Talking About NASA Astronomy & Astrobiology On Arabic Language TV

Keith’s note: I was just on Alaraby TV in Qatar talking about the recent discovery of methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of super-earth exoplanet K2-18b by the Webb Space Telescope and what this means in terms of Astrobiology and the search for life in the universe. It is fun to not have to talk to jaded American TV. Surprise: People outside of our Americo-centric news bubble are interested in things we don’t seem to care much about. Among many other international networks, I have been on Alaraby, Al Arabiya, Alhurra, and Al Jazeera. Also, since I am being translated into Arabic in real time, it is fun since I used to be a professional American Sign Language interpreter (often on TV) and the translators like that I am good at parsing technical things for translation at a pace that facilitates translation – in real time. Keith’s fun aside, I get the clear impression that NASA has little – if any – interest in making people available to this vast viewing audience. I have asked NASA PAO about this in the past but they always declined to answer. To be certain, the viewership of these Arabic language networks overlaps – but the core audience is somewhere between 200-300 million located in over 150 countries. NASA has an astonishing soft power and branding reach and it rarely takes full advantage of it. This is one example. Baffling. Anyway: here’s the [Audio]