The Vatican Observatory Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Br. Guy Consolmagno chats with Dr. Michelle Francl about her book  Steeped: The Chemistry of Tea, which explores the chemistry behind different styles of tea. The book caused quite a stir with various international news agencies - and a virtual firestorm in Britain.

Dr. Francl was also a guest for the Vatican Observatory podcast in Dec. of 2021 with an episode named: A Taste for Heavy Water.

Hosts:
Br. Guy Consolmagno SJ: Director of Vatican Observatory and President of the Vatican Observatory Foundation.
Bob Trembley: Factotum for the Vatican Observatory Foundation.

Guest:
Dr. Michelle Francl: The Frank B. Mallory Professor of Chemistry at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, and an Adjunct Scholar for the Vatican Observatory.

Vatican Observatory website: https://www.vaticanobservatory.org/
Michelle's Blog: https://quantumtheology.blogspot.com/

Intro music: Irreducible by ComaStudio
Finale music:  Cinematic Documentary by Lexin_Music

Br. Guy Consolmagno chats with Br. Bob Macke about being a team member of two asteroid missions:  the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission, and the Lucy mission to the Trojan asteroids.

Hosts:
Br. Guy Consolmagno SJ: Director of Vatican Observatory and President of the Vatican Observatory Foundation.
Bob Trembley: Factotum for the Vatican Observatory Foundation.

Guest:
Br. Bob Macke, SJ: Curator of meteorites at the Vatican Observatory

Vatican Observatory website: https://www.vaticanobservatory.org/
Macke Makerspace: https://www.youtube.com/@MackeMakerSpace
GaliLEGO Stop-Motion video: [Link]

Intro music: Irreducible by ComaStudio
Finale music:  Cinematic Documentary by Lexin_Music

Meet Bill Higgins. By day, he's one of the scientists who keeps the Fermilab National Accelerator running safe, as it pummels the smallest particles in the universe. But in his free time he’s a techie storyteller of big things and big ideas: a NASA Solar System Ambassador, a researcher of esoteric technology from rocket belts to Jacquard looms, and an explorer of how we tell the story of our scientific society.

Guests:

Bill Higgins: Radiation Safety Physicist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab)
Br. Guy Consolmagno SJ: Director of Vatican Observatory, President of the Vatican Observatory Foundation.

Read Bill's "From the cabinet of physics" series on the Vatican Observatory website:
https://www.vaticanobservatory.org/series/from-the-cabinet-of-physics/

Sacred Space Astronomy Posts on the Vatican Observatory Website:
https://www.vaticanobservatory.org/category/sacred-space-astronomy/

When she was a young girl growing up in southern Chile, Gabriela Navarro had many dreams… from being a volleyball player to being an astronaut. 

In this podcast, we'll follow the spiral path of now-Doctor Navarro that has brought her to studying the structure and formation of the Milky Way and its galactic bulge with the James Webb Space Telescope in Rome… via the 2018 Vatican Observatory Summer School (VOSS), and the 2019 SuperVOSS (which she helped organize!)

Guests:

Dr. Gabriela Navarro
Br. Guy Consolmagno SJ, Director of Vatican Observatory, President of the Vatican Observatory Foundation.

How does a young Indonesian boy from a half Muslim, half Christian family wind up as a Jesuit scientist-priest in Arizona, modeling the tropical climates of northern Mexico and Saudi Arabia, while celebrating Mass for Native Americans… and keeping his fellow Jesuits well fed with his cooking skills? Meet Fr. Christoforus Bayu Risanto! Dr. Bayu defended his doctorate in meteorology at the University of Arizona last fall, where he's now continuing his research as a postdoctoral fellow.

Guests:

• Fr. Christoforus Bayu Risanto SJ
• Br. Guy Consolmagno SJ, Director of Vatican Observatory, President of the Vatican Observatory Foundation.

Dr. Michelle Francl puts her own twist on combinations that most people might think are impossible. In this podcast she tells Br Guy Consolmagno about how the Sisters of Loreto in the small town where she grew up encouraged a love of science fiction that eventually led to her to a PhD with Nobel Laureate F. Sherwood Roland; about heavy-duty computational quantum chemistry and the taste of heavy water; about her articles for Nature Chemistry and for the Liturgical Press.

Guests:

• Dr. Michelle Francl, professor of Chemistry at Bryn Mawr College and Adjunct Scholar of the Vatican Observatory
• Br. Guy Consolmagno, Director of Vatican Observatory

Prof. Dr. Christian Koeberl has had a fascinating career in planetary sciences. An expert in how planetary impacts make craters, he served for ten years as the director of the Natural History Museum of Vienna, one of the most important natural history museums in Europe.

Today, Dr. Koeberl is the Chair in Impact Research and Planetary Geology at the University of Vienna.

In this episode of the Vatican Observatory podcast, Dr. Koeberl joins Br. Guy Consolmagno, Director of the Vatican Observatory, and host Bob Trembley to discuss the wide dimensions of his work, from impact craters, to meteorite strikes, to the public understanding of natural history.

Guests:

• Christian Koeberl, former director of the Natural History Museum of Vienna.
• Br. Guy Consolmagno, Director of Vatican Observatory

What do kids today think about astronomy and space travel? And how do they think differently about these topics compared to kids 40 years ago? 

In this episode of the Vatican Observatory podcast, longtime middle school astronomy teacher Constance Martin-Trembley joins Br. Guy Consolmagno, Director of the Vatican Observatory, and host Bob Trembley to discuss the changing landscape of astronomy youth education.

Guests:

• Constance Martin-Trembley, Middle School Science Teacher
• Br. Guy Consolmagno, Director of Vatican Observatory

On this episode of the Vatican Observatory Podcast, a pioneer in black hole imaging, Prof. Dr. Heino Falcke joins Br. Guy Consolmagno, Director of the Vatican Observatory, and host Bob Trembley for a conversation to discuss his new book Light in the Darkness: Black Holes, the Universe, and Us, his trailblazing work on black hole imaging, and the intersection of faith and science.

Dr. Falcke is a professor of radio astronomy and astroparticle physics at the Radboud University Nijmegen, as well as the winner of the 2011 Spinoza Prize. Famously, he is known as the originator of the concept of the 'black hole shadow'. 

Guests:

• Heino Falcke, 
• Br. Guy Consolmagno, Director of Vatican Observatory

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Opfb0ieCcSs 

How does a spacecraft get designed and built? How do you maneuver a spacecraft to make sure it gets where it’s going? What’s it mean to work on “Mars time”? In this episode, Steve Collins, Senior Engineer at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), joins Bob Trembley and Br. Guy Consolmagno to answer these questions and more about what it takes to create a spacecraft that can go where humans can’t. 

Guests:

• Steve Collins, Senior Engineer, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• Br. Guy Consolmagno, Director of Vatican Observatory