Premiering Tonight!

I have the privilege tonight of attending a local event celebrating the national premiere of the new television series Meteorite Men, starring Geoffrey Notkin, the gentleman for whom my friend Leigh Anne DelRay works. The program airs on the Science Channel at 9 PM EST. Please check your local listings.

I would be remiss in not mentioning Geoff’s partner in space rock sleuthing, Steve Arnold. The two make a great team, educating the audience in an entertaining fashion without going totally over the top. No death-defying stunts, but plenty of adventure, and contagious enthusiasm for finding these fallen pieces of our universe.

One has to be part scientist, part historian, and a world traveler to be a meteorite hunter. It also helps to be creative, inventive, and a mechanic to fix the vehicles that inevitably break down in the course of rambling across all kinds of terrain.

Geoff and Steve are doing for meteorites what I want to do for urban wildlife. All of us have lived vicariously through National Geographic, Nature, NOVA, the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet. We’ve been down the Amazon several times over, and have about had our fill of lions and tigers and bears (oh, my!), but we certainly haven’t explored beneath the soil for meteorites, or made a discovery-filled trek through our own backyards and city parks.

Who knows, Geoff and Steve might dig up a meteorite in your backyard at some point in the course of their own show. Did I mention that it also helps to know how to research ownership of property, and negotiate with landowners to be a meteorite hunter?

Please join me in congratulating these two fine men on achieving a dream two years in the making. Follow their exploits via Geoff’s blog, also: Meteorites: They Came From Outer Space. They may be the hardest working scientists in show business.