In this week’s episode, both our storytellers will have you on the edge of your seat, shivering with anti…….ci……….PATION as they share stories of high stakes scientific events.
Part 1: Science journalist Nicholas St. Fleur spends two years preparing for what is to be an epic solar eclipse.
Nicholas St. Fleur is a science reporter at STAT covering racial health disparities and host of the podcast Color Code. He is also an associate editorial director of events creating virtual and in-person live journalism events. He joined STAT through a Knight-Wallace Reporting Fellowship in 2020 to cover the intersection of race, health, and the life sciences during the Covid-19 pandemic. He won the 2021 Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award for Young Science Journalists. Before joining STAT he wrote for The New York Times about archaeology, paleontology, space and other curiosities of the cosmos.
Part 2: Chemical engineer Jason Raines finds himself leading the underdog team in a high school underwater robotics competition.
Jason Raines is a staunch chemical engineer turned accidental STEM innovator. For nearly two decades, he has brought a hands-on, experiential approach to STEM education as a teacher, administrator, mentor and coach to students and educators across the country. As a passionate advocate of the school-to-STEM pipeline, his goals are to raise the awareness students, particularly those from underrepresented areas, have to the vast potential STEM fields have to offer, while helping to remove the barriers that prevent students from experiencing STEM. He currently is the Director of STEM Innovation, & Partnerships at Graham Moore Education Design Consultants. He lives in Atlanta, GA and loves his wife, Anji, three daughters, Cami, Evi and Dele, and son Ryan. He loves sandwiches and hates mosquitoes.
Episode Transcript
Part 1
I had spent a year preparing for two minutes and 38 seconds of darkness. This was back in 2017 and I was a science reporter for The New York Times. My beat included a bit of space.
So the science desk at The New York Times has two titans covering space. There's Ken Chang who covers space, everything within the solar system. And then there's Dennis Overbye who covers everything outside of the solar system. And then there's me, Nick St. Fleur who covers all the cosmic debris that kind of falls through the cracks, if you will.
So I was writing a lot about backyard astronomy: meteor showers, planetary alignments, lunar eclipses and total solar eclipses. I was writing this story about this astronomer named Jay Pasachoff who was getting ready to witness an eclipse off an island off the coast of Madagascar.
I'm talking to Jay and he's telling me, “You know, this eclipse that I'm about to see, it's pretty cool. But, in August, the total solar eclipse will come to the United States and it's going to go from coast to coast, from C to shining C”
That hasn't happened in nearly a century, so I'm like, “Okay. Sounds dope.”
And he says to me, “Get to totality.”
Nicholas St. Fleur shares his story with the Proton Prom audience at The Bell House in New York City, NY in June 2022. Photo by Zhen Qin.
Get to totality. Some of you all might know what I'm talking about here. But get to totally. I'm like, “Okay. That sounds cool. What do you mean by that?”
So totality is this moment where the moon moves in front of the sun and completely blots it out in the sky during the eclipse. And what's left behind is this ethereal wispy crown known as the corona. The corona, as Jay was telling me, it's kind of mysterious, if you will. So even though we see the sun every day or we hope to see it every day, it still has some scorching mysteries.
The surface of the sun, it burns at about 5,500 degrees Celsius. That’s pretty hot. But the corona, the corona burns at about a million degrees Celsius. That's a huge discrepancy set there. That would be like going up to a fire pit or a campfire. It's nice and toasty. But then the further back you get, the hotter it is. That just doesn't make sense but that's what's happening with our sun.
And during totality is, honestly, the only time that scientists can see the corona. So Jay's telling me all of this and I'm like, “That sounds dope. That sounds pretty cool.”
And he's just like, “Wait, but the visual aspect it's cool, but it's so much more than just that.”
During totality, the sky gets dark during the middle of the day. The temperature drops. The birds, they stop chirping. They fly back into their nests. But the crickets and the frogs, they come out to play. They start croaking and such, making noise. And all around you, you see this 360 degree sunset.
And I'm like, “That sounds really cool. That sounds dope, man. I'm just being honest.”
And he's like, “I've seen over 60 eclipses.”
And I'm like, “Wow.”
And he introduces me to this whole world of eclipse chasers. He's seen them from nearly every continent except Antarctica, though he did see it like in a plane from Antarctica. He even saw one on his honeymoon. I mean, that sounds romantic to me.
And in learning about this world of eclipse chasers, these are people who travel around the world to be in the moon's shadow. They're shadow junkies, if you will. They have competitions when it comes to who has seen the most eclipses. Who has spent the most amount of time in totality.
In doing my research, I ran into a guy named Mike Kentrianakis. He's seen about 20 or so eclipses but he went viral for an eclipse that he saw. He was on a plane and some of you maybe saw it. I hear some laughs over here.
And he's on a plane and he's watching this eclipse happen. And he's screaming out. He says, “Oh, here it comes. Oh, here it comes. Look, look. Corona. I see corona. I see corona. Totality. Totality. Oh.”
Nicholas St. Fleur shares his story with the Proton Prom audience at The Bell House in New York City, NY in June 2022. Photo by Zhen Qin.
And I'm just like, “Okay, buddy. Is it really that exciting?”
And he's like, “Nick, it's lifechanging.”
And he was telling me how he was basically an eclipse Paul Revere, if you will. He went across the line of totality to all these small towns saying, “The eclipse is coming. The eclipse is coming.” Preparing them all for when you know August 21st 2017 was about to come.
So I say to him, “So you've been to all of these towns, Mike. Tell me, where will you be on eclipse day?”
He says to me, “Carbondale. Carbondale, Illinois.”
I'm like, “Carbondale, Illinois? What's that? I don't know what Carbondale is.”
Carbondale is this small college town, population about 26,000 people in southern Illinois. It's a college town, as I was saying, so there's a university there, Southern Illinois University.
But what's so special about Carbondale is that it is, at this point, known as greatest duration. So greatest duration meant that they were going to get totality, that moment when the moon gobbles up the sun and all this amazing phenomenon happens. They were going to get it for a majestic two minutes and 38 seconds, nearly longer than anywhere else in the country.
And they were also at the crossroads, so they will also experience the total eclipse when it comes back to the US in 2024.
So I'm like, “Cool, man. Okay. I got a story.”
I go over to my editors, I'm like, “Hey, I got a good story idea. I'd like to profile Carbondale, Illinois for this upcoming eclipse, because Mike Kentrianakis was telling me you need to get to totality.”
So I'm telling my editors, “I need to get to totality.” So I'm saying, “I want to go there before the eclipse to see how the town is preparing.”
My editors actually took a bit of convincing because, for so many people, when they think about total solar eclipses, they really think about something called partial solar eclipses. They remember being kids, maybe being pulled out of class going out into the backyard or the schoolyard getting these cool eclipse glasses, looking up and seeing some shadows on the sun. It's cool but it's not stunning. It's not lifechanging.
But I'm telling them, “Hey, everyone I'm speaking to is telling me that this is awesome. We really need to see it.”
So I'm able to convince my editors to send me there because there's a lot going on at that time. There was another huge, big orange story happening around there that a lot of reporters at The New York Times were more focused on. But, luckily, I was able to convince them.
Nicholas St. Fleur shares his story with the Proton Prom audience at The Bell House in New York City, NY in June 2022. Photo by Zhen Qin.
So I go to Carbondale. I'm talking to some townsfolks. I'm asking them and it's a little mixed. It's split. Some of the townsfolk are telling me like, “I don't care what's happening in the sky. I'm not that interested.”
But I spoke with this one guy who was at a bookstore and more or less he's like, “I'm about to make bank off of this.” He's like, “I'm looking at all my inventory. I'm like how could I put an eclipse logo on this? How could I put an eclipse logo on that?”
He's like, “I got koozies with eclipse logos. I got hoodies. I got it all.”
I'm like, “Yeah, he's going to make bank.”
And then I'm speaking to this other gentleman, Bob Bayer who's at the University of Southern Illinois and he is kind of their physics guy. He's telling me how he's kind of been preparing for this for like five years or so.
Southern Illinois University is getting this huge astronomical event, probably the biggest one we've had in a century, but they don't actually have an astronomy department. So he's like, “Hey, I told my superiors, I was like, ‘Listen, people will come because we have an x on the map. We have this dot on the map. We have to prepare for this.’”
And I'm like, “This is great.” So I write my story about Carbondale. Luckily, it ended up on the front page of the Science Times, which was my first front page of the Science Times, so I was like hey. I was feeling good.
And I'm getting emails from people who are telling me, “I'm going to Carbondale because I read your story.” I'm getting emails like, “Oh, are there more open rooms? Can I still book it?”
I'm just like, “Yeah, sure. Everyone, just come to Carbondale. Get to totality.”
So eclipse day comes. It's August 21st and I'm feeling kind of good. I'm like, “Okay, this will be fun. This would be great.”
I go to Carbondale, of course, because I got to go there. I'm repping the town, if you will. I'm ready to report what's happening the day of.
So I'm talking to people and it's a whole festival. They have like the town itself was swarmed with about 50,000 eclipse enthusiasts. All these people came in. I go to the stadium, 14,000 people lined the stadium. And the whole thing, it's just so much joy going on. They have a Michael Jackson medley going on. they have like the marching band playing music. It was a party. It was really a party.
So I'm there on the field and I'm talking to the scientists and I'm just like I'm feeling good about myself because I've been running into people all day telling me, “I came to Carbondale because of you, man. I read that story. I'm here because of you.”
And I'm talking to the scientists. This is about like an hour out before totality. I'm like, “So, how's everything looking?”
And she says to me, “Everything's looking pretty good, you know, except if that happens.” And she points up and I look up and the whole, everywhere around us it got dark prematurely. I look up and there is this big cotton candy cloud right in front of the sun. Huge cloud.
I'm just like, “Ahh.” Then after cotton candy cloud after cotton candy cloud after cotton candy cloud, a queue of cotton candy clouds in the sky and I'm just like, “Oh, my gosh. What's going on?”
Eclipse chasers know you're at the whim of the weather, but I'm just like, “I just invited all these people. What's going on? I'm feeling a bit nervous.”
So they had an announcer because they really went all out. So they had an announcer who gets on the microphone and he's just like, “All right, everyone. We have about 10 minutes until the eclipse. I want you all to get loose, get ready. Get ready for what we're about to experience.”
So we're getting closer and closer and he's doing this countdown. He's like, “Five, four, three, two, one…” and it's about eclipse time. I'm telling you, this cloud is right there. For the first second of the eclipse, we see it. We see something that looks so amazing, but swallowed up by the cloud.
Everyone's getting nervous. All of our joy and all of our jubilation it just turns to jitters, because we're out there and we're ready for the show but the star of the show is not there. So we're like, “What's going on?”
We're waiting and the guy gets on the mic. He's like, “All right, everyone. I'm going to need all of your help. I'm going to need all of your help. We're going to move that cloud.”
I was like, “We're going to move that cloud?”
He's like, “All right, everyone. Stamp your feet with me. Shout to the heavens, ‘Move, cloud. Move, cloud.’ In fact, I want you all to do it right now.”
He said, “Move, cloud. Move, cloud.”
And we're looking up. We're looking up and there's a little porthole, so we see it for an instant. We see this dazzling ring in the sky.
We're all like, “Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. This is amazing.”
Then as soon as we start, it gets swallowed up again. But we're all getting super hyped because this is so cool.
So all 14,000 of us, we're all there. We're all stamping our feet. We're all going, “All right. Ready, everybody? Move, cloud. Move, cloud. Ready, move, cloud. Move, cloud. Okay. We're getting closer and closer.”
And I'm telling you, we had two minutes, 38 seconds here. So we get into two minutes and 34. Two minutes and 35. Boom. The cloud moved and we all behold majesty right in front of us. We see totality. We see this ring, this wispy ring of just gorgeousness up there in the sky.
This was a celestial Super Bowl. No one was looking at the end zone. Everyone was looking to the sky. You would have thought that we just nailed this Hail Mary pass in overtime because everyone was going wild.
Then it stopped. It was over, but we all shared, in this moment, this beautiful natural phenomenon.
And then the guy grabs the microphone again and he says, “Congratulations, everybody. You've just seen a total solar eclipse.”
I'm telling you. I wasn't a believer going into this. I had spoken to these people and I was like, “Okay, it's going to be cool. Is it really going to be as cool as they thought?” And I came out changed. I was like, “Yo, I want to be an eclipse chaser now. This is dope. This is really dope.”
So like I mentioned, the eclipse is coming back in in 2024 here in the US so I really want to see when that happens. I missed it in 2020 because of the pandemic but 2024 I will be in totality, and I encourage you all to get to totality as well.
And the cool thing about being an eclipse chaser or, in my case, a wannabe eclipse chaser, is that you have your vacations mapped out for the rest of your life, more or less. Like in 2026 I'm going to Iceland. I'm going to see this eclipse with the aurora borealis. 2027 I'm going to go to Egypt. I'm going to chill by King Tut's tomb. I'm going to view it as well.
Then if I eat well, diet correctly, exercise, live a good life, in 2079, the eclipse will be coming to New York City and all of you right here in the Bell House where you are sitting, you will be able to see totality. I'll be 88 but it's going to be worthwhile.
And then, together, we can spend the next 57 years preparing for a majestic two minutes and nine seconds of darkness.
Thank you all so much for your time.
Part 2
So I'm walking back to my classroom after hearing that I am the brand new, official coach of our newly inaugurated underwater robotics team. Don't cheer because I am not happy, all right? I am a bit confused and a little bit shocked that it's happening and probably, like you, wondering what the hell is underwater robotics.
So let's just get that out of the way. Underwater robotics it's I have to teach middle school students. Imagine the middle school students building this submarine of sorts. It's about the size of a shoebox, maybe a large shoebox. It's made out of PVC piping and it has like these motors that are waterproof. So shoebox submarine, motors and has this long tether, like this cord that goes all the way out to a remote control.
The students put this into a pool and in the pool they take hula hoops and they sink them to the bottom of the pool, a lot of them. The kids race them all the way out through the hula hoops. They fly them out and then they fly them back and they time it. And that is a sport.
As I see on your face you are still shocked and confused as I am. And not only did I not know that that was a sport, I now know that I'm in charge of it.
I'll tell you a little bit about me and I'll tell you a little bit about my school. At this time, I am back in the classroom. I say back in the classroom because this was my— I've taught before but this is my first year at a middle school in a long time. I had a small business I was running for a while. The name of my school is Stone Mountain Middle School.
I am, at this time, lost. I am, at this moment, recently separated, soon to be divorced father of a one-year-old, two-year-old, three-year-old and a four-year-old. And, at this moment, I have lost my home and I lost a business, so I am lost and I need a job.
Jason Raines shares his story outdoors at Waller's Coffee Shop in Atlanta, GA in June 2022. Photo by Rob Felt.
I have a chemical engineering degree. A little bit easier to get a teaching job than an engineering job, so I find myself at Stone Mountain Middle School.
I'll tell you a little bit about my school. Stone Mountain is not what you would call— well, we aren't exactly known for our academics. You know of those schools? We aren't exactly a robotic school. We are damn sure are not an underwater robotics school. We're kind of like a more NEWS at 11 kind of school. You know what I mean? We're more like regularly featured on the TV show First 48 kind of school.
But we're trying. We have all the markers of a struggling school. And the school leadership came up with this idea, this acronym they called S-T-E-M. S-T-E-M stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. And they figured that that thing right there could help change this struggling school.
So word on the street, I have this chemical engineering that I'm hiding in my back pocket and they're like I guess you would be good for STEM. So this initiative lands on my lap and, once again, I am like, “What am I doing here? How is this happening?”
Fast forward to the robots. If you think about it, I am now the new coach of this robotics team. It becomes quite clear to me that we do not have a few things that are necessary to have a team. We don't have any money. We don't have any— not many resources. And we don't have a pool. So I was like this is going to be crazy.
So I do like most people do. I need some help. That's my main thought is like I need some help. And so I reach out to my friends, and I'm glad to see some of their faces here. And like any good friend, when you ask for help I leave out a lot of details, like most of them. I'm thankful for them because they helped me out so much and helped me get the ball started.
So now I have some help. I got some kids and we need to get to work. So when it comes down to getting to work, it's funny to me because this whole STEM thing has this collaboration component that goes with it. The more we helped each other, the more we got help. And in my head, it's like this movie montage of how this thing even happened.
So keep in mind, I don't know what robots are and then the ball gets rolled and I got these little— I'm teaching sixth graders, these little 11‑ and 12‑year‑olds, and they start to work in this like montage. I got little kids. I got little girls with their hair in ponytails and they're working power drills. I don't have a pool so we're filling up trash cans with water to test it out.
I got teachers and volunteers making t-shirts with transfers and everything. It was crazy. We were forging permission slips. It was— no, we didn't do that. Yeah, we totally did that. What am I talking about. We got to get these kids there.
So they're getting ready. The robots are coming together. I feel like the team is coming together. But all the while in my head I'm like, still, I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm totally faking this thing and they're going along with me.
So no time for that because we got to compete. This competition it's called Sea Perch, S‑E‑A P‑E‑R‑C‑H. Sea Perch is the competition. It's this big regional competition that we have to do. And so we get the kids there. My little four kids, I got four little kids, I got two boys and two girls, they're 11‑year‑olds. They're loving life. They feel great about themselves, until we hit the door.
As soon as we hit the door, I could see the shift in their energy. I see these really confident kids, like, “We've been working really hard, Mr. Raines. We're ready.”
And the doors open and they see the other teams. And they see the lights and they see the pool. I start getting questions like, “Where do we check in,” and, “Where's the bathroom,” “When's lunch,” and, “Why are all these white people here?”
I start to listen to them and I realize, okay, these kids really need some support.
So I look around. I see their eyes are bright. We have the worst‑looking robot in the building. For real. In addition to it, no shots at the t-shirt designers, but we made our own t-shirts. And so these kids, the other kids have t-shirts that have like branding on it and corporate sponsors behind it and all the while I'm going, “Okay, we can do this.”
Until one of our little girls walks up to us and says, “Hey, Mr. Raines, we looked at this other team and they've practiced in a real pool 91 times. We've been in the pool two times. We are dead.”
So I do everything I can. I try to summon up whatever movie motivational speech I could come up with and I tell them that you're going to be fine and you belong here. And you're going to do great.
And I am acting because I'm concerned as well. So you have a shook coach and shook kids and I'm wondering again, “Did I bring these kids— why did I bring them here for them to feel this way?”
But, again, no time for pity because it's time to go. Time to get into the pool.
So I say, “All right, guys, it's ready to go. We're ready to walk down to the pool. We're going to put our robots in the water.”
And they say, “No, sir. No coaches on the deck.”
I was like, “No coaches on the deck?” And they look at me and I go. And they walk away and they go, “You got to swim on your own. Those kids got to swim on their own.”
So they're out there, these underwater robots they're on the deck. They put their robots in and they say, “On your mark, get set, go.”
Their little robot takes off and they're just screaming and yelling and they're hollering, “To the right,” “To the left,” “Farther,” “No,” “Yeah.”
Jason Raines shares his story outdoors at Waller's Coffee Shop in Atlanta, GA in June 2022. Photo by Rob Felt.
They get down to the end, they come back and it's just so much chaos. I'm in the stands. I want to cry. I don't know what's happening.
And they get to the end and they go, “Did we win?”
And this is a flaw with underwater robots, by the way. I have no idea because you can't see in water. So I don't know if they won and they don't know. It was just like the longest time ever.
So they eventually start to name out who the kids their places are. And so they say, “In third place…” and they don't name us. And so our kids are like, “Huh?”
And they go, “In second place…” and they don't call us out. And I see the kids’ shoulders go like, “Well, we didn’t get second.” And it just seemed like it just hung.
And then they said, “In first place…” and they said, “Stone Mountain Middle School.” And it was crazy. I mean, bonkers. Like kids were doing cartwheels. They were crying. We were like calling mom. It was nuts and I couldn't believe it happened. It was a full-blown Jamaican bobsled moment. Like how did this happen?
And that win changed everything. It's pretty amazing because I told you about my little struggling school and I talked to you about these kids. And that little spark, that little STEM thing it was pretty cool to see them. Because, when you win regionals, you go to nationals. And so these four little kids who have never been on planes fly to Boston and complete in a national competition for something that they did not even expect to be in locally.
And to take that even further, these kids go back the next year and they win it again. And they go to nationals. And they do it three years in a row. So they win it and go to nationals three times. The thing about it is with that, in addition to that, our school caught the bug. And so when the school catches the bug, that same challenging school ends up turning into the first internationally STEM‑certified middle school in our county. I think that's pretty awesome.
As I look back on this whole thing, I think about the fact that I still say to myself, “What am I doing?” Or, “Why am I here?” It's still something that happens to me. I'm still human. But I like to think about the fact that STEM helps me answer some of those whats and whys and gives me some clarity to that. And in many ways, STEM is a way that I help others believe in themselves. I like to think that it helps me believe in me.
Thank you.