On Monday, Pamela Gay and Fraser Cain recorded the 300th episode of Astronomy Cast – an amazing and wonderful achievement of bringing scientific knowledge to just about everbody. They have been producing the podcast since September 2006 and have covered about every imaginable topic remotely connected to astronomy, but thanks to the scientific universe not being constant, there are still lots of new things to talk about and many older topics to revisit. Also amazing is that Astronomy Cast has spawned into a video podcast since the beginning of 2012 and every episode is recorded as a live hangout before it gets edited into an audio podcast, allowing the listeners to watch how the show is being made.

At the moment, there are 293 audio podcasts available on the website while editing is catching up with the actually recorded episodes. In addition, the latest 55 episodes are also available as video podcasts with an additional half hour where Pamela Gay and Fraser Cain answer questions from comments on the web. Shows 245-247 are available in this playlist (created by me), 248-300 are in the official playlist. The hangouts of the live recording usually happen every Monday at 21:00 CET and the best method to be notified when a hangout is coming is to circle +Astronomy Cast and +CosmoQuest on Google+.

So, why is Astronomy Cast so interesting? It’s not a dry and academic lecture, but the way Pamela Gay and Fraser Cain explain science is also not dumbed down at all, just enough simplified to make everything understandable for non-scientists. Some basic knowledge is, of course. required, as is at least some curiosity about the general subject itself, but their casual and friendly style makes the podcast very approachable, easy to listen to and often even really fun and entertaining. The sheer amount of episodes in the archive may be intimidating for first-time listeners, but the great variety of themes allows for a wide choice and while there is no need to listen to every single episode, I would neverteless recommend it.

So, happy anniversary, Astronomy Cast! May there be at least 300 more episodes in the future – you’ve been and will be an invaluable source of knowledge. Celebrate by listening or watching an episode or two, circle them on Google+ and leave them a nice comment!