This week I spoke with Jake Robins, the creator of the WeMartians podcast, a show dedicated to discussions of Mars, space and beyond. He spoke about his five years in podcasting, the “Make Space Better” initiative, and why we on Earth are fascinated with Mars.

Jake’s interest in space kickstarted alongside millions of other Canadians in 2013, when Chris Hadfield was commander of the International Space Station. You know, this guy. Jake says that he was enthralled by the videos Hadfield released, from tours of the station to lunchtime in space. As Jake’s interest in aerospace grew, he explains that “anyone who’s into rockets eventually will find themselves in this stupid video game called Kerbal Space Program,” a game centred around rocket building and space travel. Jake says this game was a great teacher to learn the science behind space travel, and that his love for space led him to recreate actual historic space missions within the game to share on Reddit. After a year of posting content for a passionate fanbase, he found himself wondering “how can I be part of the real space community?”, eventually deciding that podcasting was to be his next big adventure.

WeMartians; 5 Years of Podcasts

Jake released the first episode of WeMartians in early 2016 but shares that it took him several episodes to deliver a cohesive product, iron out the initial growing pains and most importantly land his first guest. Anytime I use “land” in this article I run the risk of bad space puns, but it’s something we’re going to collectively agree is ok. When he first started the podcast, Jake said it was difficult to book anyone on the show, as he was seeking interviews with some of the world’s top engineers, scientists and authorities on space whereas he “was just some kid with an $80 microphone I got at Best Buy”. He blasted out emails, built relationships through Twitter and eventually was able to have his first interview with Michael Coarezza, an Italian engineer specializing in thermal systems and working on the ExoMars spacecraft. An unexpected challenge Jake faced in this inaugural interview was not the conversation itself, but rather managing the poor sound quality that came as a result of recording live between Vancouver and Italy. Specifically, Jake explains that “he was not in a good room and I didn’t have the experience to recognize that,” so there was only so much he could do in post to salvage the audio. However, this interview showed Jake how sharing a conversation with a guest could be a great way to expand his own audience, gain credibility within the community and glean insight into many different avenues of aerospace. Another key guest Jake notes from his first few episodes is Tanya Harrison, a Canadian-American Martian planetary scientist, owner of a great Twitter account and someone whom he has continued to work with.

Over the course of over eighty episodes of WeMartians to date, optimizing audio quality is just one learning that Jake has improved upon since episode one. Before every interview he sends his guest a carefully curated guide to ensure good audio, covering everything from headphones to the acoustics of the rooms themselves. He has also learned to prepare better questions, structuring the interview around “guideposts” to smoothly direct the conversation and allow him to be opportunistic if an interesting tangent presents itself. Lastly, Jake says that he is still working on identifying when to stop an interview if he is unable to resolve any audio or connectivity issues on the fly. He says that this is “a really tough thing to do,” when considering his interviewees’ busy schedules and his own content calendar, but has saved him a lot of grief and time when it comes time to edit.

This year, Jake landed arguably one of the biggest guests of WeMartians, Jim Bridenstine, the Administrator of NASA. Coming from a history in politics and not science, Bridenstine had many critics when he was appointed in 2017, Jake included. However, despite this rocky start, Jake and others in the space community began to slowly gain an appreciation for Bridenstine on the back of several positive changes that Bridenstine had implemented. Between one another they even joked that they should start the “Jim Bridenstine Fan Club”. This fandom grew to the point where a listener of WeMartians gave Jake a hundred pins with a portrait of Bridenstine bearing the “Jim Bridenstine Fan Club” insignia on top. Pins in hand, Jake attended The International Astronautical Congress conference in Washington D.C., an event that he describes as “the biggest conference in the world for space,” full of international speakers and professionals. Jake began handing the pins out to friends and listeners at the conference, telling them that “your mission is to try and get this into Jim’s hands”. It took only forty-five minutes for a photo on Twitter to appear of Jim, accompanied with said pin. Riding the wave of this photo, Jake met Bridenstine’s communications deputy and was eventually able to arrange an hour and a half interview with Bridenstine. Jake describes this episode as “one of the best interviews we ever did,” a major milestone in his podcast, and this even resulted in a new, redesigned pin that is now available to welcome new members of the Jim Bridenstine Fan Club.

The Power of Podcasts

In an environment flooded with seemingly unlimited and complex varieties of content, podcasts almost feel like a throwback medium. For Jake, podcasts are special because conversations represent “the oldest form of communication,” before humans had photos, music, sculpture, or mildly passable blog posts. He also adds that the intimacy and accessibility of podcasts is a feature not always present in other content. Listeners can experience a personal conversation with the host, as well as indulge in any specific niche of interest that they could ever imagine.

One of Jake’s most recent projects was “Make Space Better,” a collaborative initiative prompted by the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement. Along with his creative partner Anthony Colangelo, they looked inward at the barriers to racial justice and equity facing the aerospace community. Noting the underrepresentation of women and people of colour across geophysics, geology, engineering, and other disciplines of aerospace, Jake said that they wanted to focus on helping their local community, but struggled to identify what that meant for global podcasters. Together they decided to support two organizations, with the first being Black Girls Code, an organization providing training for young Black women in many disciplines directly relevant to aerospace. In addition, they chose the Banneker Institute, an organization providing ten-week programs to undergraduate students of colour before they embark on their Masters or Ph.D. studies. Jake and Anthony proposed a fundraiser to their listeners to support these causes, agreeing to match donations to a point in an effort to raise money and awareness for these two organizations. He says “I can’t really explain how it took off,” (my personal view of rockets), but with the help of their listeners and Youtuber Tim Dodd, the “Everyday Astronaut,” they collectively raised $35,000 in donations. An incredible amount. Jake says that this was an extremely humbling experience to receive that much support from his listeners and that “it’s very nice to know that after five years of really slowly curating an audience that they ended up being that cool”.

When Jake decided to make a podcast about Mars, he said that he selected the planet in part to fill a niche in the podcast world for devotees of our neighbour in the sky. From a scientific standpoint, he adds that four billion years ago, Earth and Mars were in similar states and that its important to remember that our vastly different current environments are rooted in a shared beginning. Jake also notes that Mars has become intertwined with human culture despite ironically being somewhere no human has ever been. Between War of the Worlds, Elon Musk and countless references in popular culture, humans have been having conversations about Mars for a long time. Jake has found a way to continue this tradition with WeMartians, (admittedly with a bit more scientific input), but with the same fascination and engagement that began a long time ago.

Jake releases new podcasts, blog posts and more every week so check out the WeMartians website to stay up to date on everything Mars. You can even pick up your own Jim Bridenstine fan package. WeMartians is on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Android and good old RSS so you have no excuse not to give him a follow.

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Click here if you missed last week’s post with comedian, Matty Vu.

-BF