Sian Proctor and John Read on teaching babies to love the Cosmos

**Sarah Al-Ahmed** (0:04)
Teaching babies to love the cosmos. This week on Planetary Radio.
I'm Sarah Al-Ahmed of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. This week, commercial space astronaut Cyan Proctor and astronomer John Reed joined me to talk about their new children's book, Baby's Guide to the Night Sky, and why it's never too early to fall in love with the cosmos. And then we'll get Bruce Betts, our chief scientist's take as a kid's author in What's Up. If you love Planetary Radio and want to stay informed by the latest space discoveries, make sure you hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcasting platform. By subscribing, you'll never miss an episode filled with new and awe-inspiring ways to know the cosmos and our place within it.
Inspiring the next generation of explorers is something that we talk about a lot on this show. But what does that actually look like when the audience is still in diapers? It turns out that even the very youngest children can start building a relationship with the night sky long before they reach the end of the world.
That early sense of wonder can plant something that lasts a lifetime. Baby's Guide to the Night Sky, published by Source Books and on sale since July 7th, introduces the youngest kids down to newborns, to constellations and the wonders of the cosmos. It comes from two people that have spent their lives chasing the same wonder in very different ways. Dr. Cyan Proctor is a geoscientist, an artist and a poet. She was also a commercial space astronaut who served as the pilot on Inspiration4 in 2021, becoming first woman commercial space pilot and the only African-American woman to be a mission pilot. She flew alongside Commander Jared Isaacman, who's now our NASA administrator, along with mission specialist Chris Sambroski and medical officer Haley Arsenault. You'll hear a little bit about each of them in this show. Before that flight, Cyan was twice a NASA astronaut candidate finalist, and she spent months in a simulated Mars habitat with high seas. John Read is an astronomer and science communicator who left his career in corporate finance after a look through a telescope changed his life. He went back to school and earned a degree in astrophysics, and now he's the host of the YouTube channel Learn to Stargaze. He's also authored several astronomy books, including A Kid's Guide to the Night Sky. Here's my conversation with Sian Proctor and John Read.
Hey, Sian and John, thank you for joining me.

**Sian Proctor** (2:41)
Hi, thank you for having me.

**Sarah Al-Ahmed** (2:43)
Hello.
So I feel like this conversation is, it feels like a little bit of a continuation of a conversation that I had last year with Haley Arseneau, who was one of your crewmates on Inspiration for Sian. She wrote a book called Astronaut Haley's Brave Adventure, which was her kid's book version of her adult book. And now it's like in my brain, I'm just waiting for Jared Isaacman to drop his own kid's book.

**Sian Proctor** (3:08)
Yeah, you know, it was so great to watch Haley on her journey from coming back from space and doing kind of like her memoir and then a young adult book, and then her children's book and being inspired by her and her story. And you know, of course, I went space through art and poetry and thinking about like, okay, well, how do I get into the publishing world and enter John Read, who we've been friends. And he's like, yeah, I publish stuff all the time. And I'm like, hi, John.

**Sarah Al-Ahmed** (3:43)
That's wonderful to hear. Did you guys kind of write those books in tandem? You're separated in publication date by about a year.

**Sian Proctor** (3:50)
No, so we did not. Haley kind of had her thing going. And I knew that her books were coming out. And I love the fact that she put a character of me in her book.
And so that's always nice when your crew member kind of gives you a nod. But John and I, I honestly didn't know how to go about getting a book published when I came back from space. And John was like, well, you can self-publish. And so he has been the publisher of all my books, beginning from the very first one I did, which was Space to Inspire, the Art of Inspiration, which was a poetry art book. But I think the most proud I've been about the books we've published together was Earthlight, which is my science book.
And then he was like, hey, I've got this other book coming down the pipeline and you're a poet, would you help me on it? And I was so honored when he asked me to help with the Baby's Guide to the Night Sky.