BBC’s “The Infinite Monkey Cage” Comes to Caltech to Talk Exoplanets

Pulsars, planets, and a dash of Monty Python came together last month when the long-running, irreverent science podcast The Infinite Monkey Cage, hosted by comedian Robin Ince and physicist Brian Cox, came to Caltech.

On November 26, the BBC radio show recorded an episode at the Institute called “Hunting for Exoplanets,” featuring a panel that included Jessie Christiansen, research scientist at Caltech’s IPAC; planetary scientist Tiffany Kataria of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which Caltech manages for NASA; Sean Carroll, Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University; and Eric Idle of the Monty Python comedy troupe.

The episode takes a rambling journey through the discovery of the first exoplanets in the 1990s, Caltech’s place in the search for worlds that orbit other stars, and how Albert Einstein’s time at Caltech inspired Idle’s “Galaxy Song,” about our place in the cosmos.

Listen at Apple Podcasts or at the BBC’s website.