Category Archives: podcast

Babylon Podcast – “The Lost Tales”

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The Babylon Podcast is having a Party in the month of August.

Due to the release of the first direct-to-DVD “Babylon 5 – The Lost Tales” (TLT) the whole month is dedicated to TLT. Starting on 8. August there was an interview with Bruce Boxleitner who played President Sheridan in the second episode of the DVD.

Following later will be interviews with Tracy Scoggins who played Colonel Lochley in the first episode – and Peter Woodward as the technomage Galen in the second episode.

Who knows – maybe we will get more insider interviews from the TLT cast and crew.

Pulsar Measurements – Radio Astronomy Podcast

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Just heard this on the podcast “Mountain Radio Astronomy”. Their podcast of 8 October 2005 was an interview with pulsar hunter Scott Ransom at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville. Scott had – at the time of the interview – found about 30 millisecond pulsars in a globular star cluster called Terzan 5.

A pulsar is believed to be a quickly rotating neutron star, a supernova remnant, most of them rotating in less than a second. The pulsar has a rather small and directional radiating area that can only be registered when it is facing us.
A second type of even faster rotating pulsars – known as millisecond pulsars – rotating more than a 100 tomes per second, are found in globular star clusters.

The rotation period of the millisecond pulsars is extremely precise, approaching that of an atomic clock , and this means thatsome interesting measurements of pulsar orbits can be made.

About 20 minutes into the interview he talked about a measurement of a pulsar orbit with an accuracy that really surprised me.

The example here is the Hulse-Taylor star system two pulsars orbiting each other in an orbit smaller than the Sun.This can demonstrate Einstein’s general theory of relativity, the interaction between spacetime and gravitation and an indication of gravity waves.

One other of the pulsars, Terzan N is orbiting a massive companion in an almost exact circular orbit about the size of the Sun.there is a little eccentricity, that is difference in the long axis and the short axis of the orbit, is measured as 48 cm +/- 6 cm. Less than half a meter ! Measured at a distance of 20 000 light years. Mind blowing …

Science stranger than fiction …

Link to Mountain Radio Astronomy

Link to The podcast MP3 file

The SciFi Smackdown Podcast

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A podcast with people having fun comparing similar aspects of different Science Fiction stories.

Their very first episode had a match between the Battlestar Galactica and the Enterprise. Follow the debate about differences, advantages and disadvantages of the two flagships.

Each episode is followed by a voicemail show or two with listener feedback of the match.

Episode 2: Captain America vs Batman

Episode 3: Heroes vs. X-men This time with another approach: The smackdown is played out as a role playing game match, playing over a few podcasts.Very Entertaining.

Episode 4: second part of the Heroes vs. X-men

Episode 5: X-wings (from StarWars) vs Starfuries (from Babylon 5). This time with a guest participant known from the Babylon Podcast – since they wanted a knowledgeable representative for the Starfuries. Yet another approach : The “combattants” are to make a sales pitch for their respective fighter. Their guest made quite a pitch for the Starfuries.

Link : Scifi Smackdown Podcast

Babylon Podcast fan fiction

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It looks like the Babylon Podcast voice mails are being dominated by a piece of fan fiction (or two) Some contributors send in pieces of talks , like captain’s log or whatever , creating a story within the podcast.

If you know the series well, you will appreciate the humor of these voice mails.

If you are a Babylon 5 fan , listen to the podcast , or better to the live feed. In my opinion it is well worth it.

The Babylon Podcast

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The Babylon Podcast is a podcast dedicated to the TV series “Babylon 5” created by Joe Michael Straczynski (also known as JMS).

In this the hosts Summer Brooks and Tim Callender (two dedicated fans) and Jeffrey Willerth (producer on the series) deal with news about the series, have interviews with people relating to the series – cast, crew, authors etc as well as (in many of the podcasts) deal with a specific episode of the series, a section of the podcast dubbed “Deep Geeking”, where the episode is analyzed, and they talk about what worked for them or not etc., and finally a voice mail section.

I have been following the podcast since September last year, when I got started in a big way listening to podcasts, and was very happy to find this one. Having some time at hand, I spent two weeks listening to the preceding 42 (one hour long) podcasts in order to get up to date.

They also record live every Wednesday evening at 18 pm Phoenix Arizona time, rather inconvenient for Western Europeans (3 am), but sometimes well worth it.
Simultaneously they have an IRC chat running, so live feed listeners can comment live. Find all info about the live feed on their website (link : Listen Live). The live feed is , of course unedited so if you join in, you get bloopers, banter and all – can be very entertaining.

Their latest show #69, released last week, was a little different : Members of the chatroom were invited to call in and contribute – they had 3 contributions, and I participated in the second section.

Today I (re)watched the final episode of Babylon 5, Season 2, “The Fall of Night” . the subject of this Wednesday’s “Deep Geeking”.

Link : Babylon Podcast