*Due to a recording error this recording begins with Kellie Marie Tran answering a question*

Join the creators and cast of the hit podcast Passenger List from PRX's Radiotopia for a fan-submitted Q&A about the mystery fiction series. This recording includes Kelly Marie Tran (Executive Producer, Voice of Kaitlin Le), John Dryden (Executive Producer and Show Creator), Lauren Shippen (Series Writer, Podcaster) and Meghan Fitzmartin (Series Writer), and is moderated by Jonathan Mitchell (host of the Radiotopia fiction podcast The Truth).

Q&A with the Passenger List Creative Team - June 29, 2021

Listening to The Movies

Why watch a movie if you can’t see the screen? Matthew and his friend Ben take in a Marx Brothers film and showcase the power of a good description. Blind Guy Travels is written and performed by Matthew Shifrin, and produced and sound-designed by Ian Coss. Blind Guy Travels is a production of Radiotopia from PRX and part of Radiotopia Presents, a podcast feed debuting limited-run, artist-owned series from new and original voices. Learn more about Blind Guy Travels and access transcripts at radiotopiapresents.fm and discover more shows from across the Radiotopia network at radiotopia.fm.

Radiotopia Presents: Blind Guy Travels

Never-before-broadcast memories from JFK's confidantes recorded just after the assassination. Hosted by legendary journalist Robert MacNeil.

We Knew JFK: Unheard Stories from the Kennedy Archives

Oliver Burkeman, author of 4000 Weeks: Time Management For Mortals, shares how perhaps it's not what's happening in life, but the fact that it happens at all as a sort of revelation to reboot us to be attuned to awe, wonder, and the present moment.

No Small Endeavor Thanksgiving Special

In her episodes of Transistor, neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki introduces us to scientists who have uncovered some of the deepest secrets about how our brains make us who we are. She begins by talking with groundbreaking experimental psychologist Brenda Milner, who in the 1950s, completely changed our understanding of the parts of the brain important for forming new long-term memories.

This episode of Transistor is hosted by neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki and produced by Julie Burstein, with editing and sound design by Derek John.

Episode extras are at transistor.prx.org.

Image is of host Wendy Suzuki.

Transistor Episode 3: Totally Cerebral: Untangling the Mystery of Memory

Host Michelle Thaller talks with astronomer and author Phil Plait of Slate's Bad Astronomy blog about this conundrum: why are humans so quick to give aliens the credit for mysteries of the cosmos?

About the Show: Astronomer and host Michelle Thaller takes a look at the big questions of the cosmos and what the answers can reveal about life here on Earth. From podcast powerhouse PRX, with support from the Sloan Foundation.  

Visit our site: orbital.prx.org

Episode 1: Must Be Aliens

In this special Mother's Day episode, Michelle talks with her mom about what it was like raising a space-obsessed daughter in Wisconsin and watching her grow into a scientist.

Orbital Path is produced for PRX by Lauren Ober. Subscribe iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Image: Michelle's sister (top L), Michelle (top R), and their mom in the '80s.

Episode 5: Michelle & Her Mom

Michael Kentrianakis loves eclipses and has seen them from all over the world. Host Michelle Thaller and Mike talk about the stages of the eclipse we can see in his video that went viral a few months ago after an Alaska Airlines flight. That flight was diverted for better eclipse viewing thanks to Joe Rao, who has convinced airlines to do this before. We’ll hear how he pulled it off and learn where best to view the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse.

Get episode videos and photos at: 
https://orbital.prx.org/2016/07/chasing-an-eclipse/

Orbital Path is produced by Justin O’Neill and hosted by Michelle Thaller.

Episode 7: Chasing An Eclipse

The asteroid belt is portrayed in movies as a crowded place with massive rocks bouncing each other like pool balls, capable of sending a mile-wide missile hurtling toward Earth at any moment. The reality is much more fascinating.

Host Dr. Michelle Thaller speaks with Dr. Lucy McFadden, Co-Investigator of NASA’s Dawn Mission to orbit the asteroids Vesta and Ceres. She shares what they’ve learned by traveling 130 million miles to visit places we’ve always viewed from afar.

Learn more about Orbital Path at orbital.prx.org.

Image of Vesta from: 
http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/image-detail.html?id=PIA15506

Episode 8: A Tale of Two Asteroids

The sun can seem like a friendly celestial body. It is the source of summer, crops, and basically all life on Earth. But the sun has a dark side too. Just as sun decided when life on Earth could begin, it will also decide when life on Earth will definitely end.

Dr. Michelle Thaller speaks with Dr. C. Alex Young, Associate Director for Science in the Heliophysics Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. We'll hear about the impressive fleet of spacecraft NASA uses to monitor the sun, including the upcoming Solar Probe Plus, an exciting new mission to delve closer to our star than ever before.

Photo: Coronal mass ejection courtesy of NASA. http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/sdo/potw603-brief-outburst/index.html

Learn more about Orbital Path with Michelle Thaller at orbital.prx.org.

Episode 10: Done in the Sun

An Orbital Path episode all about… an orbital path! Planet 9's, to be exact. The replacement for Pluto as our solar system’s ninth planet is out there somewhere, and astronomers can see the ripples it creates, especially at this time of year.

Episode 12: In Search of Planet 9

Nearly 100 years after Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves — huge undulations in the fabric of space-time itself — in 2015, detectors here on Earth finally picked up the signal of these massive disturbances. 

Dr. Michelle Thaller pulls apart the power and mystery of gravitational waves, and talks with Dr. Janna Levin, theoretical astrophysicist and author of the book, Black Hole Blues and Other Songs From Outer Space.

Learn more about the podcast Orbital Path with Michelle Thaller at orbital.prx.org.

Episode 17: Making (Gravitational) Waves

Recently, we’ve started to get the first images back from Juno, which is on a mission to Jupiter. Host Dr. Michelle Thaller walks us through the results so far and how you can participate in what Juno discovers next.

Learn more about the Orbital Path podcast at orbital.prx.org.

Mini-sode 2: What up, Jupiter?

NASA is relying on hi-tech lasers — and some vintage U.S. Navy hand-me-downs — to learn about the polar regions of a remarkable, watery  planet. It's located in the Orion spur of our galaxy. NASA scientists have detected mountain ranges completely under ice. But the remaining mysteries of the ice here are profound, and what the science tells us could have dramatic impact on human life. 

In this episode, Dr. Thaller visits with two key members of NASA's IceBridge mission — Christy Hansen, Airborne Sciences Manager at the Goddard Space Flight Center, and Joe MacGregor, Deputy Project Scientist for Operation IceBridge. 

Full disclosure: audio in this episode includes a noisy old turbo-prop, and melting icebergs recorded here on earth.

Orbital Path is produced by David Schulman and edited by Andrea Mustain. Production oversight by John Barth and Genevieve Sponsler. Hosted by Michelle Thaller.

Episode 20: Holy Sheet!

There was a time before planets and suns. A time before oxygen. You could say there was time, even, before what we think of as light.

Back in 1989, the Big Bang theory was still in question. But that year, a NASA team led by cosmologist John Mather launched a mission to probe the earliest moments of the universe.

Mather won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE). This work dramatically confirmed the Big Bang theory — and, as part of it, Mather and his team took a picture of the very first light escaping into our universe.

In this episode, Dr. Thaller visits Mather to talk about these discoveries, which transformed scientific understanding of the universe. We also hear about Mather’s current project: an orbiting space telescope twice the size of the Hubble. It promises to capture the first light of galaxies and stars, and even distant planets not unlike our own.

Orbital Path is produced by David Schulman and edited by Andrea Mustain. Production oversight by John Barth and Genevieve Sponsler. Hosted by Michelle Thaller.

For more about the show, visit orbital.prx.org

Episode 21: First Light

Remember the myth of Icarus? He and his dad were trying to escape from prison. Locked up on the Greek island of Crete, they made wings out of  beeswax and bird feathers. They soared to freedom — but Icarus got cocky, flew too close to the sun, and fell into the sea. 

A few thousand years later, NASA is ready to do the job right.

The Parker Solar Probe is scheduled to fly in 2018. The spacecraft has a giant heat shield, tested to withstand 2,500-degree temperatures. 

For something so basic to all of our lives — and fundamental to the science of astronomy — the sun remains surprisingly mysterious. To learn more, Michelle meets up with Nicky Viall, a NASA heliophysicist working on the mission. She describes how direct measurements of the sun’s super-hot plasma, and solar wind, may dramatically enhance our understanding of the star at the center of our lives.  

Orbital Path is produced by David Schulman and edited by Andrea Mustain. Production oversight by John Barth and Genevieve Sponsler. Hosted by Michelle Thaller.

Episode 22: Journey to the Sun

In a scary time, in a scary world, in a scary universe, NASA astronomer Andrew Booth says one of the things that frightens him most is math. 

Specifically, the unshaken power of mathematics to describe the universe.  

That’s because, beyond the comforting world of Newtonian physics, math gets mind-bendingly weird. So from the relative safety of their backyard hot tub, Dr. Michelle Thaller and Booth (who happen to be married) try to sort out what it really means to live not in just three dimensions, but in eleven — as mathematics now tells us we do.

Join us in the hot tub as we turn on the jets, get wet, and weird...and just a little freaked out.

Orbital Path is produced by David Schulman and edited by Andrea Mustain. Production oversight by John Barth and Genevieve Sponsler. Hosted by Michelle Thaller.

For more about the show, visit orbital.prx.org

Photo: To see Michelle and Andrew in hot tub, please use fifth dimension.

Minisode 5: Scary Math

We live our lives in three dimensions. But we also walk those three dimensions along a fourth dimension: time.  

Our world makes sense thanks to mathematics. Math lets us count our livestock, it lets us navigate our journeys. Mathematics has also proved an uncanny, stunningly accurate guide to what Brian Greene calls “the dark corners of reality.”

  But what happens when math takes us far, far beyond what we — as humans — are equipped to perceive with our senses?  What does it mean when mathematics tells us, in no uncertain terms, that the world exists not in three, not in four — but in no fewer than eleven dimensions?  

In this episode of Orbital Path, Brian Greene, director of Columbia’s Center for Theoretical Physics and a celebrated explainer of how our universe operates, sits down to talk with Dr. Michelle Thaller. Together they dig into the question of how we — as three-dimensional creatures — can come to terms with all those extra dimensions all around us. 

 Orbital Path is produced by David Schulman and edited by Andrea Mustain. Production oversight by John Barth and Genevieve Sponsler. Hosted by Michelle Thaller.  

For more about the show, visit orbital.prx.org  
More at briangreene.org

The 11 Dimensions of Brian Greene

We've got some awkward news to share, folks: The producer of Orbital Path is claiming he’s been abducted by space aliens.

So this week, we're dusting off the theremin and returning to one of our favorite early episodes — “Must Be Aliens.” 

Dr. Michelle Thaller talks with Phil Plait — AKA the "Bad Astronomer" — about the Kepler mission to find planets circling other stars ... and why we humans are so quick to ascribe the unknowns of the cosmos to aliens.

In the two years since this episode was originally produced, however, the universe has not stood still. So Michelle has an update on the Kepler project — and a discovery that, once upon a time, had certain astronomers murmuring the "A" word. 

Orbital Path is produced by David Schulman and edited by Andrea Mustain. "Must be Aliens" episode produced by Lauren Ober. Production oversight by John Barth and Genevieve Sponsler. Hosted by Michelle Thaller.

Aliens Again!

In this darkest season of the year, Dr. Michelle Thaller and NASA astronomer Andrew Booth curl up by the fire. Gazing into the embers, red wine in hand, they consider the meaning of the winter solstice — on other planets. 

Like Uranus, where parts of the planet go 42 earth years without seeing the sun. Or Mars, where winters are made colder by an orbit politely described as “eccentric.” Or Saturn — where winter’s chill is deepened by the shadow of the planet’s luminous rings.  

Marshmallow, anyone?

 Orbital Path is produced by David Schulman. The program is edited by Andrea Mustain. Production oversight by John Barth and Genevieve Sponsler. Hosted by Dr. Michelle Thaller.  

For more about the show, visit orbital.prx.org

Photo: NASA

Fireside Physics: A Solstice on Saturn?

Scientists in 1985 discovered something that threatened the world we live in: 

The ozone layer had a hole in it. 

A big one. And this hole was growing very quickly. If it continued to grow, the consequences would be dire.

Presented with the science, world leaders came up with an international agreement. The Montreal Protocol, as the treaty was called, may elicit shrugs today. But it staved off disaster for Earth. It was a remarkable success story, and our planet today would be a very different place if not for the Montreal Protocol and the so-called “blue sky” scientific research — research for curiosity’s sake — that led to the discovery of the rapid deterioration of the ozone layer, and its causes

In this episode, we return to a program originally broadcast in January 2017 — one that is perhaps even more relevant today.

Orbital Path is from PRX and produced by David Schulman. Justin O’Neill produced this episode. Orbital Path is edited by Andrea Mustain, with production oversight by John Barth and Genevieve Sponsler. Hosted by Dr. Michelle Thaller.

Support for Orbital Path is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science, technology, and economic performance.

Ozone Disaster Redux

Zoe is in 8th grade. She’s a student in Mr. Andersen’s Earth science class at a public school in Brooklyn.

Lately, she’s been concerned about the future of the planet.

Specifically, Zoe has been learning about the phenomenon of planetary dehydration — and she wanted to ask Dr. Michelle Thaller what would happen if Earth lost its water.

It’s part of a new Orbital Path project called “Telescope,” where Dr. Michelle Thaller fields astronomy questions from public school students.

Michelle says dehydration isn’t anything we’ll have to worry about in our lifetimes. But in 200 million years — not all that long, in astronomical terms — our planet could resemble the desert world of Frank Herbert’s “Dune.”

Orbital Path is produced by David Schulman. The program is edited by Andrea Mustain. Production oversight by John Barth and Genevieve Sponsler. Hosted by Dr. Michelle Thaller.

The music heard in this episode is “Austin 1” by Manwomanchild.
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/MANWOMANCHILD/Austin_1_single/

Earth, Desert Planet?

For a long time, probably as long as we have been gazing up at the night sky, people have been asking ourselves: Are we alone? Is there life out there, anywhere else in the universe?

For modern Earthlings, our fascination with extraterrestrial life has focussed on one place in particular: 

Mars.

The planet today is a forbidding, arid place. But billions of years ago, Mars may have had a gigantic ocean. It was, like Earth, just the kind of place you’d think life could get started.

Earlier this month, in the journal Science, NASA astrobiologist Dr. Jen Eigenbrode and her team published a stunning discovery. The Curiosity rover on Mars had found rocks that contain organic molecules — the building blocks of life.  

On this episode of Orbital Path, Dr. Michelle Thaller sits down with Eigenbrode to understand what this discovery really says about the possibility of life on Mars.

This episode of Orbital Path was produced by David Schulman. 
Our editor is Andrea Mustain. Production oversight by John Barth and Genevieve Sponsler.

Support for Orbital Path is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science, technology, and economic performance.

For more about the show, visit orbital.prx.org

Mars Goes Organic

To hear Leonard Susskind tell it, we are living in a golden age of quantum physics. 

And he should know.

Susskind is a grandee of theoretical physics. In the 1960s, he was one of the discoverers of String Theory. His friends and collaborators over the years include the likes of Nobel Prize winners Gerard 't Hooft and Richard Feynman.

And, for more than a decade, Susskind engaged in an intellectual clash of the Titans with Stephen Hawking — and came out on top.

On this episode of Orbital Path, Dr. Michelle Thaller talks with Susskind about his extraordinary life in physics. And Susskind offers a tantalizing glimpse into his recent work on the holographic principle, which suggests our universe may be a far, far stranger place than humans have yet imagined.

Orbital Path is produced by David Schulman. 
Our editor is Andrea Mustain. Production oversight by John Barth and Genevieve Sponsler.

Support for Orbital Path is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science, technology, and economic performance.

For more about the show, visit orbital.prx.org

The Universe of Leonard Susskind

In this encore episode of Orbital Path (previously heard in October 2017), Brian Greene, a celebrated explainer of how our universe operates and the director of the Center for Theoretical Physics at Columbia University, sits down to talk with Dr. Michelle Thaller. 

We live our lives in three dimensions. But we also walk those three dimensions along a fourth dimension: time.

  Our world makes sense thanks to mathematics. Math lets us count our livestock, it lets us navigate our journeys. Mathematics has also proved an uncanny, stunningly accurate guide to what Brian Greene calls “the dark corners of reality.”  

But what happens when math takes us far, far beyond what we — as humans — are equipped to perceive with our senses? What does it mean when mathematics tells us, in no uncertain terms, that the world exists not in three, not in four — but in no fewer than 11 dimensions?  

Together they dig into the question of how we — as three-dimensional creatures — can come to terms with all those extra dimensions all around us. 

Learn more at orbital.prx.org

Brian Greene goes to 11 — again

On September 15, 2018, the last Delta II rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force base, in California. It carried into orbit IceSat-2 — a satellite equipped with perhaps the most sophisticated space laser ever built.  

NASA didn’t put it up there to shoot down rogue asteroids. Instead, it’s taking aim — with exquisite precision — at Earth.

On this episode of Orbital Path, Dr. Michelle Thaller talks with Tom Wagner. He’s been looking forward to the launch of IceSat-2 for a decade. Officially, Wagner is NASA’s Program Scientist for the Cryosphere. That means he studies the frozen regions of the Earth: Antarctica. The Arctic Ocean. The glaciers of Greenland. All places critical to understanding our planet’s changing climate.

From 300 miles above, the six laser beams of IceSat-2 won’t harm even the most light-sensitive earthling, Wagner says. But, as he describes it, the satellite will allow scientists to precisely map the retreat of ice at the poles. And that promises to teach us a great deal about how Earth’s climate will change in the years to come.

Orbital Path is produced by David Schulman. 
Our editor is Andrea Mustain. Production oversight by John Barth and Genevieve Sponsler.

Support for Orbital Path is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science, technology, and economic performance.

For more about the show, visit orbital.prx.org

Space Lasers for the Home Planet

To make a black hole, you need to think big. Really big. 

Start with a star much bigger than the sun — the bigger the better. Then settle in, and wait a few million years for your star to die.

That should do the trick, if you want to get yourself a garden-variety black hole. But there’s another kind of black hole. They are mind-boggling in size. And deeply mysterious:

Super-massive black holes. 

Last year, in the journal Nature, a team of astronomers reported finding one with the mass of 800 million suns. It’s the most distant black hole in the known universe. And it’s so ancient, it dates to a time when it seems light itself was only just beginning to move.

On this episode of Orbital Path, Dr. Michelle Thaller talks with astrophysicist Chiara Mingarelli — Flatiron Research Fellow at the Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York. Using a special gravitational wave observatory, Dr. Mingarelli is part of a cadre of astronomers hoping ancient super-massive black holes will soon reveal mysteries dating to the dawn of our universe.

Orbital Path is produced by David Schulman. 
Our editor is Andrea Mustain. Production oversight by John Barth and Genevieve Sponsler.

Support for Orbital Path is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science, technology, and economic performance.

For more about the show, visit orbital.prx.org

Black Holes from the Dawn of Light

Asteroids, as the dinosaurs found out, can have big effects on life on Earth. 

Sixty-five million years ago, an asteroid crashed into the Yucatán. The impact caused apocalyptic tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. Grit and ash blotted out the sun. It wiped out species that had roamed the Earth for millions of years.

Yet asteroid hits also were critical to the origins of life on Earth. Asteroids may well have been the bringers of water, of carbon, even of amino acids — the building blocks of life.

That’s a big reason why NASA is on a mission to Bennu. This asteroid is like an ancient fossil of our solar system — largely unchanged since the time the planets formed.

In December, after a billion-mile journey, NASA’s Osiris-Rex mission arrives at Bennu. And, for the first time, a spacecraft will try to actually bring back an asteroid sample to Earth.

On this episode of Orbital Path, Dr. Michelle Thaller sits down with Dr. Amy Simon — a senior scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and a key player on the Osiris-Rex mission. Michelle and Amy talk about the mission, Amy’s work to probe the origins of the solar system, and one other thing: 

The remote chance that Bennu, someday, could collide with Earth.

Orbital Path is produced by David Schulman. 
Our editor is Andrea Mustain. Production oversight by John Barth and Genevieve Sponsler.

Support for Orbital Path is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science, technology, and economic performance.

For more about the show, visit orbital.prx.org

HELLO, ASTEROID FINAL MIX

All things in the cosmos have a lifespan, from the smallest particles to the most ancient suns. Everything has its season. Every season must come to an end.

And this episode marks the end of Orbital Path.

So, for the last transit of our podcast, Dr. Michelle Thaller and producer David Schulman join NASA astrobiologist Dr. Jen Eigenbrode on a site visit to one of Michelle’s very favorite places at Goddard Space Flight Center. It’s building 29, where NASA builds and tests spacecraft in some of the most extreme conditions found anywhere on earth. 
 
Orbital Path is produced by David Schulman. 
 
Our editor is Andrea Mustain. Production oversight by John Barth and Genevieve Sponsler. Hosted by Michelle Thaller.
 
Support for Orbital Path is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science, technology, and economic performance.
 
For more about the show, visit orbital.prx.org

Building 29

Mixtape: The PRX Remix Valentine’s Special is exclusive stories about love of all kinds from radio & podcast stars like Al Letson and Phoebe Judge, plus talented new producers not yet heard on public radio. The hour is sound designed in a “mixtape” format with popular storyteller Shannon Cason (Snap Judgment, The Trouble) as cupid deejay...or er, host.

Mixtape: The PRX Remix Valentine's Special

PRX is a leading media company, shaping the future of audio by connecting talented producers with their most engaged, supportive audiences.
PRX builds technology and creates cutting-edge content that reaches millions of listeners worldwide.

For 15 years, PRX has operated public radio’s largest distribution marketplace, offering thousands of shows including This American Life, The Moth Radio Hour and Reveal. Named one of Fast Company’s "Ten Most Innovative Companies in Media" in both 2015 and 2017, the company has pioneered new approaches to technology and talent.

In 2014, PRX launched Radiotopia, a curated network of extraordinary podcasts anchored by 99% Invisible from Roman Mars. The network has quickly grown to over 19 million downloads per month (November 2017, Podtrac).

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