AGNs and Ancient Messengers

From a wood stove in Brooklyn to AGN nurseries, Dr. Saavik Ford traces her journey down the Star River, inculding a stop at the Public Theater.

This is the description of the episode.

There's a phrase in the civil rights movement of "lifting as we climb." I don't want to clamber over everybody else to get ahead. I'm trying to understand and fight our way through the cosmos as a team.

The Conversation

What happens when you sit a world-class astrophysicist down with a glass of rare Italian wine and ask her to explain the messengers we use to navigate the universe? In this expansive conversation, I'm joined by Dr. Saavik Ford, a professor at CUNY and a researcher at the American Museum of Natural History, for a journey that meanders from the subways of New York to the edge of the observable universe.

The Ritual

We begin with The Ritual, with a never-before-tasted vintage that traces Saavik's ancestral roots through a bottle of Nero di Troia before diving into the high-energy heart of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). She pulls back the curtain on the "glamour" of professional astronomy, revealing a world built on Python code, tedious data calibration, and the rare, breathtaking lore of being the last generation to ever put an actual human eyeball behind the lens of a world-class telescope.

The Currents

There is simply too much in this conversation to list here; you'll just have to listen to it. But we quickly move from the "canals" of Mars to the modern "Multi-Messenger" era. Saavik breaks down the five - and only five - ways we receive information from the stars, explaining how the recent discovery of gravitational waves has fundamentally changed our role as observers.

Yet, for all the high-level science, this episode is deeply human. We discuss her personal mission of "lifting as we climb" through Astrocom NYC, a program she co-founded to help underrepresented students build a "scientist identity" and navigate the precarious path of academia. We even take a surprising detour into the world of professional theater!

Whether you're counting photons from a quasar 14 billion light-years away or mentoring a freshman in a New York City classroom, we are all part of the same current. Saavik's story is a testament to the fact that science is not just a collection of data. It is a creative, collaborative, and deeply personal act of wonder that you won't want to miss.