Every child is born a scientist.
They poke, pour, stack, knock down, dig up and ask “why?” a hundred times a day. Then, little by little, we parents and the pressures of the world teach them to sit still and stop asking. I’ve spent my life trying to undo that.
Aloha, I’m Josh. Most kids know me as Dr. Dirt.
Long before I put soil under a microscope, I spent my life with kids. As Coach Josh, I’ve coached hundreds of children, from 6-year-olds to 19-year-olds, and mentored young people from about age 10 all the way into their mid-twenties. I’ve tutored, run school assemblies and sat beside kids who were sure they “just weren’t good at this” until they found out they were.
For 23 years I’ve taken a week off every year to read Dr. Seuss in every classroom across several school districts. Thousands of children have heard me read. I used those stories to talk about right and wrong and about history, and a few of those kids still think I am Dr. Seuss. Many of them are grown now. I get invitations to their weddings and their graduations, and my favorite of all: birthday parties for their kids.
Those years taught me that kids learn best when they’re engaged, and they engage when it’s fun, when we don’t stifle the curiosity they were born with. They learn even more when their grown-ups are learning right beside them.
The soil found me later.
My grandparents were conservationists who taught me to love the land and cherish everything it gives. I trained in a chemistry lab, and a farm program turned me toward plant science. I built nutrient systems for hydroponic and aeroponic growing, then moved to organic, living soil. I couldn’t trust what I couldn’t see, so I picked up a microscope.
When we moved to Hawaiʻi, the volcanic ground, the rain and the microclimates meant a year and a half of learning soil all over again. Today I run a small soil lab in Mountain View and test soil live at the market every Sunday.
Home is the mountains of the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, with my wife of 23 years and our three kids. Our 23-year-old daughter just earned her doctorate, and our 19-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son help me design and build the games.
Everything on this site comes from both halves of my life: a teacher’s heart and a soil scientist’s microscope.
You don’t need a lab coat to change the world.
A citizen scientist is anyone driven by curiosity, fueled by questions, and motivated to make a difference. Kids are born asking “why?” My mission is to ensure they never stop.
“We’ll never know all of the answers… but that doesn’t mean we should stop asking.”
—Dr. Dirt