The Jodcast - astronomy podcast

Jodrell Bank Observatory

Monthly astronomy news, interviews and questions. Created by astronomers.

  • 55 minutes 45 seconds
    March 2026
    Into the Cosmic Void. This month, we have a double cosmology interview special where Sohini and Jamie chat with Marika Asgari about her work on cosmic shear with KiDS and the future of KiDS, and her favourite models of dark matter and dark energy. Whilst Jamie talks with Leon Koopmans about his work on LOFAR, why LOFAR as an instrument will still have its own niches even in the post-SKA era.
    2 March 2026, 11:00 am
  • 1 hour 2 minutes
    February 2026
    Blue Skies Ahead! This month, we have an interview with Professor Jonathan Tennyson where he chats to Louisa and Lily about his founding of the satellite launching company Blue Skies Space, and in our Jodbite, Louis and Josh talk to postdoc Will McGenn about his work here at the Advanced Radio Instrumentation Group. In December, we also had an invite to attend RAL Space’s 21st Appleton Conference where Louisa and Phoebe chatted to some of the conference attendees.
    2 February 2026, 11:00 am
  • 1 hour 15 minutes
    December 2025
    Feeling the Cosmic Pulse. In this month's episode, Jessy and Barbara had the opportunity to speak to Dr Kai Schmitz of the University of Munster about the first results from the Pulsar Timing Array and how this could affect our understanding of early universe cosmology. Louisa and Sohini provide an end of year round up for the Jodcast, talking about the highlights of 2025 and where we are going in 2026. In our Jodbite, Louisa and Phoebe speak to PhD student Kathryn Edmundson about her work detecting and characterizing exoplanets.
    1 December 2025, 11:00 am
  • 55 minutes 3 seconds
    November 2025
    Reaching the Stars. In this month’s episode, we’ve got lots of exciting interviews. This year, the UK Space Conference was held in Manchester so we had the opportunity to interview the CEO of the UK Space Agency, Paul Bate, and ESA astronaut Rosemary Coogan. In our Jodbite, we hear more about the Simons Observatory from Berni Reid Guachalla.
    3 November 2025, 2:00 pm
  • 1 hour 13 minutes
    October 2025
    Simons Observatory Special.With Manchester playing a key role within the Simon Observatory’s development, we’ve recorded a special episode during their face-to-face meeting here. We talk to SO:UK Principal Investigator Prof Michael Brown about what makes this project so exciting and a Jodbite with Dr Katie Harrington, on her work testing and integrating the instrumentation into large telescope construction. Finally, we spoke with a range of SO collaborators over lunch at the meeting and take a whistlestop tour on what it really takes and who is involved when you build a telescope.
    1 October 2025, 11:00 am
  • 48 minutes 1 second
    July 2025
    From Stars to Cells. In this month’s episode, we interview Dr Mel Ifran about her research adapting machine learning techniques from radio astronomy to detecting cancer cells. We also answer some of your questions from our live event last month.
    4 July 2025, 11:00 am
  • 54 minutes 4 seconds
    June 2025
    Galaxy Redshifts - A hard thing to nail down. In this month’s episode, we interview Prof Joe Zuntz about his research into clustering galaxies for cosmology. Our next Jodbite comes from this year’s PhD cohort, Georgie, as she submits her thesis on molecular line fitting using ALMA.
    2 June 2025, 11:00 am
  • 1 hour 15 minutes
    May 2025
    Infinite Diversity In Infinite Combinations. In this month’s episode, we have a double interview special as we get the opportunity to talk to Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell about her discovery of pulsars and resilience against the challenges she faced. We also talk to Louise Carvahlo, the diversity and inclusion programme leader at CERN, about how they are challenging the invisible barriers that academia face.
    1 May 2025, 11:00 am
  • 52 minutes 45 seconds
    April 2025
    Bursting with Mysteries, FRBs. Welcome to our first themed episode of 2025. This month’s episode is everything to do with Fast Radio Bursts, or FRBs - their exciting discovery, mysterious origins and paving the way to using them as probes in space. This episode features double FRB interviews, with Dr Cherry Ng from CNRS Orleans giving an overview about these astrophysical mysteries, and Dr Ines Pastor Marazuela talking about her work here at Jodrell Bank to observe and understand the populations of FRBs we’ve found. But first, the news.
    1 April 2025, 11:00 am
  • 35 minutes 37 seconds
    March 2025
    Exoplanets from the Archives. In this month’s episode, we have another interview from the archive where Fiona talks to Faith Hawthorn about her work in exoplanet detection and astronomy outreach. George and Jessy also answer your questions about potential dark matter candidates and Mercury’s origins, but first the news.
    1 March 2025, 11:00 am
  • 1 hour 1 minute
    February 2025
    A Blast from the Past. In this month’s episode, we are hearing from a familiar voice as we are joined by now Dr. Ian Harrrison as he talks to us about weak lensing. We will also be diving into the archives with familiar the familiar voices of Imogen and Jonathan discussing theoretical cosmology with Dr. Cora Uhlemann
    1 February 2025, 11:00 am
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