Third Pod From The Sun

At Third Pod, we often talk with researchers about how they grew up to become scientists. But how does an actor become a scientist on screen? In this special episode of Third Pod from the Sun, we talk with actor Anthony Rapp about inhabiting the character of Lt. Commander Paul Stamets on “Star Trek: Discovery.” Rapp, best known for playing Marc Cohen in the original Broadway cast of the Tony Award-winning musical “Rent,” has been on stage since childhood. On “Discovery,” he plays the prickly lead scientist on the eponymous experimental ship. The USS Discovery, on a mission to test a mysterious “spore drive” that operates on an intangible, fungus-like mycelial network strung throughout the universe, has been conscripted into a space war on the Federation’s frontier. Rapp and castmate Wilson Cruz also took Star Trek to new frontiers portraying the first gay couple depicted in Starfleet. We caught up with Rapp at the 2019 Astrobiology Science Conference, co-hosted by AGU and NASA in Bellevue, Washington, where h