Mars has a thin atmosphere, so little changes in the weather, even breezes, make big relative changes in how sound travels. We speculate on the sounds of future baseball game on Mars before turning to a fortuitous glimpse of the light from an individual star when the universe was less than a billion years old.

What if the stuff that makes up most of the stuff in the universe is so lightweight that you could barely call it stuff? Ultralight dark matter is one possible way to explain the puzzle of the very early formation of supermassive black holes. We explore this and the intriguing origins of Ceres, and much more.

We like to think we understand ordinary matter: the stuff we're familiar with that makes up stars, planets, and donuts. Sure Dark Energy and Dark Matter are mysterious, but the rest we have a handle on. Or do we? The New Horizons mission adds to a growing puzzle about the Cosmic Optical Background, not to be confused with the Cosmic Microwave Background, which is a beast of an entirely different color!

We learn how binary star systems may create a second family of planets, Saturn's aurora may be powered by the ringed planet's high speed winds, and how thinking of planetary intelligence may guide future searches for extraterrestrial life.

A remarkably accurate test of general relativity confirms that not only does time run slower at your feet than at your head, but it runs slower at your eyes than your eyebrows. Plus, Psyche loses some of its metallic sheen, and we have spacewalk trivia and much more.

How special is the Earth for having a large Moon, and what can it teach us about where to look for habitable planets? In this episode we explore new research on what kind of planets are likely to get helpful moons like our own, and then we take a look at the idea of an infinitely cycling, but not repeating universe.

The Astroquarks assemble to examine the mysterious of a star that is blocked out perhaps by a giant dust cloud. Meanwhile, the Sun is passing through a Local Bubble in the Milky Way that has triggered star formation all around us. Join us for all this, rainbow trivia, and more.