The Vatican Observatory Podcast
Episodes
Eclectic Astronomer - A Chat With Cliff Stoll
29 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Br. Guy Consolmagno chats with Cliff Stoll - astronomer, teacher and author of the book The Cuckoo’s Egg, which tells the story of how he tracked do...
Meet The New Boss!
10 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Br. Guy Consolmagno chats with Rev. Richard A. D'Souza - the incoming Director of the Vatican Observatory! He takes the reins from Br. Guy on Sep...
An Anthropologist at the Vatican Observatory
28 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Br. Guy Consolmagno chats with Dr. Deana L. Weibel - a cultural anthropologist whose work focuses primarily on religion, especially the topics of pilg...
Steeped in Science
17 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Br. Guy Consolmagno chats with Dr. Michelle Francl about her book Steeped: The Chemistry of Tea, which explores the chemistry behind different style...
Man on a Mission (or two)
09 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
From Humble Beginnings
19 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Br. Guy Consolmagno chats with Charles F. Bolden Jr. during the 30th anniversary celebration of 'first light' into the Vatican Advanced Tech...
My Time at the Vatican Observatory Summer School
10 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Matthew Pinson SJ is a young Jesuit scientist from Australia. He was one of the students at the 2023 Vatican Observatory Summer School held in Rome du...
Roundtable with Vatican Observatory Staff
19 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This podcast was taken from the Full Moon Meetup on Friday, January 6, 2023. To begin the year, we had a roundtable discussion with several members of...
Sketcher of the Skies
02 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What spurs an artist to start sketching celestial objects as they look in her small telescope? What thrills her the most? Is it seeing the fine detail...
From Voyager to Webb: Heidi Hammel and the Ice Giants
25 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
So, how many people do you know who have had a children’s book written about them? Dr. Heidi Hammel gained international fame in 1994 by leading the...
Deep Roots
05 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Have you ever met one of those people who just seems to know everyone? Our guest, Katie Steinke is one of those people. Katie and her family have been...
From Sparkling Water to Dark Matter
24 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The most famous product of San Pellegrino, Italy, is its sparkling water. But from this same village in the north of Italy has come a PhD scientist wo...
The Stuff of Stars
01 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Brother Bob Macke SJ is the curator of meteorites at the Vatican Observatory, and during his research measuring meteorite physical properties he has p...
Ambassador to the Universe
20 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Meet Bill Higgins. By day, he's one of the scientists who keeps the Fermilab National Accelerator running safe, as it pummels the smallest partic...
On a Spiral Path to the Milky Way
08 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
The Chaotic Path of a Climate Modeler
22 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 clima...
A Taste for Heavy Water
07 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 to Make an Impact: From Crater Science to Public Outreach
30 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Prof. Dr. Christian Koeberl has had a fascinating career in planetary sciences. An expert in how planetary impacts make craters, he served for ten yea...
Space and the Middle-Schooler
28 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 thi...
Black Holes
15 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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...
On the Fly - How to drive a spacecraft
05 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 “...
Galileo: The Real Story (Part 2)
07 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Galileo was not only a great scientist, but a great philosopher of science. And yet, he was a man who sometimes contradicted his own philosophy. In th...
Galileo: The Real Story
03 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Galileo's championing of Copernican heliocentrism led to two encounters with the Church: an informal meeting with Cardinal Bellarmine in 1616 and...
The Vatican’s Interest in Space Exploration?
04 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Why is the Vatican interested in space and how is it actively contributing to space exploration? In this podcast, Br. Guy explains some of the biggest...
Living on the Moon: Why and how?
22 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
U.S. astronaut Nicole Stott and her husband Christopher Stott of the International Institute of Space Commerce explore with Br. Guy what living on (or...
Death by Meteorite: What are the chances?
18 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this inaugural episode, world-renowned Vatican astronomer Br. Guy Consalmagno, SJ sits down with Dr. Larry Lebofsky, a planetary astronomer special...
Science Fiction: What it gets right and wrong
17 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Where do you draw the line between space fact and space fiction? In this episode, Br. Guy and Dr. Larry Lebofsky of the Planetary Science Institute ex...