Interplanetary Podcast

Interplanetary Podcast is a space show hosted by Matthew Russell, whose ident places him in Guildford, England, and describes the project as the exploration of space for the benefit of all humankind. It has a signature way in. Most episodes open on a quotation, then the ident, then Russell naming the speaker with an exuberant 'Oh yeah, baby' and a bit of context. The choices range widely: Clay Boyce, introduced as an Apollo propulsion engineer; Jared Isaacman, introduced as NASA's 15th administrator; and John Bevis, born in 1695, who timed the transits of more than 160 stars from an observatory in Stoke Newington. That small ritual sets up what the show actually does, which is move between spaceflight history, current missions and the physics underneath both. History comes up in the Apollo 1 conversation with Mark Craig, which places the Moon race alongside Sputnik, Gagarin, American taxpayers footing the bill, and a generation for whom the Second World War and the atomic bomb were recent memory. Physics gets room too. In '#322 - Ethan Siegel - Grand Cosmic Story', inflation is explained as the physical rules that fix the early fluctuations which grow into galaxies, clusters and cosmic filaments, with voids and a raisin-in-dough image along the way. Russell recommends the book, and another discussed on the episode, as Christmas presents. The news side is where his own voice is loudest. In '#325 - Artemis II - Dhara Patel', he admits he had hoped the mission would be flying any day, until a suspect valve during propellant loading pushed the date back. Elsewhere in the episode, talk turns to lunar landing plans, including docking with a station in orbit and preparing there before descending, rather than making every decision from a single spacecraft. '#324 - Space 2025' reviews the year and keeps circling back to money: a US government shutdown he believes was the longest ever, thousands of people unsure whether they would be paid, and a closing case that the future deserves shared investment instead of being handed to the richest people in the room. Then come the detours. '#326 - Chasing Aliens - Daniel Lavelle' starts from a book about faith and conspiracy in the UFO heartlands, a subject Russell calls right up his street, and reaches starseed believers, eugenics, the QAnon shaman and David Icke's shape-shifting lizards. Both voices agree it gets very dark. '#297 - Living On The Moon', with Jamie Franklin, is looser still, all Buzz Aldrin comparisons and a hypothetical Beyoncé lunar gig alongside talk of lunar colonisation. The humour never pushes the substance out. Several episodes end by thanking Patreon supporters by name and noting that joining can be free, and one mentions a Discord where books and the odd paper get discussed. What a listener gets is an enthusiastic guide equally at ease with cosmology, NASA politics and the fringe.