Power Play: The Children's Museum of Houston is summer's coolest destination

Keith Ostfeld, aka Mr. O, is the director of educational technology and exhibit development for the Children's Museum of Houston… at least officially. He’s really their resident mad scientist and he’s hellbent on thinking up of fun ways of teaching kids. That’s the best thing about the Children’s Museum of Houston: it’s a ton of fun, it’s the biggest, most awesome playground in town but it’s first and foremost an educational institution. It’s basically the coolest school in town. The kids won’t even notice they’re leaning useful concepts! Check out their website and see if your kids aren’t interested in visiting: www.cmhouston.org

Episode Transcript

(00:06):
Welcome to Houston, PA, Houston'sPublic Affairs show, an iHeartMedia broadcast.
Our disclaimer says that the opinions expressedon this show do not necessarily reflect those
hell by this radio station, itsmanagement staff, for any of its advertisers.
My name is Laurent I am theTexan from France, and my guest

(00:27):
has been a friendly show for manyyears, even if though he hasn't appeared
in a few years. His nameis Keith Ostfeld. He is known as
mister Oh because he is the directorof Educational Technology and Exhibit Development for the
Chilen's Museum of Houston. The geekiestof all the geeks. He's the head
mad Scientist of the Chilen's Museum ofHouston. They're online at cm Houston dot

(00:51):
org. Cm Houston dot org.The Chilen's Museum of Houston has a website
that is just as fun and cleanand nicely designed as the museum. But
Keith, welcome back. It's niceto see you. Good to be back.
I'm glad to see you. I'mglad to be able to see you,
you know, and be able totalk to everyone more fun. Yeah,
we're still still I still have I'mstill happy to see that. I

(01:11):
was. I was looking at astory about people getting into a tiff on
a plane, and I was lookingat the video and half of them I'm
still wearing masks, and I'm like, well, I'm glad that we're moving
out of that. The museum,I like to describe it as a Disney
World experience in Houston because of howclean and well designed it is. I
i'm you are underestimating how beautiful andawesome this museum is, folks. If

(01:36):
you haven't been, I'm telling you, you just don't realize it. I
think that there's the we get theimpression that a children's museum is kind of
like a children's playground, and there'sa great deal of disparity between how good
some playgrounds are and some of butnone of them are this nice. Y'all
have a climbing tower that's designed tobe perfectly safe. That it's fun for

(01:57):
grown ups. And that's the thing, is that it's fun for everyone.
And that's the whole point, isthat you know, it's for the whole
family. We want families to interacttogether, we want families to engage together,
so we gotta make it fun forthe parents as well as the kids.
And so yeah, powerplay, whichyou were just talking about. With
our forty foot tall again forty feetso two stories tall. You can't fall

(02:17):
structure, you can't fall off.It's all netted in. That's been we
just we just readed all the padson there, so that's been all redone,
but also all the exhibit around ithas been completely transformed. It's all
new experiences throughout. So this isa three level exhibits. So up on
the top level we got the powerCrank where you're racing rockets using your arm

(02:43):
power. The whole thing is toget you active and by Gali you will
get a workout in this exhibit.Now we've got mountain biking on recumbent bikes.
So if you think of like thePeloton, we were inspired by Peloton
to put these mountain biking onto arecumbent bike so the kids can take a
mountain biking experience right there. Wealso have the power hang so you can
see how long you can hang orif you want to, how many pull

(03:06):
ups you can do. Ye powergrip because of course the whole thing you
gotta be able to have good handstrengths. You can see just how strong
your grip is going down to themain level. We of course still have
our Power Dance, which is likeour dance Dance Revolution inspired piece, but
we also have a three D twister. We've got a reaction zone where we
have lights come on, you racearound, try to hit all the lights

(03:27):
I mean. And then we ofcourse have our brand new Power Pop,
which is you are transformed into askeleton, so as you move, the
skeleton moves around, so if youwant to dance, the skeleton will dance,
and then all these bubbles appear,and so you have to pop the
bubbles, so you have to useyour hands and feet. But of course
we've got to make it fun.So there's a little buzzing bee that comes

(03:49):
along. You don't want to hitthat otherwise you lose points, so you
want to keep popping bubbles and avoidthe bee. Downstairs, so we'd save
that forty foot tall climate structure.You can take that down and parents,
don't worry. There are stairs ifyou don't feel like climbing through, but
you shouldn't take them. But yeah, no, you should climb myself.
And we've got a brand new wegot we got a whole dance party down

(04:09):
there that we want people to joinin. But if you don't know how
to dance, we also have adance studio where you can learn some fun
moves that you can then go applyinside our dance party. And then we
have our brand new adventure course,which is going to be a sixteen foot
tall structure. You start at oneside, you go up some nets,
or you go up hemispheres. Youclimb and climb and climb four levels,

(04:30):
and then you have a giant corkscrewslide that takes you through a dimly lit
slide. It's all inked closed,a disney ride. This is a disney
ride. This is all kinds offun. So we want the family to
come out. We want you toget active, We want you to bring
the kids, wear them out,and that way they sleep the whole way
home. And he hasn't even mentionedthat all of this actually teaches them something

(04:54):
too. Exactly exactly. Yeah,it's it's kind of the ultimate playground.
It's air conditioned and they have oneof the most generous membership programs you can
get. This is the kind ofplace if you think you go once and
then your kids want to go again. The membership pays for itself. It
does, and I just I wantto encourage people to take their kids to
it if you can. Obviously,if you don't live too far away,

(05:15):
then it's an easy thing. Youcan just kind of bring your kids to
a special program. Y'all are openfor free every Thursday's every Thursday, five
to eight pm, So go checkit out. Definitely, Definitely, it's
a very important developmental stuff for alot of kids, because that's something that
we all need to do throughout ourlives. At some point, you're going
to need to leave the house,at some point you're gonna need to get
behind the wheel of a car,and all these situations the first time is

(05:38):
nerve racking, and so it's importantto have these experiences where you have taken
your limits and kind of challenged yourselfto go a little bit past them.
But at the same time, we'realso having you do research on yourself.
So how far can you pedal?Can you make it all fifteen? Can
you go faster? Next time?It's about learning about your heart rate,

(05:59):
it's about about exercise and the benefitsof exercise, hydration, nutrition, all
of that as encapsulated inside this exhibit. Plus of course I didn't even get
to our Power Science Lab space whichhas been completely redone with brand new downstairs
in the base, in our lowerlevel now and so you can go in
there and you can do hands onactivities with our with our Power Science Lab

(06:21):
educator, she's there constantly. Andthen right next door, of course,
we've got a bitch of convention withour Maker Annex, and so you can
learn to make things the maker theMaker Annex, so you learn to make
him build things. You can learnto code, you can learn to how
to do three D printing, howto do laser cutting. I mean,
we will give you all the educationthat you could possibly want, and then

(06:44):
some so people, the kids cancome in there and design an object in
three D and then have it printedright there on site. Right there on
site, you can come by andpick it up afterwards, or we can
send it to We will figure outa way to get you. Whatever you
create, we can print it,we will print it. And so yeah,
we have about four three D printersgoing. We've got two laser cutters
that they can use. If theywant to learn how to do all this

(07:06):
digital manufacturing, we'll do it.And again that's where that's where the membership
comes into play because we have somuch to do. It's it's amazing to
think about going to a children's museumand not having not being able to do
everything in there. And but thatwill happen, especially if you try like
our secret game, So you wantto make sure this is where you become
a secret agent and you go onmissions to protect the museum. We need

(07:30):
you to come do that. It'sgreat problem solving, but it takes about
an hour of time to complete eachmission, and so you can very quickly
run out of time in your day. You want to come back again.
If you come more than three timesin a year, the membership pays for
itself. Well, it's just it'sa great way for the parents to be
able to without making a single effort. You've got something to do, You've
got a destination and the kids areprobably just going to love it. Uh

(07:55):
just just if you're if you're bythe front door and you wash, the
families come out, the kids campstart talking, Daddy, what about them?
And it's not because they're full ofsugar. Because actually the Chillen's Museum,
if Houston has a restaurant inside,that has made an effort to make
fruits and nutritional, valuable nutrition availableto kids. Now, I know they've

(08:16):
got they've got some of the junk, and you know, rewarding kids with
junk is like me rewarding myself witha bear. So that's it has its
place. But what I like isthat it's not a whole wall of that.
It is not actually have a nicesalad. I mean the moms are
gonna love it. Oh yeah,we've got We've got salads, we got
wraps, we got all kinds ofnutritional choices. But we also of course

(08:39):
have the favorites for you know,if you want to do the grilled cheese
or you want to chicken ice cream, Yeah, you want to do the
chicken nuggets, we got that also, you know, And because they're just
times it's like, you know,we're out, we're having a good time.
Let's you know, we just climbthat tower thing and I'm exhausted.
Let let's let's recharge with us withsome chicken nuggets and fries. Go for

(09:00):
it. It's a special day.Come on, Yes, you are listening
to Houston, PA Houston's Public AffairsShow. My name is Laurent and my
guest is Keith Austfield. He is, mister Oh, the director of Educational
Technology and Exhibit Development for the Trillin'sMuseum of Houston. They are online at
cm Houston dot org cm Houston dotorg. Mister Oh, it's been so

(09:24):
long since I've had you on theshow, I haven't even asked you if
you're still these are these titles stillapplicable to you? Those titles are exactly
still applicable to me. That isexactly what I still do there, along
with a whole lot more. Imean, if you're not sure what you're
going to be doing at the museum, you can go to our website and
up at the top we have acouple of options up there, and one

(09:45):
of them is a three D virtualfield trip. So what we've done is
we have actually scanned several of ourexhibits, so we have taken a camera,
we have scanned taken three hundred andsixty degree images as well as three
D scans of these spaces, soyou can actually you go inside. This
is all web based. You don'tneed to download anything. You can walk
through each space and then in therewe can introduce you to what's inside this

(10:07):
exhibit, so you can learn aboutlike preview what it is you're doing,
and there understand what it is thatthese exhibits are about. But in addition
to that, we have videos thathelp explain things, and we have activities
to do at home. So whenyou come home and you've had a great
time and you're going, you knowwhat, we had a wonderful time plan
with that golf ball roller coaster downin Newton, Know, how how do
I do this at home? Well, we happen to have a video up

(10:30):
right now that tells you how tomake your own marble roller coaster at home.
So we definitely do not We wantto make sure that the museum experience,
it doesn't end just because you leftour building. It has to extend
well beyond that, because we wanteveryone to be able to get involved in
this all the time. I loveroller coasters. I had a marble roller

(10:50):
coaster, but it came packaged.It was a box that had little tubes.
The rails were a little plastic tubesand stronger than but again, you
had to have it just right.You had the bank, the slopes just
right. Because even though I hadall the pieces, I designed the course
myself. It was a really interestinglearning. It's a lot of fun,
a lot of fun and this andwhat I'm describing is just literally going and

(11:13):
buying a tube of installation over atthe hardware store and learning how you know,
the first hill has to be thetallest because you have to have all
that potential energy. But if youmake the next hill too big, you
don't have enough energy to get upand over that hill. Yeah, it's
a ton of fun. I wantto make a quick aside because Keith didn't
know about this video game called theCurveball Space Program, and I've talked about

(11:35):
it a few times on this show. But we want video games to be
educational. Very few of them areand are also fun. There are educational
video games. You can visit theLouver and do a little scavenger hunt on
a CD ROM game and it's boring. You're really better all visiting the Louver
and Assassin's Creed Revolution or whatever,the one that's set in in the French

(11:58):
Revolution, because they actually modeled thecastles and you can walk through them.
You'll get a better impression of whatit was like. But the game is
violent and for grown ups. SoCurveball Space Program is a NASA simulator.
Not only does it simulate give youthe opportunity to recreate the Gemini Project,
the Apollo project, land on theMoon, it literally simulates a NASA operation

(12:20):
where you can take roadblocks like piecesor lego pieces of rockets and designed crazy
rockets or transformer planes are transforming intorobots and then you can simulate flying them
onto the Moon, onto Mars,out to Jupiter. And you can't play
this game unless you learn about orbitalmechanics, rocketry, these basic concepts.

(12:41):
It is a very challenging game.It's a little bit like the Flight Simulator,
which is really a kind of agame for grown up where some people
say, well, it's not agame, it's a simulator. Well,
but it's also fun. It's aton of fun. And building a rocket,
specifically to watch it blow up isalso a ton of fun and you
can learn something. But folks,if you have a kid who's geeky and

(13:01):
has a PC, actually it's availableon the Xbox too, or you know,
on consoles. The Curveball Space Programis one of the best video games
of all time. You can onlyplay it by learning about rocketry in orbital
mechanics. You will learn how spacetravel works and how the timing of all
these planets spinning around the Sun affects. It's insane. So just to quick

(13:22):
mention because it's extraordinary and it's anexperience not unlike the ones that you're designing
at the Chones Museum. Exactly,you're trying to present something that's going to
grab the kid because they want topush that big red button to see what's
going to happen, right, Butthen the explanation comes in the form of
a mad scientist like Keith who showsup in a costume. So here's why
it happened this way, and that'swhat the kid talks about all day long.

(13:46):
Well exactly exactly, and you know, like right now we have our
Shocks and Jolts Exhibit up. They'llbe up through next April. But well,
I mean, but actually we dohave our giant plasma tubes in there,
so you can actually you watch aplasma go all the way up.
You can actually grab hold of that, build a charge up on yourself.
And if you happen to have ayounger sibling, because I'm an older sibling

(14:07):
nearby, reach out to slat them, give a little bit of a zap
just to you know that way youcan start a fight of some sort an
electric it's not quite that well,you don't feel like that, but the
person who gets the little zap getsthey get a good solid zap from that.
But again it's all about building upcharge because you're building up electrostatics all

(14:28):
over your body, because you knowwe can conduct electricity, and we also
have that in there where you canactually, you know, create a human
chain that lights up a light bulb. So multiple people all gather together,
you just hold hands and boom.You can make this light bulb light up,
or you can do it all byyourself and just shows that how it
can keep going. We have benchesthey'll play music when you and a partner

(14:48):
work together again because it's going togo through you. So you'd start learning
about electricity, how we generate electricfields, but you can also build circuits.
You can also generate electricity on yourown because you know electricity and magnetism
are and so you learn all theseideas all while having tons of fun as
a family. Well and a lotof times it's the first time the kids

(15:09):
are exposed to these to these conceptsum and usually it's the reverse. You
learn about them in a classroom andsometimes the teacher can rub a ruler against
her sweater and demonstrate stack electricity.But you guys have actually spent all this
money to build these plasmas tubes.Okay, run that by me real quick.

(15:31):
What exactly is the plasma and whatokay, so a plasma too,
so, so think of it likea giant lightbulb almost. So you have
a long tube like a like ahalogen like halogen, Yeah, a little
wider, it's about three inches indiameter, it's about five feet long.
And what we do is there isa power source at the bottom and what

(15:52):
does it energize is uh, theSo there's a transformer in there that basically
produces a huge voltage. Voltage isdischarged up the tube and you can actually
see it as a giant spark.That's what's called plasma. So what you
see is not electricity. What you'reseeing is energy called it's a state of
matter called plasma where you superheat gas. And it's because and this is the

(16:15):
same stuff that the sun is madeof, same stuff like is made of
engines, rocket engines. That's that'ssometimes plasma. That's often that you know
fire and everything else. But you'reseeing a discharge of energy, and so
when you grab it, when yougrab the tube, what's happening is some
of that charge that is traveling upthe tube travels into you, and so

(16:36):
you can build up a charge onyourself, and then you can then transmit
that charge to other people who arenot necessarily expecting. Just the same as
if you rubbed your feet across thecarpet and you know it mustn't do that
right now at this time you're withthis much humidity. So I grew up
in a rural area outside of Leone, France, and very often we were
on fields with cows and all kindsof animals, and they have electric fences.

(17:00):
And the number of times, thenumber of times are walking by the
electric fence and your friends grabs yourhead and you're like, and they're fine,
because it's coming. It'll pass rightthrough you them. But you know,
my memory, Keith, is thisis it. If you do it,
if you do it several times,you start to feel the electricity go
through your articulation, specifically the insideof your elbows. Can't do you know

(17:22):
what I'm talking about, much biggerdischarge than what we're well so we're talking
about a fence to keep the cattlein the Yeah, it's you know,
it's unpleasant as heck it is,it is, but yeah, yeah,
we're not dealing with that kind oflevel of like we're not we're not trying
to shock cows. Sorry, butor your friend. It's just the the

(17:42):
application of electricity, which is thoughtof as dangerous rightfully so because it is,
I mean obviously to be very absolutelyYeah, everything here that we do
is very very sick. Yeah.Yeah, you talk about the transformer.
That's amazing technology to take an enormousamount of power. Yes, we all
have that. All the electricity itcomes into our house is way more than

(18:03):
one hundred and ten. It goesto a transformer. First, our washing
machines run on two twenty twenty,which is what we have in France.
I've been told, I don't knowif this is true, but I've been
told that there's an advantage of twotwenty power because if you stick your fingers
in the plug, and you shouldn't, but if you did, or if
you stick a fork in the electricalplug and you should should not, you
should not, but if you did, the two twenty may bounce you back

(18:26):
before you die, whereas the twoten it's not quite powerful enough to to
provoke a reflex, and it doesn'tmake much sense right now. I'm not
going to try. I gotta sayI've not actually studied this particular thing.
The ones I've tried, I've notcome back to talk about. Yeah,
I just so that's one example ofthe kind of thing that you can be

(18:48):
discussed at home. No that that'snot an experiment to do at home.
Go stick your hands on the plasmatwos at the chill. That'll be fine.
You are listening to Houston, PA, Houston's Public Affairs Show. My
name is Laurent. My guest isKeith Austfeld. He is mister O,
the director of Educational Technology and ExhibitDevelopment at the Chilen's Museum of Houston.

(19:11):
They're online at cm Houston dot org. Cm Houston dot org. They have
a fantastic website that's fun to tovisit. Sick your kids on it.
You know, they always want toget online with their phone. It's like
you can make that a condition forthe next session that they use. Okay,
okay, I'll let you use myphone, but I want you to

(19:33):
check out this particular website and youdial up cm Houston dot org and you
let him choose the exhibit they canvisit next time they go to um Keith.
You have an exhibit called Newton knowHow? Can you eat apples in
it? You could eat apples init? But really the Newton know how
actually kind of we kind of likebust that particular myth right off the bat

(19:56):
because he did not get hit byan apple, so sorry, strictly a
legend, but he did watch Apple'sfall and that's what inspired him. So
that's what inspired the legend. ButNewton know how. It is all about
Newtonian physics. So let's hit youknow, talking about force, momentum,
friction, gravity, Newton's three lawsof motion. But we explore all that

(20:21):
through fun and toys. So dominoes. You can make those domino trains and
knock them over to explore momentum andchain reactions. We've got you. We
were talking about space where we havea giant gravity well which is basically a
funnel and golf balls, and soyou can spin the golf balls around,
watch orbital emotion decay and fall rightinto the center. So so yeah,
so Newton know How is all aboutexploring Newtonian physics. And of course,

(20:45):
again just like you were mentioning,you can go to our website where we
also have a sister website which doesa link to our main one called MYCMH,
so it's MYCMH dot cmhuston dot orgsinstead of www type and MYCMH dot
team, he's dot org. Wehave over a thousand education videos on there,
so any of which you've done yourself, many of which I've done myself.
We have over one hundred and seventyI think on there right now with

(21:07):
the wig with one of them withthe wig, I will admit, So
definitely you gotta check all those out. But we've got and it covers all
kinds of topics, not just sciencetopics that we teach art, we teach
dance. Because all this was bornduring the pandemic when we had to close,
but we wanted to keep everything goingvirtually, so we have all those
videos on there plus one sense thenthat we've created, so you can definitely

(21:30):
check that out and spend a tonof time, you know, again both
learning about what we're doing in themuseum balls things to do at home,
because we want the museum experience toextend to home, because again, every
day should be something different, justlike we have all this wonderful program and
going on all summer long with ourpower up summers. So you also just
too quickly mentioned there's a there's aspot for tots. Oh there is.

(21:52):
Our tot spot is wonderful. Sothat's for our thirty five months and under.
So they have their own special areawhere they can go, they can
explore without having you know, oldersiblings knocking them over. But also it
just gives them their own quiet spacebecause he's not quiet at all. But
it gives them their space to kindof explore the way that they need to

(22:12):
explore because they have a very differentway of exploring from say, you know,
a five year old or an eightyear old or a twelve year old,
so they need have very different needs. And so that's that whole point
there. But also the wonderful thingthat happens up there is we have a
whole community of parents that kind ofform, especially all the new parents.
It's like, I'm totally lost.There's no instruction manual with this thing,

(22:33):
because I was there, there wasno instruction manual with that, and and
you know I love my kids,but by Gali, an instruction manual would
have been very helpful everything I hear. You can listen to your mom and
your grandparents book who would do thatright? And you know, really and
truly, sometimes I think they givebad advice on purpose, just to watch
you suffer the way that they hadto suffer. Ultimately, it's yeah,

(23:00):
you can only surround your kids withpowerful influences, and you you want to
choose the good ones because there's alot of bad powerful influences, including bad
video games and such, and soto be able to find activities that aren't
related to those things that are easilyaccessible. This is the difference between fine
dining and fast food. If yougo to the Chilling's Museum, it's like

(23:21):
fine dining for the brain or forthe for the body too, because the
museum is literally designed to be climbedall touch every bit everything. We want
you to come out. We wantyou to touch things. Please don't break
them, but we definitely want youto touch. Some things aren't very breakable,
I will admit, and even afew things that aren't meant to be

(23:41):
breakable are breakable. But we definitelywant you to come out and have fun
and not worry about that aspect ofthings. We'll go in there, we'll
repair things. So let us knowif you find something broke, and definitely
tell our stuff because we will getout there and we'll fix it right away.
And if you have scavenger hunts andmystery scavenge your hunts, your your
kid can come in and pick upa packet and become a detective. And

(24:03):
it's the kind of thing where youput glasses on to see what's written on
the wall because it's invisible unless youdon't have the glasses. I don't know
that's specifically something you do, butit's stuff like that. It is exactly
stuff like that, so you andthat's our whole secret experience. So that's
we become especially elite Crime Resolution andEspionage Team members. Secret. There's one

(24:25):
thing we haven't talked about. It'smy favorite thing. I can't do a
show about the Chilles Museum without mentioning. It's called flow works. It's outside
yea. Also, do you allstill have the little ecosystem that turn eco
station with our adals, We havethe pond. We've got frogs out there.
Now, we've got a snake insidewe've got our chicks insides. Can

(24:45):
come explore our live chicks and watchthem run around and um, it is
a ton of fun. You getto learn. And we also have we
have hissing cockroaches out there now,um, so you can come learn about
insects. Can come learn about amphibians, come learn about reptiles. Um.
You know, and of course alsoall the local flora, and you know

(25:07):
the fauna that comes and wanders andout all on their own. Um.
You know when it's when when whenthe butterflies are migrating, it's a great
time to come out. We've gotour milkweeds, so we get the monarchs
to come out and have a greatgood for you natives plan natives species.
I have to say. Flow worksis basically a water roller coaster that you're
in charge of. It's a seriesof tubes and pools and levers and floating

(25:33):
things and barrages and dams, andthe kids are all around and they can
coordinate or not by opening flows ofwater and connecting tubes and pipes, and
it is an awesome demonstration of howwe can control water to create power,
for instance, or just to learna little bit about how destructive and uncontrolled,

(25:57):
difficult to control. Water is andyou know, we live in a
city with over forty bayous and socontrolling water is a huge deal for us,
huge and it's definitely a challenge.And so you definitely learn about the
fluid dynamics and that water doesn't alwaysdo what you want it to never never,
really never. If it does isbecause it's your prisoner and it's trying

(26:18):
to get out exactly it's really andto actually have this physical demonstration, I'm
telling you, folks, this isliterally one of the most fun things you
can experience in Houston. There's somethingjust so satisfying about opening a dam and
watching it flow a pool full ofstuff. And it's also just fun to
see kids. You know, you'reeither there when it's not crowded and you
get to chewy all the levers,or you're there with a bunch of kids

(26:40):
and you get to watch them doit and then they coordinate and some of
them are building some things and thenthe guy opens the pipe and then the
stuff that the kid is building goesaway. This isn't so much fun,
is It's tons of fun, tonsand tons of fun. And you choose
how wet you get so warning.You know, if you're not sure how
wet your child is gonna want toget, maybe bring a change of cloth

(27:00):
in a towel with you because youcan always go to the bathroom and change
them out. Just do that firstand then go see the rest of the
museum. Lee, you know,you know they're the kids do that's a
good job. I can't I can'tthink of a much better place that.
The advantage that the Rones Museum hasis that, unlike the other cool museums
that are kid friendly, uh,this one is it's almost exploitative of childhood

(27:26):
instincts in the best way. It'slike it really it's not incidentally fun.
It is first and foremost fun,and then you figure out a way to
apply science and education to what's fun. And that's exactly it. Because the
way kids learn is by play.And unfortunately play has become a four letter
word. It's technically a four letterword, but you know what I mean.

(27:48):
Yeah, and and really, butthat's how they learn. And if
we don't give them the opportunity togo and play and have fun, they
don't learn as well. And that'swhy doing worksheets doesn't teach nearly as well
as getting to do things, andthat's what it's all about at the museum
is getting to do things. Immerseyourself in a culture. Go do an
experiment, build a rocket, Goget wet, trying to test water plans,

(28:17):
and you know, go to powerplay and get sweaty and learn what
your body can do and just howfar you can really push yourself. That's
the whole point of the museum hascome and play. It is a playground
for your mind, and we wantyour mind to come out and play.
Honestly, there should be a Trilling'sMuseum in every school in a science fiction
world. This is what schools wouldlook like. You to have classrooms,

(28:38):
and you to have flow works inthe back and towers to climb. And
now obviously that's kind of fabulous andall that, but what they are doing
is busting in thousands and thousands ofkids at no cost to the parents.
So we are spreading this education bybringing the kids in. You got to
remember that a museum or any opportunityreally for a kid to experience something different,

(29:03):
is a chance to put them intocontact with their own rosetta stone.
You never know what's going to ignitetheir passion and make them realize I want
to be a scientist because this thisplasma too really got me going. You
never know, it can be easy, it can be flow works, and
so to expose kids as many ofthese experiences as possible is the way to
go. And one way that wecan participate is to get more busses to

(29:26):
bring more kids to the museum.And you can go to cm Houston dot
org and just donate, because wetalked about becoming members and partaking of all
these facilities that they put at ourdisplay. It's awesome. Go have fun,
but remember that if you donate toone of these organizations, you're allowing
them to fund one extra bus ofkids, and that's what we're looking for.

(29:48):
Keith, what a pleasure, Ohso much fun. I'll always enjoy
coming. And we got to dothis more often, absolutely, and I
hope that your summer of movie goingis as good as mine. And you
gotta check out the curveball space perBall. We're going to do that and
I might do an entire section onthat awesome space. If this NASA simulator
that I like to talk about,Folks, if you have any questions related

(30:11):
to Houston, PA or the organizationsI have on this show. Just send
me an email Texan from France atgmail dot com and I thank you for
caring and listening about the issues thatput on this show. I'll see you
next week at the same time.My name is Laurulent. This has been
Houston PA, Houston's public affairs show, Houston Strong.