Episode 78: Back Under The Stars – A New Dawn!

At long last…we’re back!!! The Cosmic Savannah is entering an exciting new era as we transition into a video podcast! In this episode, we kick off that journey and invite you to join us as we venture even deeper into the cosmic ocean—exploring the universe, sharing new perspectives, and connecting with the people who bring astronomy to life. Exciting times lie ahead, and we’re thrilled to have you along for the ride.

In this episode, the team also reflects on the past 12 months, and in particular on the International Astronomical Union’s General Assembly – a massive astronomy conference that was held in Cape Town one year ago. The Cosmic Savannah intern Kaashifa Saloojee makes her microphone debut as she speaks with special guest Kevin Govender. Kevin was the Chair of the IAU GA National Organising Committee and is the Director of the Office of Astronomy for Development (OAD), based in Cape Town.

With a background in Nuclear Physics, Kevin first became involved in astronomy in 2006 when he managed the Collateral Benefits Programme at the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO). This work ultimately led to his appointment as the inaugural Director of the OAD in 2011.

Kevin reflects on South Africa’s bid to host the IAU General Assembly, beginning with the unsuccessful attempt in 2015 and the subsequent formation of a dedicated task team to prepare for a second, more strategic bid. This effort culminated in the historic decision to bring the General Assembly to Africa for the very first time.

He also shares the vision of the OAD: to “rally the African astronomical community”, a vision advanced through the African Astronomical Society (AfAS), which played a pivotal role in uniting astronomers, students, and researchers across the continent in preparation for the GA.

Kevin further highlights the lasting significance of the Assembly — the collaborations it inspired, the networks it strengthened, and its importance in shaping the future of African astronomy and research — while also offering a heartfelt glimpse into the moments that resonated most deeply with him.

We also share our own most memorable moments of the GA – in addition to our own Live Show, that is! For Jacinta, it was the rich blend of talks, culture, music, and the extraordinary diversity of people that the GA brought to Cape Town. For Tshia, it was a deeply personal moment — celebrating a fragment of South Africa’s astronomical heritage rooted in the Free State Province. For Dan, the highlight was contributing to the voting resolution on satellite interference and lunar time — the debate on how time should be measured on the Moon. And finally, for François, the milestone was completing his Honours degree and looking ahead to new and exciting opportunities in the field.

Related Episodes

Episode 76: First ever Live Show debut at Astronomy Olympics

New Addition To the Team:

Acknowledgements

Transcript

Transcription: Kaashifa Saloojee and Sisa Shibane

[00:00:00] Tshia: Welcome to The Cosmic Savannah with Dr. Tshiamiso Makwela, 

[00:00:08] Daniel: Dr. Daniel Cunnama, 

[00:00:09] Jacinta: Dr. Jacinta Delhaize, 

[00:00:11] Francois: Francois Campher. 

[00:00:11] Tshia: Each episode will be giving you a behind the scenes look at the world class Astronomy and Astrophysics happening under African skies. 

[00:00:17] Daniel: Let us introduce you to the people involved, the technology we use, the exciting work we do, and the fascinating discoveries we make.

[00:00:24] Jacinta: Sit back and relax as we take you on a safari through the skies. 

[00:00:28] Tshia: Woo hoo. 

[00:00:29] Daniel: Woo. Welcome back. 

[00:00:30] Francois: Wow. 

[00:00:30] Tshia: Yay. 

[00:00:31] Jacinta: Hi everyone. 

[00:00:32] Tshia: Hello. 

[00:00:32] Jacinta: Welcome back to the, well, second half of season six, which we started almost a year ago, 

[00:00:39] Daniel: Maebe? 

[00:00:39] Jacinta: Maebe more than a year ago yeah. 

[00:00:42] Daniel: Sorry about that. 

[00:00:43] Jacinta: Oh, awkward. Uh. 

[00:00:46] Tshia: We are here. 

[00:00:47] Jacinta: Yeah, we are here.

[00:00:48] Tshia: And you might have heard already that we have someone new joining us today to host this podcast. But he’s not really new because he’s been around for, for some time. Well, season six Maebe. 

[00:00:57] Daniel: He’s new to the side of the mic. 

[00:01:00] Tshia: And that is our 

[00:01:02] Jacinta: Drum roll 

[00:01:05] Tshia: Podcast manager, Francois, welcome! 

[00:01:07] Francois: Hi everyone. Yeah, thank you.

[00:01:09] Daniel: Good to have you in the room. 

[00:01:11] Francois: Thanks. 

[00:01:12] Jacinta: So we are now a four host podcast. 

[00:01:14] Francois: Wow. 

[00:01:15] Jacinta: So prepare yourselves for utter chaos. 

[00:01:17] Daniel: Hmm. I look forward to it. And the other exciting news is we are all sitting in a very fancy studio. Mm-hmm. And you Mae even be watching us on YouTube. 

[00:01:27] Jacinta: Hello if you are. I dunno which camera to look at.

[00:01:30] No 

[00:01:31] Daniel: Of course the podcast is still available on wherever you get your podcasts as an audio only thing, but, uh, we are in a fancy new studio at UCT. 

[00:01:38] Jacinta: Yes. 

[00:01:38] Tshia: We have breathing space. 

[00:01:40] Jacinta: We are in the university. Yeah. Fair. We are in the University of Cape Town’s One Button Studio, um, which is very fancy. We’re sitting on these nice couches with these fancy microphones that like you can just pull them to the, to the right level that you want.

[00:01:58] Um, there are lights and cameras all around us. And Saadiq is over there, one of the members of the One Button Studio team working on the audio and video settings, and I don’t know what he does, but all of the magic. And it turns out that this studio has existed the entire time that our podcast has, and we just didn’t know about it.

[00:02:16] Daniel: So, apologies to us and apologies to you. Yeah. For any of the, for recordings which came out of the previous studio.

[00:02:22] Francois: It is a bit surreal recording the Cosmic Savannah while having like space to sit. 

[00:02:27] Jacinta: Why is that? Why is that Francois? 

[00:02:28] Francois: Well, the previous studio was like three people max. 

[00:02:31] Jacinta: Yeah. Well, it’s the reason why we couldn’t have a fourth host is because 

[00:02:34] Francois: Yes, pretty much 

[00:02:35] Jacinta: You literally couldn’t fit four people into the room.

[00:02:38] Tshia: Never had space in there. 

[00:02:39] Daniel: Well, I mean we, we started in a small garage like every big good start up. 

[00:02:43] Jacinta: Oh, that’s right. We do know that- yeah. We do know that starting a podcast together is like the millennial version of do you want to start a band together? So we’ve essentially gone from garage to- Guys we’re making it big time!

[00:02:56] Daniel: Yeah. We like, we are millennials, but there’s like another two generations after us at least. 

[00:03:00] Jacinta: Oh yeah, that’s true. 

[00:03:01] I don’t know how many-What are you talking Gen Z? Are you Gen Z? Oh. 

[00:03:04] Daniel: And then what comes after that? 

[00:03:05] Because there’s another one. 

[00:03:06] Jacinta: I think there’s a gen alpha. 

[00:03:07] Francois: No, Al- 

[00:03:08] Daniel: That can’t go. Yeah. Can’t be X after.

[00:03:10] Francois: No. Yeah. No, sorry. 

[00:03:11] Jacinta: Anyway, so we, we digress a little bit. That’s to be expected. Um, what are we talking about today? 

[00:03:17] Tshia: What have you been up to? 

[00:03:19] Jacinta: Oh yeah. So why did we stop our episode like halfway through? 

[00:03:23] Daniel: Who’s going first? 

[00:03:26] Francois: Whose fault is it? 

[00:03:27] Daniel: Everyone take a deep breath because guess what?

[00:03:30] 2025 has just started. And it’s already April. 

[00:03:33] Francois: No, no. 

[00:03:35] Daniel: I lie. 

[00:03:35] Jacinta: It’s still, no, still April. 

[00:03:36] Daniel: It’s nearly Mae. 

[00:03:36] It’s 

[00:03:36] Francois: nearly Mae. 

[00:03:37] Jacinta: It’s still April though. It counts. 

[00:03:38] Daniel: By like a day. 

[00:03:39] Jacinta: Yeah. Yeah. Look. Okay. So where we left you last, um, on our last episode that we did altogether was the live show at the, um, International Astronomical Union’s General Assembly.

[00:03:51] Um, where we had a live show at the Cape Town Inter- International Convention Center. We interviewed Nobel Laureate, Brian Schmidt and Cape Town’s own Nicole Thomas. It was such an awesome event. 

[00:04:02] Tshia: It was. 

[00:04:02] Jacinta: And then we all burnt out, like anything after that. 

[00:04:06] Daniel: Yes, pretty much. Yeah. We all collapsed into a heap .

[00:04:08] Tshia: Crashed.

[00:04:09] Jacinta: Yeah. We crashed. We crashed hard. Yeah. And continued to crash for the rest of the year. 

[00:04:14] Daniel: Yeah, I think I just kind of. Did bare minimum until December. Um, yeah. 

[00:04:20] Jacinta: Well, you’re lucky. I continued to work harder than I’ve ever worked in my entire life. Trying to finish off my lecturing course and then crashed like a plane.

[00:04:28] Tshia: I actually got sick Oh, twice. Oh. Um, yeah, just sometime just after the GA I had like a lung infection thing going, going on. And then once I thought that was over, then I had surgery later on. So that was the end of my 2024. Yeah. Wow. 

[00:04:47] Jacinta: How about you Francois? 

[00:04:48] Francois: No, I just crashed out with honors. 

[00:04:50] Jacinta: Ah, you were finishing your honors year.

[00:04:52] Yeah.

[00:04:53] Francois: Yeah. 

[00:04:53] Jacinta: Tell us about that. 

[00:04:56] Francois: No, it’s quite rough because we, the first six months were quite chill because of the GA. They had to like swap a lot of lecturers out to later in the year, which is a great thing at the beginning. Uh, but not so great when you have a like MIDI dissertation to do and then more lectures like each week than you had in the first six months.

[00:05:18] So yeah, after that GA it was like crazy. There was no time to do anything but work basically. 

[00:05:25] Jacinta: Yeah. I remember going to Francois and being like, oh, when are we recording next? He’s like, I don’t know. Don’t talk to me about anything. 

[00:05:33] Francois: I remember you were giving a, a mental health, uh, seminar and I walked by and you were like, hi Francis, do you wanna come in?

[00:05:40] I was like, what is this about? And you said, oh, this is mental health. I said, good. I’ve none of that. I’ll come. 

[00:05:45] Jacinta: Yeah, that’s right. 

[00:05:46] Francois: We sat down. 

[00:05:47] Daniel: Well, good on you for going. 

[00:05:47] Francois: Yeah. Yeah. It was very insightful. Actually. 

[00:05:50] Daniel: I have no time for mental health. 

[00:05:53] Jacinta: Uh, we actually talked all about that on one of our episodes, uh, called Headspace.

[00:05:58] Daniel: Oh, good. 

[00:05:58] Jacinta: And we’ll put a link to that in our show notes. ’cause I can’t remember right now. What episode number it was.But anyway, um, yeah, so today we will be talking about the general assembly. Mm-hmm. Uh, and then in future episodes we can also give an update of what we’ve been doing in the last, I don’t know, year or so.

[00:06:15] Um, but yeah, today we’ll finish off our discussion of that. Um, so Dan, do you and Tshiamiso, do you wanna like tell us what the GA is and when it happened and all that stuff? 

[00:06:26] Daniel: It’s still quite soon for me. 

[00:06:29] Jacinta: We’ve all got wild ptsd, or something. 

[00:06:33] Daniel: Yeah, so I mean we, we- South Africa hosted and Africa hosted for the first time the International Astronomical Union’s General Assembly, which is held every three years.

[00:06:43] Uh, so it’s a very big conference for all of the astronomers globally. And yeah, it was the first time in over a hundred year history of the, the IAU that it was held on the African continent, hosted here in Cape Town. Uh, we were all involved at various degrees in organizing it and making it a success, which I think it really was.

[00:07:04] Yeah we had over 2000 astronomers here in person and another 600 or so online, and yeah, I think everyone had an absolutely great time. Maybe in hindsight, no, 

[00:07:18] Jacinta: Rose colored glasses maybe? 

[00:07:20] Daniel: Yeah, no, I think, I think the visitors from overseas in particular had a, had a great time. Yeah.

[00:07:25] I think that we had a huge contingent from across Africa of students and researchers, which was wonderful. Um, just to see how much is going on in Africa. And yeah, there was, there was a lot that happened. A lot of- a lot of like good science, but then also a lot of outreach events and, yeah… engagements. Yeah, and I think today we are talking to one of the organizers Kevin Govender, who is the director of the IAU’s Office of Astronomy for Development. So the IAU’s Office of Astronomy for Development is an office that is hosted here in South Africa at SAAO. It is hosted at the South African Astronomical Observatory, which is here in Cape Town, and he is the director of that office that’s looking at using astronomy for development.

[00:08:15] And so he was one of the organizers of this big conference, which really went well. And we have him today here being interviewed by 

[00:08:25] Jacinta: Kaashifa Saloojee. Yeah, so I mean, the IAU was just this massive event, like a massive festival, pretty much. We’ll talk more about our experiences after, but right now we’re going to hear from Kevin being interviewed by Kaashifa, who, is a third year student at the University of Cape Town, and she is also one of our interns for the Cosmic Savannah.

[00:08:48] And so she got an opportunity to interview Kevin at the IAU about the experience of the lead up to it and then the, the organization and then, and then how it was going at the time. So, yeah. Shall we?

[00:09:00] Daniel: We set some of our interns loose with a recorder. 

[00:09:02] Jacinta: Yes. Yeah, it wreaked havoc. No, they did a great job.

[00:09:06] Let’s hear from Kevin.

[00:09:12] Kaashifa: Hi, welcome to another episode of the Cosmic Savannah. My name is Kaashifa Saloojee. I’m one of the roving reporters taking interviews at the General Assembly in Cape Town. With me today is 

[00:09:23] Kevin: Kevin Govender. 

[00:09:24] Uh, I’m the chair of the National Organizing Committee and the Director of the Office of Astronomy for Development.

[00:09:31] Kaashifa: Great. Thank you so much for being here. Um, tell me about yourself and your background in Astronomy and the kind of work that you do on a day-to-day basis. 

[00:09:40] Kevin: So, my background is, is actually in nuclear physics. I got involved in Astronomy as manager of the SALT Collateral Benefits program in 2006. That was at the South African Astronomical Observatory.

[00:09:54] And in 2011, I, I was the first director of the Office of Astronomy for Development. So my, sort of astronomy connection has been largely in the form of science communication, astronomy communication, and education. 

[00:10:13] Kaashifa: Talk me through how you felt finding out that the IAU would be hosting the general assembly on the African continent and specifically in South Africa for the first time ever.

[00:10:22] Kevin: Oh, it was very exciting. It was back in Vienna in 2018 and we had put in the bid. The bid presentation was done by Vanessa McBride and in the closing ceremony of the, of the General Assembly in Vienna, they opened the envelope and announced that the next general assembly goes to Africa. So it was, it was, it was quite cool the, the president at the time, Ewine van Dishoeck you know, didn’t say it goes to South Africa.

[00:10:58] She said it goes to Africa because we always made it an African bid. So yeah, it was a really happy moment because this was the second attempt. The first attempt we made was in 2015 and- and we were not successful. And yeah, this was second time lucky. 

[00:11:15] Kaashifa: Lovely. What was the planning and organizing process like for such a momentous event?

[00:11:20] Kevin: Shoh. Well, when we came back from Vienna and we had this, this delegation that was there in, at the general assembly in Vienna, coming back, you know, on a high celebrating, the first thing we did within, within a day or two was to sit down and think, okay. What is our vision for 2024? And it started from that point, um, drawing up our vision, what we wanna achieve, what we wanna see by 2024.

[00:11:53] And- and then it was a case of making it happen. So, part of that vision was rallying the African astronomical community. So the following year in 2018, in 2019, we had a meeting, with Astronomers and students from across the continent. We just called the meeting Astronomy in Africa, and that meeting gave rise to a renewed African Astronomical Society and that African Astronomical Society then continued to grow a network of an astronomy community across the African continent.

[00:12:38] This then led to, you know, the, the formalities of signing an agreement with the, International Astronomical Union. So we signed an agreement between the National Research Foundation and the International Astronomical Union to host the General Assembly. And then it was, you know, the big push of getting the logistics done.

[00:13:08] So we basically, went from, from signing agreement to appointing a professional conference organizer to promoting our general assembly at other events and meetings. Um, and then along the way we were not happy with the conference organizers, so we separated from them and took on a huge load of volunteers who have been exceptional.

[00:13:43] And they, they’re the ones that basically put together the details of the conference with a lot of hard work right. 

[00:13:50] Kaashifa: And you mentioned the African Astronomical Society. Would you mind speaking more about that? 

[00:13:54] Kevin: So this is a body of professional astronomists. So the African Astronomical Society aims to be sort of the voice of astronomy in Africa.

[00:14:03] So their, their mission is to try and promote astronomy and grow astronomy on the continent. So with the with the general assembly coming up, there was an extra incentive in terms of you know, rallying people to prepare for this meeting. So the African Astronomical Society does things like give seed grants for early career researchers, they have various committees. They host an annual meeting, and so they have done a really good job in bringing together the astronomy community in this region. And, the level of, presentations of talks have just been getting better and better and here at the IAU General Assembly, I think this community that was rallied by the African Astronomical Society is here and presenting to the global community.

[00:15:12] Kaashifa: What are your expectations for this general assembly going into it? 

[00:15:16] Kevin: What were my expectations now that it, yeah. So going into this meeting, I, I think the one thing that we all hoped for, that we, that we wanted to achieve was to bring people together. We, we really wanted a global participation. We wanted to have a sufficient number of astronomers to make it worthwhile so that we could get as many new collaborations established through people sharing their science. But we also wanted this meeting to have an impact, have an impact on schools, having impact on the public, on society in general. And we’ve, I think we’ve largely achieved that. 

[00:16:10] Kaashifa: All right. I’m glad you mentioned the schools. I know that there were various school tours here, and also I believe that some astronomers went to schools to talk about that.

[00:16:19] What was the impact and the reaction from students at those schools and for schools touring here? 

[00:16:25] Kevin: Cool. So the schools program was a combination. So there’s, there’s a lot of astronomers here in Cape Town now for this meeting. And so prior to the conference, we called out for potential hosts of astronomers.

[00:16:42] So basically, for example, science centers, school teachers, any institutions that would be able to host astronomers and, you know, facilitate them giving talks and so on. And so when we were, advertising these opportunities, we said to all the potential participants of this meeting would you like to go out, visit to schools meet some kids and so on. And we had over 600 volunteers from that, from the participants. So our team led by Duduzile and Sally, they’ve, they basically organized groups of local people to take the international people out to schools. They arranged the school visits and so we’ve, you know, every day there’s been tens of schools that have been visited. Um, from the pictures that I’m seeing and the feedback I’m getting, it’s been excellent in terms of, you know, the kids taking it on very positively and but you know it’s not possible to get to all the schools.

[00:17:58] There are some schools in areas that where, you know, our international delegates, you know, are sometimes warned about or sometimes feel unsafe to go to. And so we’ve also brought students to the venue itself and we try to bring those students from, from those schools that are harder to reach.

[00:18:21] So we have the Astronomers going out to schools, we have the schools coming into the venue and then another big part of our engagement with schools has been that we, with our poster set up where we have 100 screens, webcams, and keyboards- keyboard, mouse, we are using a Raspberry Pie to make each of these screens that we use for our posters into a computer.

[00:18:53] So with these, with these computers, our intention is to give these to 100 schools in the region. And so that would leave a lasting impact. We’d be able to follow up with the schools. Each school would basically have a computer, which we fill with materials, but also that we can connect to the classrooms via Zoom.

[00:19:15] Kaashifa: Alright and in terms of the community, outside of the astronomy community, but various communities within South Africa, do you feel that there’s a greater knowledge of the various space science fields and opportunities that are in South Africa compared to before this general assembly has started particularly among just the general population?

[00:19:37] Do you think they have a greater awareness of astronomy in South Africa? 

[00:19:41] Kevin: I would hope that they do. I can’t say for sure, but, you know, just judging from the number of media interviews we’ve had, the number of journalists that we’ve had, I think there has been a significant amount of awareness created around these you know, this field and the, and the work that we do in astronomy.

[00:20:05] So the- in terms of just the opportunities having so many international organizations here is, you know it’s more than just them coming to talk to themselves. It’s that they want to engage with South Africa, with Africa and I think that it will be the start of lots more collaborations and opportunities for young researchers, for students. So we’ll make sure that that’s part of the legacy. 

[00:20:38] Kaashifa: Alright. What have you already seen or are you hoping to see that this General Assembly does for astronomy in Africa and its expansion and the knowledge about it? 

[00:20:48] Kevin: So I think the biggest thing is to have more international collaborations that will enhance the science coming out of the African continent. When we talk about the importance of collaborations, it’s, it’s because you know we don’t wanna work independently of our colleagues in other parts of the world. We need to have those research collaborations. Those research collaborations also bring in opportunities they bring in research funding.

[00:21:21] They bring in you know, post-doctoral researcher opportunities, student fellowships and so on. And so it will, it’ll help to have a greater amount of of these, of these connections made. And so when when our African astronomers you know, let’s say want to use a big telescope, for example, they will know that, you know, oh, I met this person at the IAU General Assembly, and they might have a telescope I can work with and so on and so we want that to be an, you know, big outcome of this. It’s gonna be hard to quantify, but it’s inevitable that these types of meetings bringing people closer, enhance the research coming out of the continent.

[00:22:20] Kaashifa: Alright, so definitely some more opportunities for African astronomers. Lastly, what was your favorite event that you have hosted here? 

[00:22:29] Kevin: Well, so far I think, uh, the highlight has been the link up with the International Space Station on Women’s Day. We, we always dreamed big about what we could potentially do with Women’s Day since it fell right in the middle of the conference.

[00:22:48] And I think what we achieved and especially Sally and Duduzile who lead our outreach committee, they basically arranged for for a connection to the International Space Station together with our technical team. And we spoke to a female astronaut on board Sonny Williams but that was not the coolest part. We actually had two black female astronauts in the audience at the time. And after the connection to the International Space Station where kids got to ask questions to the, to the astronaut there, we had Dr. Mae Jameson on stage and you know, taking questions from the audience and talking about about her work.

[00:23:42] And in the audience as well, we had Sian Proctor was the first- so Mae Jameson was the first African American in space, and Sian Proctor was the first African American female pilot. So these were, yeah, it was just a lot and anyone in the room or watching the stream, I think was lucky to see these inspirational figures all, all in the same room, same place on Women’s Day in South Africa.

[00:24:16] Kaashifa: Great. That’s so wonderful to hear. Thank you so much for your time here, and congratulations for everything that you and your team have put together over this past two weeks. It’s, it’s been amazing to see and to hear about. So thank you so much for all of that. 

[00:24:30] Kevin: Cool. Thank you very much.

[00:24:36] Jacinta: So that was really cool hearing from Kevin one of the main organizers and I think Kaashifa did a great job. 

[00:24:42] Tshia: She did. 

[00:24:42] Daniel: She did. 

[00:24:43] Jacinta: Of interviewing him. And we actually had several interns roaming around on the floor at the microphone, and we’re going to, in upcoming episodes, play the full interviews with- that they did.

[00:24:56] Daniel: But we just wanted to give you a little bit of a taster right now. A little snippet of some of the interviews and, and who was, who was interviewed and just as an example of like who was there at the GA It was so many people from all over the world, from all over Africa and international. So let’s hear from them now.

[00:25:14] Piyali Chatterjee: And today in the afternoon, we celebrated what is known as the India Day in the booth, in the exhibition hall where the Astronomical Society of India has a booth. So we were basically celebrating achievements that we have had in space exploration, which India has had in space exploration.

[00:25:35] Daniel: The GA especially coming to Africa, has really exposed me to the amazing opportunities and research and amazing people that have always been meeting in Zoom meetings, but at least I can see them now at the GA. But the GA uh, South Africa has done a fantastic job in hosting it.

[00:25:51] Shingirai: So the Zimbabwean Astronomical Society is a very, very new society. We had our first meeting in Mae, if I remember correctly, Mae the 13th. So this is a society that myself and fellow Zimbabweans have started to try and encourage astronomy growth, research, outreach and education in Zimbabwe. 

[00:26:11] Francois: Right. We’ve heard from three very interesting people there at the GA, that very much is pretty much the experience in the GA. You walk around, you knock into someone who’s from India, who’s from uk, who was from Kenya. 

[00:26:23] Jacinta: You knock into them? 

[00:26:23] Francois: Yeah. Well, I mean, I was running around. 

[00:26:26] Daniel: Yeah, yeah, me too. I was running around like chicken

[00:26:29] Tshia: Electrons…. 

[00:26:29] Jacinta: There were so many people. I was- like, electrons? 

[00:26:33] Tshia: Yeah, because you all have a full sort of so much energy and you’re just like going. 

[00:26:36] Daniel: No, I mean, if you, if you wanna go deep into it like you are, I was like an electron.

[00:26:40] I was accused of being a blur. 

[00:26:41] Jacinta: You were ionized. 

[00:26:42] Daniel: Yeah. 

[00:26:43] Jacinta: Ionized electron. 

[00:26:44] Daniel: I, I was, you know, I was, I was a probability.

[00:26:47] Jacinta: Ah, yeah. 

[00:26:48] Daniel: And then every now and again I would appear “badum”

[00:26:52] Jacinta: Because somebody measured you. 

[00:26:53] Daniel: Yeah, yeah. Exactly, exactly. 

[00:26:54] Tshia: And at some point he was both there and not there. 

[00:26:57] Jacinta: Oh, I like how we went all scientific with that metaphor. Yeah. Anyway, it was chaos. So many people at the, at the convention center. 

[00:27:04] Francois: Yeah lots of people. 

[00:27:05] Daniel: What did you guys get up to? What, what were your impressions? 

[00:27:09] Jacinta: Well, I can go first because I wasn’t one of the organizers. I intentionally stayed as far away from organizing as possible just because I knew I was also lecturing it, we’re gonna be lecturing at the same time. And that was the correct decision. ’cause it was already at the very like edge of what I could handle. Now I have to admit this, I had for some reason a very negative attitude going into the GA I just had this bad attitude about it. I don’t know where I got this from, but I was like, oh, I don’t wanna spend my time. Two weeks, blah, blah. I need to be lecturing, blah, blah, blah. 

[00:27:38] Daniel: It’s a good voice. 

[00:27:38] Jacinta: Thank you. That, that’s my inner monologue. 

[00:27:44] Daniel: It’s a bad voice. 

[00:27:44] Jacinta: Yeah but I must say it really blew me away. It far exceeded my expectations. 

[00:27:50] Tshia: Was it your first GA?

[00:27:52] Jacinta: It was my first GA, yep. First general assembly. And it was just like this massive festival. I loved, like walking in. There were people from all over the world like. So many of them, you walk into the exhibition hall and there are just like all of these extremely, like colorful and vibrant like displays and like a blowup planetarium and like a huge setup from NASA and like astronauts and Nobel Laureates and like all of this ridiculous stuff everywhere. Politicians and like the SKA had this huge set up and there’s like the countries bidding for the, the upcoming GAs, they all had their stations. I think there was like Western Australia and India and Italy and Chile and a lot of like, yeah, so lots of cultural stuff. There was like a, a like Astro radio, radio astro or something like that. So like an actual radio station. Doing interviews at the time, the whole way through. I liked hearing our ad for our live show being played. That was cool, and then, yeah, like you go to there’s like, I don’t know, three or four scientific, like, symposia going on at the same time, like conferences.

[00:29:05] And so you kind of have to like choose which one you are gonna attend. And you’re like, but I wanna go to all of them at the same time. And so you run between the different rooms and don’t actually see any of them because you’re too busy running between the rooms, and then there’s like these poster sessions where anyone who didn’t get an opportunity to give a talk has made like a poster, but it was really interesting how they did it instead of like having printed out all of our posters and put them on boards because we had to rotate them so much because there was like, I don’t know, hundreds of posters.

[00:29:34] They actually had them on these big TV screens and it was this hybrid thing where like you would go there, stand next to your poster, people would come and talk to you about it in person. And also people online, like could put their videos on and their video would come up also on the, on the corner of the screen and they could talk to you as if they were standing right there and you would just talk back at the TV screen and they could hear you. So it was a really interesting experience, which I thought was, I was skeptical of it, I admit at first, but I saw that it worked quite well. And I think this is, I mean, I dunno how much energy was used up with these TVs, but I thought that it was, it was quite a good approach towards, you know, dealing with the, the whole climate change issue with like, too much traveling for science and if, if we have to like travel less, how can we do that?

[00:30:16] And it was, I think it was a good, good trial of that. I didn’t actually get to go too much, many, like any science talks myself because I was hosting a politician and helping my students and things. I know. But we’ll get onto that in a second. 

[00:30:35] Francois: But you of course gave a talk there as well.

[00:30:36] Jacinta: Did I? Oh, I did. 

[00:30:38] Francois: About The Cosmic Savannah.

[00:30:39] Jacinta: I did, I gave a talk on the Cosmics Savannah. Oh yeah!

[00:30:41] Daniel: I went to that.

[00:30:42] Jacinta: It was like, yeah, we were all there!

[00:30:45] Tshia: Was I?

[00:30:46] Francois: You were, you were.

[00:30:46] Jacinta: Oh?

[00:30:47] Francois: You took pictures…

[00:30:47] Jacinta: Or did you have to go to a different event at the same time?

[00:30:50] Tshia: I dunno, I might have..

[00:30:51] Jacinta: I don’t know. It’s all a blur now. Anyway, we did give a talk, and then like so much entertainment as well, like culture groups and choirs and, um, I loved the flash mob.

[00:31:03] Daniel: Yes.

[00:31:04] Tshia: Yeah.

[00:31:04] Jacinta: Were you there? Did y’all see that?

[00:31:06] Tshia: Yes, I was there. 

[00:31:07] Jacinta: Yeah, it was in the like convention in the exhibition hall and then someone randomly started like singing some African song and we’re like, oh yeah, that’s kind of normal. But then, but then like someone else started singing and I was like, oh yeah, someone else is, you know, enjoying themselves too. And then more people started. I was like, oh my god, is this a flash mob? I’ve never seen a flash. Oh my God. It’s happening. It’s happening. And then like this whole, choir started singing for ages. We can play the, some of the audio now

[00:31:44] [Audio Plays]

[00:31:49] Tshia: And that’s the UP Ovuwa Ensemble choir. I think they really did so great. I mean they were quite amazing.

[00:32:00] Daniel: It’s amazing.

[00:32:01] Tshia: Um, but I think what Jacinta’s also describing is how different, I mean, it’s a good thing. I asked is this your first general assembly? Because I don’t think you can get this feel anywhere else but in Africa.

[00:32:13] Daniel: Yeah.

[00:32:13] Tshia: And I think that’s what we did. That’s, that, that was done very well here. Um, the vibes. 

[00:32:18] Jacinta: The vibes they brought out, the African vibes was there.

[00:32:20] Tshia: Yeah. It, it was just there the way we wanted it to be. Um, but it was also busy.

[00:32:25] Jacinta: Yeah.

[00:32:26] Tshia: And sho!

[00:32:27] Daniel: Like that’s two weeks.

[00:32:29] Tshia: It’s two weeks early mornings.

[00:32:31] Daniel: Yeah.

[00:32:32] Tshia: Late nights.

[00:32:32] Jacinta: Late nights. Because there was like expensive parking, expensive food.

[00:32:39] Daniel: Not for me, because I was in a hotel across the road. I was like 150 meters away. And just as well, because I was-

[00:32:46] Tshia: You were walking on gold.

[00:32:47] Daniel: Yeah, I was. I mean, I was there from 6:00 AM until midnight every day. Pretty much.

[00:32:53] Jacinta: I guess I should Maebe not admit on recording that I parked there too, even though I wasn’t staying there. No one told me off.

[00:32:59] Daniel: Oh my God.

[00:33:00] Jacinta: I thought that we were allowed to-

[00:33:02] Daniel: You parked at the hotel?

[00:33:02] Jacinta: Yeah, I did it the first day and no one said anything, so I was like, oh, I guess we’re allowed to do this.

[00:33:07] Francois: You didn’t tell me.

[00:33:07] Daniel: Just smiled and wave….

[00:33:10] Tshia: But yeah, I was, I was also a chair of a full on session. So I had to make sure that everything ran smoothly for that because you always know how this goes with talks. It’s people must admit talks on time but…

[00:33:28] Jacinta: What were you chairing?

[00:33:30] Tshia: Um, the sessions, the OEE sessions. So I was the chair of the halls for the whole full day for…

[00:33:36] Jacinta: the symposium?

[00:33:37] Daniel: Office of, of astronomy education?

[00:33:39] Tshia: Yes.

[00:33:39] Jacinta: Office of Astronomy Education Symposium? No

[00:33:42] Tshia: Office of Astronomy for Education

[00:33:45] Jacinta: Education oh, okay.

[00:33:45] Daniel: Sorry. That’s my bad.

[00:33:47] Jacinta: Okay. Yeah, so you, I saw you running around like a headless chicken several times.

[00:33:52] Tshia: Um yeah, so I needed to get that in order. But that went, like, that was on the second day, I think. So it was a bit too much to try and do because, you know, the first few days are when all the mistakes happened, right? Yeah. But that went really well. The talks that we gave were like, the, the quality of talks generally was so good. I was not expecting that, I must say.

[00:34:14] Jacinta: Hmm. Congratulations.

[00:34:15] Tshia: They really, yeah. Thank you. I didn’t, I didn’t give the talks.

[00:34:19] Jacinta: Congratulations. No you ran a good event

[00:34:20] Tshia: There are other people know, who actually gave the talks and I also went to some, some of the science talks, some, some of the outreach talks. That were there, also some interesting talks on like the use of telescopes in high schools and how those students are now actually publishing data from. I thought that was really great because we always talk about how do we take astronomy into the schools, but we don’t actually give them the, the resources to actually do astronomy. And so this was one of those movements that are being done by the LCO group, I think, and Michael Fitzgerald and Edward Gomez, that whole group, I think they really did well. And the talks that they gave was just like, we need to get into this you know, if we speaking about astronomy for education, astronomy for development, but we never actually speak about the resources that we actually use in astronomy to do these things and how students can get into using them then.

[00:35:16] Definitely doesn’t make sense. I think that was one of the things I actually enjoyed, like just seeing that bridge being done so well there were many other things. Oh yes. We had astronauts. Yeah, we have astronauts.

[00:35:28] Jacinta: Did you go to dinner with an astronaut?

[00:35:30] Tshia: I went to dinner with an astronaut.

[00:35:32] Jacinta: Oh my God.

[00:35:33] Daniel: Out of this world

[00:35:34] Jacinta: ba dum tss!

[00:35:39] Tshia: With Sian Proctor I went to dinner with her on one of the days and she was, she’s really cool. She is really cool, people. I-

[00:35:46] Daniel: yeah yeah.

[00:35:47] Jacinta: Just bow down.

[00:35:48] Tshia: Oh, no doubt.

[00:35:49] Jacinta: Queen.

[00:35:49] Daniel: You know, so well spoken and like engaging and just like happy to talk and share and…

[00:35:55] Tshia: Just happy, like just all the time.

[00:35:57] Daniel: Very cool. Yeah.

[00:35:57] Tshia: Then she asked the question, does anyone want to go to space? And like, you know, you see all these hands going up and she’s like, yeah, I was also one of those people. And I actually went and I thought, oh, that’s really cool.

[00:36:10] Jacinta: Yeah, I saw her talk, but I was online ’cause I couldn’t get there, um, in after my lecture. But she was talking about how she was like an artist and at first, like that was part of the reason why she got to to Space and everything. Like, so cool.

[00:36:23] Daniel: Yeah. Really cool.

[00:36:25] Tshia: And then the other person is Mae Jameson?

[00:36:28] Jacinta: Mae Jameson

[00:36:29] Tshia: She was also there. She also gave a talk on Women’s Day, which was quite amazing to have a female astronomist, the first black female astronomer. Let me correct myself there. Astronaut, astronaut, astronaut, sorry. Too many corrections there. 

[00:36:44] Jacinta: And she was in that session where there was a live link up to the International Space Station, right?

[00:36:49] Tshia: Yes.

[00:36:49] Jacinta: That’s so cool.

[00:36:50] Tshia: And it was, what was really great was it was Women’s Day, and then we had her speaking, but there was also the connection with the ISS and an astronaut was actually the one responding to the question the female astronauts actually. So it was just like-

[00:37:08] Jacinta: oh, I missed that session, but that sounds it so, so cool. So wholesome.

[00:37:12] Tshia: Yeah and Sian also joined, so we just like

[00:37:14] Jacinta: Okay, amazing. Perfect. Yeah.

[00:37:16] Tshia: So the GA- those moments are really cool. It, it’s the engagements with people I guess that make it a lot better yeah.

[00:37:23] Jacinta: Yeah.

[00:37:23] Daniel: What did you get up to Francois? Was it too soon?

[00:37:27] Jacinta: Oh, no, it was during the, during your honors?

[00:37:29] Francois: No, I was a volunteer. Oh, that’s, so in order to afford to go I had to volunteer to, run mics and run around and help the organizers and stuff. So I had a wildly different experience. Uh, but it was weird to go ’cause it’s my first conference. But it didn’t really feel like that ’cause I was basically running around. Yeah although I was sort of in the JWST room a lot of the time with mics running around, which was, interesting. Listening to science talks were great and so on.

[00:38:03] Jacinta: That’s cool. I missed that entire symposium.

[00:38:06] Francois: Oh, it was great.

[00:38:06] Jacinta: I was kind of devastated.

[00:38:07] Francois: It was really cool.

[00:38:08] Jacinta: So the James Webb Space Telescope, right?

[00:38:10] Tshia: Yeah.

[00:38:10] Jacinta: Like the, the one of the biggest newest, you know, or technically not technically, but like replacement of the Hubble, but like super cool big telescope, making revolutionary discoveries. And you were in the actual conference where they were presenting these new discoveries.

[00:38:23] Francois: Yeah, it was really cool.

[00:38:24] Jacinta: That’s awesome.

[00:38:25] Francois: It was really fun to watch. Um, but. Yeah, it was a lot of running around, a lot of like doing stuff, organizers and so on. So yeah, a bit of, a bit of, a bit like Dan blurring around. Not as busy, of course, but you know. Yeah running around.

[00:38:40] Daniel: I was on that WhatsApp group too, but I was, I was creating the work.

[00:38:43] Jacinta: But you, no, you were the minion?

[00:38:48] Francois: Pretty much yeah.

[00:38:49] Tshia: I have the WhatsApp group muted.

[00:38:52] Daniel: I’ve gone, I like all the WhatsApp groups are just like the next week gone. I’m out I haven’t looked at them since. Wow why would I?

[00:39:02] Francois: What if a particular highlight was the talent show that was hilarious.

[00:39:05] Daniel: Oh, did you go?

[00:39:06] Francois: Yeah, because I went, so I didn’t perform of course I have no talent, but that one was fun. No, it was fun to watch.

[00:39:11] Tshia: Yeah. So the-

[00:39:11] Francois: Actually quite interesting.

[00:39:13] Tshia: Yeah so there was the astronomers got other talents.

[00:39:16] Francois: Yes.

[00:39:16] Tshia: Um, and I really liked that other, because, you know, just doing Astronomy is a talent on its own.

[00:39:20] Daniel: Exactly you see, you do have talent.

[00:39:22] Jacinta: What kind of performances did they do? I miss that entirely.

[00:39:25] Francois: Uh, lots of singing, lots of dancing. There was one guy with a guitar and then there was that guy who made a song for the GA

[00:39:31] Daniel: Oh yeah, yes ghanain guy

[00:39:38]

[00:39:38] Daniel: Yeah the other things it 

[00:39:39] Francois: was mainly, yeah, it was mainly singing and dancing and, uh, there was one older astronomer who did a number from Cats.

[00:39:46] Daniel: Beautiful.

[00:39:47] Francois: Which was hilarious.

[00:39:47] Daniel: Memory.

[00:39:48] Jacinta: You can’t

[00:39:49] Francois: Yah memory.

[00:39:49] Jacinta: Was it good?

[00:39:50] Francois: Yeah, it was.

[00:39:51] Jacinta: Oh, okay. Sorry. I was gonna say, you can’t, like,

[00:39:53] Daniel: What a song

[00:39:53] Jacinta: You can’t say bad things on air, but if you’re saying it was actually good.

[00:39:56] Francois: No, well, yeah, I enjoyed it.

[00:40:00] Daniel: Oh, there’s some big notes you gotta get to.

[00:40:02] Jacinta: That’s, it’s ambitious for sure and Dan, how was your experience? I- you were, yeah, you were definitely a blur. Like what, you were part of the whole organizing.

[00:40:12] Daniel: Yeah, so I was, I was one of the main ones. Yeah, one of the main ones. So I was responsible for all the media communications. So, basically we did a, a daily newspaper that went out every morning at like 6:00 AM which is why I was up at. I don’t know what time I was up. I just didn’t sleep and yeah, so that was the sort of recap of the, the previous day with photos and stuff, and then articles and then also like what was coming up.

[00:40:41] So we put, put that out every day, which was really cool, and went really well and then, you know, running all the, the comm stuff; so moving the photographer around. We had a brilliant photographer, Fred Bradley.

[00:40:52] Tshia: Oh, he was amazing.

[00:40:52] Jacinta: Yeah.

[00:40:52] Daniel: Yeah, he was, he was incredible. He was just everywhere. He was also, just popped up exactly where you needed him, whenever you needed him. And then now the media, I mean, we, we had a huge amount of media coverage. We had like, live crossings with, with national tv, like multiple times. So the first couple of days that was like, all I did. Finding people to be interviewed like dealing with the, the broadcasters and-

[00:41:18] Tshia: Just my pleasure, Dan you’re welcome.

[00:41:21] Daniel: Thank you.

[00:41:22] Jacinta: Were you interviewed?

[00:41:23] Tshia: Yeah.

[00:41:24] Daniel: Yeah. It was like, oh, like, like

[00:41:26] Jacinta: Were you the poster childs here?

[00:41:28] Daniel: Yeah “Tshia like please do an interview.” “Like, no, can’t”, like, “come on!” I mean, I just get like a list, like right we need six people and we need them at 10:15. I’m like, mm okay.

[00:41:38] Jacinta: But at least you just like, like if you throw out a fishing rod, you catch like 10 or 20 astronomers at any given time.

[00:41:44] Daniel: Yeah. But, but then they don’t always show up and, yeah.

[00:41:48] Jacinta: True.

[00:41:48] Daniel: And also the I mean, I shouldn’t complain, but like the media also like, oh, we changed our minds. Like, like, wait, what? Like, you know? so yeah, that was, the first few days were particularly intense with all the, the media stuff after that had calmed down a little bit, but still like the, the daily newspaper and then all the other stuff that was going on. I mean, just- 

[00:42:10] Jacinta: You were schmoozing the whole time

[00:42:12] Daniel: and Yeah, I did a lot of schmoozing with, then there was a lot of

[00:42:14] Jacinta: With like I don’t know high level- the minister! Yeah the Minister of Science.

[00:42:17] Daniel: The minister came and yeah, there were all these like you know, ambassadors and, and the like. So there was like a, a fancy breakfast, which you went to Jacinta too. 

[00:42:27] Jacinta: Um, oh yes, I was

[00:42:28] Daniel: You do love a good schmooze too.

[00:42:29] Jacinta: Yeah, well, when I can, no. I got to host the acting high commissioner of Australia to come visit, David Hayan and that was really, really cool. That was such a good experience. And so I got to go to like big wigs, fancy breakfast where there was like, the guest speakers were like a Nobel laureate, like, okay Brian Schmitt, Phil Diamond, the director general of the SKA, Mae Jameson, an astronaut and there was also

[00:42:54] Daniel: Kgotso Mokhele

[00:42:54] Jacinta: Yes who was the first director of the

[00:42:57] Daniel: The NRF

[00:42:58] Jacinta: The National Research Foundation

[00:43:00] Daniel: And like the brainchild of SALT

[00:43:01] Jacinta: and yeah, the brainchild of the SALT telescope and, so I was just sitting there like, I didn’t even know what this breakfast was for I was just told to rock up for breakfast at this time. And then there’s Dan in this like full on suit and I was like, what is happening right now? And they was like all the, just an entire room of VIPs and guys, the breakfast, it was so good.

[00:43:19] Francois: What did you have?

[00:43:21] Jacinta: I don’t actually remember, but it was like a buffet. So, you know when you just go and get one of everything? And then Dan and I could like collaborate on making sure that the right people schmoozed together. We were like maneuvering, you know, manipulating people next to each other. Great. I love that.

[00:43:34] Daniel: I don’t remember the breakfast either all I remember was just coffee.

[00:43:37] Jacinta: Yeah. Lot of coffee just like injection into my face.

[00:43:40] Daniel: I do, I think I was like always in a suit. I think I wore a jacket like all the time. 

[00:43:43] Jacinta: Yeah. 

[00:43:44] Tshia: You did yeah.

[00:43:44] Daniel: Except when I wore a tux.

[00:43:48] Jacinta: No, it was cool.

[00:43:49] Daniel: Oh man yeah, it was, it was intense. It was cool. It was a good experience. I did walk out of it being like, I will never do that again. Like it was, it’s done. I’m glad I did it. But it was like, it was a good experience. Yeah, it was, it was good to organize something of that scale. Yeah and yeah, but tough. The one other thing I wanted to say, because I have a great like story about it, is one of the things that the GA that they do, so in 2006 they voted Pluto to be a dwarf planet, not a planet anymore. So at the General Assemblies, I have these resolutions, which then everyone, every member of the International Astronomical Union, gets to vote on a resolution.

[00:44:29] Tshia: Yeah and I did vote this year oh, I was so excited- last year.

[00:44:32] Daniel: Me, me too.

[00:44:33] Jacinta: I did, I think I did. I can’t remember now.

[00:44:35] Daniel: So there, there was a resolution on like satellites interference , so basically like trying to regulate the satellites and their effect on astronomy and then the other one was on lunar time. Which was so cool. Like, because I don’t know if you’ve actually sat down and thought about lunar time because on South Africa, on, on Africa, South Africa, on the world earth, we have time zones, right?

[00:45:00] But time is, you know, you just add an hour, you subtract an hour, happy days. What are you gonna do when you go to the moon? Any ideas? You don’t get to just add an hour, subtract an hour. Why not? Time runs at a different speed.

[00:45:16] Tshia: Yep.

[00:45:17] Francois: Yeah.

[00:45:17] Jacinta: Wait, what?

[00:45:18] Daniel: Yep. Gravity’s different on the moon. So time runs differently.

[00:45:23] Tshia: Differently.

[00:45:24] Daniel: You can’t, you can’t have like a conversion between earth time and moon time it has to have its own time running independently of Earth

[00:45:33] Jacinta: really?

[00:45:34] Francois: Makes sense.

[00:45:34] Daniel: So now they’re setting up like, you know, a GPS system for the moon was its own time.

[00:45:40] Jacinta: That’s cool.

[00:45:40] Tshia: And we voted on that.

[00:45:42] Daniel: Yeah.

[00:45:42] Jacinta: Okay. I did not vote on that I missed that entirely. That’s so cool.

[00:45:45] Francois: What was the vote? What was the vote on if to do that or not?

[00:45:48] Daniel: So it was basically to do it and how to do it.

[00:45:50] Francois: Ah.

[00:45:51] Daniel: And the idea is that there will not be no time zones on the moon there’s like coordinated Lunar time. There’s only one time on the moon and it runs at its own speed, it’s only one time.

[00:46:00] Francois: Oh, okay.

[00:46:01] Daniel: So that at least now when you land, you know, what time you land and like, you know Moon time when the flights take off and land, it’s like, it’s a little bit easier. Anyway, that was cool. I like that.

[00:46:12] Tshia: I think that was really cool as well

[00:46:15] Jacinta: I was just did this to say that we’ve got three minutes left of this recording, but I totally forgot that we’re actually video now.

[00:46:21] Tshia: I was about to say.

[00:46:24] Daniel: Yeah at least it wasn’t One minute.

[00:46:26] Jacinta: Oh, well before we quickly like wrap up- Hey!

[00:46:33] Daniel: Or two

[00:46:34] Jacinta: Okay, but like guys, we had the live, our live show as well. Yeah. Right?

[00:46:37] Francois: Yeah.

[00:46:37] Daniel: Yeah.

[00:46:37] Jacinta: How cool was that?

[00:46:38] Daniel: Yeah so we have, we have played the live show episode already, so hopefully you had to listen to it super fun. Definitely the highlight for all of us, for the GA.

[00:46:49] Jacinta: Well it was for me

[00:46:50] Daniel: Gotta be, gotta be.

[00:46:51] Francois: Of course.

[00:46:52] Jacinta: Yeah I mean, behind the scenes-

[00:46:54] Daniel: Tshia say it was your highlight. 

[00:46:56] Francois: It’s not

[00:47:00] Tshia: My highlight?

[00:47:03] Jacinta: Well, how did you find it?

[00:47:04] Tshia: Well, I must say that we looked really amazing.

[00:47:08] Jacinta: We did, we looked damn good

[00:47:09] Tshia: For our life show we looked amazing.

[00:47:10] Jacinta: We don’t say so ourselves.

[00:47:12] Tshia: There are pictures on our website, take notes

[00:47:15] Daniel: and you go back to them regularly.

[00:47:18] Jacinta: I do

[00:47:18] Tshia: I actually have one of my pictures from there as, as a profile picture, one of my social media. It’s really cool.

[00:47:24] Jacinta: It’s a cool photo from the, the professional photographer took that photo in your amazing live dress and your head headwear.

[00:47:31] Tshia: Yeah, that was really cool. But my highlight also was the, hmm, like, it wasn’t really a big thing, but it was quite big for me was- so an astronomer from Germany came to South Africa many years ago and they did some work and collected some data at the Boyden Observatory, which is in Free State and all that data long time ago it was collected on some plates that he then took all the way back to Germany and during the GA Marcus Poal, who’s the director of the I-U-O-A-E and works at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, returned those gold plates back.

[00:48:10] Daniel: That’s pretty cool. 

[00:48:11] Jacinta: Oh, wow.

[00:48:12] Tshia: Back to South Africa and someone from the Boyden Observatory in Free State was there to receive these, and I think that was my highlights, just like

[00:48:20] Jacinta: That’s really cool.

[00:48:20] Daniel: That’s amazing yeah, they repatriated.

[00:48:21] Jacinta: That’s goosebumps.

[00:48:22] Tshia: Yep.

[00:48:22] Daniel: Oh yeah. That’s pretty cool.

[00:48:24] Tshia: Yeah.

[00:48:24] Jacinta: That’s really cool. But back to the live show, because I do, I just remember that we’ve actually got the studio. We don’t have to get out at 12, do we?

[00:48:33] Daniel: But we should, we should wrap up.

[00:48:35] Jacinta: Yeah we’re fine. Okay, we’re fine. Okay we can just finish this discussion. Um, yeah. So, but like, okay. Francois so you weren’t a host yet.

[00:48:43] Francois: Yeah.

[00:48:43] Jacinta: You were, you were our manager. So you came on stage to get your flowers and your thanks to the ends.

[00:48:47] Francois: Oh, the chocolates were delicious.

[00:48:48] Jacinta: Were they?

[00:48:48] Francois: Yeah.

[00:48:48] Jacinta: Okay.

[00:48:49] Francois: Fantastic.

[00:48:50] Daniel: I didn’t get chocolates.

[00:48:51] Tshia: Yeah, neither did I.

[00:48:53] Jacinta: Well, you should have organized them for yourselves, guys. You’re not, I don’t have to be the only one doing the organization, but I did ’cause you guys were, to be fair, organizing a lot of other things in the GA. But anyway, my question for you, Francois, was how was the show from the audience?

[00:49:08] Francois: I think it was really good. It was, it was an interesting experience to see the Cosmic Savannahh hosts live. I think that was a pretty interesting thing.

[00:49:17] Daniel: Um, well, everyone’s experiencing it now too.

[00:49:20] Jacinta: Yeah, it’s true.

[00:49:20] Francois: Well, that’s true, but I, at that point, you’d never have seen them. It’s a bit like when you listen to someone on the radio for a while and you see what they look like, right.

[00:49:29] Daniel: No, your voice doesn’t match.

[00:49:31] Francois: Yeah.

[00:49:32] Daniel: Yeah, our voice matches.

[00:49:34] Francois: I think that was, that was probably what most people were thinking, but I thought it was great.

[00:49:37] Daniel: That’s the first people were thinking?

[00:49:39] Jacinta: To be fair, you know what we look like!

[00:49:42] Daniel: Contact us at Cosmic Savannah, you want and let us know if our voices match and if not, we can swap around.

[00:49:49] Francois: Yeah, we can, we can do that now. But yeah, I think it was very energetic. The live band was fantastic. I think that was great. Brian is always a great, person and as well.

[00:50:00] Jacinta: And Nicole?

[00:50:00] Francois: Yes, Nicole was fantastic as well. It was just, it was, it was a great event. I think you guys looked a bit nervous at the beginning.

[00:50:07] Daniel: Oh, fair enough.

[00:50:08] Francois: I, I think everyone understood. Of course. Yeah. It’s first live event. It’s not easy to perform live in front of that many people. From your guys’ perspective, I wanted to ask. What was it like to just see that many people?

[00:50:20] Daniel: Yeah, it was cool

[00:50:21] Francois: like listening to the cosmics offender because usually it’s not that you like sit in the little pendulum room and there’s no one there and it’s just you guys and so on, and that must have been a bit weird.

[00:50:30] Daniel: Yeah, it was cool. I mean, I think like, you know, you can look at the stats and how many downloads we had, but it doesn’t quite feel like people are listening. You interact with a few people, you’re like, oh, I love your podcast. Um, you’re like, yeah

[00:50:42] Jacinta: you’re just saying that.

[00:50:43] Daniel: But having everyone there was, was pretty cool. And I mean, like you said, like the marimba band was like, oh, spot on

[00:50:50] Jacinta: Guys we had a marimba band playing our theme song. Like?

[00:50:55] Daniel: Yeah, that was cool which actually, like, I mean, those guys were super impressive because they were great. Like, they arrived like an hour before and I was like, okay, cool. So I sent you the, the theme tune, like, you know, two weeks ago, like, have you been practicing? And they were like when did you send it to us? I’m like, dude, like, come on. Like, this was the, the one thing I wanted you to play our theme tune. He’s like, well, how does it go? I was like let me, let me find it. So I just like go to like my podcast and play like the beginning of an episode and he’s like, okay. Okay and then they just start playing it.

[00:51:28] Francois: Oh, that’s crazy.

[00:51:30] Daniel: Like I was like, yeah, that’s pretty much it. He’s like, we’ve got it. Yeah. No further questions.

[00:51:36] Jacinta: I’m glad you didn’t tell me that because I would’ve had a heart attack.

[00:51:39] Daniel: Oh, by the way, they haven’t practiced at all.

[00:51:41] Jacinta: Like Yeah, but to be fair, we didn’t practice at all.

[00:51:44] Daniel: No and that maybe that did show a little bit. Oh my goodness. I think, but also we, like we. Like screeched in at the last minute.

[00:51:50] Jacinta: Well, that’s what I was about to say. Like for me it wasn’t nerves at all. It was sheer disorganization.

[00:51:55] Daniel: I mean, you weren’t in your dress until three minutes

[00:51:58] Tshia: And makeup

[00:52:00] Jacinta: Well, I mean, things are important, but yeah, we had poor Sumari and some of our interns, Sumari, our social media manager, flew in from Joburg just for the show. And we had her making these like cue cards for us with the stickers on the back. So that, and then it was, it like went right up until like a minute before the show, these were all getting done. I was saying to to Brian backstage, take your badge off, take your name badge off. Come on now. You get in there, now you go sit down. There you go, sit over there. And we hadn’t practiced at all anything.

[00:52:30] Daniel: No.

[00:52:31] Jacinta: Nothing and so we you know, like when we sit in a studio, we usually like start the episode and was like, well that was terrible. Let’s start that again, ’cause we need to like wait to get our vibe and our bands bat, you know, whatever. But we just like, we’re just like, oh no, we are on stage. At the moment.

[00:52:49] Daniel: Um, and I only wrote down one joke.

[00:52:51] Tshia: But I think we got a couple in.

[00:52:55] Daniel: Oh yeah, for sure.

[00:52:56] Tshia: While we started.

[00:52:57] Francois: Yeah. I really liked your, sorry, Jacob joke at the beginning,

[00:53:00] Jacinta: which most people, the audience wouldn’t understand because we edit out that Jacob edits out there.

[00:53:05] Daniel: Well, to be fair, I mean, if they listen to the bloopers at the end of most episodes there’s almost always a story.

[00:53:10] Jacinta: Jacob’s our editor. Yeah so no, I thought it was so much fun though. Yeah. I had such a high afterwards

[00:53:17] Tshia: I must say I, I could not see the people.

[00:53:19] Jacinta: Yeah.

[00:53:19] Tshia: Because it sounded like I was seeing them, but like I just saw no one.

[00:53:23] Daniel: No, you can’t make out a face.

[00:53:25] Tshia: Not at all yeah and I think just before we went on stage, uh, we are just fixing our mics outside and then the band was playing and we just like started dancing.

[00:53:35] Jacinta: Yeah, that’s right that was the moment. Then we were like, yeah, we got this, we got this, this guys

[00:53:39] Tshia: we’re gonna go just now

[00:53:42] Jacinta: Dun Dun Dudududun..

[00:53:42] Daniel: And we went onto the stage and they were like, oh, we don’t got this.

[00:53:45] Jacinta: Yeah I think my, the first thing I did, I don’t know if anyone saw, was trip over the wire on the ground there.

[00:53:53] Daniel: Yeah but then, I mean, the band really helped. I mean, they, like, they helped, they also, like, they played for like 15 minutes before we walked in and like, oh, they, the crowd were loved.

[00:54:00] Jacinta: They loved it. I think it was half an hour and there was like a saxophone at one point.

[00:54:04] Daniel: Yes, yeah and we missed all of that. Yeah they set it, they set a wonderful tone.

[00:54:07] Jacinta: So Yeah but it’s on YouTube and you’ve got the link on the, on the episode for the live show, the full link to the whole YouTube episode and I’ve watched it because I wanted to see the marimba band play, which was really cool.

[00:54:21] Um, alright. So, yeah. And, but actually I did see the audience with my entire third year undergraduate class, which was great. I’m glad they were all there and they cheered for us when we, when we walked on and that like really set the mood.

[00:54:35] Daniel: So it was like that was the lecture for the day.

[00:54:37] Jacinta: Yeah yeah, it was actually, and

[00:54:38] Tshia: she canceled the lecture.

[00:54:39] Jacinta: Yeah on the stage. I canceled the next day’s lecture so that was great. 

[00:54:43] Daniel: That’s why they were all cheering.

[00:54:44] Francois: It was, was they, they got to meet Brian before as well.

[00:54:47] Jacinta: Yeah so Brian and and Nicole both spent like an hour talking to my students. Yes just like, basically just in a pri in a room privately, which was awesome before the show. So thanks very much of them for doing that and then I think other than our live show that my highlight was the closing ceremony when, everyone just started singing shosholoza, which I don’t know if you wanna explain for people who dunno what that is.

[00:55:12] Tshia: I mean, I dunno much about it.

[00:55:13] Daniel: I’m just like she doesn’t speak Zulu. 

[00:55:15] Tshia: Yeah, yeah. But like yeah I think I know that shosholoza, number one, it’s a train. But also people in the mines also used to sing shosholoza.

[00:55:27] Daniel: So yeah, it was like the migrant workers. When they were sort of coming from sort of the provinces to the mines and yeah. So it was, it was one of the songs that was huge. You know, like we, we sort of, we are working together, we are going like through the mountains and, and yeah. It’s, it’s a we’ll play, we’ll play a little bit of it now. You’ll, you’ll hear, but it’s a, it’s become a real sort

[00:55:51] Jacinta: of anthem

[00:55:52] Daniel: Almost anthem yeah. So like, I mean, I, we do, we definitely don’t need to get talking about my running, but like the, the big comrades- the huge running race that happens every year. Like they play it at the start and it’s

[00:56:05] Jacinta: oh my God, just got goosebumps

[00:56:06] Daniel: I mean tears. Yeah tears. Like, it’s just like all these strong, powerful people like singing and oh my gosh, it’s very cool.

[00:56:14] Jacinta: What, what does shosholoza actually mean?

[00:56:16] Daniel: It means like, work together. I think like, you know, like we, you know, we’re together, we together we got, we are moving forward together.

[00:56:22] Tshia: Like yeah, it has a lot of- it’s about moving from one place to another. There’s, there’s a, there’s a word in English, almost like perseverance, right?

[00:56:35] Jacinta: Perseverance.

[00:56:35] Daniel: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:56:36] Jacinta: Okay. Amazing. Anyway, it was so cool because I, I don’t know, I guess it was a semi flash mob where all the organizers had like learnt the song and learnt the dance, some dance together, and then everyone kept coming up on stage until the stage was full.

[00:56:49] Daniel: And, um, I don’t know. I think if you if you’ve spent more than a few years in South Africa, you probably know shosholoza. 

[00:56:55] Jacinta: Oh no. But the dance, is there a dance that goes with it or?

[00:56:58] Daniel: Oh, no, just like a forward back, like a-

[00:57:00] Jacinta: Oh, okay. Okay well, anyway, so I was

[00:57:02] Daniel: Feel it in your soul Jacinta

[00:57:03] Jacinta: Oh, I felt it in my soul. I was singing my little Lungs out. You’ll, you’ll see I’ve, I’ve recorded some of it on my phone, so I’ll play it. We can play it for you and yeah, it was just, it was such a great moment.

[00:57:31] All right. I think we’ve chatted for a long time today, but you know, I think, I hope people will have listened to the whole thing ’cause they would’ve missed us a lot guys. They would’ve missed us so much.

[00:57:39] Daniel: Sure, and we missed you.

[00:57:41] Jacinta: We’ve missed it yeah. 

[00:57:43] Francois: Alright, so that’s it for today thank you very much for listening, and we hope you’ll join us again for the next episode of The Cosmic Savannah.

[00:57:52] Tshia: You can visit our website, thecosmicsavannah.com. We will have transcript, links, pictures, and other stuff related to today’s episode.

[00:57:59] Daniel: You can follow us on X, Facebook and Instagram @cosmicsavannah, that’s Savannah spelled S-A-V-A-N-N-A-H, and you can now find us on YouTube. We are not only audio episodes but also video episodes are uploaded with closed captions, which can be auto translated into many different languages, including Afrikaans, IsiXhosa and IsiZulu.

[00:58:18] Jacinta: Special thanks today to Kevin Govender for speaking with us and the little snippets from our upcoming episodes.

[00:58:24] Francois: Thanks to our podcast manager, me, our social media managers Sumari Hattingh, Abigail Tambiran for transcription, Shamaan for website design, Emil Mentjies for video creation, and the whole Cosmic Savannahh volunteer team.

[00:58:36] Tshia: Thanks to Mark Wahlnut for music production, Brian Masemola and Mija Wojcik for photography, Kyle Jones for Astro Photography, and Susie cares for graphic design.

[00:58:46] Daniel: We gratefully acknowledge support from the South African National Research Foundation. The Square Kilometer Rail Observatory, the South African Agency for Science and Technology Advancement, the South African Astronomical Observatory, the University of Cape Town Astronomy Department, and the One Button Studio at UCT.

[00:59:01] Jacinta: You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, including YouTube, and we’d really appreciate it if you could rate and review us and recommend us to a friend.

[00:59:12] Francois: We’ll speak to you again next time on The Cosmic Savannah

[00:59:25] Jacinta: Edit point.

[00:59:33] Daniel: Yeah and you can switch your cards if you need to.

[00:59:38] Jacinta: Yes can hear at the end of the video go. “Woo!”

[00:59:42] Daniel: Maybe we can cut that bit out. And we done?

[00:59:47] Jacinta: And cut.

[00:59:50] Daniel: Nice.

[00:59:51] Francois: How do we record?

[00:59:56] Tshia: Oh my God.

Interns:

• Sisa Shibane
• Kaashifa Saloojee
• Karabo Rantwane