Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ astrophysics and cosmology • particle physics, Standard Model, muon g‑2 • black holes, gravitational waves, pulsars • galaxies, star/planet formation, exoplanets, JWST • spaceflight, Moon/Mars, commercial space • astrobiology, Europa/ocean worlds • climate change, oceans, hurricanes • AI, machine learning, bias • scientific skepticism, pseudoscience, DEI
This podcast features interviews and explainers focused on fast-moving developments in science, especially astrophysics, cosmology, and space exploration, with frequent detours into adjacent fields where scientific methods and evidence are central. Conversations often bring listeners into current research questions—what the universe is made of, how it began, and what might lie beyond established theories—through discussions of particle physics, the Standard Model, supersymmetry, and experimental results that may hint at “new physics.” Along the way, the show revisits major ideas and open problems such as dark matter, dark energy, the early universe, black holes, neutron stars, pulsars, and gravitational waves, including how these phenomena are observed and what their measurements can and cannot tell us.
A recurring thread is how astronomy and planetary science are practiced in the real world: how galaxy surveys and telescopes gather data, what ambitious missions aim to do, and what risks come with high-stakes instruments and engineering challenges. Human spaceflight and near-term space policy also appear regularly, including commercial spaceflight, returning to the Moon, and the practical hurdles of sending people to Mars, along with behind-the-scenes details about mission operations and astronaut culture.
Beyond space, the podcast covers Earth science and climate topics, from sea-level rise and ocean-driven ice melt to hurricanes, temperature records, and debates over mitigation strategies such as carbon capture. Several episodes address science communication and skepticism, examining how misinformation and pseudoscience take hold in areas like archaeology, health, and fringe cosmological claims, and emphasizing how to evaluate extraordinary headlines. The show also explores the social context of science—questions about diversity, institutional culture, and the habits and biases that shape research—and includes discussions of artificial intelligence, machine learning, data use, and the potential risks of automated systems.
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Episodes:
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#86 - Dr. Dan Hooper - New Physics or Faulty Calculations? All About the Muon g-2 Experiment
2021-May-24
64 minutes
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#85 - Dr. Stephon Alexander - Black Holes, Supersymmetry, and all that Jazz
2021-Mar-28
89 minutes
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#84 - Nate Stewart - America's Back (in Space), Baby!
2021-Mar-17
74 minutes
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#83 - Dr. Ethan Siegel - ʻOumuamua, Aliens, and The Scientific Commandments
2021-Mar-02
89 minutes
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#82 - Dr. Brian Keating - The Everlasting Lessons from Galileo's Life
2021-Feb-03
77 minutes
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#81 - Dr. Daniel Whiteson - The Standard Model and Its Many Quirks!
2020-Nov-13
101 minutes
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Why This Universe? - Please Stop Emailing Dan About MOND!
2020-Nov-11
33 minutes
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#80 - Dr. Jeyhan Kartaltepe - Galaxies, Galaxies, and More Galaxies!
2020-Oct-16
68 minutes
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#79 - Dr. Dan Hooper - Did NASA Really Detect a Parallel Universe!?!?
2020-Aug-27
88 minutes
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#78 - Brian McNoldy - Hurricanes and Climate Change, What's the Connection?
2020-Jun-17
80 minutes
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#77 - Dr. Maura McLaughlin - Detecting the Ripples from Merging Supermassive Black Holes
2020-May-07
84 minutes
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#76 - Peter Haas - Artificial Intelligence Should Scare You!
2020-Apr-16
91 minutes
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#75 - Dr. Kevin Peter Hand - Exploring Alien Oceans
2020-Apr-09
103 minutes
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#74 - Bernie Taylor - Finding the Origin of Dogs
2020-Apr-08
90 minutes
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#73 - Nate Stewart - The Difficulties of Getting to Mars!
2020-Mar-28
81 minutes
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#71 - Dr. Joel Kastner - Watching Planets Form!
2020-Mar-07
79 minutes
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#70 - Dr. Mike Poland - Yellowstone: The Gravity of the Situation
2020-Feb-18
95 minutes
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#69 - Dr. David Warmflash - Let's Rover the Moon!
2020-Feb-05
110 minutes
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#68 - Nate Stewart - The Rituals of Spaceflight!
2020-Jan-29
84 minutes
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#67 - Dr. David Fisher - How Human Spaceflight is Returning to the United States in 2020
2020-Jan-09
115 minutes
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#66 - Dr. Dan Hooper - Can We Answer the Biggest Questions in Astrophysics?
2019-Nov-05
115 minutes
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#65 - Dr. Josh Willis - OMG: The Oceans are Melting Greenland!
2019-Oct-16
80 minutes
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#64 - Bernie Taylor - Building the Thirty Meter Telescope: Unifying Science and Spirituality
2019-Oct-09
68 minutes
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#63 - Dr. Brian Keating - What Existed Before the Big Bang?
2019-Sep-25
71 minutes
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#62 - There May Not be a Clear Solution to Climate Change!
2019-Sep-17
41 minutes
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#61 - Dr. Sara Mazrouei - How The Moon Teaches us About Our Past!
2019-Sep-03
86 minutes
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#60 - Artificial Intelligence is Biased Because We Are! | Featuring Dr. Chris Kulp
2019-Aug-23
18 minutes
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#59 - July 2019 was the Hottest Month on Record, How do we Know That?
2019-Aug-21
61 minutes
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#58 - Dr. John Hoopes - Pseudo-archeology Tries to Rewrite History; From Mayan 2012 "Prophecies" to Ancient Aliens.
2019-Aug-13
103 minutes
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#57 - What Will Happen if The James Webb Space Telescope Fails? | Featuring Dr. Nathalie Ouellette
2019-Aug-06
22 minutes
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#56 - Dr. Chris Kulp - Machine Learning and the Big Data Revolution!
2019-Jul-30
103 minutes
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#55 - Is 5G Safe? | The Hottest June on Record has Passed!
2019-Jul-24
55 minutes
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#54 - We Chose to go to The Moon 50 Years Ago! IT'S TIME WE GO AGAIN!
2019-Jul-19
61 minutes
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#53 - Dr. Nathalie Ouellette - Exoplanets and the James Webb Space Telescope
2019-Jul-09
95 minutes
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#52 - Could Fast Radio Bursts be Aliens?, Helicopters on Mars, Quadcopters on Titan, and Buying Tickets to the ISS!
2019-Jul-05
103 minutes
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#50 - Why did we Stop Going to the Moon? | Featuring Dr. David Fisher
2019-Jun-19
19 minutes
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#49 - Dr. Duncan Lorimer - What are Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs)?
2019-Jun-13
93 minutes
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#48 - Dr. David Fisher - We Must Return to The Moon!
2019-Jun-04
123 minutes
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#47 - The Pull Out Method... Works?
2019-May-31
52 minutes
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#46 - Getting LIGO Funded | Featuring Dr. Rai Weiss | TSOTU Short
2019-May-17
16 minutes
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#45 - Dr. David Warmflash - The History and Future of our Relationship with the Moon!
2019-May-14
101 minutes
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#44 - Nate Stewart - We're Returning to the Moon!
2019-May-09
91 minutes
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#43 - Exploring the Pseudoscience Spectrum!
2019-May-07
112 minutes
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#42 - Dr. Rai Weiss - Detecting Gravitational Waves and Winning a Nobel Prize in the Process
2019-Apr-24
68 minutes
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#41 - Can We Remove Carbon from the Atmosphere? | Featuring Dr. Stephen Pacala | TSOTU Short
2019-Apr-16
11 minutes
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#40 - Climate Change is Happening! Why Deny it? | Featuring Dr. Matt Fitzpatrick | TSOTU Short
2019-Apr-12
10 minutes
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#39 - Searching for Life on Europa | TSOTU Short
2019-Apr-06
14 minutes
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#38 - Dr. Matt Fitzpatrick - The Climate will feel very Different in 60 Years!
2019-Apr-02
77 minutes
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#37 - How the Seasonal Flu Vaccine is Made featuring Dr. Peter Barlow | TSOTU Clip
2019-Mar-28
8 minutes
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#36 - Where could we find Life Beyond Earth?
2019-Mar-26
107 minutes
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#35 - Is the Yellowstone Supervolcano due for an Eruption? featuring Dr. Michael Poland - TSOTU Clip
2019-Mar-22
8 minutes
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#34 - Bernie Taylor - The Influence of Biological Time on Intelligent Life and how it could Change our View of Potentially Habitable Exoplanets
2019-Mar-18
102 minutes
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#33 - Discovering the First Fast Radio Burst featuring Dr. Duncan Lorimer - TSOTU Clips
2019-Mar-15
14 minutes
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#32 - Nate Stewart - How America is Returning to Human Spaceflight and The Purpose of the Lunar Gateway
2019-Mar-12
65 minutes
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#31 - The Importance of Radical Ideas in Science featuring Dr. Priya Natarajan - TSOTU Clip
2019-Mar-09
10 minutes
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#30 - How to Conceptualize a Black Hole featuring Dr. Priya Natarajan - TSOTU Clip
2019-Mar-06
7 minutes
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#29 - Dr. Priya Natarajan - Dark Energy, Dark Matter, Black Holes, and Recognition in Science
2019-Feb-28
84 minutes
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#28 - Dr. Peter Barlow - Curing the Common Cold, Flu Vaccines, and Pandemics
2019-Feb-19
61 minutes
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#27 - Dr. Julia Young - How History Can Help Us Understand Modern Immigration to the U.S.
2019-Feb-04
92 minutes
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#26 - Brendan Gets Interviewed - Black Holes, Aliens, Fast Radio Bursts, and Flat Earthers
2019-Jan-31
109 minutes
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#25 - Understanding Black Holes: What We Know and What We May Never Know
2019-Jan-23
55 minutes
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#24 - 2018 Climate Change Recap, Fast Radio Bursts, and Putting Solar Panels on Trump's Wall
2019-Jan-14
103 minutes
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#23 - China on the Moon, Government Shutdown, and The ISS Hole
2019-Jan-07
80 minutes
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#22 - Dr. Aysha Akhtar - The Impact of Factory Farming and Animal Testing on Human Health
2019-Jan-01
98 minutes
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#21 - Nate Stewart - How Commercialization of Space Travel Can Lead Us To The New Space Age
2018-Dec-18
105 minutes
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#20 - Dr. Stephen Pacala - Understanding Our Changing Climate and Carbon Mitigation
2018-Dec-11
88 minutes
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#19 - Nate Stewart - Climate Change and Revitalizing Space Exploration
2018-Dec-04
78 minutes
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#18 - Dr. Ken Miller - Science Denial, Free Will, and Finding Common Ground Between God and Evolution
2018-Nov-29
96 minutes
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#17 - Dr. Michael Poland - Monitoring the Yellowstone Supervolcano and Predicting Eruptions
2018-Nov-21
72 minutes
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#16 - Dr. Maura McLaughlin - Gravitational Waves, NANOGrav and the Pulsar Search Collaboratory
2018-Nov-14
84 minutes
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#15 - Dr. Duncan Lorimer - Pulsars, Discovering Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), and Creating Music
2018-Oct-31
96 minutes
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#12 - Bernie Taylor - Before Orion, The First Astronomers, Astrology, and Recognizing Genius
2018-Oct-10
104 minutes
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#10 - Dr. Sam Sternberg - CRISPR, GMO's, and Bioethics
2018-Oct-03
56 minutes
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#9 - Dr. Brian Keating - Reforming the Nobel Prize
2018-Sep-26
46 minutes
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#8 - James Barrat - Will Artificial Intelligence Destroy Us?
2018-Sep-24
40 minutes
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#6 - Dr. Joan Nichols - Bioengineering Lungs, Health Effects of Space Travel, and Succeeding in Science
2018-Sep-12
96 minutes
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#5 - Dr. Francis Halzen - Detecting Neutrinos, MultiMessenger Astronomy, and The IceCube Neutrino Observatory
2018-Sep-05
74 minutes
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#4 - Dr. David Fisher - Space Force, Going Back To The Moon, and Politics
2018-Aug-29
93 minutes
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#3 - Dr. Darold Treffert - Savant Syndrome, Psychedelics, and Paranormal Experiences
2018-Aug-22
105 minutes
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#2 - Dr. Nicole Gugliucci - Making Citizen Science Successful, Compensating Citizen Scientists, and Overpopulation
2018-Aug-17
77 minutes
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#1 - Dr. Chris Kulp - Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence
2018-Aug-17
110 minutes
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