Mat Kaplan 

Today, I’m joined by American radio personality, Mat Kaplan. Mat is the host of Planetary Radio, a radio talk show about space exploration produced by the Planetary Society. The role of the Planetary Society is to bridge the gap between the scientific community and the general public to inspire and educate people from all walks of life. I wanted to chat with Mat about his career in radio, his love of all things space, as well the work he does for the Planetary Society, so I hope you are sitting comfortably and happy to stay with us.

We started our conversation about how popular the space industry is (01:00) before moving on to discussing Mat’s career in radio and broadcasting (03:35). We stayed on this topic, talking about developments in radio and its relationship with podcasting (07:50). Next up, we chatted about Mat’s interest in space and how it started (13:10). We then moved on to the work that Mat does with the Planetary Society (15:35) and in this segment, we also discussed the Society’s approach when getting people involved. Towards the second half of our chat, we moved on to Mars and why Mat is so fascinated with the Red Planet (26:05). One of the last topics we talked about was the future of space without Russia’s participation (34:35). My last question to Mat was about what he is reading and watching at the moment (44:22).

Show Notes

• The Planetary Radio show
• The Planetary Society
• The End of Astronauts by Donald Goldsmith & Martin Rees
• Never Panic Early by Fred Haise and Bill Moore
• When Robot and Crow Saved East St. Louis by Annalee Newitz

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