Telescopes

The podcasts I’m recommending to everyone at the moment are Nasa’s Curious Universe and the Royal Astronomical Society’s The Supermassive Podcast. Both have me convinced there’s no topic better suited to the oral medium than space. Not even history. Unless you happen to be an astronaut, you’ll find much of what is described so alien, that your imagination will go into overdrive. What does a Brown dwarf look like? What is the ‘tadpole’ orbit of a quasi-moon? The icy surface of Europa has red furrows which make it look like ‘a giant dragged its fingernails’ across it. How did those furrows get there? You will probably find the images summoned

Given my affection for M*A*S*H, I can’t think why I haven’t listened to Alan Alda’s podcasts before now, besides the fact that they look quite uninviting. There is Clear+Vivid, on the power of communication, and Science: Clear+Vivid, on the power of scientific research. As someone who used to fall asleep listening to cassettes for A-Level physics, I am not easily excited by protons, and was prepared to give the latter particularly short shrift. Five hours on, however, Alda is still in my ears, and I am buzzing like an electron. Unlike many presenters, Alda, 85, doesn’t pretend not to know something just so that his interviewee will explain it to