Our conversation with Jack Black and his brother Neil Siegal about their Mother, Judith Love Cohen was too good just to give you just the taste from the end of our Star Search episode. Here's the extended producers cut with everything from Jack's birth story, to being an engineer in the 70s, to Judy's 2nd career as a book publisher.

Thanks to Jack Black and Neil Siegal for sharing their memories about their Mom.

Find the transcript here

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There are a lot of air and space celebrities; pilots, astronauts, engineers, etc etc. But there's another category of celebrities that are famous for other things but also have surprising ties to air or space. Today we're talking about three of those; a famous tv chef who also helped create a shark repellant for aviators and spacecraft, an actor from Hollywood's golden years who invented the basis for wifi, and an aerospace engineer who worked on Apollo and more--and also has a pretty famous kid. Stay tuned to the end for a special celebrity guest.

Thanks to our guests in this episode:

• Paula Johnson, Curator of Food History-Smithsonian's National Museum of American History
• Dr. Andrew Meade McGee, Curator of Computing-National Air and Space Museum
• Dr. Teasel Muir Harmony, Curator of the Apollo Program-National Air and Space Museum
• Dr. Neil Siegal and his brother, Jack Black

Find the transcript here

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When the Chandra X-Ray Observatory launched 25 years ago, it showed us our universe in a whole new light (literally). From the remnants of exploded stars to Jupiter's auroras, Chandra has shown us so many beautiful and scientifically important sights. Even after a quarter decade this unique telescope is still giving us new data about black holes and whirling neutron stars and all the things out in space that give off x-rays.

Thanks to our guest in this episode:

• Dr. Daniel Castro - Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
• Megan Lin - Chandra X-Ray Observatory Flight Operations Team Lead

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The city of Roswell, New Mexico is kind of in the middle of nowhere. Out in the dessert west of Texas, this small oasis in the dessert was first home to indigenous peoples, then cowboys, ranching and farming and then the military before becoming the crash site of a possible UFO in 1947. That story took on a life of it's own and by the time the Army came out with an official explaination in 1997, the myths had stuck. Today, Roswell is still a farming and ranching community but 'the incident' as it's known bred a tourism economy based on aliens. From the flying saucer McDonalds, to the International UFO Museum and Research Center, and the annual UFO festival; Roswell is a unique space-y destination all its own.

We're joined by Dr. Emily Margolis, Curator of Contemporary Spaceflight

Thanks to our guests in this episode:

• Jan Dunnahoo- Roswell historian
• Juliana Halvorson- Roswell City Councilor

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AirSpace is made possible by the generous support of Olay.

Sci-fi is full of giant ships full of humanity living and dying and reaching out to new places far far away. Usually, these are called generations ships. And they rely on well, generations. But today in science-fact there's so much more about reproducing in space that we don't know than the small amount that we do. And as we get closer to commercial space travel that might include honeymooning on the moon, we kind of need to figure out what's going to happen with pregnancies that are a little extra-terrestrial in origin. Space sex ed is now in session!

Thanks to our guest in this episode:

• Dr. Alex Layendecker, Director-ASRI

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AirSpace is made possible by the generous support of Olay.

Georgia "Tiny" Broadwick was 15 years old when she first jumped out of a hot air balloon with a parachute in 1908. Over the next 14 years she would make over 1,000 jumps, first out of balloons and then as the first woman to jump from an airplane. Her talent and skill was sought after by the Army in WWI when they first started training their balloon and airplane pilots to use parachutes as a safety device. Tiny even accidentally invented the ripcord that's a staple in parachute design today. Her legacy stretches long, even if she's not as well known of a name as some in early aviation. We're exploring her life and legacy today on AirSpace.

Thanks to our guest in this episode:

• Dr. Alex Spencer, Aeronautics Curator - National Air and Space Museum

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AirSpace is made possible by the generous support of Olay.

In the 1930s, rocketry was basically a joke among the scientific establishment in the U, but that didn't stop a rag tag group out of Pasadena from trying to build rockets. That group would first be known as The Suicide Squad (for all the dangerous experiments they conducted on campus) and later as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Over its first decade, the JPL story includes funding challenges, communist intrigue, brushes with the occult, building weapons, building engines and ultimately--building rockets. Buckle in, this one's a wild ride.

Thanks to our guests in this episode:

• Fraser MacDonald, Author, Escape from Earth: A Secret History of the Space Rocket

• Erik Conway, JPL Historian

• Interview with Frank Malina from the Caltech Archives and Special Collections

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AirSpace is made possible by the generous support of Olay.

AirSpace will be back in two weeks with brand new epsiodes. In the meantime, enjoy this episode from our friends at the podcast, This is Love.

When twin rovers named Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars twenty years ago, they were only supposed to last 90 Martian days. But years passed, they were still alive, and engineers kept taking care of them. “I remember telling myself, ‘Please don’t die, Opportunity. Please don’t die.’”

Find more information about this episode here.

AirSpace is from the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.