WOW IN SPACE

A “bonkerballs” tour through the cosmos.

Thomas and Wow in the World podcast co-host Raz step into Centeno’s cartoon illustrations to be “galactic guides” to an assortment of space-related topics from the Big Bang to astronaut gear and training. Along the way, they give Uranus a chance to fume about being “the butt of all your jokes” and describe some of the pranks astronauts have pulled in orbit. For all their contagious sense of fun, though, they don’t cover much ground that isn’t surveyed elsewhere more systematically and in greater detail. Furthermore, they’re sloppy with details—no, Galileo did not invent the telescope, nor can navigators determine exact locations with just a sextant, and their pie chart of relative solar system masses is visibly at odds with the adjacent numbers. Stargazers searching for Sirius aren’t going to get much help from “look for a very bright star with a bluish-white tinge,” either, while younger audiences in general are going to be left wondering how black holes can “burp excess radiation and particles” when supposedly nothing can escape them. And even grown-ups will likely find the lists of technical source reports in miniscule type at the close indigestible. A dozen related Wow in the World episodes are linked with QR codes at the end. Thomas is white, and Raz has darker skin.

An entertaining jumble of undependable astro-facts.