Chris:
Welcome everybody to the first episode of the Get Over It podcast for which we have an awesome guest who by day is a musician and composer and by night a consultant for NASA on how to put microphones on Mars. I chose this as our first episode because I think it really embodies what we’re trying to do on this podcast and that is getting out of your comfort zone, not just getting through it, but figuring out a way to take something to the next level and getting over it.
Chris:
Our guest today recalls an account from early in his childhood where someone came into class to talk to them about the wonder of space. That experience stuck with him throughout his life, and it stuck with him so much that through constant prodding and poking, he eventually found himself as a consultant on a project that would bring all of us here on Earth some of the first sounds of Mars. Why? Because he didn’t stop. He never let that go. He took that experience from early on and didn’t let that fire die no matter where his life journey took him. He didn’t just stare up at space and be inspired by it’s awe, he took his passion, his knowledge and figured out a way to get himself and all of us here on Earth a bit closer to that magnificent unknown world that lights up the sky every time we look out at night.
Chris:
What do you say, let’s learn more about it and let’s Get Over It. All right, I’m super pumped to finally get to the interview with my guest today because we’ve been talking for 15 minutes. Jason Achilles Mezilis who is a rock and roll musician and an extraterrestrial audio engineer, as he coined himself. Oh you didn’t coin yourself this but you might start taking this space roadie, which I love, he loves. Those are two things by the way, rock and roll musician and extraterrestrial audio engineer that I inspire to be in my next life.
Chris:
But seriously, Jason is a rock multi-instrumentalist, a record producer, orchestral composer and by day, by night working with, this is a very relevant story right now with NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the JPL on a project to capture the sounds, the sights of Mars with the Mars Perseverance Rover that recently, when we’re recording this, it literally just landed a week ago. We’re going to talk to him about his life, his career, his music and what’s going on on Mars. Right now, Jason my man, finally welcome to get started on the show, how are you doing man?
Jason:
We met 10 minutes ago, how the heck do you know all this stuff?
Chris:
I wish everybody could know what we were talking about, we were talking about everything from how lions are different than humans. Are bees smart?
Jason:
We’re going to lead with David Blaine though, because I was going to tell you this story.
Chris:
Yeah do, tell me about David Blaine.
Jason:
By the way, do I need to watch my language on here?
Chris:
I would tone it down, but you can let some fly I guess. I’ll put an E on the show so everybody knows.
Jason:
We were talking, I don’t know, how did David Blaine come up?
Chris:
We were talking about creep…[crosstalk 00:02:49]
Jason:
Because he thinks he can show up in your closet.
Chris:
Yeah, we were talking about creepy things and then David Blaine came up.
Jason:
Oh about choice, manipulating choice.
Chris:
Yeah, that’s right.
Jason:
That’s what we were talking about. A buddy of mine, this was many years ago and a buddy of mine were watching late night TV on my couch and David Blaine was the guest and I want to say he was on Leno, I think. He did a card trick for the audience and it was just this, “All right, I’m going to do it. The audience can participate.” He holds up a deck of cards and he just goes through them, he basically says, “Go ahead and pick a card in your brain, don’t tell who you’re with,” and he does the whole trick at the end of the thing. He pulls out the card and he shows it, and it’s the card I had thought of.
Chris:
That you thought of at home?
Jason:
At home. On my couch. I look over at my buddy and he’s looking at me and we both turned white.
Chris:
He was thinking about it too?
Jason:
The same card, jack of hearts or jack of diamonds. Jack of one of those.
Chris:
I don’t understand that guy.
Jason:
It was the craziest magic trick I’ve ever saw in my life. You’re talking about forcing decisions on people through marketing and stuff. That’s what we were talking about earlier. This guy had us pick a card at home.
Chris:
I don’t know how he does those things. Some of those things he does…[crosstalk 00:04:08]
Jason:
Freaks me out dude.
Chris:
He does the back in day…[crosstalk 00:04:12]
Jason:
That guy’s insane.
Chris:
He’s street mad. He uses street magic, those YouTube series, you can go watch them where he goes to these random, sometimes poor neighborhoods and he’ll just go up to random people and he’ll do these crazy…[crosstalk 00:04:26]
Jason:
He’ll fly and stuff.
Chris:
… and then he’ll just bail. He just bails out of nowhere.
Jason:
He’s like the ultimate magic troll but he’s actually doing it.
Chris:
And they freak out. I remember this one thing about, he was down in New Orleans and he was on Bourbon Street and he had that card trick where they were drinking, and he takes a card and they take it from him and they write something on it like their name or something…[crosstalk 00:04:51]
Jason:
Right, and he spits it out or something.
Chris:
… dude he folds it up, he puts it in his mouth, he spits it into the corner and then all the sudden they go get the bottle on the floor and there’s beer in it and the same card is in there. I’m like, “How is that possible? I don’t understand.”
Jason:
It’s like seven levels beyond what it would be to convince you that it’s already crazy and creepy.
Chris:
Right, you don’t need to go that far.
Jason:
It’s been incinerated. You have to reconstitute it.
Chris:
Right, this group of people, they’re already drunk so they’re completely freaked out and they look to find him, and he’s gone. He’s gone.
Jason:
He just bails.
Chris:
If that was me I’d be like, “Yo, I saw someone from another world or life tonight. That guy that showed up with that card is not from this world.”
Jason:
There’s a movie called Red Lights with Cillian Murphy and Sigourney Weaver, it’s an amazing film that almost nobody ever saw but it has to deal with if magic somehow could potentially exist, how it would weave it’s way into the normal world. Robert DeNiro’s in it too, it’s Red Lights. I can’t remember who directed it but I highly recommend anybody who’s into this kind of stuff needs to see that movie.
Chris:
Talk about influencing your choice or influencing you, I think David Blaine’s whole game is, granted he does those crazy endurance things where he stood up on that pole in New York City, that’s different. But these tricks…[crosstalk 00:06:17]
Jason:
Putting stuff through his arm and stuff.
Chris:
Yeah, through his lip. Whatever he does, or swallowing a frog and then regurgitating the frog or some weird…[crosstalk 00:06:27]
Jason:
It’s almost like the supernatural was not enough of a challenge for that guy so now he’s got to actually overtake his own physicality.
Chris:
So crazy. Good for him. If this ever makes it to you David Blaine, come on the show and tell me how you do that, we’d love to talk about it. All right Jason, listen I want to talk about a lot of things, I really want to get to the Mars piece because it’s relevant. Before we get there, I need to know, now more so you talked to me for longer than what people are hearing, this establishes you as a human as your journey. What was a young you like? What were you about? Were you always into music, was that what drove you? How did you fall into that? Talk to me about a younger you.
Jason:
It’s funny because I remember young being very quiet and insecure. I grew up in a forest in Michigan.
Chris:
You grew up in a forest in Michigan. You’re not from California, you’re not from LA?
Jason:
When I was a kid I should say, I grew up in Northern California but as a kid I lived in Michigan and I was born in Chicago actually. But people who knew me back then or relatives, or aunts or whatever, they were like, “No, you were always really loud and running around and in everybody’s face.”
Chris:
You’re like, “Really? I don’t remember that.”
Jason:
In my perspective I was really quiet and kind of scared about everything. They’re like, “No, you weren’t.”
Chris:
No dude, not at all.
Jason:
Recently I was told that before I was old enough to speak, my parents would take me and put me in front of a record player and put a record on and I would just sit there and not move. Apparently…[crosstalk 00:08:03]
Chris:
Just vibe out to it. That goes back to what we were talking about, the brain being in born. I feel like a musician or people who are music minded have that. I feel like it’s wired in there.
Jason:
It’s absolutely from my fathers side of the family. No question. My mom loves and enjoys music and participates in it but every single person on my Greek side of the family is musically, I guess gifted would be the… even if they’ve never played an instrument…[crosstalk 00:08:29]
Chris:
It just comes easy to them.
Jason:
… in their life, they all sing beautifully. They automatically deviate to the harmonies of a melody…[crosstalk 00:08:36]
Chris:
It’s not just a normal trying to sing, they actually sing, right?
Jason:
Yeah. They’ll split into the right parts. Those are the ones that aren’t doing it professionally. One of my cousins in Greece is a cardiologists and an orchestral flutist.
Chris:
What? That’s such an interesting combo.
Jason:
That’s not the tone who’s a neurologist.
Chris:
Where in Greece by the way? We didn’t establish this, where in Greece?
Jason:
The families from a town called Elassona which is sort of in the mountainous region near Olympus. Which was on the old road from Athens to [inaudible 00:09:16] before they built the big… it was sort of an important city. There’s talk… Homer mentioned it in his writings and that was how many thousands of years ago?
Chris:
Thousands of years ago.
Jason:
It had a slightly different name but apparently it’s been tracked in antiquity for millennia, this little town. But my family, they’re everywhere.
Chris:
Have you gone? Do you go?
Jason:
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I would have been there last year but obviously…
Chris:
Something happened.
Jason:
There was bit of a travel issue.
Chris:
Something happened. You vibed to me, it’s in your genes…[crosstalk 00:09:48]
Jason:
I spit out my coffee.
Chris:
… it’s in your DNA. Was it always a big thing or was it just there? Some people don’t find it until later.
Jason:
No, it was always a big thing for me. First it was piano, I remember seeing when I was, I think five years old I saw a broadcast of who I later figured out was most likely Vladimir Horowitz and I think he was playing piano for Reagan or something like that, at the White House, which would explain why it ended up on our little black and white TV. I was really young when that was put out obviously. I remember him hitting the keys and he has huge hands, and there’s something about the way too that his touch and his sound just sounds massive. As a kid I just remember, “That’s so cool,” just this thing, this powerful thing that could come out of this physical action.
Chris:
Plus he’s on TV and you’re watching him do it at the same time, I imagine that had something to it. Something like that.
Jason:
I guess so. It was right before the Muppet show. There was this sensationalism to it.
Chris:
It’s like Pavlov’s reward. The light comes on and the food comes out.
Jason:
Pavlov’s reversal, yeah.
Chris:
That’s funny.
Jason:
My parents basically were like, they said that I would have to play an instrument but they would let me choose what which I actually thought was a really cool strategy. I recommend that for people.
Chris:
Not trying to be like, “Play piano. Play piano.”
Jason:
Yeah, but forcing something. “You are going to learn something, but we’ll let you figure out what that is.”
Chris:
What age was that?
Jason:
“If you want to be a musician there’s many things you need to do, if you don’t want to be a musician you can pick drums.”
Chris:
What age? Badum.
Jason:
That was for Dan.
Chris:
For Dan. So Dan, Jason was in band with Dan Dinsmore who was the founder of Over It and that’s the connection here. I’m going to get to that I think in a little bit. Hold on, I want to know what age that is. I have an eight year old and I’ve been really wanting him to get into…[crosstalk 00:12:01]
Jason:
Now’s the time.
Chris:
Now’s the time, right?
Jason:
Yeah.
Chris:
It’s probably past it.
Jason:
That’s the latest you should be doing it.
Chris:
Right, brain wires around five. It’s ideal…[crosstalk 00:12:10]
Jason:
Yeah, start around six or seven.
Chris:
All right, you go through high school, when do you start playing in band? When does it start coming together? When does it start really coming together for you where, “I’m doing this.”
Jason:
I remember having career day in high school and they brought, I don’t know if they still do this anymore but back then they used to bring, you go into this room there’s a fireman in there, he’s telling us what it’s like to be a fireman. It’s like open house day and all these different rooms are different people do different things. Through going and talking to these people you’re supposed to figure out what you want to do for a career. First of all, just making the decision that quickly didn’t seem to make any sense to me but also I remember going through, and some people did really cool things but none of it clicked.
Jason:
Then I remembered we had had a guy when I was in like third grade or something like that, third or fourth grade who brought in a synthesizer one day. He was making helicopter noises on his synth and I thought that was the coolest stuff in the world. It was back when synths still had knobs and buttons and weird crazy crap all over it.
Chris:
Right, right, right.
Jason:
That was the only one that ever grabbed me. Basically by process of elimination, I ended up… I know I love music and there’s nothing else that seems to make sense so that’s why I studied music in college.
Chris:
Hold on, I feel like right there, I feel like the Get Over It moment for most humans in music, that doesn’t happen is, “I really like music, I know I really like it, but…” and there’s a but, right? It’s like, “What am I going to do? What am I going to do with music?” Did you face that or no, you went right through it? And is that the difference between someone that does?
Jason:
No, that took 25 more years for me to figure how to actually make it into a career.
Chris:
Okay, all right. But you didn’t care about that is my point. You just went, you just did it?
Jason:
Well, no. It’s funny because nowadays when somebody tells me, “Oh my kid is really interested in music, what do I do?” I always tell them, “Sign them up for financial planning classes immediately.” Because that’s the real skill that will allow them to be a musician. If they want to have a sustainable career they need to learn that their art… they can’t just be doing it for fun. You shouldn’t…[crosstalk 00:14:35]
Chris:
Right. Because that’s where those two brains don’t meet.
Jason:
Yeah, they don’t…[crosstalk 00:14:40]
Chris:
The musician and the artist does that and those guys do that. That’s what makes it more difficult to know that, that you need to really be able to manage stuff otherwise it’s not going to happen.
Jason:
Yeah, I think absolutely a lot of the most successful musicians out there, especially in the pop world where it’s a lot less about the actual song or the actual performance and it’s much more about a package delivery which is a whole creative team. It’s producers and engineers and all these things. You look at your Katy Perry’s, I’m not saying she can’t write a song, she’s talented but there’s like eight co song writers on most of those hits.
Jason:
Nowadays, the musicality isn’t necessarily the most important part of a hit song.
Chris:
Correct.
Jason:
Especially in the pop world.
Chris:
Definitely in the pop world. What world is it in outside of symphony or orchestra? Do you know what I mean? Do you feel like it’s like that with rock or is rock biased and will say, “No, that’s more of an art, a writing.” Do you know what I mean by that? Why is it just for pop?
Jason:
Because pop is more, it’s not about…[crosstalk 00:15:55]
Chris:
Just a sound? It’s just a sound?
Jason:
Yeah, it’s more about hooks. It’s not as much about an overall…
Chris:
Like melodic sort of thing?
Jason:
Yeah, it’s not about…[crosstalk 00:16:04]
Chris:
I just wanted to use the word melodic in this conversation, by the way. Just so you know.
Jason:
I think there’s more scientific technique applied to generating a pop hit. Not to say you can’t have one by accident by being very musical like The Police are a great example, the band, The Police. Brilliant tight pop structure and amazing delivery, created through chaos. Anyone who knows anything about The Police, that band was just fist fights all the time. But a brilliant element of song writing, production… production in a song writing aspect that was applied to that. But it’s not about little hooks every two seconds.
Chris:
Right, correct.
Jason:
Everything now is designed to catch you and hold your ear within seconds and every four bars there’s a certain change, there’s always things to keep you hooked, to keep you interested…[crosstalk 00:17:05]
Chris:
Repetition…
Jason:
… they call them hooks, right?
Chris:
Yeah, repetition is what makes the brain remember something.
Jason:
Right, repetition but with changing over time in very specific increments.
Chris:
Tell me, did you and do you have a favorite instrument? Or do you continue to try to expand your range? Do you mess around with new things? Have you settled into something? Playing one instruments one thing, but playing multiple instruments, do you have a first love kind of thing?
Jason:
I don’t find myself reaching too much for different voices. It’s sort of like there’s certain singers that can sing in a million different ways and there’s other ones, they do one thing really well. I find that the kind of music I’ve always loved, and the kind of bands I’ve always loved, it’s about personality. The expression of personality has to do with an unwavering approach to something.
Jason:
For example, the sound of my guitar, I remember I was in San Francisco when I discovered the sound of my guitar and it’s a very unique combination of a certain pick up and a certain kind of old amp that everybody has but almost nobody ever uses in a consistent fashion. One of the ways I made it consistent was by going to my guitar and ripping out all the other pickups in the guitar that could possibly pull me away from that sound once I found it.
Chris:
It became like your default sound.
Jason:
Yeah, then I forced… once I realized that I would play different things on different pickups for example, and every time I played something with on this one setting it was cool, and another setting sounded kind of cheesy and butt rocky. I realized, “You know what, it seems like I should just get rid of the temptation to do stuff that sucks.”
Chris:
Right, just stick to this sound.
Jason:
I physically dismantled the instrument in such a way that it wouldn’t allow me the opportunity to create bad riffs with.
Chris:
See, that’s very smart of you. You see that? We were talking about what smart means and what it means to actually be smart or intelligent. I would argue that that’s smart. You are mindful and aware of something, and then you actually did something to maintain the presence, which I have tattooed on my arm because I rarely stay present. It was a way to force yourself into the sound that you just love, right? That’s smart.
Jason:
Yeah, but it was more of an emotional thing.
Chris:
Nah, come on, it’s smart man. You can just say it, it’s fine. It’s all good.
Jason:
I was just like, if you’re making stuff and you feel down on yourself because it sucks, I don’t want to feel down on myself anymore…[crosstalk 00:19:58]
Chris:
Right, I don’t want to feel like that anymore.
Jason:
Obviously when I do that thing it sucks, so I’m just going to get rid of that. I don’t know.
Chris:
Tell me when you met Dan. I want to talk about this real quick and then I want to get into the current stuff before we don’t have too much time. Where did you meet Dan? He wasn’t on the west coast, was he? [inaudible 00:20:15]
Jason:
No, Dan and I were in a band for many years called Owl, the bass player singer of that band, his name was Chris Wise and I’d known Chris in LA. We’d been introduced by a mutual friend at a bar, best way to meet people. I met a lot of my…[crosstalk 00:20:34]
Chris:
At least it was before this whole thing anyway. Go ahead.
Jason:
Yeah, now it’s a rare way to meet people. It was funny, a friend of mine she introduced us and she’s like, “I don’t know. You guys need to meet each other. I feel like there’s something you’re going to do together, should do together.” She ended up being right. When he needed to record a new record and he had hit the reset on the previous version of the band, he didn’t have band members anymore. He basically said, “Hey, do you want to come play, just play your guitar on this recording with another guitar player friend of ours,” and his drummer who was his childhood friend from back home in Upstate New York.
Jason:
I met Dan, I think we had one rehearsal together and then we recorded an album of songs we’ve never heard before. Just going off of demos. That’s how I met Dan. This was in, I think it was in Matt Sorum’s studio in Beverly Hills area. He had a nice studio in his backyard in a guest house kind of thing.
Chris:
Jeez.
Jason:
Yeah, it was total like, “What? This is cool.”
Chris:
You’re like, “Wow, this is great.” How the hell…[crosstalk 00:21:51]
Jason:
That’s how I met Dan.
Chris:
How does that work man? How do you come into a situation… this is a band, you’re coming in to play and I imagine it’s sort of like football. You go into the new team, they have a whole new system, they have their own plays and they have their thing, and you’re good, you’re a good player but it’s a different system. How do you get in that? Do you just jam out to get a sense for how people are? Is there music to guide the sound? How does that work? Do you just say, “I’m doing what I do in your context,” how does that work?
Jason:
The way you just asked that was actually perfect because that’s exactly what it was. The sound of that band was very different from everything I was just describing you about the sound I developed for myself. I did try and adapt that as much as I could. There’s a very strong tonal mid range push in the guitar sound I have now, I tried to bring that into that band where it was less [inaudible 00:22:45] marshalls, it’s usually a scooped mid range kind of. I tried to give it that, that was a little piece of myself that I brought to that band, tonally I guess.
Jason:
That was exactly it is that because the songs were there and structured in demo form, we really sort of like… it’s like jumping on a pirate ship together. The ship is still being built but there’s a strong framework and they’re like, “All right, we’re going to finish the rest while we’re sailing. There’s enough there so it’ll float on the water and you can get out of port,” but you’re hammering the decks on, you’re pulling the sail up, you’re trying to do all these things. Somebody’s hopefully steering it. That’s how it is. They’re like, “There’s the ship, get on, we have one day on the dock. Real quick, we’ll check the hull and everyone’s on the ship and leaving tomorrow.”
Chris:
Yeah, we’re going.
Jason:
That’s literally what happened. I think it was just one rehearsal, maybe two but I want to say it was one.
Chris:
How long was your run with them then? How long was that with Dan?
Jason:
Pretty much it was like 10 years I think.
Chris:
Jeez.
Jason:
Yeah. But Dan and I are still obviously good friends and he’s amazing. Have you done one of these with Dan by the way?
Chris:
No, he’ll be a guest though on the show.
Jason:
Okay, you got to…
Chris:
Oh yeah, I got to reserve some time for that episode man.
Jason:
You got to tear into that.
Chris:
I got to get some time for that one. But let looking at the time, let’s talk about Mars. I got to tell you something, scientists…[crosstalk 00:24:15]
Jason:
You got to keep these things…[crosstalk 00:24:15]
Chris:
The scientist in me has frequently debated people about the necessity of NASA, the necessity of space exploration because a lot of time, and I think it was Neil deGrasse Tyson who kind of gets the public credit for making science cool and making the case for space.
Jason:
These days, yeah.
Chris:
These days…[crosstalk 00:24:36]
Jason:
But Carl Sagan’s the…
Chris:
Correct. I agree with you. Agree.
Jason:
He’s the Johnny Carson.
Chris:
He’s the Johnny Carson, you’re exactly right. You’re exactly right. Without wonder and without that sense of the child looking up in the sky seeing the star and being like, “What is that?” We don’t really have anything left, that’s how I feel. As the human, with the different brain, that’s what’s going to keep us the dominant species is the ability to wonder, to think, and be rational. Explore what you can and then hopefully get to a point where you realize you can’t. What I want to say is, why the hell… I have oh yeah, but I never went there. What made you get into space? What was it about it that culled you towards it?
Jason:
It’s funny because…[crosstalk 00:25:25]
Chris:
It’s been a while, right dude? Before this thing started.
Jason:
I don’t know when this podcast will air but we’re doing this on a Friday morning right now, it’s about 10:30 and at noon I’m speaking to a class of kindergartners.
Chris:
That’s why you love to do it.
Jason:
Because I remember being in kindergarten when our teacher came in and spoke to us about it, and I remember it like it was yesterday. It lit something that never went out.
Chris:
That’s awesome dude. That’s again, that’s what it’s about man. It’s that instilling that awe.
Jason:
I think kids are great too because if you can catch any kid before, I’m not sure what age cynicism comes along. I don’t have my own kids that I’m aware of.
Chris:
I feel like with the technology nowadays, earlier and earlier, you know what I’m saying?
Jason:
I do think that you’re exactly right about that and it’s funny because I’ve always had this issue with technology, especially with younger folks.
Chris:
Same.
Jason:
I’ve never been able to get… you just explained why I feel that way and that’s wonderful, you’re right because exactly that. Technology introduces cynicism to people, not in and of itself technology’s great, but anything you can steep into the mind of a kid before… I think cynicism is the enemy of everything beautiful in life. It’s the enemy of art. Cynicism is terrible which is why I never got into ’90’s rock.
Chris:
Oh my God, that’s great.
Jason:
I’m totally serious man. It’s just like, “This sucks. None of this feels good.”
Chris:
None of this feels good. I got into science because I loved the quest of it. I always say it’s like a puzzle where you don’t know what that picture looks like on the box, but you just got a bunch of pieces and your job is to figure out what that picture is while you’re doing the puzzle. It might take you 10 years to get two pieces to lock together, but when you lock the two together, you see the picture a little bit more clear, it’s that feeling that I can’t explain. It’s incremental advance but on a global scale. When you look back, it’s those incremental, it’s the mold that fell from the ceiling that killed the bacteria. It’s that kind of thing in science.
Jason:
There’s also something inherently honorable about the pursuit of science and music falls in the same category. There’s in and of itself, absolutely nothing but goodness that comes from those passions.
Chris:
It’s pure.
Jason:
Sure, yeah, yeah. Obviously that gets distorted very quickly and here comes cynicism.
Chris:
Right, but that’s what they’re trying to do to science right now, they’re trying to get rid of…[crosstalk 00:28:20]
Jason:
Oh man, don’t get me started.
Chris:
… they’re trying to get rid of the purity of science. They’re trying to make it a thing that can or can not be. I don’t want to get started on it.
Jason:
I’ll tell you this, just to the one point because it’s funny how in the midst of a pandemic everybody’s become a home scientist, a closet epidemiologist. But for some reason, when your car breaks down, everybody still goes to the mechanic and trusts them.
Chris:
Exactly dude. So true.
Jason:
I don’t understand the science of auto mechanics is so much more… maybe it’s because it’s a physical, tangible thing.
Chris:
Because the car actually runs again. I think that’s the thing. I think that’s what actually happens. What people are saying right now about these vaccines is like, “So let me get this straight, I get a vaccine and I have to do the same thing? Still wear a mask and not see people?” They’re like, “Listen, you’ve got to understand people…”
Jason:
We don’t need to… this is a long conversation.
Chris:
“Science is not that fast dude, this is a real time thing that no one knows about. As soon as we get the information, you’ll get it, but for right now just chill out for a second.”
Jason:
Yeah, if you need surgery or something, suddenly you’re not questioning your doctors political motivations anymore. You’re just like, “Okay, right I’ll die.”
Chris:
“You’ve got a mass in your stomach, we need to take it out.” “Get it out doc, do whatever you’ve got to do.” “You need this vaccine.” “I’m not taking that shit.” All right, I don’t understand. But anyway, again I want to get to Mars.
Jason:
We’ll get there, it took six months the last time, if we get there in 45 minutes, we’re doing all right.
Chris:
We’re going to get to Mars. You start to say to yourself, “I’m going to get…” was there a problem you aimed to fix or was it pure you wanted to know what Mars sounds like? What was it?
Jason:
Are you talking about, specifically…[crosstalk 00:30:10]
Chris:
What spurred your interest to get into where you got into which is… was it just the awe of space and then it took you there? Or you had a specific thing you wanted to solve?
Jason:
No, probably the first one. It was something I loved and then as I was getting older I felt like not having it be a part of my life, I didn’t want to be, I hate to say a fanboy because thank God people should be fans of science, but for me I felt like that wasn’t enough. I was starting to define myself negatively by the fact that I was on the sidelines.
Chris:
How did you get in the game? What was your first step in the game?
Jason:
Well, I started dipping my toes into it, I actually looked back recently, it was over 10 years ago I started randomly reading more science magazines and I started cold calling, not calling, mostly emailing scientists about some topic I’d read and be like, “Hey, have you thought about this?” To the guy on my toilet literally while they’re like, “Yes, we have thought about that but thanks kid.”
Chris:
“Actually yeah, we thought about that dude, next.”
Jason:
Yeah, so eventually I finally hit upon an idea, people had thought about but nobody had actually done it before which was capturing sound on Mars. At the time when I thought about it I was with a friend of mine. A quick internet dive with Dr.Google revealed that yeah, in fact Carl Sagan talked about this over two decades ago but it hadn’t actually been done yet. Then I don’t know, it was like everything exploded. It was just like, “Holy crap, this is it. I know about sound. They’re doing this thing, it kind of relates to this thing, and I know how to do this thing. Let me in. Let me in. Let me in.” I just rattled the cage like, “Hey, I want to play.” It kind of worked.
Chris:
The concept of… it’s cool, I’m sure people out there are listening, if you haven’t you can watch some stuff on it but the concept of this camera, this thing that when the rocket, when it’s approaching the planet and it’s descending down, the idea and the concept was having something that would pop off that would then be able to film and record or watch and listen, and the rocket or the shuttle, whatever the hell you want to call it, I’m not using the right terms, landing…
Jason:
It can be any of those things, yeah.
Chris:
It can be any of those things, actually descending, watching the descending, landing, that wasn’t your idea was it? Was that their concept that you were just trying to capture some of that?
Jason:
These are two entirely different things but they came from the same conversation with my buddy. The camera thing, as far as I’m aware is my original idea, I’ve never heard anybody… I’ve met other people since then, since I’ve put it out to the public that have also sort of developed that idea on their own, but I haven’t found anybody who has put it forward in a public avenue prior to when I did.
Chris:
But this is not what is on the ship now?
Jason:
No.
Chris:
Okay.
Jason:
There was this article that came out in Wired Magazine the day before Perseverance landed and most of it’s about the microphone and then some of it’s about this camera. They came from the same conversation which was early 2016 with a buddy of mine. But they’re both being developed now. The microphone, I ended up working with the team that helped develop and it’s a long story but basically we helped them make the selection of the final flight hardware which is a DPA microphone. I don’t know if you guys use them in your studio or not but it’s a great company.
Jason:
Separately from that, late last year I developed the camera idea into a NASA funded our project now for development for 2021.
Chris:
I gotcha.
Jason:
Totally independently.
Chris:
I gotcha. So the microphone is there now, is that what we’re talking about?
Jason:
The microphone’s there and that’s the one that captured those first sounds that they shared at the press conference. Which again, I didn’t build it, some people are like, “You said you built it.” I’m like, “I never said I built it.” But I had a lot to do with, my company that I basically had to start to be a consultant, we were the ones that ultimately made the final selection of hardware with JPL and then DPA’s obviously the ones that built the hardware.
Jason:
It’s called Exocam, that’s the…[crosstalk 00:35:08]
Chris:
Exocam, that’s right. It looks like a camera encased in a ball.
Jason:
It’s a 360 camera inside this metal cage. That design will probably iterate quite a bit depending on… but that’s the lunar exocam’s looking like that right now.
Chris:
Wait dude, tell me how the hell you simulate conditions on Mars. My concern is when I’m jogging down the street and I’m trying to video myself, that I’m going to get a little wind. How do you… they know the conditions of Mars but how do you recreate those? They just have simulators that recreate that?
Jason:
If you’re talking about…
Chris:
You’ve got to know how to capture sound in an environment that’s probably pretty rough, right?
Jason:
Yeah, but you don’t really have to simulate… number one, Mars actually has an atmosphere so that helps. We couldn’t do that on the moon for sound. I think for the physicality of the exocam, on the moon you don’t have any atmospheric properties to deal with so I think modeling how it’s going to work on the moon is probably a little easier. On the other hand you have this big puffy [inaudible 00:36:24] everywhere on the moon so part of our issue is dropping this thing down and not having it sink into… if it goes into a pile of sand then we don’t see anything.
Chris:
Yeah, you’re done. That’s like a drone video of when I lost my drone on the beach and all I got was a whole bunch of sand because it was buried the whole time.
Jason:
This is the big issue that I think we’re going to run into with developing the moon camera is how do we make sure we get a good… on Mars everything’s pretty hard packed, at least that we’ve come to see.
Chris:
Right, it’ll land, it hits, it’ll stick.
Jason:
Yeah, and you have other considerations like atmospheric properties you got to deal with and stuff. And thermal cycling.
Chris:
Right, that’s the other thing, the heat or the temperature of the atmosphere, I don’t know what you want to call it. The sound… you’re saying you don’t really have to… you think about those things but you don’t have to simulate them, is that right?
Jason:
Well, a lot of it’s done on the page and then there are certain things after at some point you just need to throw them in a vacuum chamber or an atmospheric chamber and test. With microphones it’s interesting because they’re not designed to do any of what we asked this one to do. When we were making our evaluation and trying to put forward it was kind of like, “Okay, we don’t know if this thing will work at all, but this is our best guess honestly.”
Chris:
Isn’t that a lot of what space exploration is? “It’s our best guess, we’re going to do it.”
Jason:
To some degree. At the same time, when they first stepped into the space shuttle, the space shuttle never flew as a test flight. When those guys got into that thing the first time, even the Apollo missions which were crazy technology for the time, they still would fly those initially without people inside them. At least they got them into space without exploding and things like that. The first time astronauts stepped into the cabin of the space shuttle, the only thing I can’t figure out is how it managed to still take off despite the gravitational pull of their balls.
Jason:
Because they’re like, “All right, get in that thing. We’re going to launch you, it looks good on paper.”
Chris:
Yeah right, sure, I’ll see you out there.
Jason:
“Okay, good enough for us,” and in they went.
Chris:
So does a drawing of a house for me on paper, but I would never live in the house that I drew on a piece of paper. They had a lot of trust of those people.
Jason:
Exactly, in that sense, when human life is involved everybody gets… with this microphone if it didn’t work nobody was going to die. Some people might have some career options that come forward. They called it a technology demonstration so basically if it worked, great, if it didn’t, great…[crosstalk 00:39:22]
Chris:
To lower your expectations, it’s just a demonstration.
Jason:
Yes, and what comes with that is no funding to do the tests you would do if it were a reliant system. There were a lot of tests that probably could have been done. There were a lot more throwing things in a vacuum chamber. You can simulate, with the exception of gravity, you can simulate pretty much every other aspect of the merchant atmosphere artificially in a chamber. The gases, the pressure, the temperatures, but you can’t do the gravity. Gravity doesn’t really effect the microphone anyway so that’s fine. These things could have been done more thoroughly but they weren’t. Some was, a little bit just to sort of make sure, “Okay, well…”[crosstalk 00:40:10]
Chris:
Not to the extent of a human going up and you got to make sure.
Jason:
Yeah, they’re like, “Whatever.”
Chris:
So tell everybody, quickly just describe where the microphone is, where it’s housed. And is it recording 24/7? Is it constantly running? Does it turn on and turn off?
Jason:
I am not on the engineering team, I was a consultant. My contract actually ended the day of the press conference which was, thank God it worked. The day they announced that we captured this audio, and I reviewed that data a few days prior to that with JPL. The Perseverance is about the size of an SUV, on Earth it weighs about a ton so on Mars it’s 30% of that roughly. If you’re in the drivers seat of a car, the microphone is kind of roughly passenger door handle height, about halfway between the front and the back door. It’s right on the side there.
Chris:
Okay. It’s on one side.
Jason:
There’s two microphones, there’s one that was part of the entry descent and landing system, and that’s the one that I worked with. There’s another one that’s totally unrelated, different kind of microphone that’s on the mast, where the head basically is and that instrument is called Super Cam and there’s a little mic that’s on the end of this little pinky extrusion. It’s an electric microphone. That one will activate, I think now it’s activated, by the time people hear this it’s definitely been tested.
Jason:
That couldn’t record during landing because it was in a stowed position. Unfortunately ours didn’t work during the landing either so that was a whole thing.
Chris:
Yeah why? I think I saw that or I was watching it land and you’re like, “Unfortunately the audio was not picked up.” What happened? Do you know?
Jason:
It was crushing. It wasn’t until, I found out that it didn’t capture that two days before they were able to fire it up on Sol two. The day you land is Sol Zero and martian days are sols.
Chris:
How long is a martian day?
Jason:
It’s almost the same as Earth, I think it’s a little shorter or a little longer, I can’t remember which. But very close, close to 24 hours. Just happens to be similar rotation speed. For two days everybody was congratulating me on being involved in this mission and I knew that we didn’t…[crosstalk 00:42:57]
Chris:
You’re like, “Yeah dude, can’t wait to hear it.”
Jason:
It was crushing man. Thank God, that weekend they ran another recording cycle once on the surface and it did work so it wasn’t a hardware issue, it wasn’t the mic. The mic was fine. That was my job was to help them pick that unit, if the diaphragm had ruptured or something…
Chris:
Right, it wasn’t that. It was something unique to the entry, to the landing.
Jason:
No, it wasn’t even that, it turned out that… what they said during the press conference, during the Q&A later, it was basically an issue between the digitizer and the software. And Adam your engineer, this happens in the studio all the time, you turn on two pieces of gear, they just don’t talk to each other. Nobody knows why. You shut them off, you turn them on again and then they’re fine.
Chris:
This just happened to be a once in a lifetime while landing on Mars situation.
Jason:
Yeah, I don’t know to what degree that may or may not have happened during testing.
Chris:
But on sol two they fired it up and they were capturing sound?
Jason:
They turned it on, they recorded a minute of sound, and then there’s these little gusts of wind at the very beginning of it, and that’s what they aired during the press conference. It was like, “Thank God for that wind because everything else you’re hearing is self noise.” That one little wind was actually the sound of the atmosphere of the planet.
Chris:
Where can people hear it? [crosstalk 00:44:26]
Jason:
It was only there for a moment.
Chris:
Can people hear it?
Jason:
If you…[crosstalk 00:44:31]
Chris:
Google sound on Mars or something like that?
Jason:
Yeah, it’s not hard to find.
Chris:
All right.
Jason:
NASA’s got it posted everywhere. I think CBS or NBC, I don’t know. It’s not hard to find.
Chris:
Your contract with this ended, you’re still working on the cam though, or no?
Jason:
Yeah, the day that I actually signed my papers to end my contract with JPL and invoice them, that same day I picked up… I don’t know if I picked up, but I’m now working with a company called Rocket Lab. They want to send a probe to Venus in a couple years so I’ve been working with them to try and capture the sounds of Venus for an atmospheric probe. We’re onto the next planet basically.
Chris:
What’s Venus’ atmosphere like?
Jason:
Well it depends, on the surface it’s hell. Literally it’s 90 times the Earth’s pressure. It’s like if you’re I don’t know how many miles in the ocean. It’s crushing and it’s I think 800 degrees Fahrenheit.
Chris:
So David Blaine would do well there?
Jason:
Oh he’d be great, he’d be walking around like, “Hey, what’s up?”
Chris:
Oh my God, that’s crazy.
Jason:
When you’re coming through the atmosphere there’s certain spots in the atmosphere where I think if you’re about, I want to say it’s like 50,000 feet or something like that, it’s basically Earth’s atmosphere and pressure. The only difference is the actual gases are composed primarily of sulfuric acid.
Chris:
Which doesn’t do well for you.
Jason:
But you could be essentially, you wouldn’t need a pressure suit at that atmosphere, you’d just need something to breathe and probably cover your…[crosstalk 00:46:27]
Chris:
Cover your skin from being melted, yeah.
Jason:
Yeah, I don’t even know if it’s continuous, I want to say the sulfuric acid is more in clouds and if it rains…[crosstalk 00:46:39]
Chris:
Like spritz of it, it’s not like it’s floating through the air.
Jason:
It’s condensation. You could potentially have… they talked about having air ships on Venus as a tourist destination. The trick is you’re way up in this layer where it’s about 70 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s the normal pressure, you need help to breathe, that’s really the thing. You can see fine up there. It’s probably a big orange haze but when you start… this probe will be crashing through that very quickly. We probably won’t hear anything but just screaming wind sound but it’ll be from Venus.
Jason:
And then the camera thing is the next immediate thing. That’s getting developed this year. Meanwhile I’m trying to put music out.
Chris:
I was going to say, you also balance your music career. You’re not not doing that, right? You’re still doing that. You’re still in music.
Jason:
Yeah, absolutely. That’s the cool thing about the… the Mars sound thing actually got a crazy amount of publicity and that article in Wired Magazine that I mentioned earlier, I just did a bit for the Canadian broadcasting system. Other countries are wanting to talk about this thing, it’s amazing, it’s awesome. The tie in there is the music background and the sound background.
Chris:
Yeah, exactly. It’s a good story.
Jason:
What they like about the story is, who’s this jebrony that came along and got this gig, he’s supposed to be playing rock and roll…[crosstalk 00:48:21]
Chris:
He’s a rocker from California. It’s a good story.
Jason:
Which is great. I always try and bring back and like, “By the way, new single.”
Chris:
I was going to say, what has it done for you? Have you seen the tick up? Have you seen more music?
Jason:
A little bit, nothing crazy but definitely yeah, you can see people are going over there in a way. Prior to this musically, it’s just been small potatoes stuff. I did some cool shows with Mel, we played some good opening acts and played with some big bands and stuff. I was the guy in the band, now I’m doing an instrumental thing, it’s my name Jason Achilles, that’s my musical identity. It’s my first and middle name. It’s all instrumental too, which is hard to get out there. It’s cool and the people that like it really like it, but you don’t hear a lot of instrumentals played on the radio for example.
Chris:
Right, it’s tough to cross over to that sort of thing with that.
Jason:
And my style too is very old school. I still record stuff on tape.
Chris:
Here’s what I see. As we close this thing down, here’s what I see. I see you have the opportunity because you have at least a foot in the space world somewhat, here’s what you’ve got to do. You’ve got to be the guy that gets to Mars and plays guitar on Mars. Do you think you can make that happen, or what’s going on?
Jason:
That might take a while. I’ve got some ideas, I’m still trying to work with JPL and with the team that is operating the other microphone, it’s a French based agency. There are still some ideas about how we can do some pretty cool stuff relating to audio capture from the surface and coordinating these two microphones together maybe to capture a stereo event or something like that.
Chris:
Would you go to space? Would you go if you had the opportunity? Would you go?
Jason:
Hell yeah.
Chris:
You would?
Jason:
As long as I can come back, yeah. I’m not one…[crosstalk 00:50:16]
Chris:
You’re not a space station guy? No, hell no.
Jason:
I’d go for… again, as long as I can come back. But there’s these people that, “I want to go to Mars and never come back.” Mars sucks. It’s a really terrible place to live. I like…[crosstalk 00:50:33]
Chris:
Of course, there’s nothing there.
Jason:
I like to breathe fresh air. I like to be able to swim. I like to be able to see a tree.
Chris:
See something. You want to be able to see something. What do they have?
Jason:
How many millions of years did it take for us to eventually evolve into a planet where we evolved to be like art. Humans and Earth are perfectly in sync with each other in terms of… oops sorry about that, I just disappeared for a second. My phones angry at me. Mars is horrific and absolutely people should go there, absolutely. I would even… I would be willing to spend six months in a thing there and back to walk on the surface for three weeks, yes. But I’m not staying there for two years, and I’m not going on some one way trip. But yeah, I’ll take the space carriage. Why not?
Chris:
Is that what it is? Six months? What are these guys like what’s his name…[crosstalk 00:51:32]
Jason:
I know it is.
Chris:
… when they’re going to the moon or they’re going to space, how long is their journey? These commercial journey’s to space or whatever, is it the same time or are they trying to make it quicker? Are they making a stealth, what is that jet? The Concord for spaceships to get out there quick?
Jason:
There’s a lot of ideas about how you could get there hopefully quicker and a big part of that is especially if humans have to deal with it, but right now the constraints put it at six months. I think nuclear propulsion I think is a big aspect of that. Did I just disappear again? What time is it by the way?
Chris:
It’s 2:40, we’re going to go. It’s 12:40… not it’s 11:40.
Jason:
No, I’m fine, I got to…[crosstalk 00:52:20]
Chris:
Jason’s got to go talk to kindergarten kids.
Jason:
We’re fine, I just wanted to make sure because that was the teacher calling.
Chris:
They’re going to be like, “Where is the space guy? Where is he? He’s not here.” He’s talking to Chris about random stuff. No, anyway…[crosstalk 00:52:36]
Jason:
It’s six months there, six months back to Mars. For the moon it’s more like three days right now. The fastest approach is, that’s the answer to your question.
Chris:
Six months. Is there a lot of leeway there. Does it got to be perfect, that trip out?
Jason:
It’s pretty tight yeah. Orbital mechanics sort of dictate that Mars takes about twice as long to orbit the sun so every two years you get in alignment where that provides you your shortest trip.
Chris:
Oh.
Jason:
The moon’s the same distance from us all the time.
Chris:
Right, right. Exactly.
Jason:
That’s a little more of where you’re launching from on Earth compared to where it is.
Chris:
These people at NASA, these scientists, do they have an app on their phone that lets them know where it is in six months? I feel like I would be checking that thing like, “Oh my God, what’s going on out there?”
Jason:
It’s cool because right now and depending on when this podcast airs, Mars is right up in the night sky right now. At the moment you can see it every night.
Chris:
It’s crazy, I know. It looks like a red planet.
Jason:
Yeah, it’s noticeably red.
Chris:
It’s noticeable red.
Jason:
It is, yeah.
Chris:
It’s a red planet.
Jason:
It’s cool too, the night of the landing on February 18th, that evening, it just randomly happened that the moon and Mars were right next to each other. I got a great picture of it.
Chris:
That’s awesome man.
Jason:
That just happened to be that way that evening. It was really… it’s cool when you do something crazy like this. I can tell these kids, “It’s not just in your head, go outside tonight. You can see it, it’s physical. It’s there. You’re looking at it.”
Chris:
It’s right there.
Jason:
Anyway.
Chris:
Dude, for everyone out there, if you haven’t seen it already, you can Google Jason’s name, you can Google microphone on Mars. You can read more about this stuff.
Jason:
Go check out the music.
Chris:
Yeah, but primarily you’ve got to check out the music. Where can they find it? Is it on most streaming places? Tell them, your website, tell them where to go.
Jason:
Yeah, jasonachilles.com is the website. If you go to Spotify, I actually have two different accounts on Spotify, the one you want is Jason Achilles.
Chris:
Jason Achilles, he is Jason Achilles Mezilas. I am Chris [inaudible 00:55:00], this is the Get Over It podcast.