with. You know, my advisors, co-authors, say like Paul, you got to knock this off.

41:05 Like you, you're, you're, you're jeopardizing your career. I was going to ask you that Cause. I mean, obviously you're starting very early, very, very early in the in the podcast universe. I would assume that hardcore academics would look at you as like what in the hell are you doing? oh yeah, I remember one of my um like mentors and advisors and now friend, uh john beacom at the ohio state university. I told him I was doing this. He goes, so, um, oh, what's a podcast and like like we're at that level also. He's like ignorant of how the world works. John, I love you, but like um and also in science, especially like research, centered r1, top, you know, top tier universities uh, doing anything but research is detrimental to the trajectory of your career because it's seen as wasting time, because your job is to get grants, is to write papers, to have students is not to communicate science.

42:07 That's not part of the deal, um, and so they were rightly they. Everyone was absolutely correct. They're saying paul, the more you're doing this like media and outreach, the the more you are risky, you're putting a scientific career at risk. And so what you usually see in science communication is people who leave academia altogether after like a phd. They just, they're just, they just stop the train, they don't do a postdoc, they don't gun for research positions. Uh, they just go out and then they start writing or they start like a YouTube channel or something or working with a science museum. There are a bunch of careers in science communication.

42:48 Or you see late stage academics, people who have tenure, people who it's impossible to fire, and then they start devoting more of their time to like writing books and doing interviews. They have no risk. I did it exactly wrong, and then they start devoting more of their time to like writing books and doing interviews. They have no risk. I did it exactly wrong by doing it in between, which turned out to be exactly right, hence the title of your show. I was going to say that, but I'm glad you. But I did it like I can't think I have not met someone. I'm sure there is someone else out there who followed a similar path, but I can't find someone who, uh, tried to do both because I loved research and I also loved outreach, and I was, and I was growing in this love and passion.

43:33 I knew I had always enjoyed conference presentations. Um, I had always enjoyed preparing for those and giving those and like sharing the results of my work. I enjoyed writing papers. I had always enjoyed the sharing aspect, which is a normal part of a scientific career it to the public. And so when it came time to start applying for faculty positions, I was spending less and less time in research. My research productivity was dropping, my paper output was dropping and I was becoming an unattractive candidate.

44:15 But I was also having a lot of fun and so I just kept going. And then I was able to carve out in Columbus a joint position after a lot of discussions and negotiations and going back and forth, where I was halftime at the Ohio State University doing research and then halftime the chief scientist at the Center of Science and Industry, the Science Museum in Columbus, ohio. So we created that position. Then I had I had two lives, so I would spend 20 hours a week at COSI, uh, doing being the chief scientist there and communicating science, and I spent 20 hours a week, uh, doing research and and, and that position served me well for about three years and then I started growing more and more in outreach and communication and media.

45:03 I was flying to New York and LA all the time. I was starting to appear on national TV and produce television shows, working with more people, and I knew I needed to make another change. In 2019, 2018, 2019, I quit those positions and moved to New York and became entirely freelance science communicator. So my income deriving entirely from articles, appearances patreoncom slash, pm Sutter, where you can support my show. Patreoncom slash, pm.

45:46 Sutter, where you can support my show um, the whole deal, book, uh, royalties, uh, you know, appearance fees for for tv, the whole, the whole deal. And I spent a few years focusing on state growing that, stabilizing that, creating a career from that. And then it's been in the past year, year and a half, that I've been able to carve out time again for research and start reach and I'll work with my collaborators again, find pockets of money to pay for my time, you know, and you know still half a stale baguette every other week. So it's like like a hobby, but it it allows me to engage in research, and so now I feel like I get the best of both worlds, where I get to have an income that can support my family doing something that I absolutely love, which is communicating science and sharing science, and I get to continue my own lines of research in terms that are dictated by me, not dictated by a grant deadline or a university provost breathing down my neck.

46:51 I don't have to follow the trends, I can just research what I want to research and publish when I want to publish. So I feel like I'm at a place where I get the absolute best of both worlds and I'm so glad I went down the path that I did. You know, as you laid all that out, I couldn't help but think about the hypocrisy of the people who are telling you not to do this. You know I think about zoos, for example. You know some people are against zoos. However, if you want to succeed in conservation, people need to understand the animals and appreciate them, et cetera, et cetera, and the zoos help tell that story. So I think about you.

47:33 In your set of circumstances, you're bringing science and you're bringing all of these great ideas to the forefront for people to engage with and discover and to learn, which I would think behind the scenes, would drive revenue and projects and a foundation for a lot of these people who are telling you not to do this, to work and to survive and to thrive. Am I wrong? Yeah, that makes so much sense, doesn't it? You're absolutely right, it is hypocritical. And I do take my fellow scientists to task. I I do um visits to departments surrounding my latest book and I talk to fellow scientists and I say you got to get out there.

48:20 You have, we have to support science, outreach communication or we are going to die on the vine. But the ultimate irony is, like I said, we overproduce PhDs by a factor of 10 to 1. So all these faculty that were telling me, like you're jeopardizing your career in research, there was no career in research, there are no jobs anyway. What was I putting at risk? Less than 10% chance of landing a research job, like that's what I was putting at risk. But these numbers aren't discussed, these numbers aren't distributed. Uh, no one really knows. Everyone pretends that, oh, as long as you publish more, as long as you're the best, then you're guaranteed to get a job somewhere, but that's not how the real world works.

49:08 Um, they all these faculty, are very well-meaning, absolutely. Uh, they were trying to look out for me. They really didn't care for me, but they had a very like myopic, limited view of of what a phd in physics can mean and what a successful, thriving career can mean all right. So, uh, just to kind of stick on that topic for a moment. So you have now obviously proven to a point that your, your, uh, your path has proven successful. You know you are obviously very successful as a podcaster, prolific writer. Um, you have, uh, you've obviously made your your, your, your way as a consultant on a number of different projects for shows, for things of that nature.

49:49 Um, do you think your model now has obviously, you know, stodgy? Older academics are going to be the same way as you said yeah, yeah, we don't have to worry about that. They're always going to be about hey, once I get tenure, then I don't have to worry about anything. But for those who are trying maybe to get into or want to continue to maintain their standing within academia early in their careers, early in their careers, is it smarter now to try and be more versatile, so to speak, where you should try and build more of a I hate to say, but a social media following so people know who you are. Is it better to advertise yourself? I guess is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, so definitely we need to take a different approach to graduate education as a whole, and what I argue in my book education as a whole, and what I argue in my book is that because so few of our PhD graduate students end up in a research career, we can't pretend that graduate school is a training ground for a research career, because only one out of 10 of those students are actually going to do the thing that we are pretending to train them to do.

50:57 So, yes, please, like, we need to continue graduate education. We need to have the same classes that we need to do some independent research. You know we need to write a dissertation, like all that can stay the same, because that is the bones of how you, how you can call yourself a doctor. You know, phd in physics. But we also need to add on to that like actual real world job training, like how to write a resume. to this day, I do not know how to write a resume, uh, because I've never had to apply to do one right job right, I have a cv, a curriculum vitae, you know the academic version of the resume and I know how to knock one of those out of the park, and I know how to write a research statement and I know how to pitch a book idea.

51:40 I do not know how to write a resume. If you ask me, like Paul, do you have tips for writing an effective resume? I'm going to have to look it up and graduate students, a doctor of physics should be able to write a resume. They should be able to move smoothly through LinkedIn and develop contacts. They should be able to work with industry people outside of academia, because that's where they're going to land. 90% of them are going to land outside of academia, so it behooves us, it obligates us as a community, to prepare them as much as possible. What are you? most proud of in your work. All the work you've done, I mean, it's vast.

52:22 I don't know if you could single out one thing, but what is the thing that you're like? This is my, this is my baby right here. This is what I, yeah, this is my baby, what I yeah, this is my baby um, I have. There is one project that is uh, incredibly special and um, uh, very, very close to my heart in in many ways, as you'll see um around the time that I moved to new york, I I had started dabbling with um, art and connections. I am not a trained artist. I got an A in art class in high school. In elementary school I remained forever as second trumpet.

53:07 So that's it. That's my list of artistic achievements. But I really have always been captivated by art and moved by art, by music and dance and theater, and I realized very early on that this can be an effective way of bringing science to new audiences. Because people show up to read my books, listen to my podcast, show up to a live presentation at a science center, and it's generally the same kind of people and that's fine, that's great. They're paying my bills. So, thank you, please keep showing up. That's patreoncom slash pmsutter, but it's a different crowd that will show up to a dance performance or a music concert or come to hear some poetry.

53:57 So even when I was in Columbus, I was starting to work with local companies, work with a local dance company. We created a production that actually aired on PBS member stations around the country and around the time I was starting to move to New York, I got connected to a New York-based company, siren Modern Dance, and we created this project called TikTok, which explores the nature of time, and this performance it's evening-length performance, it's about 45 minutes long. I narrate two sections of it on stage with the dancers, where they're interacting with me. The music is happening, everything's choreographed.

54:37 My words are choreographed to the music. The dancers pick me up, sometimes I work, you know, interact with them, and then I step off the stage and then, you know, beautiful, mozart continues. And so we explore this nature of time from the angle of physics, the angle of human experience and memory and anticipation. It is a wonderful combination. I've had the privilege of getting to share this project around the world and the choreographer of the work and co-artistic director of the dance company, kate. We started out as collaborators. We were collaborators when I moved out as collaborators. We were collaborators when I moved to New York.

55:18 We we developed this project. We finished this project, um and and and. Now we're married to each other. Wow and uh, we have two wonderful children. Uh, yeah, she had, she had two boys, uh, and they're not my step sons and they are the lights of my life, and we have a beautiful family and getting to share in that artistic joy and seeing the world through her lens, the artistic lens, lens of modern dance and movement, and then she gets to see the world through my, like, scientific lens and we get to create. We don't collaborate on a new project because we're, you know, collaborating on a family right now, yeah, um, but, uh, we still perform tiktok when that's the name of the this, this piece, um, we still perform it when we get bookings.

56:10 Uh, we'll, we'll create a new project together someday. But it just opened up my world in, not just to new audiences, uh, but to new ways of of seeing and appreciating the world. And it goes back to my childhood of just being hungry and wanting to learn more and wanting to look at things in a different way and wanting to poke and dig a little bit deeper. And I feel like I've saturated my abilities as a scientist like I. Like I, I have the all the scientific tools at my disposal for investigating nature that way, and now we have a whole new set of tools. Um, I do not dance nobody wants to see me dance but but, but, seeing my wife and opening that up to like looking at the world through an artistic lens and reading about it and experiencing it.

56:57 I feel like I have a brand new set of tools and ways and lenses to view the world, and that has brought me immeasurable joy. So what advice do you have for someone who wants to follow the academic path, maybe not the same way as you, but maybe even a little bit like you in terms of, you know, maybe encompassing more of an aspect of bringing in a social media aspect to the learning, to the learning portion of it? Is there one piece of advice or two pieces of advice you would have for someone who wants to go down that path? If you want to go down the academic path, I think it's best to do this. It was actually it's funny you say this because I was at an event at the Frost Museum in Miami last night.

57:39 They invited me to be the keynote speaker for a fundraising gala and they invited the physics department and astronomy department for the University of Miami and they got a table there and then they introduced me to some of their graduate students and I'm standing in front of these wonderfully intelligent young people and they're saying it's like so, dr Sutter, do you have any advice for them? And I'm like okay, the bad news is there are no jobs. Sure, yeah, and I think it's important.

58:30 If you're going to go down that path, you have to go odds, like not because of your lack of skills or intelligent or cunning, or wit or grit or any of the qualities we aspire to as a scientist, just simple dumb luck, like there just aren't enough chairs. That means that it empowers you to craft your own career, because if you follow the strict academic path and you chase one of these research positions, you're doing what everyone tells you to do Like oh, if you want this, then you need to do this postdoc and you better have an elite fellowship over here and you better publish at least three to five papers a year, and then this is what you need to highlight in your research statement.

59:16 Yeah, I know your passions are over here, but this is spot in the field right now. So you need you're always going to be having other people tell you what to do, to dictate the path of your career, but if you open yourself up, then you get to decide what success looks like. You get to decide what a PhD in physics or any academic field means to you. You become the author of your own destiny, not to somebody else, and so I hope I was able to inspire those young students last night. Sure, I said there are no jobs out for them. Absolutely inspiring, so there are no jobs, but that means you get to define success. It is in your hands and nobody else's.

1:00:00 Last one from us, and we can't thank you enough for your time. This has been amazing. What do you hope your legacy will be? Have you thought about it? No, Honestly, I haven't thought about my legacy. I am focused on what I am doing. I assume that nobody listens to me or downloads my podcast, even though the statistics say otherwise. The book sales say otherwise. I know my, my impact on the world is larger than like I assume because I'm so focused in, like the next project, the next thing. Uh. So I know I'm having an influence on the world and what I care more about are like those small scale interactions, like what I had last night or this conversation, or the legacy of my, my step-sons, um, and then their kids, and just being an influence in the world, where I see the universe as beautiful and complex and mysterious and knowable and that is worth exploring and that is worth sharing.

1:01:10 If this ripples out and affects a few people, then I'm a happy man. So, with that in mind, if people want to, if people are listening to our podcast who don't know you and are not currently following you, how do they get to know you better? The podcast, the stories, the books, where should people look? Yes, yes, the best place is my website P M Suttercom. That's P, as in Paul, m as in Matthew happens to be my name, suttercom. That's my website and that's where I link to everything. I have three books out by now, working on a fourth. I my podcast called ask a spaceman. Appearances on various TV shows, hosting a few TV shows and digital shows, um, and appearances on on news.

1:01:59 Regularly You'll see me on NBC news, on weather channel, on CNN, you know, anytime there's a space related newsworthy event. Um, that's where I link, uh, my social media handles. I'm mostly on Instagram and LinkedIn. Nowadays there is a Paul Sutter on Facebook, but my page was stolen from me in a hilarious incident a year ago and it's impossible for me to-. Hilarious incident, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was that's the next one. That's the next one. So the Paul Sutter that's on Facebook is not me and I can't Facebook Zuckerberg. If you're listening, listening? I can't access my own page like I'm the guy on the picture, like that's me and like I can't anyway solve the universe's problems, but you can't get into your face exactly you know it's good for the universe to still have mysteries.

1:02:49 That makes it more fun, and I so like. Instagram and linked LinkedIn is where I post about upcoming events and things I'm doing. You know, and but the website is is the hub Perfect? Well, paul, I've learned a ton. This has been an incredible conversation, and I should also call out that, in my mind, when I think of a scientist, I don't think of a great communicator, which is just my ignorance. You have broken the mold and are a brilliant storyteller. I had another two hours worth of questions to ask you. I'll have to come back. We'll do another two hours. We'll do it. We'll do another one. Paul, thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me on. This was a wonderful opportunity to share.

1:03:31 So that was Paul M. Sutter. And going in, we wondered whether or not we were smart enough to have that conversation. I'm not exactly sure how we're feeling now, but I think we hung in there pretty well. Tushar, what are your? takeaways. I can come away with this, and you don't have to be a genius to come to this conclusion. We were not smart enough to speak to this guy. It's fine. But it was fascinating. Let not, let's not sugarcoat. It was a fascinating discussion. Now, he didn't paint a very, uh, positive, rosy picture of what life as an academic is like, but, uh, and we could have spoken to him and you know, we probably could have spoken to him for another two hours about what it meant to have a job of that kind of caliber, of that level in a private situation.

1:04:14 Like what would a private company like that look like? Whether it be spacex, things of that nature? Um, look, I think the type of job he has, obviously it's not meant for everyone, right, this is not the job that you're just going to go out and say. Your guidance counselor says, yes, be a, be a cosmologist. It's not going to happen. You have to obviously be wanting of the rigors of an extremely academic life, right, I once called my sister a professional student. That's what you have to be. You have to be a professional learner. That is your job. And if you're able to land one of those positions, look, that's great. Then you can quite literally ponder and mull over the literal origins of the universe and move forward in your career in that sense.

1:05:02 But maybe this is not the job for everyone. But what a fascinating conversation to have with obviously one of the absolute best in the business, and I'm smarter for it. Thank you for making me feel a lot smarter than I was before we started this interview, and hey, it makes me. It will give me a greater appreciation of books that I read in the future Hell, even science fiction movies and science fiction shows that I watch. In the future. I will have a better perspective on how I look at them. Yeah, what a great conversation and what a great person. You know he spent, he gave us his time and we can't thank him enough for that. You could just hear the passion in his voice. You know what I mean that he wants to share, and he wants to share his experience, his knowledge and get people excited about science.

1:05:48 And you could just feel that. You know the bad news there's no jobs, so he very few jobs. I mean the numbers he gave 10 PhDs for what? Every one open faculty position. I mean that's a. That's a pretty bleak outlook for that. Now the good news is that he's been able to craft and carve a career in a really fascinating way. You know you get to decide what success looks like. You're the author of your own destiny. You could craft your own career. I mean I love that advice. That's not just for academia, that's not just for this particular career, that's for any career that you want to choose in your life.

1:06:31 You get to decide what success looks like For him. I mean he said it, he has a childlike curiosity and scientists are people who refuse to grow up right. He's a searcher, he's a sharer. I mean I can't thank him enough for just opening my eyes to those things and getting me excited about the universe and physics and not chemistry but everything else? Well, you like chemistry? don't you? I mean, you know what. It's funny when he said chemistry was his worst. You know class, because it was by far and away my worst class. I got a. D in high school chemistry and I never had a D in my life. But imagine the grade he gets in his worst class as compared to us, oh, for sure.

1:07:14 Well, true. True, but no, I mean, that was a really inspiring conversation. You know, bleak in terms of, like, the academia job aspect of it, but I love the way he's carved out his own career and gotten other people excited In the world of social media. Now, sky's the limit. You could do whatever you want to do with this type of field and he's doing it. It was frowned upon before. I don't think it's frowned upon anymore when you see people like him and, yeah, neil deGrasse, tyson and others who are finding a way to teach people and share that passion. Very cool For sure, and my primary takeaways were, you know, one keep an open mind. You know he was a coder and he went to college and he discovered all these different things that he found compelling and followed that path forward.

1:07:59 So he was very malleable and open to consider new ideas and try stuff. He came out and he said you know, I think there's a need here for a podcast, ask the spaceman. And he just put it up there to see what would happen. And, sure enough, things took off and he found a niche that has turned out to be incredibly important and incredibly, you know, meaningful to both he and his family. So keep an open mind, try stuff, put yourself out there and you never know what can happen. So with that, paul Sutter, thank you so much for joining us. Everybody out there, make sure you check out his podcast, ask the Spaceman and visit his website at pmsuttercom.

1:08:44 On behalf of Tushar Saxena, larry Shea and me, larry Samuels, thank you again for joining this episode of no Wrong Choices. If, after listening, you've thought of someone who could be a great guest, please let us know by sending us a note via the contact page of our website at norongchoicescom. While there, please be sure to check out our blog and explore other great episodes while signing up to become a member of our community. You can also follow us on LinkedIn, facebook, instagram, youtube Threads and X. Tiktok is up and content has begun rolling out. We'll be back with another episode next week. Before then, always remember there are no wrong choices on the road to success, only opportunities, because we learn from every experience.