Featuring Bianca Jones Marlin and Veronika Meduna
32 Min
Nov 10, 2018
39 Min
Nov 7, 2018
They may be the most important questions in all of science: Where do we come from? Are we alone?
38 Min
Nov 7, 2018
Notes from the Fog author Ben Marcus on Elon Musk, the weird existential joys of the reality TV show Castaways, and whether we will eat in the future.
58 Min
Nov 3, 2018
The Kepler mission has ended. Listen to highlights of the October 30th media briefing that included the father of the fantastically successful planet finder, William Borucki.
The friendly side of North Korea. Men at sea, dancing! Monty Python, of course, and more!
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the Jet Propulsion Lab are preparing to send NEA Scout on a long, light-propelled journey to a near Earth asteroid
RIding the Greyhounds of hell, from New York to El Paso. The grandiose alternate reality of hedge fund traders. Growing up Russian in Reagan's America, and more.
Linda Spilker returns with exciting, just-published research enabled by the 20-year mission’s enormous success
We salute humankind’s long history of stargazing by checking in on what will be our planet’s largest telescope.
Man Booker prize winners Olga Tocarczuk and her translator Jennifer Croft on maps that lead nowhere, plasticized anatomies, and humor across national borders.
It's NASA's 60th birthday! On October 1st, 1958 NASA began operations. We provide the audio equivalent of looking at the space program's baby pictures as we explore its origin story
The Dean of space policy, John Logsdon, returns with stories and a new book of original documents that shaped the US space program from the birth of NASA to SpaceX
A nation born in revolution will forever struggle against chaos. Jill Lepore, author of These Truths, on the surprising roots of the mess America's in.
Today, we take a step back to imagine a world without a web of GPS satellites telling your smartphone where you are every second of the day. While this might sound scary, come along and maybe you’ll discover you have a secret sixth sense...one that’s b...
A mostly SpaceX episode as the ambitious company provides updated details regarding its huge new rocket and introduces its first astronauts
How a mother-daughter obsession became a massive and dangerous industry. The weird history of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.
A seismic shake-up at a venerable literary gatekeeper. Shallow and not-so-shallow consumerism. The Paris Review’s new editor on old ghosts, new voices, and what’s worth keeping.
How much of what you do is actually your choice? What if you were secretly being controlled by a parasite that had infected your brain? What if that infection was spreading?
Mat Kaplan’s Huntsville, Alabama trip wraps up with a tour of the historic and history-making Marshall Space Flight Center
Welcome back Kristen! We get caught up on hot primaries & Special Counsel Super Tuesday
Host Mat Kaplan begins a two-episode visit to Huntsville and the Marshall Space Flight Center, recorded this week at the US Space and Rocket Center
Welcome to a future in which you can sign up to be a brand ambassador, and get paid for every time you mention a product in conversation.
We found a bipartisan issue--views toward tech jobs. Our interview with Bruce Mehlman
Hey, there's some news. With Kristen away, Margie talks to Bryan Bennett from The Hub about investigation polling.
Pluto passed in front of a star on the evening of August 14. Mat Kaplan joined pro and amateur astronomers on a mountain to observe this rare event.
Congo is one of the most culturally diverse, mineral rich, and beautiful places on Earth. But the “heart of darkness” colonizers dreamed into being still bleeds. Daniel McCabe’s documentary This is Congo lets this wounded nation speak for itself.
Last week we told you about boring wildfires. This week, what its like to be right in the middle of a decidedly *not* boring fire.
Today we tackle the age-old question: what if animals could talk? Or, more precisely, what if we could actually understand what animals are saying?
In Egypt, comedy can be a matter of life and death. But life in America's no cakewalk either. Political satirist Bassem Youssef on reinventing yourself, crossing cultural lines, and the future of space exploration.
A very special episode, where we talk about the OH-12 special. Trump converts. Plus wine & vegetables.
Space exploration leaders at the 2018 Committee on Space Research Assembly in Pasadena, California
When you’re a Hasidic woman in Borough Park, Brooklyn, starting an ambulance corps is a radical act. Documentary filmmaker Paula Eiselt on the push-pull of identity and cultural change in her film 93Queen.
The Planetary Society's new principles for human spaceflight, and serious questions about whether we are on the path to Mars
Kristen saw a concert. Margie has jet lag. We're both in LA, taking in the kale smoothies & easy living.
Everywhere East of the Mississippi certain kinds of forest are disappearing. The Woods Doctors have a prescription to cure this illness, if we dare to use it.
Our world was rocked by last week’s announcement of good radar evidence for a liquid water “lake” under the Red Planet’s south pole.
Why do space colonies seem more likely than underwater cities? And what does it take to build a settlement on the sea floor?
On hallucinating a teensy Virgin Mary in a water fountain, our weird relationship to fame, her stint as an elf-hunting camp counselor, and more in what feels like a 4 am college conversation with the inimitable Parker Posey.
Two big topics: immigration & Putin. Just who is leading who around here? Obviously: The Cats.
Japanese probe is just 20 kilometers from asteroid Ryugu as it prepares to snatch samples of the space rock for return to Earth
Do not succumb to “funklessness”. Join us as we nerd out to a staggering degree on utopian afrofuturism, David Bowie, and the sci-fi-inflected music of the ‘70s. With Jason Heller, Hugo-award winning author of Strange Stars.
One of the Planetary Society’s 2018 Shoemaker Near-Earth Object grants has gone to astronomers searching the sky from a mountaintop in the North African nation of Morocco
If you're sad you missed fireworks on the Fourth, may we interest you in a Supreme Court battle?
18th century sailors would know how to use a sextant just sent to the ISS, along with an amazing tool for basic science called the Cold Atom Lab.
In her vivid, dreamlike new book of short stories, Florida is a humid, seething organism that wants to eat you. Snake-infested. Full of sinkholes. A thing to resist, get lost in, surrender to, and sometimes, temporarily escape.
National security expert Dr. Brian Weeden joins the show to explain President Donald Trump's announcement regarding a Space Force.
After 200 years of wrestling with an incredibly aggressive invasive crab from Europe, we finally realized the answer may not lay with science, but tradition.
Ceres is the queen of the asteroid belt. Her first Earthly visitor is nearing its last days in spectacular style.
Watch for falling rocks! Asteroid Week comes to Planetary Radio, bringing you the best of space exploration and astronomy.
Guns as currency. Guns as status. Guns as the power of the unpredictable. Stanford Historian Priya Satia on how we got where we are today.