Occasionally, I have been able to listen to Radio Lab on WNYC. Every time I do so, I am astonished. Not in a glib bored postmodernist way, but in the way where I find myself sitting on the couch listening, doing nothing but listening and imagining what they are describing. To give you an idea of what the show is about I quote the webpage:
Radio Lab is designed for listeners who demand skepticism but appreciate wonder, who are curious about the world but who also want to be moved and surprised.
I signed up for the podcast of Radio Lab and have been listening to the back catalog. This morning I listened to a show from May of this year about Space. Roving from subjects of the recoding of humankind (and whales) on Voyager, the love affairs of Carl Sagan, details of the history of space, they then switch in to the relationship between art and science in describing our place on the planet and in space. Each minute of the show is, well, again, astonishing.
To make this transition they discussed an artist named Dario Robleto who produced a series of photographs of tomato seeds sprouting. I wondered what you might be wondering right now: how the heck is this related? The seeds were launched into space on the Long Duration Exposure Facility. While only supposed to be in space for a few weeks, this craft was lost in space for years, as the crew scheduled to pick it up died in Challenger. Even more odd is that the craft that did eventually pick up the LDEF was the Columbia.
The seeds were not very healthy, Robleto laments, as he describes the process of acquiring the seeds and attempting to grow them.
The show ends with audio clips from the last time we walked on the moon and the way that the X-Prize unfolded to create a situation whereby a man went into space twice in as many weeks. The commentators along with a sound clip of a man musing about the dangers of space travel combine to point out that there have always been pioneers, lives hav always been risked, and thankfully so - or we would never get anywhere. They do all note that deaths on The Great Plains were much less senstional when compared to an exploding space ship.
But you have to wonder, if there were TV back then, would that have been the case?
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