This week, I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Jonathan Buzan, an atmospheric physicist and planetary habitability researcher whose journey to Mars science started not with a telescope, but with a well-worn copy of SolarQuest which was this epic monopoly style board game where players would travel around the Sun acquiring monopolies of planets, moons, and space structures trying to knock their opponents out of the game through bankruptcy, as well as the occasional laser blast. That early spark led to video games like SimEarth, a fascination with climate extremes, and eventually, a PhD in atmospheric physics and biothermophysics from Purdue University. Since then, he’s held research positions at institutions like the University of New Hampshire, the University of Bern, and now Aalborg University in Denmark, where he works at the intersection of computational physics, sustainability modeling, and planetary systems science.

In this episode, we dove into his experience as the GreenHab Officer for Crew 218 at the Mars Desert Research Station, the surprising emotional highs and lows of simulation life, how heat stress and planetary climates shape our understanding of habitability, the scandanavian huddling mindset, controlling for randomness, the importance of redundancy, taking the bad with the good, connections to the past, dehydrated cuisine, the absolute workout of preparing an exquisite Martian beshumel sauce, and why space research still feels like play—even when it’s deadly serious.

A huge thank you to Dr. Jonathan Buzan for joining me today and sharing his insight and curiosity, to Nick Thorburn for our stellar theme music, to Ceci Giglio for the beautiful graphics, to RDan, Leila, Inka, and Carl for admining the FB group, and to my family for supporting this adventure—even when the house turns into a sound lab for Martian acoustics.