0:00

Hey everyone, it's a holiday week,

0:02

happy 4th of July to those celebrating it,

0:05

so we're rewinding to one of our favorite episodes.

0:08

NASA has been making a lot of

0:10

headlines with the discovery of planets outside

0:12

our solar system that may harbor life,

0:14

also called exoplanets, and our guest, Sarah

0:16

Seeger, is a big part of these

0:18

pioneering projects. While

0:20

we have you here, make sure to check out some

0:22

of our upcoming workshops and a Design Better Happy Hour

0:25

in August in San Francisco. Free

0:27

and discounted access goes to our premium members and

0:29

we'll be opening up tickets to everyone next

0:32

week. Just head on

0:34

over to our sub stack at designbetter.com. Okay,

0:37

on to the show. Everybody

0:42

comes to the table with a certain

0:44

sense of ownership of different parts of the project,

0:46

but it was also just getting to know each

0:48

other. It turns out you really

0:50

do need a very outspoken and provocative person.

0:52

You need some tension. You need to get

0:54

the discussion going for people to push the

0:56

boundaries. In the end, I think

0:58

a genuine respect for each other is really

1:00

key. Looking

1:03

up into a clear night sky and seeing the

1:05

thousands of stars visible to the naked eye, it's

1:07

hard not to wonder, are there other planets like

1:10

ours out there? Our

1:12

guest for this episode, Professor Sarah

1:14

Seeger, is on a mission to

1:16

discover potentially habitable planets outside our

1:18

solar system. Sarah is an astrophysicist

1:21

and planetary scientist at MIT. And

1:24

to discover these exoplanets, she relies not

1:26

only on her own brilliance, she

1:29

is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship,

1:31

otherwise known as the Genius Grant, but

1:34

also on some pretty extreme collaboration

1:36

across different disciplines. In

1:38

the course of our conversation, we talked to

1:41

Sarah about how her teams push beyond initial

1:43

friction and how giving herself permission to fail

1:45

has driven much of her success. Sarah

1:48

is also the author of a memoir titled The

1:50

Smallest Lights in the Universe. And we

1:52

talked to her about the book and bringing her full self to

1:54

work. If you're listening to

1:56

this at night, take

1:58

a few minutes. Step outside

2:01

and get inspired by the stars above

2:03

you, like your ancestors

2:05

before, and then

2:07

enjoy our conversation with Sarah. Thanks

2:10

for listening. Sarah

2:16

Seger, welcome to the Design Better podcast.

2:19

Thanks for having me. So I was

2:21

just saying before we hit the record button,

2:23

your book, The Smallest Lights in the Universe,

2:26

was one of the best reads of 2020

2:28

for me. I really

2:30

enjoyed it and should frame a

2:32

little bit that your work,

2:34

you're looking for exoplanets, planets

2:36

outside of our solar system.

2:39

And that entails a lot of different types

2:41

of efforts, and we'll dig into that more. But

2:44

your book is about the search for

2:46

life in the universe, but

2:48

it's also about the search for life here

2:50

on Earth. And I wonder if you could

2:52

talk to us about the parallels that you

2:54

see in your work and your personal life

2:57

and how they sometimes

2:59

might inform one another. It

3:01

sounds cliche, but life is a journey. And

3:03

so are our careers, and so is

3:05

the exploration of space. And

3:08

I think the overlapping parallel is that

3:10

sometimes there are giant obstacles in front

3:12

of us we have to work around.

3:15

And sometimes there are great opportunities that we have to

3:17

be able to recognize. And so both

3:19

in my work and personal life and just thinking

3:21

about space and all the wondrous

3:23

things that could be out there and our path

3:26

to exploring them, there are a lot

3:28

of parallels that I do try to weave together in the

3:30

story. The story is very intimate, and

3:32

I think Erin and I both felt that, given

3:35

your status and your level of

3:37

professionalism in your career, it

3:39

may have been something of a risk to publish

3:41

something so personal. And we wonder

3:44

if you could talk a little bit about the kind

3:46

of power of being able to bring your full self

3:48

to work and kind of

3:50

expose things maybe that people don't often

3:52

talk about. Right, that's a really

3:54

deep question. Part of my goal

3:56

was to inspire because

3:58

there are... Now

8:00

perhaps you know some people who I mean, I'm sure you

8:02

know people who are on the autism spectrum They might not

8:04

know it yet or perhaps you don't know but once you

8:06

sort of see it you can recognize it in others Absolutely.

8:09

Could you tell us a few other roles in your rule book?

8:11

What do they say? Okay so one of them is we're often

8:14

in our own little world and Where

8:16

I work at MIT one of the places is this

8:19

very long corridor. We call it the infinite corridor and

8:22

Sometimes like you're in your own little world and some of

8:24

them go. Oh, hi. Hi Sarah You know Hi, Professor Seager,

8:26

you'll be like and because you're in your

8:28

own little world and you weren't thinking about them and they

8:30

get very very offended By that reaction. So it's like when

8:32

you walk into this corridor Just sort of

8:34

be aware that people are gonna come up to you And what will

8:36

you say another rule is when you

8:39

walk into a room with a meeting and you sit

8:41

down like don't expect them To start the meeting right

8:43

away. There has to be some period of small talk

8:46

Like how are you today? Oh, Elijah.

8:48

I heard about this thing like Wow.

8:51

Okay. Hey, that's really cool And

8:53

even if you don't mean it at all Like you

8:55

still have to do that and you have to think to yourself

8:58

You're a good part of this meeting is going to be

9:00

incredibly slow and not relevant to the topic at all And

9:02

you just sort of have to let that flow and so

9:04

it takes a lot of effort because it would be as

9:06

if you Were from another country and let's pick perhaps France

9:09

perhaps you're from Paris and Then

9:12

you you move to America. Let's say you

9:14

move to rural America like that's going to be a

9:16

culture shock for you and probably you're gonna have to

9:19

You know revise your expectations about how people interact and

9:21

how they behave and it's like that But it's like

9:23

that on a daily basis So it ends up becoming

9:26

quite tiring but the rule book is incredibly helpful because

9:28

then you don't offend people by mistake That's

9:30

fascinating. Is that something you're gonna publish? Well, I

9:33

wasn't thinking of that right now We also need

9:35

a rule book in the other direction. So for

9:37

a spoiler alert I have

9:39

like a married to the most wonderful man ever

9:41

and he adores me so much and I'm just

9:43

still so so thrilled Well, he's the

9:45

funniest person ever because he needs his own rule book I feel

9:47

like he's got a rule book This

9:49

is not easy to live with someone like this, especially

9:52

when I met him. I Actually

9:54

felt like he had a sixth sense like not

9:57

psychicness, but you know, it's kind of in that

9:59

direction tuned in maybe

12:00

my only friend, actually, only really good friend,

12:02

which is, it's a wonderful thing to have,

12:04

be married to your best friend. But

12:07

as he was sick and terminally ill, I

12:09

realized I was in really big trouble because

12:11

I had, I didn't like, you know,

12:13

who do you reach out to, who will help support

12:16

you and who will you connect with? And so I

12:18

thought of my children as well because what little

12:21

family you do have is very far away. I

12:23

went about this really consciously and I looked at who

12:25

my children interacted with a lot. Like we had a

12:28

babysitter who was a family friend and her whole family

12:30

became like our family. And the kids could go to

12:32

her mom's house and they would all, you know, they

12:34

would sleep overnight there. And

12:36

so I like paid attention to what was working and

12:39

what looked good. And I just invested in that. It

12:41

sounds very formulaic in a way. And

12:43

I had this other friend I met who

12:46

is, I think oddly enough

12:48

quite seriously on the autism spectrum. And he actually told

12:50

me how to make friends. He had like a way

12:52

that he, and so I just

12:55

kind of went from there. I managed to

12:57

find friends and find something that I liked

12:59

about people. It sounds

13:01

all foreign to a lot of people because it just

13:03

comes naturally to you. But being able to get this

13:05

was like hugely eyeopening for me and it was a

13:07

wonderful experience. I actually don't think

13:09

that it comes naturally. Speaking for myself that

13:12

I didn't realize that community was so

13:15

important until COVID-19. Oh wow. And

13:17

we're isolated, you know, it feels like we're on our

13:19

own little island and realized we only

13:22

had one other family to communicate or like

13:24

spend time with. But when you look back

13:26

before coronavirus, can you see now that you

13:29

did have a community or you didn't have

13:31

one? I had a surface community, but not

13:33

the depth of community that you really described

13:35

in your book. That was the thing that

13:37

was so profound is that it's not just

13:39

like people that you'd meet with on a

13:41

Friday evening for a cocktail, but like they

13:43

know you, they know who you are, they

13:45

know your story. Right, well, I'm really so

13:47

pleased that you picked up on that. I

13:49

feel like looking back, I was in my

13:52

own pandemic, just me, you know? And

13:54

now that the whole world is going through it, it's like

13:57

I'm seeing this mass, well, there's a mass

13:59

pandemic, to

28:00

reach those goals. That just doesn't sort of fall into

28:02

your lap. Part of that is just being

28:05

open to and recognizing opportunity and also being

28:07

able to work hard to get there. He

28:09

would always say, so you know how people

28:11

always have these quotes or idioms they love?

28:13

He'd always say, you know, Thomas Edison would

28:15

say, 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. I'm

28:19

curious too about how sort of a little

28:21

bit of a mischievous nature may have played

28:23

into the kind of early formation of how

28:25

science and creativity, and you talk early in

28:27

the book about dropping objects off a balcony

28:29

and getting caught for doing that. And then,

28:31

you know, other well-known physicists, you

28:34

know, there's a bit of a mischievous streak in

28:36

them like Richard Feynman, who's kind of well known

28:38

for that. Why do you think that is that

28:40

maybe sometimes creative folks embrace sort of mischievous nature

28:43

early in their childhood? I think there's a lot

28:45

of things. I think one of them is just

28:47

trying to understand how the world works, you know,

28:49

by doing. And so it's

28:51

like curiosity. I think that all kind

28:53

of ties together. And then

28:56

there's also the pushing boundaries. I mean, most

28:58

kids do that, whether it's, you know, being

29:00

creative or doing something crazy or just pushing

29:02

back on their parents. So I think it

29:04

all comes together. Curiosity, pushing boundaries, just to

29:06

kind of see how far you can go

29:08

and trying to just figure out how things

29:10

work. I don't think we thought we were

29:12

being mischievous, honestly. We were just

29:14

trying to occupy our time with something that we were curious about.

29:17

There are few places in your career and

29:19

in your life where there was a fork

29:21

in the road where you've had some big

29:23

opportunities kind of present themselves. And some of

29:25

them are more obvious than others. Certainly

29:27

a MacArthur Genius Grant. That's sort of a

29:29

fork in the road, not necessarily like there's

29:32

a lot of things you can do with

29:35

that opportunity. But are there opportunities that are

29:37

maybe less obvious to readers

29:39

of your book or even your students

29:41

who know you better, where you feel

29:43

like that decision right there,

29:45

whether that was logic

29:47

or luck that drove that left

29:50

or right turn that

29:52

changed everything? Can you think of some of

29:54

those points in your career and how they

29:56

changed you? An obvious one is I was

29:59

in graduate. school at Harvard, and

30:02

I was looking for a PhD thesis,

30:04

something to work on that would define

30:06

my doctorate. Typically your advisor

30:08

will give you a few choices, and

30:10

he gave me this choice to work on this

30:13

brand new field that was so new, exoplanets, planets

30:15

orbiting stars other than the sun. And

30:17

at the time, there were only a few. Now

30:20

there's thousands, and we think every star has a planet.

30:23

But back then it was very controversial. People didn't believe

30:25

it. And so it was a

30:27

choice, do I do this topic that's, wow, is brand

30:30

new? It's a brand new topic. Or

30:32

do I not do it because it just could

30:34

be nothing. I mean, it could be nothing. It could go away

30:37

and not be anything. That was one. That

30:39

was a more direct one. I feel like

30:41

I'm going through one right now because there's something

30:43

I've wanted to do for a very long time.

30:46

It can help men too, but it has primarily due

30:49

to empowering women who, if you

30:51

have women friends or nieces

30:54

or nephews or children, for some reason, women

30:56

have a huge lack of confidence. There's this

30:58

thing called imposter syndrome, and it's

31:00

so limiting actually. It's to me the biggest

31:02

limitation. You can talk about sexism or unconscious

31:04

bias, and I've always wanted to do something

31:07

about it. And I'm in the

31:09

process of trying to do something big with this, and

31:12

an opportunity presented itself, oddly

31:14

enough, by someone who wanted to interview me for

31:16

a podcast. And so I looked this

31:18

person up, and I'm like, I wonder if I

31:20

should float my idea by this person. And it

31:22

turned out this person, her name is Somi

31:24

Aryan, she's building this big

31:26

movement. And so now I have an opportunity to

31:28

be a part of this movement to

31:31

embed my ideas like a cornerstone in this

31:33

whole thing. So I'm still thinking about that

31:35

now, but one of the questions for all

31:37

of us is do we use emotion or

31:40

logic in our decisions, and

31:42

which one is better or worse for a given

31:44

situation? Because there's something you really want to

31:46

do, but is this really practical? And

31:49

then there's the thought that I'm a big believer in

31:51

is to listen to your inner voice. And

31:53

so when there's a fork in the road, if it's something that you

31:56

just feel excited about, that really makes you

31:58

think. I think there's a lot

32:01

of opportunities like that that we don't realize, because we're

32:03

so used to just being on our phones and having

32:05

information given to us. We're not as in touch with

32:07

ourselves. But if something comes up with

32:09

you and you're like, wow, okay, it makes you stand

32:11

up. I think that's something you need to start thinking

32:13

about harder and whether you can do something with it.

32:16

We definitely have a lot of listeners

32:18

in our audience, women of influence and

32:20

influential position. And also a lot of

32:22

people who are early in their career

32:24

too. Is there a

32:26

place where they can go learn about what

32:29

you're working on or perhaps pitch in? Well,

32:31

they can look up Somi,

32:34

S-O-M-I-A-R-I-A-N. And she

32:36

has this growing movement. She calls it

32:38

Think Tank. And she's working on this

32:40

bigger thing. And I can't say much

32:42

about what I'm doing now because it's

32:44

still in formulation phase, but I just

32:46

have two distinctive tools that will help

32:48

people gain confidence and overcome imposter syndrome.

32:50

That's fantastic. That's great. Well,

32:52

Sarah, we'd love to kind of wrap up the

32:55

podcast, just talking about your work right now

32:57

and what are you excited about with pending

32:59

discoveries or opportunities? And you mentioned the Venus

33:01

Project. Maybe you could talk a little bit

33:03

more about that as well. Yes,

33:05

well, I like to think of Venus as the

33:08

ignored sibling. I don't know if you are siblings

33:10

or, you know how in a family there's

33:12

usually that one kid who gets all the attention. And

33:15

then there's one who usually gets ignored. Well,

33:18

in our family here of Earth, Venus and Mars,

33:20

Mars gets all the attention. Whereas Venus, it's not

33:22

the thing you really think of when you think

33:24

of an exciting planet. And here in the US,

33:26

we have not sent a mission to Venus in

33:28

decades. Whereas we see, you know, one of our

33:30

missions will be landing on Mars very

33:32

soon. So it turns out

33:34

Venus is incredibly mysterious. We believe it might

33:37

have started out like Earth with an ocean

33:39

and with a nice climate for life. It

33:41

might've even had life early on, but

33:43

it went through a runaway greenhouse where it got

33:45

hotter and hotter and hotter. And eventually the oceans

33:48

evaporated, leaving Venus to be a, it's like a

33:50

death planet. Like the surface of Venus is so

33:52

hot, no life of any kind could survive there.

33:55

But over half a century ago, Carl Sagan, it

33:57

was positive that, you know, in the clouds of

33:59

Venus. The temperatures are not too hot,

34:01

not too cold, but just right for life. And

34:03

perhaps there's some kind of life floating around in

34:06

the clouds. Like on our own earth, we have

34:08

life that temporary lives in the clouds, bacteria that

34:10

are swept up from the surface. And

34:13

so the thought of life on Venus, it's

34:15

been quite fringe. It's like a fringe topic. We

34:17

have a phrase in science or in perhaps it

34:20

exists in your world too that an

34:22

idea has to pass the giggle factor.

34:25

So if you tell someone or idea and they laugh, it's

34:27

not it's not legit. Well, this is becoming more

34:30

and more kind of accepted thing to study.

34:32

And there's been huge renewed

34:34

interest in Venus lately. And

34:36

so the mission concept that my team's

34:38

working on, we're working on several different

34:40

concepts. Think of it as like small

34:42

and cheap, medium and more expensive and

34:45

large and slower and even more expensive.

34:47

And the first opportunity we have is

34:50

to go with Rocket Lab. They're a

34:52

private commercial spaceflight company that sends small

34:54

payloads into orbit. And they're going to

34:56

be sending a rocket to Venus in 2023. And

34:58

we've teamed up with them to help

35:00

choose a very small instrument and a probe would

35:02

drop down through the atmosphere. And

35:05

we'll look for signs of life by way

35:07

of gases that don't belong. We might be

35:09

able to investigate the cloud particles, which are

35:11

not water, but they're a very nasty substance

35:14

called sulfuric acid. But we can probe those

35:16

particles and see what's inside of them. It's

35:19

fascinating. Venus is very volcanic

35:21

too, right? It is

35:23

volcanic and it does have active volcanoes now, but

35:26

it's not overly so. It's not

35:28

like there's always things, you know, volcanoes erupting in

35:30

like a Mount Vesuvius type of way. It's just

35:33

small kind of outgassing. I've

35:35

been intrigued by Venus since I was a kid, since

35:37

reading a short story. I think it was Ray Bradbury

35:40

who wrote about the distant future and

35:42

Venus had been terraformed. And the sun only

35:44

came out once a year there. And there

35:46

was this story about us, kind of as

35:49

a kid in an elementary school

35:51

who bullies locked him in the closet. And during the

35:53

one day the sun came out, there was just something

35:55

very poignant about that that stuck with me.

35:57

Wow. I'll have to read that story. Thanks for mentioning

35:59

that. What about exoplanets that

36:01

you're excited about that our listeners should

36:04

be aware of? Well, we

36:06

do have a big change coming. There's

36:08

a special telescope called the James Webb

36:10

Space Telescope. And we used

36:13

to call that the next generation space telescope as

36:15

it's going to be the next thing after

36:17

Hubble. It's like the next space telescope.

36:20

And the James Webb will be launching in later

36:23

this year, actually, and we've been waiting for

36:25

it for a decade or more. Actually, it

36:27

was conceived of decades ago. And the James

36:29

Webb Space Telescope will be like a super

36:31

powerful Hubble, although it operates at

36:33

infrared wavelengths. And it will be orbiting very

36:35

far from Earth. It'll be

36:37

operating very far from Earth where it's quiet

36:39

and dark and very cold. And

36:42

this James Webb Space Telescope will be able to

36:44

study the atmospheres of small

36:46

rocky planets, planets that are also orbiting

36:49

very small stars. And so today we can study

36:51

the atmospheres of hot giant planets primarily. And so

36:53

we're able to take like a leap in technology

36:56

to get us to the next level. And we

36:58

look at these atmospheres of small planets, we're going

37:00

to look for water vapor as

37:02

an indication of liquid water oceans needed for all

37:04

life as we know it. And

37:06

it's kind of among our wildest dreams

37:08

that with the James Webb Space Telescope,

37:11

we could find gases in a planet

37:13

atmosphere that don't belong, that are there

37:15

in huge quantities that we might

37:17

be able to attribute to life. So

37:19

I'd say that's the number one thing we should be looking forward

37:21

to in the coming few years.