Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Infrastructure week. at last.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

This is all too absurd to be reality, right?

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

No one could have predicted…

Militantly superior in their own minds…

All your base are belong to Tunch.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

I’m going back to the respite thread.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Let there be snark.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

It was, in fact, named Jelly.

Every MSM headline appears to be written by DougJ. i hope he’s getting paid.

Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

We still have time to mess this up!

You are here: Home / Science & Technology / Programming Note/Self Aggrandizement — Vulcan/Planet Nine Edition

Programming Note/Self Aggrandizement — Vulcan/Planet Nine Edition

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Hey, all:  if you’ve got a moment this afternoon, I’ll be talking with Ira Flatow on Science Friday about The Hunt for Vulcan in the context of last week’s announcement about Planet Nine.

Radio_King_poster

I’ll be on in the second hour, starting at around 3:20 ET, maybe a couple of ticks before, and rabbiting on with Ira until about 3:38.  Some NPR stations fecklessly omit the second hour of Science Friday, so check local listings.  You can always catch it live or later at the Science Friday site.

While there may be better ways to spend 18 minutes of your life…there are surely worse ones too.  Come on down if you’ve time and the inclination.

Image: Poster for the film, The Radio King, 1922.

Reader Interactions

50Comments

  2. 2.

    Punchy

    IANAAstronerd, so perhaps dumb question. Is this something that the Voyager craft that’s nearing the exit of the solar system could look at/study? I’m guessing no, because if the answer was “yes”, Neil Tyson would be pimping that shit all day.

  3. 3.

    Another North Carolinian

    Somewhere, Watson Davis is smiling. Science on the radio, still, after all these years.

  4. 4.

    redshirt

    My copy of your book is on the way. Can’t wait to read it. Great timing too, with the recent news about the possible new planet in the solar system.

  5. 5.

    Shell

    Some NPR stations fecklessly omit the second hour of Science Friday, so check local listings

    Feh! Mines does, in favor of a repeat of The Takeaway.

    The end of the week is good at public radio. Food Fridays on Lopate, and Science Friday

  6. 6.

    Tom Levenson

    @Amir Khalid: Yes. That’s not the only reason though. #GeneralRelativityFTW
    @Punchy: Unlikely. Space is big (cue Douglas Adams fans here). Planet Nine’s putative orbit is every whacky, and it’s unlikely either that Voyager will be anywhere near it, nor in any condition to let us know if it were, by the time it got out to very distant region in which Nine is supposed to hang.
    @redshirt: Thanks! Hope you like it. Yeah — I planned the book to coincide with the Nine announcement. #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement

  8. 8.

    Dork

    Maybe we can cut a deal with the Oregon terrorists and agree to give them a few hundred square miles of pristine Planet Nine land on which to graze their cattle.

  9. 9.

    pacem appellant

    I am at the dr’s at that time, so I’ll definitely catch it later in the day. I can’t wait to hear the segment! Ira Flatow is one of the best radio hosts out there. Good luck!

  10. 10.

    dww44

    @Shell: My state does the same. They’ve never broadcast the second hour of Science Friday. We usually get Fresh Air at the 3 o’clock hour, but now on Fridays we get a local/state program titled “The Political Rewind”. Since the overwhelming number of state officeholders are GOP’ers most of the guest pundits are also. Teeth grinding for me.

  11. 11.

    OzarkHillbilly

    KWMU carries Sci Fri but they are among those who only play one hour. I’ll try to catch it in all your glory at their website.

  13. 13.

    Mike J

    I just wish somebody would slap Flatow until he understands how stupid his “good side/bad side” segment is. Yes, many good things do have unintended consequences that we need to be aware of. That is a long, long way from “everything is both good and bad.” He always makes me think of that crappy Sting song in which he says,”never saw a miracle of science that didn’t go from a blessing to a curse.” What, you’ve never seen the polio vaccine? Grrrr. The framing around that stupid segment makes me want to break things.

    And that’s even touching on SciFri’s biggest sin. “Congress did X. Congress refused to do Y.” Absolutely no mention that a vote was on party lines, and of course no mention of which party voted the anti-science side.

    In spite of those things, I still listen to the podcast every week. The guests are almost always really good. Today’s show demonstrates the good taste of the bookers. In fact it was a SciFri interview where I first heard about Newton and the Counterfeiter and heard the name Tom Levenson. So they’re good for something.

    I guess that’s the good thing/bad thing on scifri.

  14. 14.

    Howlin Wolfe

    Minnesota Public Radio only airs the first hour, much to their discredit. They play a BBC news program (why? I wish I knew) instead of the second hour of SciFri.

    I’ll make sure to listen to it on the website.

  15. 15.

    Miss Bianca

    Is anyone else conflating “Planet Nine” with “Plan Nine from Outer Space”? I see the Vulcan joke space is already taken…

  16. 16.

    Cermet

    @Miss Bianca: That is why M. Brown name it in that manner. Unlikely to find it soon; will take many years and hard work. Also, they still need to guess what part of the orbit or it would take far longer. Very likely there – Newton doesn’t lie – but as they said, some other things could (remotely) cause a similar effect upon those small bodies. Will be interesting if they find it.

  20. 20.

    Gimlet

    Some say it’s a massive Vogon vessel which is perturbing those orbits as it processes the objects ahead of it.

  21. 21.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    Radio King sounds like my kind of movie serial. Of course, as a radio geek, I spent most of the 1970s biting my tongue after tiring of folks confusing amateur and CB radio.

  23. 23.

    Tom Levenson

    @redshirt: A) yes. B) still a long way to go to make the Greater Cambridge bestseller lists — much less those beyond the formidable redoubt of Our Faire Citie.

    @Gimlet: Best alternate explanation I’ve heard yet.

    @Mike J: thanks for the kind thought in there.

    And fie on all those who don’t carry SciFri’s second hour. Poltroonish stations.

  24. 24.

    ruemara

    I’m more of a Nibiru jokester myself. Wish I had time but I’m putting a friend through weight training today. Hopefully, I have come up with a nice brutal workout.

  25. 25.

    MomSense

    I’ll definitely tune in.

    Speaking of science, anyone catch Neil de Grasse Tyson on The Nightly Show? He is using this whole flat earth diss rap business to make science even cooler.

  26. 26.

    Roger Moore

    @Punchy:

    Is this something that the Voyager craft that’s nearing the exit of the solar system could look at/study?

    Not really. The Voyager spacecraft were able to visit as many planets as they did because they took advantage of them being conveniently organized in their orbits for that kind of mission, and that still took a ton of planning to get them to fly where they were supposed to go. It would be total pot luck for Planet 9 to be close to either Voyager’s path. Our best chance of finding it is to predict where in the sky it’s likely to be based on observations about the Kuiper Belt Objects it’s supposed to be influencing and then look intensively with Earth-based telescopes.

  28. 28.

    redshirt

    I read recently (forget where) that we should be able to detect Planet Nine, if it exists, since we have a general idea where to look. It won’t look like a planet though – even Hubble could barely capture Pluto. It’ll be a “moving star” if we do find it.

  31. 31.

    Prescott Cactus

    Tom,

    Will catch the broadcast via the delayed internet as I don’t think we get a 2 hour Science Friday.

    If you have any clout with your publisher PLEASE consider asking to have your book available on the kindle machine.

    THANKS !

  39. 39.

    Kalimama

    Finished your book a few days ago. Found it fascinating. Just listened to the Science Friday section – just wish he had you on for a longer time.

  40. 40.

    eldorado

    i was able to catch the segment up the the bit where einstein applied general relativity to the problem. nice work!

  42. 42.

    sallie gouverneur

    too bad you didn’t get to finish the anecdote about the American astrologer…I got to hear the whole segment, lovely to hear your voice again. Have the book already, say thanks to R J Julia Bookstore in Madison CT, displayed it handsomely before Christmas–so, a full royalty for you young man.

  43. 43.

    Steve Finlay

    The guy with the hat in the Radio King poster has quite a resemblance to the late Glenn Gould, who did some extremely innovative radio stuff in his day.

  44. 44.

    John M. Burt

    Some time back, I wrote a sort of Isaac Asimov pastiche about the many dispelled and demoted candidates for Planet Nine: Vulcan, Ceres,* Pluto….

    *Actually, since Ceres was discovered before Neptune, I suppose Neptune was erroneously named the Ninth Planet.

  45. 45.

    Exurban Mom

    I loved listening to you today! I wish the segment was longer. Your enthusiasm translates really well on the radio, plus you do a great job of taking complex ideas and explaining them clearly and simply. Love. Am ordering your book now.

  47. 47.

    JimL

    Tom:

    You exhibit even more enthusiasm for science vocally than when you write. And your comments vis-a-vis Einstein’s realization of the confirmation of his theory via the movements of Mercury was delightful.

    JimL
    An unquenchable thirst for Pierian waters.

  48. 48.

    pacem appellant

    Just listened to the segment. I am so jealous that you’re on a first name basis with Ira Flatow. Now I’m off to get your book. Thanks!

  50. 50.

    cermet

    Special Relativity does not give the correct answer for Mercury’s orbit – only General Relativity does. Hence, during WW1 it was the shift in stars that proved Special was correct (General hadn’t even been formulated yet.) It was far later that he developed General and showed it accounted for the Mercury problem and not during WW1 as you mentioned. A minor error. Overall, a very good broadcast and interesting discussion.

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