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.

How do we figure out the masses of astronomical objects far too large to fit on any human-made scale? In this episode, Alex tracks the paths of planets to figure out which ones are winning a gravitational game of tug-of-war, while Will describes a mysterious little galaxy that seems to be missing a key component. And, you won’t want to miss our spectacular sonification contest runner-up from Tharindu Jayasinghe, who brought to sound the most extreme heartbeat star known to date!

We’re back from vacation! We play 2 truths and a lie about what we did this summer and learn that the truth might be subjective. Alex brings a BBQ-themed Astrobite about the brightest galaxies, teaching us that “astronomical Hot DOG” is a state of being. Malena discusses how planets vacation to the outer solar system (spoiler: they never return home). 

Billions of years before Van Gogh put paint to canvas and immortalized them forever, the stars in the sky were nothing more than an intricate tangle of magnetic fields and swirling gas. Turn the clock back with us as we learn about the physics of these protostellar systems! Northwestern/CIERA postdoctoral associate Erin G. Cox teaches us about the polarization patterns of Class 0 and Class I systems, and Will gets all turbulated as he discovers how HII regions might drive star formation.

Tired of vacations being ruined by cloudy weather? Alex the travel agent can book your next trip to brown dwarf binary 1416B, where it’s always a balmy 2000 degrees and never cloudy. Or maybe a sojourn to a hot Jupiter is more your style? Malena the meteorologist has you covered with your 10-million year forecast: cloudy and lopsided. In recognition of Juneteenth and the start of #BlackInAstro week, both papers featured in this episode were led by Black astronomers.

In this episode, we discuss the varied methods used to determine stellar ages. Alex shares how planetary companions can slow the spin of twirling stars, Will compares the  spectroscopic fingerprints of binary systems (thanks, Barium!), and Malena provides some peaceful pulsations to enjoy on your next afternoon walk.

How can astronomers study something that nobody has ever seen? In this episode, we switch to the dark side to shine a light on one of the biggest questions in all of astrophysics: the nature of dark matter. Malena teaches us how dark matter helps galaxy clusters glow up, and Will takes a journey to the center of the Earth to find prehistoric prints from a big WIMP. Plus, Alex brings us our most romantic space sound yet. 

In this Beyond episode, we veer off the traditional path to a PhD with three interviews from early-career astronomers who did things a little bit differently.  Tim Holt shares his transitions from zoology to teacher and, finally, to astronomer. Ashley Walker describes how perseverance helped her to realize her dream as Chicago State University’s very first astrochemistry major. Natalia Guerrero paints a story of her journey leaving a graduate program, taking a leadership role on the TESS team, and reentering academia more inspired than ever.

You’ve heard about planets, stars, galaxies, and other “types” of astronomical objects on the show -- but what about the objects that defy our classification schemes? Will discusses how a mysterious system of massive planets(?) came to be, Alex puts on his thinking cap and tells us about the Universe’s biggest hat, and we top it all off with a discussion of the benefits and shortcomings of classifications in astronomy.