Ep376_I Want My NASA TV
JSC · 2025-03-14
Ep378_I Want My NASA TV Joseph Zakrzewski (Host) Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center. Episode 378, I want my NASA TV. I'm Joseph Zakrzewski, and I'll be your host for this episode. On this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, production designers, communicators and astronauts, all to let you know what's going on in the world of human space flight and more. For decades, NASA TV, and now NASA+, has been the gateway for the world to witness historic space flight moments from the Apollo moon landings to the shuttle era and today's exciting programs. But how does it all come together? What does it take to capture and share the story of exploration with audiences across the globe? Today, we'll be talking with the experts who make it happen, NASA's live television producers and longtime team members who have shaped the evolution of NASA's television productions. In this episode, we're honored to speak with NASA's External Relations Office multimedia supervisor John Stoll and NASA's live television producer team lead, Sarah Volkman, who have been key colleagues in bringing NASA's story to life. Enjoy. Joseph Zakrzewski Hello, John. Sarah, thank you so much for coming on Houston, We Have a Podcast today. Well, to start, tell us about yourselves and what are your backgrounds. What brought you to NASA, John, we'll start with you. John Stoll Sounds good. Thank you so much for having me. This is exciting about myself, my background, so obviously, my name is John Stoll. I've come from audio production. I was a musician as a kid, and I learned that you could do audio for a career. And so I went to I got a degree in audio, and then I found a job out here for Lockheed Martin, not an audio but soldering communications panels and various test chambers they have on site at Johnson Space Center. And so I just dove in. I love soldering, so I'll come here and I'll do that. And then a friend of mine, I'd only been there a few months, friend of mine said, Hey, over in building two, there's they there have audio people at NASA. I said, they don't have audio people at NASA. That's not possible. That'd be the coolest thing in the world. It turns out they do, and they had an opening for an audio person. So I made myself, I made myself in building two, and just bothered them until they just like, just fine, just come over here and start working. Because I love space exploration. Always have, and I love audio production. And so that's how I got here, and I was in the audio control room. We supported, in those times, space shuttle missions, primarily, and then the space station started being built, and so we supported both of those things. And that's, yeah, that's my background and how I got here. Joseph Zakrzewski Sarah, how'd you get here? When did you start? Sarah Volkman All right, well, thank you for having us on. It's really fun to be on the this side of the microphone long time, first time. So I was definitely a Film TV, just, you know, nerd growing up. And I was also a daughter of a military family. So we moved all over, but by way of a lot of places, wound up in Texas as our last stop. And yeah, so I decided to stay here for school. Went to school in East Texas, Stephen F Austin State University. They have a awesome film program there, and decided, you know, when I was wrapping up high school, that's what I wanted to pursue. And through that experience, learned a lot about myself, learned a lot about other schools I had, and decided once I got out to, you know, get into the industry any way I could. I didn't quite have the stomach for, like, a lot of my classmates, you know, live on a couch and do a like, like, probably like a Stoll here, I did something a little more steady. You know, for my I knew that about myself, my mental health, so I found a job at a news station because I loved film, but I also loved TV. And I learned a lot there, and that definitely opened me up to getting this, this job here. So our last stop when we were moving was Houston. My parents live in Houston, so that's where I was looking to move to after working a little bit of news in East Texas. And I mean, really, just the stars aligned. And I really, really, just got really lucky that, like, like, same thing happened to John. They had this opportunity again. People are like, what do you do? What do you do? The film degree? And I love to now tell them, Well, I just work at NASA, so ended up here. Got really lucky. Um, and thanks, John. John Stoll You’re welcome. Joseph Zakrzewski It’s always fun to see when people's eyes light, you know, light up when you tell them that you work at NASA and what you get to do, and when you get to be a part of and, and especially this, this group here with NASA TV now NASA plus production and everything that goes behind it, you see a lot of, you know, talks of. Celebrities and engagement on online and through other podcasts that they talk about, th