How are your sunglasses like the stars, planets, and galaxies that comprise our universe? Not only do they look cool – they’re also no stranger to polarization! In today’s episode, Will describes a mysterious transient lurking within our own galaxy, while Malena shares how baby magnetic fields might have polarized the baby Universe. Alex guides us through a trashy symphony of delightful debris, showing that even space junk can be eerily beautiful.

Pop the champagne and blow out the candles, it’s our fiftieth episode!! To celebrate, we’ve prepared a list of fifty different paths that you can take with a degree in physics or astronomy. What’s the difference between soft money and hard money? What does Sir David Attenborough think about the moon? How do you really pronounce the word “potpourri”? Listen to this episode to have two of these questions answered. Want to be on the show? Want to hear more about a certain career? Fill out our career survey here! Every submission gets an a[s]b sticker: https://forms.gle/NfJjUVKBQk4KBQDw7

Alex and Malena sit down for a gourmet meal and Will, with curved mustache and slicked hair, pours the wine. Alex enjoys his star cluster soup as he tells us about the state-of-the-art in star formation simulations. The gang then enjoys a space sound entremet (served chilled) before moving onto a main course of freshly seared planet. Malena explains how we might tell if a sun-like star has dined on a planet, and shockingly enough, we learn that these stars like to eat. Malena also tells us all about the kind of puns she’d like to make…but she doesn’t actually make them. 

We’re kicking off the new year by spinning a record from a few months back, about all the ways that rotation teaches us about the universe. Malena describes a few energetic stars lurking around the Main Sequence, and Will keeps his opinions about MOND to himself. Alex brings us home with an orchestral sonification to rival Stravinsky’s best.

In today’s episode, we learn all about the clues that Kevin has benevolently placed within the Universe to teach us about the graceful and multifaceted field of galaxy evolution. Alex describes how much the galaxies of today can learn from their wise, high-redshift ancestors through Lyman-alpha emission, while Will segues into the mysterious properties of one of the most nearby aged galaxies. Malena shares a snazzy sonification of a hidden neighbor, as well as her school bus seating habits.

Ever misplace a brown dwarf? If re-tracing your astrophysical steps doesn’t help, it’s probably where you least expect to find it. In this episode, Alex and Malena bring us some brown dwarfs discovered in truly unusual locations. Alex sees the glass half full when he tells us how brown dwarfs could explain long secondary periods in red giants, solving a longstanding mystery. Malena guides us to a brown dwarf oasis in the phase space desert and manages to still talk about planets.

It’s time to talk radio on the radio! In this episode, we explore some of the research beaming out of the world's largest fully steerable radio dish -- the Green Bank Telescope (GBT)! We hear from Brenne Gregory, a Scientific Data Analyst at GBT, about her trek from the rolling hills of Scotland to the heart of the Allegheny Mountains. Will keeps his finger on the pulse of a pair of neutron stars, and Alex listens for a lawn mower at the heart of the Crab Nebula.

All speeds are relative -- especially in astrophysics. In today’s episode, we learn about the timescales of different transients and explore what the fastest and slowest events can teach us. Alex describes the fastest koala in the universe, Will shares the slowest rotating lighthouse known to date, and Malena tosses in a magnetic curveball to bring us home.

Do you enjoy reading and listening to science communication? Are you ready to get involved with it yourself? From chatting with friends to podcasting, blogging to writing magazine stories, the world of SciComm is more accessible and more diverse than you may have thought.

We share some personal stories about how we got started in scicomm and hear from 2 SciCommers who made the leap from being PhD students to full-time communicators. Kerry shares her experience pitching magazine articles and discusses her new job as a Communications Specialist for the American Astronomical Society. Stephanie tells us how she discovered her passion for public outreach and how it led to her dream job as the head of the social media campaign for the Vera Rubin Observatory.

This is Episode #42, so it might just contain the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. Today we set our phasers to stun and dig into some astrophysics research that brings science fiction one step closer to becoming science fact! Will teaches us what it takes to become a class II civilization on the Kardashev scale, and Malena gently reminds us that we can’t stop the change, any more than we can stop the suns from setting. Plus, Alex has a space sound that’ll leave you all starry-eared.