Grace Under Pressure at 18,000 MPH: The Incredible Adventures of Astronaut Capt. Jerry Linenger, MD, PhD

Living a Life in Full is a conversation you always want to have with that person who gave an amazing TED Talk or the author of one of your favorite books, or that inspirational Olympian you always wanted to know more about. It's graduate level conversations with those making a difference in the world and in the lives of others. This show brings you new ideas and approaches so that you can live a life in full. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout and I hope you enjoy this episode. This episode of Living a Life in Full is brought to you by ATI Physical Therapy. If you need physical therapy, choose ati. ATI offers exceptional care, trusted expertise and remarkable outcomes customized to your needs. ATI has over 800 clinics coast to coast in 25 states. We want to start feeling better fast. ATI can help address chronic pain or recovery from an injury or surgery expertly, quickly and conveniently. ATI's first program uses a performance based methodology to safely return injured workers to their workplace. FIRST is designed to increase strength, endurance and cardiovascular functioning. ATI's sports medicine provides athletic training services to help athletes get back in the game. ATI has hundreds of professional collegiate, high school, middle school and club relationships nationwide. ATI also offers a variety of specialty services including home health, hand therapy and women's health. To Learn more about ATI's advances in evidence based practice, clinical outcomes and their innovative new smartphone app, please visit atipt. Welcome to another episode of Living a Life in Full. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout. I have to say it's really an honor today to have Captain Jerry Leninger on this episode. Jerry is one of the most down to earth astronauts you could ever hope to meet. Pun intended. Jerry was part of one of the most dangerous and dramatic missions in space history. While living aboard the Russian space station Mir, Jerry and his two Russian crew members faced numerous difficulties. They had the most severe fire ever aboard an orbiting spacecraft. They had failures of onboard systems. They had a near collision with a resupply cargo ship during a manual docking system test. They had loss of station electrical power and they had loss of altitude control resulting in a slow uncontrolled tumble through space which just kind of sends chills down my spine and sounds like a lot of different kinds of science fiction movies that I've seen. But these are actually things that Jerry has problem solved through. In spite of all these challenges and added demands on their time on that mission, they still accomplished all of their mission goals, which included a spacewalk, a fly around, and all of the planned US science experiments. In completing this five month mission. Gerry logged approximately 50 million miles, the equivalent of over 110 round trips to the moon and back. They had more than 2,000 orbits around the Earth and traveled at an average speed of 18,000 miles an hour. Jerry's been awarded numerous commendations and medals. He was a top graduate from the Naval Flight Surgeon Training and Naval Safety Officers Schools. He was awarded a gold medal from the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. And he's also a recipient of NASA's highest honor, the Distinguished Service Medal. He's authored two books. Most recently completed an episode on National Geographic's book new one, Strange Rock, which we're going to go deep dive into, which is a new series. It's hosted by Will Smith and produced by acclaimed filmmaker Darren Aronofsky and award winning producer Jane Root. He's also the proud father of four. And perhaps one of his greatest honors is to have been immortalized at his hometown, McDonald's, which again, we're going to get into. So welcome to the show, Jerry.

Thank you, Chris. Wonderful. I forgot about my life. Kind of fun to hear it all spilled out.

Yeah, you kind of needed to get that reminder, I'm sure. So, hey, I think it was, I know it was some years back in my memory. The longer back it is, the worse my memory is. But I think it was at a Renaissance weekend that we met. And I'm thinking it was maybe like one of the New Year's ones in Charleston or. Do you remember? Does that ring any bells?

Yeah, that sounds right. Yes. I actually went down with my family to one down in Charleston and I participated in a number of other ones. You know, I kind of pick it depending on where my children are at the time. So I've got two boys out in the LA area. So I've been going to the Santa Monica Renaissance weekends. And then you tie in a visit to my sons.

Well, that's perfect. That's a clever way to do it. I'm gonna have Phil and Linda, they're gonna be on an upcoming episode, so everyone stay tuned for that. That'll be fun.

Wonderful greetings to them.

Yeah. Very small world. So, Jerry Mann, you know, I got

a quick one with Phil that I. A little story about him. He runs the Renaissance Weekends. Wonderful. He used to be a diplomat. You'll hear all about Phil. But we were outside in at Charleston and my, my son, we're public school people, were up in a little town in Northern Michigan and my son was a bit overwhelmed. A lot of New York City people there and they're all in private schools and they're talking about, you know, going to Harvard and things like that with their, what their dreams were. And my son got a little shy about the whole thing and you know, felt he was kind of like, dad, I don't know, man, these people are like, you know, kind of scary smart and they're all from New York and La la, la. I talked to Phil and I introduced my son to him and I told him that little story and, and he said, you know, John, us public school kids have to stick together and gives him a pat on the back. And I thought it was wonderful moment, you know, what a wise thing to say to my boy, to tell him, you know, doesn't matter where you're coming from, you can achieve anything as much as any other kid.

Well, hear, hear. Yeah, I think that really speaks to kind of the ethos of the Renaissance weekend and Phil and Linda both. And to you too, sir. I mean, you, you know, certainly came from humble beginnings and have just done some amazing things and I'm anxious to have our audience hear about. So there's so many things I want to talk about with, with you and your life and your experiences. I mean, just by any facet, it's really kind of amazing. And I kind of want to start from the beginning actually with your origin story. I, I have this ha to deconstruct guests CVs, and yours is one of the incredible ones. I know it starts back at the U.S. naval Academy and then leads to medical school. Two master's degrees and to top it off, a PhD. Can you kind of pick us up like from undergrad at the US Naval Academy and bring us forward?

Yeah, you know, we had five kids in our family, Chris. And you know, when my dad saw that the Naval Academy did not have tuition fees and that, you know, become an officer in the Navy, that was sort of, hey, son, that's where you need to go. Couldn't afford to put us all through college. Dad drove a telephone truck and you know, good, hard working man, but that's tough to put five kids through college in that circumstance.

Sure.

So that kind of, you know, determined my fate, I guess, and I went there and I will give the US Naval Academy absolute full credit, if you want to call it a turnaround in my life, because they teach you that self discipline and that sense of curiosity and that's what's pretty much driven me the rest of my life. And I credit that as my turning point in life. Medical school, piece of cake after that PhD stuff, University of North Carolina, pretty much piece of cake. Easy peasy, you know, the master's degree down at Southern Cal, you know, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, kind of a piece of cake. All downhill after you have that intense four year experience training to be an officer and learning leadership skills at the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis. So hats off to them.

Hear, hear. So did, did you also serve in your background as a flight surgeon? I. Is that right?

I did, yes. So after I went directly to medical school, kind of a different program at that time, and finished that and then went out to San Diego, did some surgical internship and then I got into the aerospace medicine aspect of things. So down to Pensacola, Florida, Navy flight school, kind of a modified program. But given my background at the academy, they took me a bit further than they would a normal flight surgeon. So I've got a lot of flight hours under my belt and served with squadrons around the world. Couple years over in the Philippines, for example, with the squadron that used to fly out and hit the aircraft carriers as they came through the Middle east on the way to the Indian Ocean. And actually we had some detachments out in the Indian Ocean. So I'd fly up to the Arabian Gulf and all over the world hitting our US Navy aircraft carriers.

Gosh, you know, I had done some work with flying doctors over the years and on a couple of the missions I had opportunity to work with some flight surgeons. And I think that I have such respect for flight surgeons, Jerry, and you obviously as well, because like you guys are sort of like the Chuck Norris's of surgeons. You know, it's just really a different breed. I mean, just really.

Yeah, what you're really after, you know, when you think of, for example, a pro football player and all the money they put into that person. Same thing with a, with someone flying, you know, F18 or the F35 Lightning coming up. You know, these are hundred million dollar aircraft. And you want that pilot to be 100% healthy and you want him 100% psychologically stable and you want no distractions in his life. And so the Navy very wisely integrates a well trained physician into that squadron. You become sort of a sports medicine doctor, you become a ear, nose, throat doctor for sure because, you know, pulling a lot of GS and going high altitude and you know, you end up with the ear blocks, things of things of that nature. And so they integrate you, you get their respect. Because you're my own case, you know, a lot of flying experience myself. You're flying with them, you're operating with them, you're deploying with them. They trust you, and they share any issue they have with you. And your main job, therefore, is to keep them healthy, keep them flying safe, and making sure we bring our aircraft back and we accomplish our mission. So it's a. It's a pretty nice program and a smart spending of resources to have that flight surgeon integrated to Navy squadrons.

Yeah, I think that's a brilliant, brilliant model. So I have to do a little. I always do some embarrassing self disclosures in these. And in my fanciful youth, I contacted NASA and got their admissions packet and, you know, for, you know, astronaut training and completed it, sent it in. And of course, I didn't make it too far. Can you lead us through how a person actually makes that transition to becoming a bona fide and highly decorated astronaut?

Yeah, there's a lot of people want to do it. You're not alone. Trust me. Chris, you know, I think the last time there were like 30,000 applicants.

Thank you. That makes me feel better.

Yeah. Maybe 10 spots.

I was really, really close. I could tell he's really close.

Yeah. Yeah. You got to be persistent, for one thing. I think what they do on the first record, I've heard this whispered. I'm not sure it's officially true, but the first time you apply, they put your name in the computer and they say, okay. And then they toss your application out and don't even read it because they have so many. And then if you persist the second time, they say, okay, this guy's not just doing this on a whim. He or she is truly interested in being an astronaut. Now we'll take a harder look at it.

Oh, that's good to know.

And so you messed up by only doing it once. Probably, number one. Number two, you know, when you finally do make it, you know, and I applied a few times, and after a while, you know, you just went through my bag. I got an MD, I got a PhD, I got a couple masters, I'm flying in the Navy. What more do you need? Well, I'm doing as good as I can and they reject me. It's kind of like, okay, I don't know what they're looking for, but I'm doing the best I can. And thank goodness for word processing because it had just come around at that point and I had all my application, because, as you remember, it's a pretty. Oh, God, extensive application.

Yeah, Right.

But I added there. So I just updated it, said, I, I don't think I'm going to make it because I didn't make it last time and. But I pushed the button and printed it out, and that time I. I ended up making it. Now, having said that, so I guess the key ingredients are you better have a pretty solid resume. You better have immersed your life in some, oh, I guess, dangerous situations. Scuba diving, you know, flying jets, things like that, showing that you can perform under pressure and. But the final thing, you better be lucky. And people say, oh, yeah, Jerry, you're not lucky. You, you know, you have great resume and you worked hard your whole life. I did. But I'll tell you, Chris, and I am 100% sincere in this for that seat that I got, I guarantee there are 15 other people at least that were absolutely equally qualified to take that spot that I got. And so at the end, there's a bit of a dice roll to get to that position where they're rolling the dice on you. It takes everything that you think, the self discipline, the hard work, accomplishing things, solid education. You better be healthy, because they will probe you. You know, you'll find things wrong with you you didn't even know you had.

Wow.

Because they're going to invest a lot in you. They want to make sure you have the health that'll take you through a career. But then at the bot, you know, the bottom line, you get yourself in that position, and then it's just pure privileged. And I realized from the very start that it was a privilege representing mankind as an astronaut. And you try, therefore, to represent them well.

Yeah, well, I think you've done that. So you've been to space twice. I know not all astronauts do that.

What.

What was your first mission like?

So it's a bit of a, you know, the first one's overwhelming, I guess. We went up and main thing we did, we had a untethered spacewalk. I was the inside guy helping coordinate the ballet out there. Guys firing thrusters, kind of like a Buck Rogers jetpack thing. It was an awesome advancement in our spacewalking abilities. Ability to get you back to the space station if you get detached. And then the other big thing, we had a satellite. We actually set it out into space, left it alone. It did observations, and then at the end of the mission, we went, grabbed it, put it back in the payload bay, and brought it back to Earth. And the final thing was a big laser. We beamed at the Earth. And when you think of weather systems, you know, we only see half of it. You see the lighted side of the Earth, you see the satellite photos of these, you know, typhoons swirling. We Had a laser and on the dark side of the Earth, we would ping it at the Earth and map out cloud cover, everything else. And now you have the complete picture of planet Earth's, you know, atmosphere and disturbances and weather patterns. And that was a test of that device. It worked. They then built a satellite and it's now up there pinging down at the Earth, trying to get a complete weather picture so that we can predict those hurricanes and other destructive things and get people out of the way. So it saves lives. So all those missions, you just feel like, hey, I'm doing something that's, you know, valuable and it's going to make a difference in our quality of life here on the planet.

Right? Yeah, I think that's a, I think through this conversation people are going to learn a lot more about that because I think that's oftentimes an unrealized, unrecognized kind of benefit that, you know, everybody needs to kind of do a tip of the hat of appreciation to NASA and the work that you guys, guys have done because it's long lasting and it's impactful. So second mission I know is quite a test. Sort of talked about that in the intro. Tell us about how training was different for that and step us through what happened on that five month mission.

Yeah, what happened was we wanted to engage with the Russians. We wanted to pick up some of their long duration space experience that they had. They, they had a space station called Mir. And so we took some Americans and basically turned them into cosmonauts. So after that first mission, I, you know, ended up in Star City, Russia every morning, one on one with a Russian language teacher. Wow. Learning that language. Yeah. And every afternoon a rocket scientist, you know, talking in Russian.

Oh my gosh.

So it was two years of a lot, a lot of hard work to prepare for a very complex mission on a very, I didn't know it at the time, but a very unstable, old failing space station. The only thing the Russians had at that time. And so they were going to keep that thing going no matter what. Design life. Three to five years. And it was 13, 14 years old. Oh, gosh.

So in that five month period at the time, that was the longest duration flight for an American male at the time.

Right?

That was, that was one of your accomplishments, is that right?

That's correct. And it was a tough five months. I'll tell you. That was the toughest five months of my life for sure. And I was already, to be honest, kind of, you know, burned out from two years in Russia, trying to learn that language and learn all those complicated engineering diagrams and everything else so that I could get up there. And I kind of thought, you know, thank goodness I'm blasting off. I can go up there and relax now and then, look out the window and see the planet. But instead, it was. It was 24 hours a day trying to stay alive, trying to keep the space station going, trying to get the work done. You know, it was a tough five months of my life.

Well, you had tell us about the fire. I mean, that just. I mean, every one of the things I said in the intro just would just terrify me, you know, when I was doing the research, you know, the background for this, Jerry. I mean, it's like, oh, my God, I can't imagine a fire in a space station. I can't imagine, you know, kind of almost falling out of orbit. I can't imagine, you know, almost, you know, getting, you know, dinged by, you know, a ship coming in for, you know, docking. And so step us through. How. What, what happened? When did, like, what was the process of these things? And, and how did you guys survive the fire?

We had a backup generator for the oxygen. The primary generator had broken, ignited this thing, supposed to percolate a little oxygen, but it had built in fuel and it had a lot of oxygen, and it was like a blowtorch. The thing sparked, did something it wasn't supposed to do, obviously. Supposed to be a little exothermic reaction. Instead, this thing's on fire 2 or 3ft length, sparks flying off the end of it. And I'll tell you, Chris, the biggest surprise was the, the spread and the density of that smoke. You know, I've done Navy firefighting. I've used to, you know, closed spaces where, you know, you have a fire and you battle it. Controlled situation. But on that space station, I'll tell you, within 30 seconds, it was just total blackout. Couldn't see the five fingers in front of your face. You know, smoke everywhere. There's no, you know, going down low in a fire because that's smoke in space and it's everywhere. Zero G, if you will. It is everywhere.

So is. Is it just like little particulates that are just all, like, how do you. Do you, like, clear it or something? How do you get rid of all that?

Yeah, that's a good point. So you fight the fire. You know, getting that out took about 14 minutes, or fire extinguishers. I mean, it was. It was a battle to get that thing out, and there's nowhere to Go. Obviously, right. In a space station, you're kind of stuck with your fate, but you're exactly right. When it was out, you have that sigh of relief. And then my, I guess my flight surgeon kicks into me, my doctoring, and I say, you know, we're still in big trouble. We have an unbreathable atmosphere, and the only thing keeping us alive at that point, we had some respirators on with a little oxygen bottle next to it. You know, it was an unbreathable atmosphere. And so now you hope your life support systems can clear that smoke, toxic material debris out of the air as it's floating everywhere before your oxygen runs out.

Gosh. Did it leave like a residue on instruments and equipment once you cleared it?

Yeah. You know, here's a secret and I, you know, no one's listening, right, Chris? It's just between.

Yeah, just you and I. Yep, yep. This is all top secret.

The real secret is, you know, that the Russians, you know, to this day would say what a great life support system. We have those fans and filters just clean the heck out of even a bad fire. The reality was the hull on the dark side of the Earth would get very cold. The fire extinguisher was water based, and so there was some water mist and droplets, if you will, you know, mixed in with all the smoke. And when you move to the dark side of the Earth, that water condensed on the old hull and we had kind of free water. And we had that problem even before the fire. You know, you should not have free water, electronics and everything else. Yeah, but, you know, we had, they had a hard time getting rid of that. And the life support systems couldn't keep up with it. But the bottom line, in that case, it paid off because that kind of cleared that atmosphere by condensing those water droplets onto the hull. And then later on, we took old discarded, you know, T shirts, whatever we could find, and we'd sop up the water and stuff it into sort of these garbage bags that end up on the, you know, the resupply ship eventually burn up in the atmosphere.

So I'm surprised to hear that you'd have like a water based fire extinguisher. I think you'd have like halon or something like that. So that's.

Yeah, it sounds good, but when you really start thinking about it, you know, I'm in space for five months. It's a closed ecosystem. Fire took place about a month into it, and if we're spraying any chemical in the air, you know, I'm Breathing that for the next five months. Yeah. So, you know, water base is the best you could actually do up there because you, you know, you don't want to contaminate the atmosphere. There's three things, Chris, that's, I think, interesting that we trained kind of automatic. You better be able to respond without really thinking. Sort of like a wide receiver in football needs to know the pattern he's running and has to do it without thinking, you know, and that's fire. You better react quickly, and you better react correctly. Rapid decompressions. The other one. Now, that blowtorch was. Was going with, you know, a lot of. A lot of power behind it was like a blowtorch. And so the whole time, you're kind of looking down at that hull, hoping that the torch doesn't point down, because then I've got rapid decompression. If you pierce that hull, you know, quick suffocation. So that one's on your mind. So that's the two. And the third one is a toxic event, a toxic spill in the atmosphere. And we definitely had that with all the byproducts of that fire. So we had the big three all at once, simultaneously, on a space station. Isolated, cut off, no communication to the Earth. And it was up to the ingenuity of myself and my cosmonaut crewmates to wow, you know, to perform under pressure and keep your cool. Did you learn how to get that fire out?

Did you learn.

That's what I was screaming. We're gonna get that fire out, and I'm gonna see my boy again at a newborn at home, so.

Well, did you learn how to say we're out of Schlitz in. In Russian?

There are a lot of expressions in Russia that I use. You know, that's interesting, though. I mean, the whole time it was a Russian space station. And if you were God looking down at us, you would not know who the American was. And we, you know, use the skill sets that each of us brought up there. And we were basically cosmonauts. And we spoke only in Russian for the five months. No, we only spoke to Mission Control Moscow for those five months, only in Russian. And so again, it was. I kind of in my title now I say, you know, US Astronauts slash mere cosmonaut.

No kidding.

And I think that kind of reflects. Reflects what I was doing now, you know, on the International Space Station. Now you're. You're an astronaut. The cosmonauts have their own segment. And you don't. You train together. But not to the extent I Was basically integrated as a Russian cosmonaut. No special, you know, accommodations, because I'm an American and speak English. It was. It was a Russian operation. And our goal was to kind of learn how the Russians operate. And so that was probably a smart way to do it.

Yeah, I guess. Gosh. So speaking of your son, this whole first experience or whole mission experience led to your first book, the off the Planet Surviving Five Perilous Months Aboard the Space Mission, Space Station Mir. Is that right?

That's correct. It was kind of a reflective thing. So when I got back, actually, I saw Jim Lovell. The old Apollo 13 guy. Yeah, yeah, he's living in Chicago. Great, great man. And I went to see him and I said, you know, I'm moving to a small town, Northern Michigan. Any advice for me, Jim? And he said, well, you had five months of what I had a couple days of on Apollo 13, and you ought to share that story and you ought to go speak about it. Share it. You owe that to the world. You had to pay privilege to go up there and you should write about it. So he had his book, obviously, Apollo 13 book, Lost Moon, originally. So anyway, I said, well, I guess I can do that. I'm in a small town, don't. Didn't have a job lined up. And so I took a year or so to kind of reflect on things. And it was, to be honest with you, it was cathartic. There was a lot of suppressed pressure and psychological pressure, and, you know, you just had to keep performing. And so you just push that down and kept it out so you could perform. Yeah, and writing that book was a way to let it all out and kind of catch up psychologically. And that's great with. With what had happened. And then you've got your physiological catching up to do after floating for five months. So I had to do a lot of physical rehab and everything else. So I would say, you know, that book was cathartic along with, you know, I'd write until it. Until it hurt, actually. And sometimes I'd find myself, you know, psychologically drained and say, man, I gotta take a break and I'll take a walk, which was part of my rehab. So it was kind of a recovery period for about a year and a

half after that flight, psychically and physically. I know that I've seen some of your other interviews online, and you talked about the capacity of compartmentalizing and that that was one of the things that really, you know, it sounded like, you know, if I interpreted what you're saying correctly, that was one of the ways that, you know, kind of helped get you through that time. So I could see you'd need to have a debriefing, decompression kind of time, so to speak, after.

Yes, you know, acutely that compartmentalization is important because you, you have fear. You know, it's survival instinct. You know, this is going to kill me, but you've got to tuck that away. And you just got to get methodical. And thank goodness my two crewmates, you know, they, they were of. The one was a military engineer, one, you know, used to fly a MiG. They've been in those tight situations before and we all kept our cool and compartmentalize it, tuck that fear away and, and get on with the task of, you know, saving that space craze station and saving our lives.

Yeah.

And on a broader scale, you're exactly right. I guess you kind of are able to compartmentalize the psychological isolation. You know, loneliness, missing your family.

Sure.

Not sure you're gonna make it back. All that pressure to perform, which is a huge one also. I've got 120 experiments that I've got people down on Earth that spent their lifetime, you know, designing those experiments. And I had the privilege to execute it up there. And in spite of those circumstances, I said, I am gonna come back, look him in the eyes, and I'm gonna, you know, say I got their job done. And I, you know, accomplish those, those goals of the mission. So those, those are pressures that build up and, you know, trying to perform hour after hour, really by the minute up there, it takes some recovery afterwards.

Yeah, I remember too, hearing, and I'd like you to speak about this. You're, you know, sort of like walking off the shuttle that typically, that's not the process that people typically get kind of gurneyed off or something. Tell us about your reentry, so to speak, back to Earth's atmosphere.

Yeah, you know, after five months, you're floating. And it's worse than me saying, chris, go lay in a bed for the next, you know, five months, because at least you have gravity. And when you roll over, you're fighting gravity up there. It is effortless. And so you end up with bone loss and muscle atrophy. You know, I had about 65% of my pre flight strength level, lost about 14% of my bone mass. Hips, lower spine, disuse, atrophy. So when you land, you know, you turn your head, you feel like you're tumbling, and your ear is not, you know, adjusted to gravity. But when they came in to carry me off on a stretcher. You know, I said, you know, I've been in space for five months, and I've overcome a lot of tough times, a lot of difficulties up there. You know, I'm an officer, United States Navy, and we don't get carried off on stretch.

I love that.

Oh, man. You know, I'm gonna walk off this thing. I'm gonna crawl off this thing. To be honest, Chris, I don't. You know, they could have. If I passed out and they dragged me out, that would have been just fine. Because if I had the ability to finish that thing, I was gonna finish it. I wasn't going to give up at the end. That was a tough mission. And I also didn't want my wife and family seeing me carried off on a stretcher. So I said, you know, I'm going to walk off this thing no matter what. I don't care what happens.

That is so awesome, Jerry, man. So, speaking of which, was it like spending that time. You also. Your second book, I think you had written, like, around 72 letters. And did those then get completely piled into the letters to my son book is that.

Yeah, the first. The first book was a, you know, memoir, if you will. I tried to get right to space as fast as I could, but then when I was in space, not sure I was going to make it back, and I would say acutely, probably three times. You know, the fire, we had a near collision, life support systems failing, one thing after another. And then you know, just kind of the overall risk of. Of launch and reentry and doing spacewalks and everything else. You kind of get this feeling that, you know, I might not make it back. And so my son was about a year and a half years old, and I said, you know, I'm going to write him some notes. We weren't able to get that down to Earth very easily. It was. I attach it to the end of data files every week or so over a ground pass over Moscow, downlink it. They'd peel it off, give it to my wife. She collected them. And when I got back and, you know, started reading those letters, I said, you know, every father should be saying this to their. To their kids. And there's nothing, you know, I'm unique in where I was saying it from and my lifestyle at that point, floating in space. But the basic human connection, you know, the relationships we have for our offspring, people we care about more than anything in the world, is the same. And every father should be saying this to their kid. So I said, you know, I can share these letters, put a little framework around it, but they. They are literally letters that I wrote floating on the ceiling up in space. Very personal letters to my son. You know what I hope for him in his life? Telling them why I'm sacrificing. Why what I'm sacrificing up there. And if I didn't make it back, letting them know that I thought it was a privilege to. To be up there and to represent mankind well. So I hope he understood.

That is so touching, Jerry. Again, I think it really speaks to the humanitarian part of who you are and what makes up, you know, you as a person. I know. Speaking of this, you're quite family oriented. You've got four kids. How did you and your wife Katherine meet?

Yeah, kind of an overlap. You know, everything's kind of fortuitous in life. You just have to, you know, you have these moments and you don't know that they're significant or whether they're going to be significant. They end up, you know, changing your whole course of your life. I was. They do what's called a hail and farewell. So I was going to a research center. I was being hailed. I was just arriving at a naval health research center out in San Diego, gonna do some research on bone remodeling. My wife was finishing up a master's at San Diego State. And so she was being farewell because she had finished her internship and there was a little party on the beach, and we overlapped by a day, met each other. Wow. You know. And off to the races. So, again, it's a matter of a one day, you know, overlap and. Or, you know, the whole course of your life can change.

How cool.

Wow. That way with all of us. Right. Everything that happens in your life is kind of just a bit of a whim and, you know, just the way things work out.

Yeah.

Other fate, maybe.

Yeah, absolutely. So I want to get into the new National Geographic one Strange Rock series. But before we do that, clarify for me. I think you were in an episode of something called Secret Space Escapes. Can you start with that show and tell us about that and that episode?

Yeah, I've been in quite a few documentaries over the years. Mostly talking, you know, with some graphics and some reenactments of the fire and then some real film from space. So a lot of those in that case are talking about some really close calls in space that sometimes, you know, you don't even really hear about. And, you know, for example, in my case, the Russians did not want to Publicize that they had a failing space station. And it was a lot of public relations things between the US government and Russia. And when I came back, it was kind of between a rock and a hard place. Because on one hand you have to be straightforward about what happens so that we don't repeat those mistakes and so that we improve the safety for the next people going up there. But on the other hand, there's sort of a diplomacy going here and you don't want to break up and undermine things at high diplomatic levels, I guess so anyway, those are the types of things in some documentaries I've done talked about this. The latest one, though, is much more focused on planet Earth. You know, the. How life emerged, how lucky we are to be living on the planet. And it's done kind of at a higher level than anything I'd done in the past.

Gotcha.

National Geographic, you know, I mean, as a kid, you read the old magazine.

Yeah.

The incredible photography. Yeah, yeah.

Well, let me, let me do a lead.

Cinematography is amazing in this, in the series and, and I narrate one. They have eight different astronauts narrating and then they have Will Smith kind of being the common thread overall narration of it. And then we all kind of appear in it, you know, reflecting on our experience in space and our observation of planet Earth from a different perspective than anyone else would have.

I've seen some clips and trailers and things on it too. And from what I learned, I want to give you kind of a plug for it too and really encourage listeners to watch it. It's eight storytelling astronauts that have been featured on this. And you know, as you said, and as in the intro, you know, Will Smith is kind of the overall overarching host of it. And I want to read a quote. This has been called an epic cinematic event series that will redefine natural history filmmaking and promises to be a mind bending, thrilling journey that explores the frame, fragility and wonder of planet Earth. It's the extraordinary story of why life as we know it exists on Earth, brought into perspective by the only people that have left it behind, astronauts. And in one of the things that I saw, Jerry, so clarify for me, was your episode originally called Death.

It was Death.

Hey, what's up?

Death. He modified it to Survival.

Okay.

The latest iteration. But you know, there is sort of, I mean, one part, for example, it's already been airing a bit. And so my series actually just aired this week and, and I was very pleased because you never know, you know, how it's all going to get Edited turn out. Yeah. But one thing, you know, they're looking at in Kapchatka Peninsula there, and in Russia and Siberia, they look at salmon. You know, I know the sign. Salmon migrate. They lay the eggs and they die. But then the salmon are very high in nitrogen. And that height, the nitrogen, then they get decomposed, and they have these incredible films of thousands of maggots eating these salmon. It's just kind of gross. Yeah, you don't want to watch it over dinner. But then that nitrogen gets into the soil, and then the trees along that river suck up the nitrogen and they flourish because nitrogen is fertilizer for the trees. And then within the trees, the insects find nesting spots. And then the insects are on the water and the salmon eat the insects, and then the salmon die. They create the nitrogen, it goes up the tree that, you know, it's just this one little ecosystem where everything is interwoven, interdependent, and it's awesome and it's amazing. So it's those type of things that you just. Astronaut. Don't really put it all together. And I think from an astronaut in space, I look down at the planet and I say, wow, you know, what a system that is. What a fabric. Awesome how that all interacts and how it all works.

Yeah, yeah. And it's. I think it's interesting because I think when people think of astronauts, they, you know, default to thinking of space travel or thinking of this or that, obviously, which is part of the being an astronaut. But I think it's a really clever lens in which to look at the enormity and the micropity, the microscopicness of what has to work and what has to work right. In order for things to thrive and people to live.

Yeah. We talk about other life out there in the universe, and you look at the probability theory and you say, okay, we're finding these exoplanets and everything else. But I'll tell you, if you really look at what it took to create life on Earth for it to occur, and that's just our feeble mind, you know, trying to piece God, you know, and trying to make sense of it. But. But when we do that, you know, God gave us the ability to think. So I think it's good that we do try to piece it together. And he's probably up there laughing at us like, well, you don't have that quite right. But when you look at all the different things that had to happen, if you just, you know, turn on that rational side, if you will, you know, it's just all these chance things that had to happen for life to exist on this planet. It gets to the point where I'm not so sure there is any other life out there.

Yeah, yeah. That everything really has to kind of line itself up to be able to have that happen.

So in space and in time, and that's the thing, we don't think about the time factor, you know, and you're talking about a billion years or 14 billion years or 4 billion years. You know, we're, as humans, we've got what, 10 fingers, 10 toes? You know, we're good with those kind of numbers. We can go up to 100 or a thousand and have sort of a feel for what that, what that means. But a billion is really beyond our comprehension. We don't really get it. These vast amounts of time and the vast amount of space and distance between planets and between different galaxies, it is mind boggling and we cannot truly comprehend the immensity of it.

Yeah, I think that's very true. So. Well, I will put the books in these episodes and things in the show. Notes for everybody to, to check out and I really encourage it.

Yeah, it's going to be around a long time, Chris. I don't even care about a plug for it. It's a well done series and I'll tell you that the fun thing about it, you can just sit in your rocking chair and your lounge chair and put your feet up and just kind of take it in and let the facts kind of go in one ear and out the other and you would just appreciate, you know, the, the gestalt of it, the beauty of the planet, the complexity of the planet. And then you can rewatch it and you can pick up all kinds of facts that are, you know, fascinating. Like the nitrogen going up the trees.

Yeah.

So it's got, it's got all those aspects. I guarantee this show will be. People be watching it 20 years from now, so. So no hurry to jump on it. But it is a well done series called One Strange Rock. And if you want to, you know, see my own episode where I'm kind of highlighted and that's the one Survival episode number five.

Awesome. Awesome. Good. We'll do that. Yeah, I've heard that the visuals and stuff, again, kind of true to the National Geographic reputation of just beautiful photography, cinematography, et cetera, is one of the additional key things about this. In addition to the stories and the

other thing, on a personal level, I'll tell you, Chris, it's fun going up, new learning curves. And so this Doing film and doing the different things I've been involved in, it's been wonderful. And I learn a lot about how they put these things together. And I've seen it, you know, over a decade now. But this one's kind of the ultimate one.

Yeah.

You know, how, how it's all put together, how the publicity works. We have New York, you know, showings at the Lincoln center with a couple thousand people watching the premiere route in LA with the television critics and learning how that world works. And you know, so it's, it's been interesting process in addition to the actual filming and how fun.

Well, I want to shift gears a little bit because I can't talk to. You can't talk to an astronaut without talking about kind of what's, what's going on in space now. I mean, I think it's almost in some levels, I think almost like a resurgence. I was out at South By a couple of years ago and went through just this amazing exhibit that, you know, NASA, you know, had put together. And it was really, you know, kind of cool. There were some sort of, you know, gray haired, you know, cool scientists and engineers and they, there were some young folks with tattoos and everybody was just all kind of communicating and talking about the tech and talking about the possibilities in the future and stuff. I think now we see a lot of stuff with travel to Mars and we see about privatization of space travel and all sorts of new missions. I just read in yesterday's Wall Street Journal an article with the new director of NASA talking about lunar explorations again and things like that. So what's your take on things? Where do you see things today? Are you happy with it? What are your hopes for tomorrow with NASA? With the United States involvement in space travel?

Yeah, let me start with what you just said there. The gray haired people and the young people with their tattoos. I always thought that's the beauty of NASA. You've got the mentors there that have been around kind of the old timers. They've seen, you know, failures along the way. They've seen what works. They have a bit of caution. And then you, you mix that with the, the young people because, you know, space is sexy.

Yeah.

Everybody wants to be a part of that.

Yeah.

And so you can recruit the brain power of the world and that's what's down there at the Johnson Space Center. I'll tell you. You've got some sharp people down there and you've got that beautiful mix. And as far as government programs go, there is none better than that. Because what happens is you get these young people coming down there, postgraduates or you know, out of college even, and it's probably the best postgraduate education you can have because you've got brain power from the world, all concentrated. Given a task, given a certain amount of time to accomplish that task, given great mentors above them and the equipment that they need. And most of those people last for four or five years and then they go out and they start their own businesses and they create jobs and they create economic opportunity for others. NASA bemoans that. They say, man, we got this great talent. And you know how hang on to those people. I'd give the counter argument you're doing what a government program should do. You are developing people to go out and to lead and to create business and to create jobs. It's a fantastic way to spend money, if you will, taxpayer money. You can't get a better program than that.

Yeah, that's true. It's probably reminds you of your medical training of see one, do one, teach one. You know, it sort of becomes.

Yeah, this mentorship.

Yeah, exactly.

And I've seen, you know, virtual reality training was kind of starting when I was there. Now we have, you know, more virtual reality out there. But at that time, when I'm doing spacewalk training, I'd put on this big clunky headgear and it was like I'm, you know, my hands moving out and I'm getting the virtual reality. First time I've ever seen anything like this. It was a group of, you know, seven, eight people there that were the virtual reality training, spacewalkers, how to do spacewalks. And what you would expect out there, avoid sharp edges, things like that. Well, those guys again, they left NASA after about five years, went out to Silicon Valley area, Louisiana. And last I heard they had sort of a billion dollar company going in virtual reality. And they had like, I don't know, you know, 200,000 or I'm exaggerating, 20,000 employees. Yeah, that's, I mean, what that is. That's the kind of program you want to spend money on. And that is just the job creation part of it. Then you've got all the benefits, the technology, everything else. So there's my little bit for why NASA should be around and why we should spend money on space exploration. Back to your question a little bit there. It's a lot tougher to do these things. It's not a video game. It's tremendous speeds. It is enormous amounts of power and force to get into space. And so when you talk about going to Mars, that's a pretty big stretch. And I sort of like that idea going back to the moon. It's three days away. If you have problems, you can get people back to Earth in relatively short time. You want to go to Mars, you're talking year and a half, two year, three year trip. You have a problem along the way and, and you've got big problems.

Yeah.

And so, you know, setting up a, a lunar colony makes a lot of sense to me.

Yeah. I think. And again, it just, it brings me back to my childhood, you know, in the 60s, and just the whole lunar space program and everything. You know, Mercury and Apollo and Gemini, you know, just. But with newer tech.

Inspirational.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

It's, you know, it affected me. It affected you. Affected a lot of people. Whether you're an astronaut or not doesn't matter. It, it got you thinking of bigger things and what we could accomplish. And so look, look, you know, I like doing hard things. Just like Kennedy said, you know, do it because it's hard.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's, that's what we should be doing. Doesn't matter what we do so much. So I guess let me just say that it doesn't matter what we're doing, you know, Mars, moon, asteroid, I don't care.

Yeah.

It's just got to be hard and it's got to challenge us and it's got to bring out the best in us and it's got to, you know, pull those old timers together with the smart young people with a common goal and to move mankind forward. That's what matters now, where we're going here, here.

I think it's, it's kind of cool in the vernacular today even of people talking about. Doesn't necessarily have to do anything with space, but like calling it, you know, your project is your moonshot project, you know, it's, it's become the thing that means, you know, this is where it's inspirational, it's focused, it's high energy, it's high impact kind of thing. That, that's just become part of our vocabulary, which.

Yeah, isn't it? You know, 50 years later we still say, you know, hey, we went to the moon, didn't we? You can still do that.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

You know, that was, that was a heck of a thing we did. There's no doubt about it. But you know, maybe a little bit of a problem with that is with space shuttle, for example, although we did have two, you know, terrible accidents, you start thinking it's Kind of routine. And it is not routine. And the private space companies, you know, SpaceX blew up a couple rockets along the way and they still have not gotten to a person rated vehicle to take us to the International Space Station. You know, it's probably six, seven years late at this point.

Yeah.

So it is hard. It's going to be hard. And we get excited and I'm excited, don't get me wrong, about some of the things that SpaceX and Boeing and everyone else is doing. But it's a tough process. There's no magic, no one has some magic wand. And so these new space companies have learned the hard way, really. Having said that, I think a lot of that is water under the bridge. And at this point I'm pretty optimistic. We're finally sort of caught up to where we probably should have been maybe four or five years ago if we had followed a different template.

Gotcha. That's good. That's reassuring. So I want to bring us back down to Earth and probably somewhere a bit closer to where I'm guessing you're at geographically today. What's this mechanical McDonald's thing all about, Jerry?

Yeah, it's amazing. You, you do your research. You know what's funny? I was just down in Detroit, an old, you know, I was, I'm a Detroit guy and went to medical school in Detroit. Thought I was going to do trauma surgery and unfortunately that was the place to do it at that time.

Yeah.

But I just did some filming down there and I went to my old town and walked around. But my old town of east Detroit as McDonald's and they in there, they kind of decorated the whole thing with the space theme and they've got a lot of the things that I brought back, different things I had in space. And they built this big statue and it's me and it's probably 10ft tall. And when you're ordering, he kind of is over the top of you. Scary. Right at the counter there. So. Wow. That's my claim to fame. Jerry Lineager has a statue in a McDonald's in east Detroit, Michigan.

There you go. Well, hometown boy done good, right? So that's, that's very cool.

So.

Well, I, I also want to.

Hey, hey. You know, I, I along those lines. It's funny, my nieces, I'll never forget. You know, I'd been in space and spacewalking and doing all the things we've been talking about. Then I was on the Oprah show and it was actually Richard Branson was on and myself and Sebastian Younger, one of the authors. And we had different people on the show. But in any case, my niece, who was probably 10 at the time, you know, comes home to my brother and says, oh my gosh, Uncle Jerry is on Oprah. And that was the biggest, you know, most amazing thing that Uncle Jerry could have. Going to space dinmat.

Yeah, big space mace.

So the McDonald's thing is kind of in that same realm.

That's good. Everybody's got their criteria. You know, you can win medals, Jerry, you can do all these other things, but, you know, you gotta, gotta get your time on Oprah or gotta get your McDonald's. So that's.

There you go.

Very cool. So, and I know I want to talk about, in closing, last few things, and I suspect that maybe this is because of your experiences of looking down on Earth for five months, that you really have a strong humanitarian focus and a strong humanitarian ethos and thread through some of the work that you're involved with now. You're a founding board member of Global Fresh Water, which is a think tank, pardon me, on Global Fresh Water. I think tank called Circle of Blue. And you're also a member of the advisory board at the sustainability leader, Volens. So tell us about what got you involved with those and what you do and what those organizations are all about.

Well, as I'm talking now, looking out of a bay that, you know, Sutton's Bay, where I am here, it's a little bay off Grand Traverse Bay, which is off of Lake Michigan. And so, you know, anybody that sees the Great Lakes has to fall in love with fresh water. I mean, this is the greatest collection of fresh water on Earth. And so it, you know, like, everything starts locally, I guess. And I, I just was interested in, you know, from space. You realize fresh water is everything. You know, that's what defines mankind. Ancient civilizations, the tiger shepherdes, the Nile, the Yangi, you know, the man needs water and, you know, maybe we need to take a little bit better care of it. And I'm sort of a middle ground guy, though. I, I really believe that 80% of us can find common ground around, you know, keeping fresh water fresh and not polluting it and not bring invasive species in. And, and you know, there's an extreme on both ends that I think is not helpful. So, you know, if you have someone that just wants to dump a bilge into the Great Lakes, you know, they deserve prison or whatever you want. You know, they deserve some punishment for that. But that's, you know, like 1% out there. Not even that. And Then on the other extreme we have people that, you know, if you, if you swim in the water and you didn't take a shower in the Great Lakes before you went in the water, you're contaminating the Great Lakes. I mean, come on. Yeah, you know, so, so I'm a, I'm a middle ground person. I think there's a lot of common ground on a lot of these issues and I think the pendulum swings way too far one way and way too far the other way. And those people on the extremes kind of dominate the press, if you will, and unfortunately makes it seem like there's some crisis and some conflict and that we can't find common ground of a simple thing like, you know, protecting our freshwater resources.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, so that's kind of my angle on all these things and why I'm involved. Having said that, I would say that, you know, I'm involved in getting these things going. I believe in them. I'm still proud of what they're doing. But I'm not a day to day operator. But it's very hard and I guess a cautionary tale for any organization. It's very hard not to get, you know, swung in a direction you don't necessarily want to be toward one of those extremes because those extremes are doing all the shouting and all the press coverage and having all the big international meetings. And so, you know, we need a lot more of that 80% in the middle organizations. And in my own, my circle of blue, for example, we talk about in Australia the drought and you know, maybe global warming is causing this drought. Well, the next year they have more rain than they can handle. The, you know, the dams are overflowing, the rivers are, you know, they got water they don't know what to do with. It's the coldest winter ever. They do no reporting on it, you know. So I call my friend and say, come on, there's got to be a balance here. You're going to talk about a drought. You got to talk about plentiful rain that they don't know what to do with. And so these crises is kind of what everyone tries to create because that gets the attention and gets the press and brings in the funding dollars, I guess. But I'm again, I'm a middle of the road. Use the Great Lakes for commerce. You know, I love watching a big freighter go by. I love seeing the iron ore going down to make human lives better and easier and build cars and everything else, you know, but don't, don't dump your bilge in the light.

Right, right.

Common. Common sense.

Exactly.

And I think 90% of us are on the same page.

Yeah, that's good. Well, I think bringing common sense into that, that, you know, just practical, actionable kinds of things could just go a long way. So I share your opinion.

Yes.

So in our final little bit of time, I want to let you go. This has just been great. I could, you know, maybe we can do a round two or I could talk to you all day. But if someone's interested in space, and I know that that can be a variety of different kinds of things, it can be the track of an astronaut like you, it can be engineers, it can be a variety of different kinds of specialty scientists, etc. What would you recommend? Where should someone start? What should they look at? If they're in high school or college or looking towards a career, where would you point someone?

Yeah, probably the documentaries I just talked about. Those are pretty darn good. Take a look at that. They're. There's plenty out there. You know, read some of the books. Apollo 13, Jim Lovell, as I mentioned, you know, great book. Just kind of immerse yourself in it. You know, engineering in the STEM fields, matter. And so if you're interested in a career, even peripherally involved with space or aeronautics, anything else, you better have some background in engineering at least, and you better understand math, science, engineering, if you're gonna have any hope to, you know, to make a difference in those industries.

Sure.

But it's, it's a fascinating world. It's, you know, even myself, I mean, sometimes I say, okay, you read about something in the galaxy, then you read about, you know, something shooting stars or whatever, black holes, you know, you can go forever. It's like, you know, our knowledge is so limited. There's so many of these discoveries that take your breath away. So I guess to some degree you got to kind of corral yourself and, you know, find a niche that, that really fascinates you and then attack that hard rather than trying to understand the whole kabang because just, there's just too much.

Well, it's. And I think that's really good advice to be very, you know, kind of focal on something and then your focus and what you might learn or bring to the table then becomes integrated, you know, with the other professions and other disciplines and things into.

And the other things, Chris, is. You've brought it out. Well, you know, you say you applied to be an astronaut. I applied, I applied again. You know, whatever your dream is, it's great to have Those big dreams. And in order to get there, so you got to have that future goal. And I'm looking across the bay a mile and a half across. I see a little house over there that might be my goal. I want to be an astronaut someday. But along the way, you have those little in between goals, you know, accomplishable with real numbers to them and time frames to do them. And you progress your way through those, you know, those sub steps along the way. And if it doesn't, you know, if you don't get to the other end there, I don't get a good crosses this bay here, a big wave knocks me off course. It's not so bad because I'm really set up for lots of opportunity. So have those minor. For young people, you know, have that big goal. Don't let anyone talk you out of it. And do concrete things to get yourself close to achieving that goal. And no matter what happens, whether you reach it or not, you're going to be close enough.

Yeah, I like that. That's great.

And lots of other opportunities along the way.

So, Jerry, I have to ask, what's next? What haven't you done that you want to do or what in the world can be on an astronaut's bucket list? Is there such a thing as an astronaut's bucket list?

Yeah, I think there is. It's maybe not as concrete as it used to be, you know, that goal of being an astronaut and all the steps it took to get there. But I love new learning curves. And so I'm always open to, you know, the filming, for example, that we. We did here for One Strange Rock. I try to do extensive reading in areas that I'm not that familiar with. I think at one point you've. You've prepared yourself to kind of have a broader perspective on things and to come at things from different angles because of the things that you may have accomplished in your life. And so I think no matter what the challenge is, you've got some tools that will help even outside your field, outside medicine, outside space. I think you can kind of use a different perspective and attack any problem from a different angle. So I don't have anything real concrete. I guess my family's grown. I kind of launched them, if you will. And so now I have a little bit of time to maybe start, you know, doing something else. I'm not exactly sure what that's going to be.

I can't wait to watch and see. So for people that will put it in the show notes for the Want to tune into the show and learn more about you and things like that. What are the best ways for people to follow you or to reach out or whatnot?

Yeah, you know, I'm actually not a big. I try to stay private, I guess.

Sure. Okay.

You know, kind of a funny thing, astronauts in space. You know, you're cut off. I just heard another astronaut. I won't mention who it was, but said that when she got back, she kind of wanted to avoid people a little bit. And it was like she had to overcome that because, you know, you're. You're sort of isolated and quiet, and you're able to, you know, to think in your own things. So anyway, I've got Facebook and I've got a few of those things, but I'm not a big, you know, tweeted out there all the time.

Gotcha.

You don't need to know what I'm eating for lunch.

I guess that's right. Yeah, exactly.

You know, but I do go out. I do a lot of keynote speaking to corporate events and Renaissance weekends and all the other things. And so. So I'm out there. So you just have to dig a little bit. Good.

Yeah. I think. Cause I was. I was stalking you for a bit. So I think if, you know, people want. If people.

You were able to find out quite a few.

That was good.

It's out there.

Yeah.

Yeah. I always tell it, you know, you Google myself and, oh, my gosh, you got a thousand hits. You know, it's like. So there's no end to it.

Exactly.

Obviously, the couple books. The books just went out of print, actually, so they're getting harder to find. Maybe I'm just gonna fade away into the sunset.

I seriously doubt that. So. But I know that if people do want to engage you for, you know, speaking and stuff, you're. You're represented. So we'll try and get that.

Yeah. I'm with Washington Speakers Bureau.

Awesome.

And, you know, to me, it's the ultimate compliment when people appreciate what you're saying, appreciate what you did, and give me the opportunity to stand in front of their employees or their customers and, you know, a couple thousand people out there. And I feel that I actually. That it matters, you know, that I can influence lives, that I can bring a different perspective to the problems. And. And that's kind of one thing I do do when I do a talk. I study that company as much as I can. I probably know a hundred times more than I need to know about it, but it's a little MBA course for me. The way I Look at it. I think I have my MBA at this point. I'm talking to different corporations and different associations and everything else. And it's been a wonderful sort of experience for me to have that privilege to get in front of those audiences.

I think the privilege is probably quite shared. And I can't imagine, Jerry, the with your background in history that you would do anything without being quite prepared because it is certainly it has paid off in spades for you, my friend.

Well, as you know, Chris, it's a privilege to do the things that we are able to do. And I'll tell you, I hate wasting my time. You probably have sensed that from what we've been talking about, and I definitely hate wasting important people's time. So you're right. I prepare hard. I try to make sure that I did not waste anyone's time, that we all get something out of it.

That's great. Well, I think I certainly feel like I have, and I think our audience will very much appreciate this time that you've spent with us today. It's just been a pleasure. And hopefully maybe we can reconnect at a Renaissance or cross paths someplace else again. I can look forward to seeing you again, Jerry. Thanks again for being on the show.

Thank you, Chris. And yeah, I hope we do, you know, cross paths here on the planet Earth somewhere down the line. And it's an absolute privilege to be talking to you and to your listeners. So thank you.

Awesome. Bye. Bye. Living a Life in Full is a production of Stout Media, a subsidiary of Gordian Knott, llc. Assistant Producer Gracie Wong Music Dan o' Brien Sam Rude Graphics Larry Newberry Executive producer and host, Dr. Chris Stout to learn more, stop by our website alifeinfull.org for show notes and please recommend us to your friends and leave us a review on itunes. Thanks.