The Flight Deck
Diverse, thought-provoking stories from the world aviation and space exploration. Presented by The Museum of Flight.
Episodes
December 19, 2023 • 61 mins
Wendy Lawrence is a retired NASA astronaut and pilot for the United States Navy. She joined host Sean Mobley for a frank and honest conversation about resilience, finding community, and reflecting on her time in the Navy and at NASA through an LGBTQ+ lens.
In Season 3 of The Flight Deck, we’re sharing stories of LGBTQ+ people in aerospace.
Full shownotes at www.museumofflight.org/podcast
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December 12, 2023 • 33 mins
LGBTQ+ people have been part of aviation and space science for centuries. Today’s episode is a bit of a departure from our normal format. Special guest Joalda Morancy rejoins host Sean Mobley to spotlight 10 individuals in aerospace past and present who are part of the LGBTQ+ umbrella.
This list of 10 people is not meant to be comprehensive. If you were making your own list, who would you include? Let us know! Contact us via email...
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December 5, 2023 • 58 mins
Museums are places where history is presented and interpreted, and presenting and interpreting the stories of LGBTQ+ people in aerospace brings with it unique challenges for the people doing the interpreting. Isaac Fellman and Tony Pankuch, two thinkers in the museum and archives world whose focus is on LGBTQ+ stories, join host Sean Mobley to consider people like Sally Ride, Amelia Earhart, Josephine Baker and others from aviation...
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November 28, 2023 • 59 mins
Dr. Marques Redd and Mikael Owunna are Black, queer Pittsburgh-based multidisciplinary artists who weave indigenous African cosmic stories into their work. A recent film they directed, The Primordial House is an example of this, referencing everything from modern pictures of deep space phenomenon to the connections the Igbo people have had to the Sirius star system since ancient times to the celestial stylings of Black jazz artist ...
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November 21, 2023 • 62 mins
Greg Sumner grew up fascinated by airplanes and managed to parlay that love of aviation into a career as a pilot, flying some of the most iconic aircraft out there for United Airlines. He also served as the co-chair of the National Gay Pilots Association, a worldwide organization dedicated to creating community for LGBTQ+ people across all aviation jobs, and fostering a more inclusive industry. He joined me to share some of his fav...
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November 14, 2023 • 71 mins
The history of the gay men who still make up an unusually large percentage of the flight attendant labor force is not well known. Associate Professor of History at Kansas State University Phil Tiemeyer covered this topic in his book “Plane Queer: Labor, Sexuality, and AIDS in the History of Male Flight Attendants.” While the book covers almost a century of history, Phil sat down for an interview that focused on the HIV/AIDS crisis,...
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November 7, 2023 • 38 mins
Author, astrophysicist and science communicator Joalda Morancy wrote their young readers book “Aliens: Join the Scientists Searching Space for Extraterrestrial Life” while they were still a college student at the University of Chicago in 2021. They joined our host Sean Mobley for conversation about science, finding their people, and the reasons genuine representation in STEM helps make our own planet a better place for everyone.
F...
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October 28, 2023 • 44 mins
There’s little about Dr. Margaret “Mom” Chung’s story that you can call ordinary. From her status as the first known Chinese American woman doctor, to her secret mission to recruit pilots for the American Volunteer Group in World War II, to the ways she intentionally transgressed and presented both masculinity and femininity in her life in order to gain access and acceptance, to the thousands of soldiers and celebrities who gathere...
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October 22, 2023 • 89 mins
Welcome to Season 3 of The Flight Deck! This season’s theme is LGBTQ+ aerospace history. We’ll be investigating the ways that LGBTQ+ people have been part of aviation and space exploration since the beginning, and also the ways the aerospace industry has shaped the LGBTQ+ community. We’ve got a fantastic lineup of conversations heading your way this season, and it’s starting off with X-15 historian, transgender activist, Air Force ...
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September 6, 2023 • 10 mins
What a century! We recently visited the National Museum of the Untied States Air Force to get a close-up look at the Century Series aircraft on display there (F-100, F-101, F-102, F-104, F-105, F-106 and F-107). As a delightful bonus to that trip, our Senior Curator Matthew Burchette got to interview Doug Lantry, Curator at the National Museum of the United States Air Force. Not only that, but he did it in one of the NMUSAF's stora...
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August 22, 2023 • 12 mins
If you live in a rural area and don’t have access to a hospital, what do you do in a medical emergency? That’s where Life Flight comes in. Life Flight and other organizations like it use helicopters to whisk passengers in hard-to-reach areas over mountains and bodies of water that would take cars hours to travel, in a matter of minutes. On top of that, the helos are equipped with life-saving equipment to keep a patient stable durin...
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August 15, 2023 • 11 mins
Thousands of satellites are zooming over your head right now, orbiting Earth and beaming down research data, images, phone calls and even Internet access. Did you know that many of those satellites were made within a few miles of The Museum of Flight? Join Geoff Nunn, our Adjunct Curator for Space History, and our Senior Curator Matthew Burchette for a conversation about these small orbiting wonders.
Get the full shownotes and tra...
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August 8, 2023 • 11 mins
Each year, Seafair brings a spectacular air show to the skies above Seattle. The jewel of the show is the annual performance by the Blue Angels, the United States Navy’s demonstration team. This episode features a conversation with some of the behind-the-scenes crew of the Blues, learning about the many people who support the team to keep the Blues in safe condition.
Full show notes ➡️ https://tmof.click/3DM7VKF
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August 1, 2023 • 20 mins
Welcome to Season 2 of The Flight Deck! From now on we’ll be presenting podcast episodes in themed seasons, letting us explore stories from aerospace in entirely new ways. This season is all about “Curator on the Loose!” The Museum of Flight’s hit webseries. With almost 4 million views, the show features our Senior Curator Matthew Burchette taking viewers into areas of the aviation industry they normally don’t get to explore. If yo...
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December 7, 2021 • 13 mins
In the conclusion to a two-part series about the mysterious DB Cooper, this episode picks up the story from its cliffhanger ending in Part I, with Museum of Flight Docent Mike Burns sharing the events in the aftermath of the hijacking, the aircraft involved in the search for Cooper, and the theories that persist even to this day about the true identity of the missing criminal.
Full Shownotes -> https://bit.ly/3rK4BLo
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November 23, 2021 • 18 mins
This episode comes out on the brink of a major anniversary here in Seattle. 50 years ago tomorrow, November 24, on the eve of Thanksgiving, a man known only as DB Cooper boarded a plane in Portland headed for Seattle. What followed is a tale of danger, extortion, and hundreds of thousands of missing dollars - over a million in today's money. Host Sean Mobley sat down with Museum of Flight docent Mike Burns to get the story.
Full s...
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November 2, 2021 • 33 mins
If you’ve shopped in the Museum’s store, Lynda Eck may have helped you with your purchase. Before she started working here at the Museum, however, Lynda had a 35-year career flying with United on aircraft like the classic 747, first as a stewardess, then as a flight attendant. She joins host Sean Mobley for a conversation about her career chock full of stories from the friendly skies.
Full show notes -> https://bit.ly/3CDY5YX
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October 19, 2021 • 22 mins
What’s it like to drift from planet to planet, exploring the universe? In today’s episode of The Flight Deck, you get to do just that. Host Sean Mobley invites you to take a break from the hustle and bustle for a few minutes as he leads you through a game of Alone Among the Stars, a journaling game by Takuma Okada (@noroadhome) where you play an intergalactic explorer chronicling their adventures through a series of writing prompts...
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October 5, 2021 • 23 mins
How does studying a giraffe help make a better space suit?
Dr. Dava Newman is the current Director of the MIT Media Lab and served as a Deputy Administrator of NASA in the mid-2010s. She’s been with MIT’s School of Engineering since 1993, where she ponders questions like how giraffes avoid passing out lifting their little heads up to munch on some trees, and uses these findings to lead a team of innovators creating the MIT BioSui...
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September 21, 2021 • 20 mins
How do you build a rocket engine without blowing your factory up? Vern Estes took on this assignment as one of his first tasks in the family business of model rocket manufacturing. In today’s podcast episode, he recalls reaching the challenging goal of creating a machine that could quickly, and safely, pack model rocket engines to keep up with the voracious demand from a public eager to launch their own kits into the atmosphere.
F...
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