Exoplanet science with the machinery left in view.
Exocast follows extrasolar worlds through the people and methods used to study them. Its conversations move from research paths into detailed explanations of transits, radial velocity, microlensing, instrumentation, planetary dynamics, and atmosphere-interior links.
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Exocast is a conversation show centered on exoplanets and the astronomy that makes them visible. Its subject is distant worlds, but its real texture comes from method: occultations, transits, radial velocity, microlensing, direct imaging, light-curve modeling, and the stubborn work of interpreting weak signals. The episodes shown here keep returning to planets at the edge of what current instruments can measure. Some conversations focus on odd dips in light curves and possible ring systems. Others move through giant planets, small rocky worlds, giant planets, planet interiors, atmospheres, and the ways planetary systems may differ across the galaxy. The show likes the details. It asks how a technique works, what it can prove, and where its limits sit. That makes Exocast more than a tour of discoveries. It is a guided look at the uncertainty, equipment, code, and inference behind exoplanet science. The regular voices are comfortable with specialist terms, but the rhythm is still conversational. Guests are introduced through their research paths, then drawn into explanations of the problems they study. A discussion can move from aboriginal astronomy to planetary dynamics, or from bad telescope images to machine-learning approaches for better light curves. The show often treats instrumentation as part of the science rather than background hardware. That matters. Exoplanet research here is not presented as a clean list of confirmed worlds. It appears as a discipline built from partial views, careful constraints, and clever reuse of existing data. The copy of the field that emerges is lively and exacting. Exocast suits a listener who wants astronomy with equations implied, telescopes named, and uncertainty kept in the frame.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants serious space science in a conversational register, especially when the path from observation to evidence matters as much as the discovery itself.
What sets it apart: Exocast stands out by keeping the technical craft of exoplanet research in the foreground: instruments, surveys, models, limits, and the small signals that carry large claims.
The exoplanet podcast
A star dims oddly, and suddenly you're asking how anyone can tell a planet from a ring.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A possible ringed object gives this exoplanet episode a quietly gripping sense of scientific unfinished business.
Professor Matthew Kenworthy comes through as a scientist shaped by curiosity in its most physical form, from childhood tinkering to the careful work of exoplanet research, instrumentation, and direct imaging.
A wide-ranging astronomy episode connects exoplanet detection, planetary dynamics, ice-age cycles, and Indigenous sky knowledge.
Exocast brings Professor John T. Horner into a broad astronomy conversation that starts with radial velocity and how it helps detect and characterise exoplanets, then follows the pull of planetary dynamics toward Earth's changing precession and ice-age cycles.
A tiny blink in starlight becomes a smart guide to what may be hiding beyond the known planets.
Exocast takes a tiny dip in starlight and turns it into a clean, engaging way to think about the outer solar system. Dr. Milena Rice, introduced as an exoplanetary explorer and expert in planetary and exoplanetary dynamics, explains how stellar occultations by asteroids can…
A measured guide to microlensing, galactic planet populations, and the telescope that may sharpen the view.
Microlensing gets a thoughtful turn here, with Dr Eamon Cairns showing why this often overlooked exoplanet method matters. He explains how an almost perfect alignment can let gravity bend and multiply the light from a background star, making a planet detectable even though it…
A clear astronomy listen on using machine learning to recover stellar evidence from scattered light.
Exocast makes direct imaging feel concrete by starting with the core nuisance: scattered light washing across a detector like lens flare, drowning out the faint signal observers want. Dr.
A focused episode on how exoplanet interiors can leave chemical fingerprints in distant atmospheres.
Exocast takes a geological route into exoplanet science, following how a planet's interior can shape the atmosphere seen from afar. Caroline Dorn traces her path from earth sciences and geophysics into exoplanet interiors, then lays out why super-Earths and sub-Neptunes make…
Rotating StarTalk scientist-hosts and a comedian co-host tackle listener-submitted cosmic questions.
Patient space coverage with real mission context.
Exocast's conversation with Professor Matthew Kenworthy centers on direct imaging, exoplanet rings, and the instrumentation that makes both possible.
Exocast-80 b asks whether giant planets are friends or foes, and John T.
Dr.
Exocast talks with Dr Eamon Cairns about microlensing and the distant exoplanets it can reveal beyond radial velocity and transits.
["Benjamin Pope of the University of Queensland explains why direct imaging treats exoplanet hunting as an optics-and-software problem, not just an astronomy problem.", "He describes planets that can be 10^4 to more than 10^9 times fainter than their stars, the \"firefly next to a searchlight\" scale that drives coronagraph work at James Webb and future missions like Habitable Worlds Observatory and LIFE.", "He also traces his Oxford and K2 work on Gaussian-process corrections for Kepler's six-hour sawtooth drift, plus the bright-star program that pulled usable light curves from Aldebaran and the Pleiades.", "The final stretch moves to tree-ring radiocarbon, where 774 AD and 993 AD spikes point toward an extreme solar event rather than the easy stories of constant carbon or a simple supernova."]
["Exocast episode 76b talks with Professor Caroline Dorn, an assistant professor for exoplanet science at ETH Zurich, about exoplanet interiors and atmosphere coupling.", "Dorn describes leaving hydrogeophysics at the University of Lausanne for a Cheops-linked postdoc in Bern, and she says she had to look up the definition of a planet on her first postdoc day.", "She explains why mass and radius only give bulk density, why even Earth can fit an iron-core-plus-hydrogen-helium toy model, and why cosmochemistry, stellar abundances, and lab experiments matter.", "The conversation covers plate tectonics, stagnant lids, \"squishy lid\" Venus models, white dwarf pollution, and TOI-270d as a sub-Neptune whose atmosphere may reflect a magma ocean and hydrogen-helium envelope."]
Polluted white dwarfs, Louise Nielsen says, may offer the only direct way to read rocky-planet composition from a spectrum.
A limb-darkening library that was supposed to take two weeks turned into a two-year project, and Dr.
Exocast interviews Jules Fowler about extreme adaptive optics, predictive control, and polarimetry for exoplanet science.
Exocast interviews Dr Jason Wang of Northwestern University about direct imaging exoplanets, starting with the challenge of separating faint planets from bright starlight.
Interview with exoplanetary scientist Professor Nikole Lewis about her career and work with space telescopes.
Interview with Mark McCaughrean about the James Webb Space Telescope and ESA missions.