Best Josh Colwell Podcasts (2025)

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Interview w/ Coach Luke Colwell (Assistant Coach at Cornell) 1:11:55

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2d ago1:11:55

1:11:55

Coach Luke Colwell shares his journey from growing up in Apex, North Carolina to becoming an Assistant Coach at Cornell. Luke served as a Student Manager and then a Graduate Assistant at South Carolina under Coach Frank Martin from 2017 until 2022. Colwell was hired as the Director of Basketball Operations at VMI and spent two seasons with the Keyd…

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Supernova Hazards and Cloudy With a Chance of Sand 40:02

9d ago40:02

40:02

We're all about the weather on this episode, with a new study showing that even relatively distant supernova may have affected the Earth's climate in the recent past. And the James Webb Space Telescope has observed exoplanet WASP-107b to have clouds of sand vapor. Plus, we have two hot takes and two Top astroquarks!…

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Cool Planetary Cores and Lava Fountains Galore 40:14

23d ago40:14

40:14

Original top quark Tracy Becker is back to bring us up to speed Europa Clipper's flyby of Mars, and we learn about a new way for planetary cores to form without so much heat. Join us for all this, plus lava fountain trivia, space news, and much more.By Josh Colwell, Addie Dove, Tracy Becker

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Interview w/ Coach Tristan Spurlock (Assistant Coach at Penn) 47:23

23d ago47:23

47:23

Coach Tristan Spurlock shares his journey from growing up in Northern Virginia to becoming an Assistant Coach at the Division I level. He started his college basketball career at the University of Virginia and eventually transferred to UCF. After playing professionally he joined the coaching staff at the University of Iowa. In April Coach Spurlock …

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The End of the Universe As We Know It and We Feel Fine 47:17

1M ago47:17

47:17

A major update to the predicted end of the universe has it coming much earlier than previously anticipated. However, we still have plenty of time to get our affairs in order, and the update has to do with spaghettification, and anything with spaghettification can't be all bad. We also talk about active asteroids, your ideal night sky, and cosmologi…

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Interview w/ Coach Stan Waterman (Head Coach at Delaware State) 40:44

1M ago40:44

40:44

Coach Stan Waterman shares his journey from growing up in Wilmington, Delaware to becoming the Head Coach at Delaware State. After playing Division I basketball at the University of Delaware he began his coaching journey at as an Assistant Coach at Wilmington and then moved onto the Sanford School. In his 29 seasons at the Sanford School he led the…

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A Slurping Black Hole and a Win for the Streaming Instability 41:55

1M ago41:55

41:55

We get lucky and catch a rogue supermassive black hole in the act of slurping up a star as it meanders through a distant galaxy. Closer to home, the detection of a second trinary, or triple, system in the Kuiper Belt beyond the orbit of Neptune bolsters the streaming instability theory of planet formation. We talk about all that and what it has to …

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Vesta Chip Off the Old Block and a Nearby Dark Molecular Cloud 49:28

2M ago49:28

49:28

The asteroid Vesta may be a fragment of a much larger protoplanet, and astronomers examine old data to discover a large molecular cloud lurking right in the solar system's backyard. Get all the details, plus habitable exoplanets get another look, space news, and trivial matters with your friendly neighborhood astroquarks.…

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Interview w/ Coach Flynn Clayman (Head Coach at High Point University) 45:55

2M ago45:55

45:55

Coach Flynn Clayman shares his journey from growing up in Los Angeles to becoming the Head Coach at High Point University. After his professional playing career ended overseas he coached AAU before accepting a Graduate Assistant position at Southern Utah and quickly advanced up the ranks to Associate Head Coach - as well as being named the Interim …

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Ultralight Dark Matter and Peanut Asteroid Hot Take 40:47

2M ago40:47

40:47

NASA's Lucy mission had a picture perfect encounter with the asteroid Donaldjohanson on its way to the first ever flybys of Trojan asteroids. Discoveries of ancient supermassive black holes challenge theories of their formation. If dark matter is composed of ultralight particles (lighter than a neutrino), that could resolve the mystery. Join us for…

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Hot Takes on Water on Earth and Black Hole Singularities 42:40

2M ago42:40

42:40

The astroquarks discover hot takes and explore the nature of ice, the origin of Earth's water, and the trouble with the singularities at the hearts of black holes. Plus, we have a stumper, astronomical trivia, and much more.By Josh Colwell, Addie Dove, Jim Cooney, Audrey Martin

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Weird Convection on Venus and a Wrinkle in the Lambda Cold Dark Matter Model 43:37

3M ago43:37

43:37

Venus's extra-thick crust may be extra chewy, allowing convection to occur and helping power volcanoes into the current era. New observations of the distant universe, meanwhile, show that dark energy may not have behaved as expected in the standard cosmological model. We'll break it all down for you together with space news and trivia with your fri…

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Interview w/ Coach Stan Jones (Former Associate Head Coach at Florida State) 1:48:27

3M ago1:48:27

1:48:27

Coach Stan Jones shares his journey from growing up in Mississippi and walking onto the basketball team at Memphis [State] to becoming one of the most well respected assistant coaches in the country! He amassed an overall record of 353-91 including back-to-back state championships in 1993-94 and 1994-95. After his tremendous run as a high school co…

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Supernovas and Mass Extinctions 49:04

3M ago49:04

49:04

A survey of nearby stars establishes the rate of supernovas in our general neighborhood. Evidence indicates we had nearby stellar explosions at the times of two mass extinctions. Those supernovas may have decimated the ozone layer and contributed to extinctions and climate changes. Plus, we recorded on April 1 and take a look at silly April 1 scien…

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Life on Hycean Worlds, Interstellar Debris, and Dark Matter Survey 43:38

3M ago43:38

43:38

If there are Hycean worlds and if they have a certain kind of microbial life and if there is enough of it, JWST might be able to see the chemical products of that in the planet's atmosphere. We take a look at that, debris from neighboring stars entering our solar system, and the first results from the Euclid space telescope. Join us for all this pl…

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Are We Inside a Black Hole? 51:43

3M ago51:43

51:43

There are exciting new observations from recent lunar missions, a possible chunk of the Moon keeping us company, and an intriguing observation supporting the theory that the entire universe is inside a black hole! Get inside the event horizon with the astroquarks for all the space updates, trivia, and more.…

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Interview w/ Coach Tyler Summitt (Former Louisiana Tech Women's Basketball Coach & Co-Founder of Pat Summitt Foundation) 50:28

4M ago50:28

50:28

Tyler Summitt shares his journey from growing up in Knoxville, Tennessee to becoming the Head Coach at Louisiana Tech to the Co-Founder of Pat Summitt Leadership Group and Director of the Pat Summitt Foundation. Growing up the son of Coach Pat Summitt, Tyler attended The Webb School where he played basketball for current Swarthmore Head Coach Landr…

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Oort Cloud Spiral, the Color of Mars, and a New Dwarf Galaxy 41:15

4M ago41:15

41:15

We take a look at the formation and structure of the Oort cloud of comets which is spherical at large distances but has a spiral structure in its inner regions. And, after all this time, there's a surprising twist on the nature of the iron mineral that gives Mars its reddish hue. Also hiding in plain sight is a dwarf galaxy in the neighborhood of t…

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Did You Quipu? 36:31

4M ago36:31

36:31

Lunar exploration continues to accelerate, and there's a new longest "structure" in the universe. Quipu is a quasi-alignment of clusters of galaxies stretching over 1 billion light years. Structure is in cynical quotation marks because these objects are not bound or connected to each other in any way, but their arrangement is a natural consequence …

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Interview w/ Coach Bobby Marlin (Former Head Coach at Louisiana) 1:26:58

4M ago1:26:58

1:26:58

Coach Bobby Marlin shares his journey from growing up in Tupelo, Mississippi to winning 600+ games as a college basketball coach.After serving as a GA and an Assistant Coach earlier in his career, Coach Marlin was hired at Pensacola Junior College and won 123 games in his five seasons at the helm - including the 1993 NJCAA National Championship.He …

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Hubble Tension Won't Go Away But Some Exoplanets Do 42:04

4M ago42:04

42:04

The more measurements we make of the expansion of the universe, the more it seems as though Hubble Tension is not a problem with our data but a problem with our understanding of the expansion of the universe. We'll talk about that, and some cool new observations closer to home, including a disintegrating exoplanet that is giving us a unique peak in…

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Interview w/ Coach Mike Roberts (Assistant Coach at UTEP) 1:01:46

5M ago1:01:46

1:01:46

Coach Mike Roberts played at Indiana and was on the team that was the Runner-Up 2002 NCAA Championship.He served as a Graduate Assistant at Texas Tech under Hall of Fame Coach Bob Knight before embarking on a coaching career that has taken him to California, Rice, UNC Greensboro, Indiana, Cincinnati, and now UTEP.Coach Roberts has developed a stron…

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Exocomets, Io, and the Great Dimming of T Tauri 44:21

5M ago44:21

44:21

Juno reveals a surprise about the interior of Jupiter's volcanic moon Io, and the OG young variable star T Tauri is getting ready to fade from view thanks to its dusty neighbors to the south. Speaking of dust, that's what gets kicked up when comets collide, and a new survey examines the cometary belts around dozens of star systems, providing a deta…

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Little Red Dots and Big Black Holes 44:32

5M ago44:32

44:32

The discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope keep coming. After showing that galaxies formed far earlier than we thought, we now have a better understanding of what was going on in the early universe. Those little red dots spied by JWST are actually the glow of heated dust and gas from supermassive black holes, and not the glow from billions…

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Kiss and Capture for Pluto and Charon and Dark Energy Remains Dark 46:03

5M ago46:03

46:03

Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, orbit each other with gazes lovingly fixed on each other, held in place by a romantic tidal attraction. But Charon's large size has always been difficult to explain. New simulations show that their love affair may have started at the beginning with a "Kiss and Capture" collision, much gentler than the devasting i…

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Quasi Particles, Pluto's Moons, and Cosmic Rays 45:25

6M ago45:25

45:25

We kick off 2025 with oddities from quasi particles, to cosmic rays, to the moons of Pluto. What has mass when it moves in one direction and doesn't when it moves in another direction? How do thunderstorms on Earth interact with cosmic rays? What is up with Pluto's moons? Join us as we tackle these questions as well as the stumper and special top q…

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Interview w/ Coach Josh Mandell (Video Coordinator at Loyola Marymount) 34:27

6M ago34:27

34:27

Coach Josh Mandell shares his journey from growing up in Texas to becoming the Video Coordinator at Loyola Marymount. He worked his way up to Head Manager at the University of Washington before electing to stay on as a Graduate Assistant under Coach Mike Hopkins. After finishing up his Master's degree he was hired by Coach Stan Johnson at Loyola Ma…

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Mysterious Dark Comets 39:22

6M ago39:22

39:22

We know about extinct comets and active asteroids, but now we've got something in between: dark comets, whose orbits indicate cometary activity, but we can't see it! We'll get the scoop on these interesting objects, a flare from a supermassive black hole, and a twist on the question of the age of Saturn's rings. Plus, we have our end-of-the-year ro…

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Making Big Blobs is Hard 37:48

7M ago37:48

37:48

Top quark Jim Cooney explains why making big blobs is hard and how new observations are helping us understand how the universe made big immensely big blobs more commonly known as giant elliptical galaxies. Nature loves to make a disk, and we love to tell you all about the cool things nature does, including a solid state greenhouse on ancient Mars t…

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Interview w/ Coach Andrew Muse (Wichita State Graduate Assistant) 42:01

7M ago42:01

42:01

Coach Andrew Muse shares his journey from growing up in North Carolina to becoming a Graduate Assistant at Wichita State. Growing up in a basketball family, Andrew played for his father in high school and then walked on at App State. He played for Coach Dustin Kerns and his twin brother Aaron served as a Student Manager during their four years in B…

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Neutrino Fog and the Hunt for Dark Matter 43:44

7M ago43:44

43:44

It's a good news bad news story with the detection of the neutrino fog. This signal from solar neutrinos may confound our search for certain dark matter candidates, but at least we know our detectors are very, very sensitive! We also take a look at magnetic fields in the outer solar system, specifically why Uranus's magnetosphere was so weird when …

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Not All Supernovae Are Created Equal 41:34

7M ago41:34

41:34

If you're speaking English, not Latin, do you really have to say "supernovae" instead of "supernovas"? Also, they are, in some sense, created equally: explosion of a white dwarf, but the outcomes are not all equal. You are welcome for this grammatical tangent, and please enjoy our fun discussion about weird tesserae (more Latin!) on Venus and the w…

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Is There Another Belt of Comets? 42:02

8M ago42:02

42:02

New observations contradict earlier studies about the possibility of another belt of comets orbiting the Sun twice as far away as Pluto. We'll take a look at what's what in the outer solar system and also explore whether black holes may help explain the Hubble tension. We also play FLOD (Flyby, Land, Orbit, Destroy) and have some "how many planets"…

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Interview w/ Coach Chris Acker (Head Coach at Long Beach State) 49:48

8M ago49:48

49:48

Coach Chris Acker shares his journey from growing up in Compton, California to becoming the Head Coach at Long Beach State. He was a member of the Chaminade team that knocked off Villanova in the 2003 EA Sports Maui Invitational. Chris played professionally in Portugal and Greece before returning to the US to play in the Continental Basketball Asso…

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Trojan Asteroids Everywhere 28:14

8M ago28:14

28:14

Join Strange and Down quarks for a close look at Trojan asteroids, the forgotten asteroids of the solar system. NASA's Lucy mission is en route to take our first close look at these denizens of the outer solar system and has an Earth gravity assist in December 2024. As you'll see in our trivia, the numbers of Trojans may surprise you. Jupiter is th…

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2024 SoCon Men's Basketball Media Day 1:54:23

8M ago1:54:23

1:54:23

2024 Southern Conference (SoCon) Men's Basketball Media Day: Dwight Perry (Wofford) Ed Conroy (The Citadel) Bucky McMillan (Samford) Brooks Savage (East Tennessee State) Mike Jones (UNC Greensboro) Andrew Wilson (VMI) Tim Craft (Western Carolina) *Chattanooga, Furman, and Mercer were unable to schedule interviews this season **Sponsored by FastMode…

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Basin Instinct - Cosmological Structure and Edible Asteroids 45:09

8M ago45:09

45:09

We get a tour of our place in the grand cosmological scheme of things with new mapping of the local Basin of Attraction. Spoiler: also Jim's new stage name. And we explore the final frontier of In Situ Resource Utilization with studies of how to get edible nutrients from the raw materials in asteroids. It's a little bit gross. Plus space news, triv…

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OG Top Goes to Europa 50:24

9M ago50:24

50:24

Original Top Quark Dr. Tracy Becker returns to her old stomping grounds to hang with the Walkabout crew and send Europa Clipper on its way to Jupiter. Join us for a preview of this mission's ambitious goals and the exciting journey it took to the launch pad. Also, new research suggests the Earth may escape a fiery death when the Sun becomes a red g…

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2024 A10 Men's Basketball Media Day 45:03

9M ago45:03

45:03

Anthony Grant (Dayton) Chris Caputo (George Washington) Chris Mooney (Richmond) Dru Joyce III (Duquesne) Fran Dunphy (LaSalle) Frank Martin (UMass) Josh Schertz (St. Louis) Matt McKillop (Davidson) Ryan Odom (VCU) Tony Skinn (George Mason) Keith Urgo (Fordham) Mark Schmidt (St. Bonaventure) Archie Miller (Rhode Island) Billy Lange (St. Joe's) Drew …

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Back in Black Holes 47:58

9M ago47:58

47:58

We’ve got mini black holes as potential dark matter candidates and monstrous black holes spewing jets to cosmological scales. Who better than Top quark Jim Cooney to take us through these black holes? No one, that’s who. We take a deep dive into meteorites, particularly those that have come from Mars. You may be surprised to learn how many we have,…

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Interview w/ Coach Maciariello (Former Head Coach at Siena) 1:02:53

9M ago1:02:53

1:02:53

Coach Maciariello shares his journey from growing up in New York and being the Albany Times Union Player of the Year in 1996, to becoming a the Head Coach at his alma mater [Siena]. He started his college basketball career at New Hampshire before transferring to Siena College where he redshirted under Coach Paul Hewitt and playing for Coach Louis O…

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Black Hole Spindown Chirp and a 9-Day Geologic Rumble 41:03

9M ago41:03

41:03

Gravitational waves may provide a new way to observe supernovae in our own Milky Way galaxy and determine when they produce black holes and when they result merely in neutron stars. Closer to home, scientists did some clever detective work to figure out the source of a mysterious 9-day seismic shaking here on Earth. The culprit: a giant, regular sl…

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Recent Lunar Volcanic Activity and the Metallicity Cliff 46:01

10M ago46:01

46:01

Tiny samples brought back from the Moon hint at surprisingly recent volcanic activity. What's up with that?! Elsewhere in the galaxy, a detailed study of over 100,000 stars identifies the metallicity cliff. This is where stellar composition that is low in heavy elements seems to inhibit the formation of at least some types of exoplanets. The astroq…

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Interview w/ Coach Dave Davis (Former Head Coach at Pfeiffer & Newberry College) 1:43:23

10M ago1:43:23

1:43:23

Coach Davis shares his journey from growing up in New Hampshire to amassing a 486-313 record as college basketball coach.Davis moved to North Carolina in high school and went on to play college basketball at Warren Wilson College - where he would eventually be enshrined into their hall of fame. After graduating from Warren Wilson he got his start c…

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Adventures in Space the Cady Way 38:31

10M ago38:31

38:31

The Astroquarks are joined by former NASA astronaut, PhD Chemist, and retired USAF Colonel Cady Coleman at Dragon Con 2024 for a wide ranging discussion of space flight, institutional challenges, training, flute playing, and more.By Josh Colwell, Addie Dove, Audrey Martin

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Ocean World Mimas and the JUICE Slingshot 46:01

10M ago46:01

46:01

Recent (astronomically speaking, of course!) perturbations to Mimas's orbit may be the explanation for the surprising presence of a global subsurface ocean in this tiny moon of Saturn. Meanwhile, the European Space Agency's JUICE (Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer) mission successfully completed a novel gravity assist making use of the Earth's Moon and the…

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Barney the Dinosaur Killer from Outer Space and Water Inside Mars 40:24

10M ago40:24

40:24

New research shows that the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs some 66 million years ago formed in the colder, more distant reaches of the solar system. The Astroquarks have taken it upon themselves to dub this asteroid Barney. We’ll update you on that new research and a surprising discovery from Mars Insight data that suggests Mars has a potential…

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The Fermi Paradox - Are We Truly Alone? 41:00

11M ago41:00

41:00

When Frank Drake created his famous eponymous equation to estimate the number of advanced communicative civilizations in the Milky Way, we had little more than educated guesses for most of the factors in that equation. Decades later we have much better data, and the answer seems to reinforce Fermi's famous paradox: why is our galaxy so silent? The …

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Chemical Whispers of Life on Mars 41:24

11M ago41:24

41:24

The astroquarks assemble for their 365th episode, about 10 years after their first, with a look at a canceled mission to the Moon and tantalizing observations from an ongoing mission at Mars. The Perseverance rover has spied a particularly unusual rock sample with some tantalizing features. Join us for the deets as well as historical astronomy triv…

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Interview w/ Coach Will Turgeon (Assistant Coach at Eastern Washington) 54:11

11M ago54:11

54:11

Coach Will Turgeon shares his journey from growing up the son of a highly successful college coach [Mark Turgeon] to becoming an Assistant Coach at Eastern Washington University under Coach Dan Munson.Will Turgeon played two seasons at Catholic University (DIII) before having to end his playing career due to injuries. He ended up becoming a Graduat…