2025 brought some exciting extraterrestrial scientific discoveries that might have been missed amid other headlines. Hosts Aynsley O’Neill and Jenni Doering discuss new evidence about the Martian environment and the possibility of past life on Mars, the discovery of important building blocks of life in samples from the asteroid Bennu, and observations of the third interstellar object that’s been documented in our solar system.

As a new space race heats up, private companies and sovereign nations alike have their sights on setting up permanent human settlements in space – but huge technological, medical and legal challenges remain. Biologist Kelly Weinersmith and cartoonist Zach Weinersmith are a married couple who teamed up to write the 2023 book A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? They join Host Jenni Doering to chat about the comically hostile environments beyond our home planet.

A City on Mars authors Kelly and Zach Weinersmith continue their conversation with Host Jenni Doering about the challenges of settling space. They discuss why the Moon has limited “primo” real estate, what it was like to write this book together as a married couple, and why they view humor as an essential piece of helping a general audience understand such complex issues as international space law.