Geography Is The Moon: It's Not Just The Tides

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The Moon is not just some celestial object in the sky that peers down on us nightly. It's an integral part of the way our planet functions. Not only does it have a physical impact, as we can see with something like the tidal movements of the ocean, but it's also been a huge source of religion, inspiration, science fiction, and eventually, actual science! As such, the Moon has a geography all unto itself...

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
Super duper important question, probably themost important question I've ever asked you,
hunter, Really, what's the phaseof the moon right now? Oh?
Wow, I didn't see that onecoming exactly the phase of I remember there
was a full moon a few weeksago, so it's not full. It
is not full. I feel likeit's waxing or waning something something. Maybe

(00:27):
I don't know. It is usuallyeither waxing or waning as it's right.
So I guess I was playing prettybroadly there, you know. I think
I think we could probably ask,you know, ninety nine percent of people,
and most people wouldn't know. However, I would argue that this is
how most people interact with their withthe moon most right, Like they look

(00:48):
up and see sort of what it'sdoing, is it? Is it up
there? Sort of? Is ita thumbnail kind of thing? Right right?
As it turns out on today,July twelfth, is when we're recording
this, it is a waxing crescentmoon, which means it is thirty seven
percent illuminated, and we are headingwe are spiraling towards a full moon right
now. So that's where we're atfull moon. Yeah, we're yeah,

(01:11):
We're we're getting more moon as thedays go by. So tomorrow, July
thirteenth, will be a first quartermoon, so it'll be forty six percent
illuminated. Okay, I believe.Let's see if I have my I have
my little website here, the nextfull moon will be July twenty first,
where it'll be yea. So let'ssee, as you're listening to this listener,

(01:32):
on the sixteenth of July, youwill be one, two, three,
four, five days away from afull moon. So there you go.
That's your that's your full moon.Check. If you want to know,
if you're doing some star seat lookingat some stars, that night on
the twenty first might not be thebest night as it turns out, and
the moon is quite bright, andwe'll ruin that experience for you. So

(01:53):
as you can probably guess, weare going to talk all about the moon
today. Uh really quick though,before before we get in to it.
Last week, this episode is supposedto come out last week. It didn't.
Obviously you all got a remix episode. Sorry for that. You know,
schedules kind of get away from ussometimes, and you know, this
one's one of the ones that slipped. But we're happy to be able to

(02:13):
bring back and talk about the moontoday because it should be a really fun
episode. Yeah, we're back.Yeah, we also have this is also
one of our episodes where we havea special guest episode that's coming out in
a couple of days. So wehave Trevor Cherlein from more commonly known as
Plateau Astro on social media to helptalk a lot more about the sciencey parts
of what we're going to be talkingabout today. So everything you listened to

(02:35):
today, at least most of thethings you listen today when we talk about
the science. If you want moreinformation, come back and listen to Trevor
talk about it. Highly recommend greatguests. Definitely creat talking out on Thursday
or any other day after. Yeahwe should. I mean we say this,
but having guests is fun. Itis fun. It's definitely something we

(02:58):
want to do more more. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, we don't have
the expertise. So we just talkedabout geography. So let's get back to
the moon. So listener, ifyou did recall, we have done an
episode this kind of moon adjacent.We did a two part episode on the
space race. We covered the classicspace race, we covered the modern space
race on two episodes. We're gonnatalk a little bit about the space race

(03:20):
in this episode because we can't reallyavoid it when we're talking about the moon,
but that those two episodes will obviouslyhave a lot more information for you.
But in both of those episodes,the moon did feature very prominently.
However, it was more of ageopolitical conversation, and so today we're talking
more about We're gonna talk more aboutthe culture of the moon, sort of
what the moon is doing, whatis it, what does it meant for

(03:44):
people? And really how how didwe get a moon in the first place,
Because not every planet has a moon. I think a lot too,
but not everybody have some have lotsof moons, though some have lots of
moons, right Jupiter has like Iwant to say, like thirty moons or
something like that. It's it's incredible. That's a lot to keep. We
do not have. We just havethe one, only the lonely for us.

(04:05):
I also want to call out beforewe get into the actual episode that
I relied heavily on Ben Moore's bookMoon Past President in Future to guid much
of my research. It was reallynice to be able to have a single
book that kind of talked about everythingthat I kind of wanted to cover today.
Obviously, if you want more information, if you're really fascinated by the
moon at the end of today's episode, go check out that book. I

(04:26):
found it to be a really easyread, and he was explaining things in
a way that was understandable for somebodywho's not an astronomer or an astrophysicist,
and I'm definitely not neither of thosethings. So go check it out.
Absolutely. So let's get into it, and we're going to start with why
we have a moon in the firstplace. So Hunter, this, we've

(04:47):
said this before. This might bethe time when we go back the very
farthest we've ever gone. In fact, I don't know how much farther we
can go back at this point unlesswe do a geography as the Sun,
in which case that's probably an episodethat will happen at some point. Yeah,
we might have to do that.But you're right, Well, we
keep pushing it back further, butI can understand for this particular topic,

(05:09):
we have to go back further thanever, further than ever. So,
Hunter, where do you think themoon came from? It came from a
galaxy far far away. I'm notsure a long time ago, just floated
by and wanted to hang out.You know, this is a question that's
never been posed to me before.I'm not sure I've ever thought too much
about this, but but now thatyou pose it, I'm realizing I don't

(05:31):
really have a good idea about wherethe moon came from. You know,
people have ideas, but I think, as we're going to find out,
it's it's it's a mystery still tothis day. Obviously, how could it
not be? Nobody was Nobody wasaround back then. So we're going to
talk about some of the origin theoriesbehind the moon, in particular one we're

(05:51):
gonna talk about one because it seemsto be the most prominent, but it's
just there is no way for usever know, right, and where there
are theories, there's debate, right, So right, and we're gonna we're
gonna come for that to exception,right, Yeah. Yeah. And so
obviously the Moon's origins mystery, butdue to recent science that largely spawned out

(06:14):
of the Apollo programs moon landings,we have sort of some better ideas,
and we're going to talk a littleabout that. So one very important fact
that we learned from Apollo's program.The findings there is that the rocks on
the Moon and the Earth are arevirtually identical. They are, They're very
similar. So see, obviously there'sgonna be some differences, but they're not.

(06:35):
They're not you know, the moon, for example, the Moon isn't
made of cheese, which I thinkis a common children's men had a lot
growing up, and I was alwayskind of suspect of that explanation, but
having never been there, you know, I wasn't sure. And after after
finding this out that that the rockswere basically similar, very similar, This

(06:57):
would lead to a theory called theimpact model. Have you heard of this
theory? Hunter, I'm not familiarwith the impact model, though, so
let's talk about it. So innineteen seventy four, just after the Apollo
program ended, Cornell University hosted aconference on planetary satellites. They're the astronomers.
William Hartman and Donald Davis presented anew model of the Moon's origin.

(07:19):
So this was a new idea.I think people have been thinking about this
for a long time. The Greekthe ancient Greeks have been thinking about this
for millennia. Now, right,how could you not I mean, how
could you look up in the skyand see this thing at night and it
changes and you're wondering, well,where did that come from? Right?
I mean yeah, and yeah,we're going to talk a little bit about

(07:42):
the ancient history as well. Butfor all what you just said, right,
it's this omnipresent entity that's in thesky, there's going to be people
wondering about it. So in nineteenseventy four, these two astronomers sort of
presented a new theory and according toHartman and Davis, a planet, and
this is the impact model theory,A planet the size of Mars, or

(08:03):
roughly equivalent to which is a littlebit smaller than Earth for people who aren't
aren't aware, collided with Earth aroundfour point five billion years ago. So
this is again, this is whyI'm saying, we're definitely farther back than
we've ever been before, and we'venot gone back forward point for a billion
years before. No, I don'tbelieve so so. But it was this

(08:26):
great collision, you know, asit happened, that vaporized a massive fraction
of Earth's surface. Again, obviously, how could it not. Mars is
still really big. It crashes intoanother planet it's going to leave a mark.
And when it happened, the smallerplanet that hit it, it's sent

(08:48):
debris flying into orbit around Earth.Right, And so this smaller planet hit
it, there's debris everywhere, sentit flying around into orbit. That debris
then formed a spinning disc of matterthat eventually coalesced into the Moon. So
at one point, if you lookup to Saturn, or if you see
a picture of Saturn, you cansee that it has a disc right that

(09:09):
sort of you know, debris thatsort of floats around it. Right at
one point. Yeah, right,it's very it's very coolest. But I
would argue Saturn is probably the coolestmoon because or it's the coolest planet because
of that. It's got a littlebit of an edge to it. Yeah,
it's like you know when it's likea planet's like combing its hair back,
you know, it's like the cooloneally. But so at one point

(09:31):
Earth also would likely had some sortof ring as well, and then just
over sort of millions of years,billions of years, perhaps the debris coalesced
and sort of form compacted itself andformed into the Moon that we now have
today. And so that's sort ofthe impact theory. In the years since

(09:52):
Hartman and Davis announced this new theoryof theirs, numerous scientists have contested it.
So we'll talk a little bit aboutsort of what's going on there.
These ideas argue that if a planetcollided with Earth and material material resulting from
that collision combined to form the Moon, then the Moon should clearly be a

(10:13):
mixture of both. So if yougo back to what we already said,
right, the rocks that they sortof found on the Moon were virtually identical
to rocks found on Earth. Therefore, if there was an actual planet that
was not of Earth that collided intoEarth, there would be more of a
mixture, right, solid reasoning,I would catch that. Yeah, I

(10:37):
mean, but unless the planet thatcrashed into Earth was Earth like or yeah,
I don't know, or maybe youhaven't been to that part of the
moon, dark side of the moon, that's where the other rocks are hanging
out. I don't know, Iknow, I mean, these are these
are the questions I had too.The book doesn't dive too much more into
sort of the you know the otheryou know, I guess the debate that

(11:00):
goes back and forth. So thenyou know, there's the theory. Then
there's the debate back and they don'tgo back into like the well then aha,
here's another thing for why the impacttheory that doesn't really do that too
much. But I had some ofthe same questions. It's like, okay,
well they brought back some rocks fromfrom the Moon landings. But they
did they bring back rocks right right? Yeah, I mean they didn't.
They didn't like, they didn't likeget a you know, a tractor up

(11:24):
there and shovel like three tons ofthis stuff. It's it was a relative
oh nothing like that. Yeah.So so I again, it could be
true, but it could also Idon't know. Again, you know,
the dark side of the Moon,maybe that's where all the extra planetary moon
rocks are could be. But soagain to the to the people who are

(11:50):
debating against this theory, apparently tothem, the Moon is too similar to
Earth for the impact model to betrue. No matter where in the Solar
System, the place in it thathit Earth had formed, its chemical properties
would have been different from Earth's.So I guess that's what they were arguing.
And we know this because we've testedmeteorites that formed from rocks on Mars

(12:11):
and they are considerably different apparently fromEarth rocks. So again I don't know.
Again, maybe there's just some hiddenrocks somewhere, maybe it's deeper into
the cross on it, or maybethe impact models wrong, which it very
well likely could be because it's justa theory. It's you know, that's
that's how theories works, about makinga theory about something that happened four billion
years ago, as you might neverbe disproved, right right, Yeah,

(12:35):
So according to them, you know, the impact model doesn't quite work.
However, current science has has comeup with maybe a potential solution to bridge
the two a little bit, amerger if you will, between these these
two sort of ideas. So therecould have been there could have been two

(12:56):
planets, apparently similarly sized planets that, rather than a giant impact, that
sort of combined and coalesced into sortof the Moon. That's sort of what
it's going for. And after theyspiraled around each other, the enormous gravitational
force of the two planets would havepulled them together, forming Earth. And
so that's sort of an idea ofhow Earth formed, and the material from

(13:18):
both planets would have completely mixed andbecome identical the Moon then would have been
the result of a fragment splitting offfrom the still forming planet, and so
that's sort of the other theory.It's like, Okay, maybe it wasn't
an impact, but maybe there's stillsome ideas here. There was two planets
they sort of eventually pulled each othertogether formed to become Earth, and a

(13:39):
smaller fragment that just didn't quite makeit. Maybe it was sort of a
hanger on would eventually depart and becomesort of the Moon. That's maybe how
you can get there. I don'tknow, this is fascinating. I've never
considered that possibility that Earth is reallytwo previous planets. I don't know.
I mean, you know, nobodyreally knows multiaha. Again, the truth

(14:03):
is, none of us are everreally going to know this. That's just
the nature of history, something we'veconstantly said on this podcast, but obviously
for this one it's just going tobe impossible. Absolutely. So let's leave
behind sort of the origins of theMoon. Let's move to sort of the
how the moon has impacted human civilizationsand what it's done for people, because

(14:24):
that's your human geographers, we're culturalgeographers. That's a big part of what
we care about. Absolutely, andobviously the moon. We talked about this
already a little bit. The moonhas obviously had a huge impact on humans
because how could it not right acrosscivilizations, the moon figures prominently, it
would seem. Yeah, yeah,Hunter, how do you think, you

(14:45):
know, if you're looking back toancient history, how do you think people
would have, you know, interpretedthe moon. Well, I think the
moon and the sun are these veryprominent features, and I think lot of
cosmology, a lot of beliefs aboutorigin stories or the way that the world
works, that they become personified instories about gods and goddesses, and so

(15:11):
I think there's probably a lot ofthat. I mean, just you know,
thinking back to Romans and the Greeksand the Egyptians and others, there's
a sun god, there's a moongod, and they were pretty powerful,
and it's probably supposed to a storyor some kind of meaning to the people.
So the religious people they have thisinterpretation and then the moon is used

(15:31):
to tell them about themselves in someway. Absolutely, right, you basically
did you give us a high levelof what we're going to dive a little
bit deeper into. But yes,I mean ancient peoples looked up at these
things, the sun and the moon, and they were like, these are
gods these and which makes sense,right, it's reasonable. These are like

(15:54):
at that moment in time when there'ssort of a prescience kind of world,
say, pre scientific theory, youcould only ever interpret these things as omnipotent
beings. Because when I was akid, I remember laying in the back
of my parents' station wagon, whichwould be illegal and have them thrown in
prison today probably, but you know, back then, people weren't worried about

(16:18):
that as much. For some reason. I remember just staring at the moon
and I felt like it was followingus, and so I remember asking my
parents, you know, why iswhy is the moon following us? And
they're like, well, it's notfollowing us. It's just really big and
kind of always there. But Iwas, I was, you know,
my own self mythology. I waslike, what is this thing? Why
is it always following me? Yeah? Yeah, I mean it's it's it

(16:41):
looks like it's constantly looking down onyou, right, It's like this thing
anyway, So let's talk a littlebit about this. So from from the
Eurasian steps to African planes. Themoon has been a constant presence and has
influenced various religions and idea of ideasaround sort of gods and goddesses. It
was an omnipotent celestial object for humansall around the all around the world.

(17:04):
Right. And the longer that apparentlylonger that these people gazed at the moon,
the more these ancient peoples did seekan explanation for it. And so,
lacking sort of the math and sciencethat we have today, they assumed
that these would be you know,gods and and and so there would be

(17:25):
stories attached to them. Right.So I have an example here from the
Maha Barata, which is a fourthcentury BCE Indian epic, and it explains
h lunar eclipses with with a story. Right, So there's a story up
there. I'm gonna run through sortof high level with the story. This
is not go read the Maha Barataif you actually want the full story,
if you want the version. So, gods and demons, it says,

(17:48):
once agreed to work together to producean elixir of immortality. However, the
gods betrayed the demons and stole theirelixir. During the ensuing quarrel. The
demon Rahu snuck into the god's campand tried to steal it back, but
the Sun and Moon warned the godVishnu, who woke and beheaded Rahu,

(18:08):
little little dark grim. Most ofthem, most of these ancient stories are
that's okay, I have a lotof these kinds of stories. Yes,
Rahu's headless body and bodiless head werethen faded for eternity to chase the Sun
and Moon angrily through the night skyand eclips happens when Rahu's head catches one
of his betrayers and swallows it,causing a darkening of the sky. However,

(18:32):
because he was he's only a severedhead, the moon or sun slips
back out through his disconnected neck.It's a kind of kind of a I
mean, it's it's kind of afantastical story, obviously, but it's it's
like, the idea here is thatit's trying to it's trying to take not
only these two celestial objects that arealready immense and very powerful to these people

(18:52):
who are trying to explain it,but it's also trying to take a certain
event that happens with them and Earth. It's so and explain it, right,
And it's trying to give sort oflogical processes for why why an eclipse
happens and then why why it endsas well, which I thought was really
fascinating. It's a way of tyingthe you know what's in space to the

(19:17):
Earth, right, It's a wayof trying to connect these things. So
it makes sense that people would speculateon this and come up with stories.
Yeah, exactly, well, Hunter, if you can believe it. The
first attempts to actually move away fromsort of super natural explanations of the moon
and and sort of start trying toexplain what actually is happening up there would

(19:40):
actually come much farther back. Itwould come basically in the sixth century of
BCE with with ancient Greece, atime when this would be like a time
when there was a lot of sortof human ingenuity happening. A lot of
philosophers, right, Ancient Greek waswell known for this, But I think
this idea that this was happening soearly would probably still surprise a lot people
that there was ancient Greeks looking upat the moon and thinking, well,

(20:03):
that's not a god, that's somethingelse, and we want to figure out
what that is, and I thinkthat's kind of wild. Most importantly,
time, I guess, and they'llcome up with some interesting ideas. Yeah,
right, exactly. Yeah, Sothe Greeks we had to do.
The philosophers, they didn't have toThey didn't have a nine to five or
anything like that. Their job isjust to think about stuff. Most just
to think about stuff. Yeah.So the Greeks, apparent as far as

(20:26):
we know, were the first tobreak from the idea that God's controlled the
cosmos and the events of the Earth. There could have been other peoples around
the planet, we just don't havethat information on hand. And instead,
the Greeks perceived a world of materialobjects acting under strict laws, and this
would ultimately come to be formed whatwe know today as physics. Right.

(20:48):
So there's a few important thinkers tothat stand outs during this process. There's
Pythagoras, who lived around five seventyto four ninety five BCE and determined that
the Earth was by observing the waythat light reflects on the Moon, which
was a vital step in understanding basicallyspace and sort of everything that would come
after it. Listeners, you mightalso recognize that name Pythagoras is also the

(21:12):
person who invented the or came upwith the pythagoram phthagoram theorem something like that.
It's a math thing. Basically,it's like, instead of going up
and left, you can just dothe crossover something like that. I'm not
a math person, but yeah,I remember that from my math things.
We should all be so lucky tohave one of our ideas endure for you

(21:33):
know, twenty five hundred years.Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. In
fifth century BCE, Parmenidas discovered thatthe Moon reflects light from the Sun,
which again that's another very important aspectof understanding the Moon and sort of how
things are working within our planet.Later on, in the third century BC,
Aristarkis correctly identified the our place inthe Solar System and attempted to gauge

(21:59):
the Moon's distance from Earth. Heapparently used a system of geometry that measured
the time it took for the Moonto cross a shadow. He arrived at
some fairly accurate estimates apparently that wouldbe refined and approved upon later by you
know, astronomers as people were understandingthis as a science. Now this was
you know, this this all seemsvery advanced, right, and we're like

(22:22):
getting to this point where we're like, wow, this is this is actually
getting like you know, I don'tI feel like, you know, we
were learning about Galileo discovering this stuff, you know, two thousand years later,
right, that that kind of stuff. As it turns out, ancient
Greece would would fall the fall bythe wayside as most you know, ancient
empires do as most empires do eventually, and the Romans would rise up in

(22:44):
its place, and they would bringback a lot of the superstition and mythology
with the gods. And so that'ssort of what ended up happening and sort
of curtailed a lot of this scientificinvention, and they theorizing during this period
of time, so great illustration havehow scientific thought is often rejected by people
in power the masses sometimes and well, thankfully that's changed, right, Thankfully

(23:12):
we don't have to worry about thatanymore. Oh sad? All right,
Well, let's let's go ahead andjump to our very first ad break,
and then we're going to come backand we're going to talk a little bit
more about sort of the modern sortof human interaction with the moon and technology
and a little bit of science fictionas well, because the moon has impacted
at all. So I've been waitingfor this, and we're back. We

(23:41):
were talking all about the moon today. That big glowing orb in the sky
that's not the Sun. That's anotherthing. Get to that in the later
episode. Probably we'll see. Ithink it should be an episode the Sun.
I think we're committing to it rightnow. I think I think we're
committing to it. Yeah, right, Well, well that'll happen someday.
I don't in the list, Yep, let's get back. We're going to

(24:03):
talk a little bit more about sortof the more modernish human interaction with the
moon. So one of the biginventions that that we use today for a
lot. I mean, people aregonna have one in their house. But
one of the big inventions that wouldspawn out of people's curiosity with the moon
would be the telescope. Hunter.Have you ever used a telescope before?

(24:23):
I believe I have. I tryingto recall a specific instance of using it,
but I know that I've looked throughone before. Yeah, I mean
it's it's kind of amazing, right, It's like I've I've used one to
look at you know, Jupiter orSaturn, and like you can just have
one and they're they're kind of big, you know, like kind of bulky,
but like it's not like normally large, Like it can stit on my

(24:44):
lap essentially, right, And it'skind of amazing that you can point this
thing out, a celestial object thatlooks like just like a little twinkle of
a star, and from there seein greater detail the rings of Saturn.
Right, that's amazing. Yeah,it's impressive. In fact, you know,
again, we have this episode,this guest episode with with Trevor from

(25:07):
Astro Plateau on Thursday, and nowwe didn't ask him how a telescope works,
And now I'm kind of bummed thatwe didn't do a little bit question
that would have been a really goodquestion. Oh well, it's still a
really fantastic so I come back andlisten to it. Well, So,
the telescope was invented sort of inthe seventeenth century or ce Common era,

(25:27):
and it was inspired by a lotof these original fanciful tales about the Moon.
So with people able to finally seethe Moon's surface reasonably well for the
first time, it sort of begana new age of discovery of astronomy.
Right, this is sort of whatit started, the gears and motion of
you know, what's going on upthere? And it also started to spawn

(25:51):
a lot of science fiction people's popularimaginations, not necessarily about these these things
that were gods or anything like that, but but what was up there?
Right? So authors at the time, as the telescope was being invented in
people were actually getting pictures and beable to look at this thing, they
started speculating about lunar life forms.Right, is there people up there looking

(26:11):
down on us and wondering what's thisblue marble, green, blue green marble
thing? Using their owns or whatever? Yeah, exactly are there rivers and
oceans? Right? These early telescopesyou could see in greater detail, but
you couldn't see to the same degreethat you can see today. So we're
going to talk about there are somereasons why they thought there might have been
liquid water of some form up there, And then are there similar mountains plains

(26:36):
that kind of stuff? Just likewhat's going on? Is there any sort
of similarias between what we experience hereon Earth and up there on the moon.
So some of the stories were wildlyfantastical. So seventeenth century historian,
writer and bishop Francis Godwin wrote TheMan in the Moon, a story about
a man named Domingo Gonzalez who hitchesa vehicle to a breed of swans that

(26:59):
migrate to the Moon. Once there, he discovers an inhabited world with oceans
and a race of tall Christian peopleliving in a lunar paradise. So it
gets a little weird there, littlelittle religiously, but I guess not in
common for this to figure prominently.Yeah it does, I mean, yeah,
it definitely does, especially if youthink about during this time, you

(27:21):
know, this would probably be sortof the latter end of the Renaissance period,
where there's still a lot of interplaybetween you know, arts and religion
and all these kinds of things.Other science fiction stories offered more plausible vision
of lunar travel, something more akinto what astronomers would later actually imagine.

(27:41):
Right. So, for instance,in eighteen sixty five, French author Jules
Verne published De la Terra a laLuna, a story of proto astronauts traveling
to the Moon in a capsule firedfrom a cannon. Now that is about
as close I think you can gety, Yeah, it's pretty solid.

(28:03):
In his nineteen oh one classic TheFirst Men in the Moon, HG.
Wells imagined an anti gravity material usedto steer a craft to the Moon,
predicting the great difficulties that later astronautswould have exiting Earth's gravitational poll, which
again I think these are. Thisis after the theory of gravity. Of
course, right, this is nineteenoh one. People understand this, but

(28:26):
this is still I think very presient. Both of these authors are very present
because they're they're imagining issues that astronomerswould actually have a hard time figuring out.
Right, Obviously, we know Earth'sgravitation. We Earth had gravity at
this point, but nobody in nineteenoh one really knew how hard or how

(28:48):
intense and how much energy would actuallybe needed to escape that gravitational poll,
at least not to the same degreewe do today. In Russia, the
first ever rocket scientist, Konstantine Zoikowski, wrote his own science fiction novel on
the Moon, in which he accuratelyportrayed the experience of standing on the Moon

(29:08):
and the effects that low gravity wouldhave on the body, which again I
think these are. It's kind ofamazing that people are thinking about these things.
Now. You know, we justran through three stories of people who
sort of got things right. There'sprobably a million stories that completely get it
wrong. You know, absolutely,there's a lot of Yeah, there's a
lot of theories involving the Moon,the moon landing not actually having happened,

(29:32):
all this kind of stuff. Sopeople have lots of thoughts about the Moon,
right, and so this this kindof leads us to what we're gonna
talk about right now, which isthe space race, because we did actually
go to the Moon. That's somethingthat happened. And listener, if you
recall I remade this plug at thebeginning, but we do have two really
great episodes all about the space race. One that covers the classic space race

(29:55):
that took place in the middle ofthe nineteen hundreds, middle to the late
nineteen hundreds, and then the secondepisode which covers sort of the modern day
space race or what's happening now?What are people trying to do? I
was wondering if you could summarize sortof what was the classic space race,
like, what was that? Well, there was there was the race to

(30:17):
get to the Moon, I thinkis what you're referring to, and the
idea was that you could demonstrate theadvanced character of your country or your society
by somehow getting to the moon first, and that would prove to the rest
of the world that this would bethe most advanced thing and so and particularly
this happened in the context of theCold War, so there were big efforts

(30:40):
between the United States and what wasthen the Soviet Union to try to accomplish
this feat. Yeah, I mean, we're gonna go through a little bit
of some of the dates and sortof the things that happen here in a
minute. But I think the spacerace, at least the nineteen hundred space
race, I think was such afascinating period of time because prior to this
this moment, countries nation states havebeen in contests with each other for millennia,

(31:04):
right, and the way that theyusually have contested with each other has
been through war and or just war, but trade sometimes as well. Trade
trade as well. Yeah, butcertainly in terms of like and obviously colonization
that was a big, big contestas well. But war was such a

(31:26):
big aspect of it because it wasit was about who who can who can
have the better weapon? Soonest,right, right, you know, if
you're inside the medieval period of Europe, right, different alloys of steel would
guard different you know, soldiers fromfrom arrows now, you know that kind
of stuff. As you get intosort of World War One, which you

(31:48):
know, we had a whole episodeyou know a little while ago that that
was a war that throughout it's throughoutthe war they were inventing new weapons at
rapid pace so that they could oneup each other. And I think the
space race is so interesting because youhave these two really big powers, the
United States the Soviet Union, thatare actively competing, and they're competing in

(32:09):
terms of war. Obviously, theCold War not a hot war, though
it does get a hot in differentplaces, but this is an aspect where
they're competing for something that is Iwould argue, so unique and unusual that
for the aspect that happened that onecountry was like let's do this and the

(32:31):
other one was like, oh,we need to do this too, and
then kicks off. This whole thingwas very unique and well, I'm sure
there's some negative externalities that were bornout of this space race, I would
argue there's also a lot of positives, and it potentially could have moved some
of the energy away from the warside as well as both countries focused on

(32:53):
the space race side, which isprobably a net benefit for us all well.
And then it also had this hugeimpact on popular culture in the United
States. Oh, think of theaesthetics of particularly the nineteen sixties. I'm
thinking, you know, the Jetson'saesthetic here, the space needle and all
this kind of stuff. And thisis all directly related to what we're talking

(33:14):
about, this this space race andthis race to the moon and the imagination
of what's going to happen in thefuture. And so I think that's part
of it too, is that eachof these countries or each of these societies
are aspiring to have control of thefuture as well. Absolutely so, I've
waxed a little bit about the spacerace. I've waned a little bit.

(33:37):
Let's get into sort of what happened. Again, this is highly abridged.
This will be like five six ishminutes of space race talk, but you
can go listen to a couple hoursof it if you've got that more double
up you remix, Yeah, checkit out. Absolutely so. After World
War Two, both the United Statesand Soviet Union made rapid progress in space
exploration. So both countries had takenmany of the best rocket scientists from post

(34:00):
war Germany, which was seen asa leader, right. The V two
rocket was invented in Germany, andit's a very horrible weapon at the time,
and they put them to working,some of them to working in the
cause of space travel. Obviously someof them also went towards weapons research as
well, but it would be theBut the Soviets diverted substantial resources into new

(34:21):
experiments that and because of this,they quickly took the lead inside in the
space race, which I don't thinkis a popular is popularly known in at
least here within the United States.I think most people think US was always
ahead, and they're therefore at thatyou know xyz, and it's like,
well, not really, not thecase, Yeah, not the case.
So on October fourth, nineteen fiftyseven, the Soviets successfully launched the first

(34:45):
artificial satellite, Sputnik, into space. I'm sure you've heard of that,
hunter, Yeah, it's I mean, can you can you just could you?
I have an image in my head. I'm wondering, you know what
it looks like. Don't know ifI know exactly what it looks like.
It's funny because, like I forsome reason, I have this image in
my head that I saw a whileago, I guess probably years. But

(35:05):
it's like this little sphere and ithas like these little antenna and it kind
of looks like this little spiky ballthat they just set up there. Anyway,
So this little sphere went up,you know, circled the Earth,
transmitting a repeating series of bloops andbleeps and beeps and whatever. Nothing more,
that's it. But that was stilla monumental thing, right, that's
nobody ever done that before, andjust now it's under the sandpoint and emo

(35:28):
exactly exactly. Yes, So atthis point the Soviets were well ahead of
the US in terms of space exploration. To make matters worse for the US,
their own first satellite launch on Decembersixth, nineteen fifty seven failed miserably.
So this was just a couple monthsafterwards, but it was not did
not work out well for NASA andin the United States. So we don't

(35:52):
refer to it in the spunt nitkind of way, right, I mean,
it doesn't really stepped into the popularno. Again, Like, yeah,
I would argue most people who aren'thistorians or space people probably don't ever
never knew that the first satellite thatwe tried to launch failed. I don't
think it's it's not tat. Idon't think history classes throughout the United States,

(36:15):
these are not the things that areemphasized, right exactly. So,
apparently, hurting from this humiliation thefirst ever satellite, you know, blowing
up, President Kennedy initiated a massivepush to get the US to the Moon
and so on May twenty fifth,nineteen sixty one, he unveiled the Apollo

(36:35):
mission, driven more than anything else, apparently by the urgent need to beat
the Soviet Union. Both sides sawit as a contest between capitalism and communism,
which were the two competing economics sortof theories at the time, maybe
still as I don't know, ideologies, yes, ideologies, YadA, YadA.
Apparently, if the US could getto the Moon first, it would

(36:58):
prove that capitalism was superior. Idon't know why. It seems arbitrary to
me, but sure, I guess. So, the US began to direct
direct its budget into the Apollo program. In today's money, it would cost
well over one hundred billion dollars.That's way more than what NASA's annual budget

(37:20):
is today, so this is justa single program within NASA. Obviously,
it was a really big program withinNASA, just a single one. And
of course the US would go onand reach the moon, right, and
we're gonna talk about that in asecond. But I did want to call
it that the Soviets had achieved otherfirst aside from the first you know,
satellite in space. So they putthe first woman into space. Okay,

(37:42):
they had the first space walk,which is like getting out of your ship
and I guess you're not walking,you're floating. It's extraordinary. Yeah,
yeah, and the first they hadthe first cosmonauts to fly in normal clothes
rather than space suit. So ifyou look at you know, videos of
the you know, International Space Station, they're not all in space suits the
whole time. They are like,I mean, they're not in like I

(38:06):
don't think they're in tennis shoes andshorts and a T shirt either. Yeah,
they're just sort of like lounging clothesor you know, is this casual?
I think, yeah, business casual. Yeah, business casual for the
space crowd exactly. So I justwanted to call that out. The Soviets
had a few other firsts, solike it was really getting to the point
where it's like, Okay, theUS has the Moon and nothing else.
I mean, there's probably some otherthere's probably some things that the US did

(38:28):
as well, but the Soviets weredunking on them constantly during this time.
However, the US the enormous budgetthat they gave NASA would payoff. So
the Apollo eleven mission landed Neil Armstrongand Buzz Aldrin on the Moon on July
twentieth, nineteen sixty nine. Andthis is probably what most people here in

(38:50):
the United States and maybe in otheryou know, allied countries learned most about
with regards to the space race,that the US was the first to land
on the Moon. And it wasa very impressive you know, feet of
engineering and ingenuity and all this kindof stuff. Right, It's just phenomenal
that we've been able to do thatstuff. I mean, one of the
more remarkable things in my memory ofthis situation is that then they then placed

(39:15):
the US flag on top of theMoon, as if you know, that's
like a classic territorial grab, right, It's like, we claim this,
we claim this moon for for theUnited States or whatever, and I'm sure
a lot of other countries were kindof rolling their eyes at that. It's
like, really, I mean,you put the US flag up there.
I think it because not only dothey do that, but at the same

(39:37):
time, it's like under that thatquote, you know, it's one small
step for man, one giant leaffor for all mankind or something like that.
Right, And obviously you know,at the time, the the popular
sort of verbiage was manned for standingin for humans, right, is we're
talking about all of humans, butit's still like the the idea that you're

(39:59):
you're talking about, you know,we're doing this for all of humankind and
then boom, here's a big oldAmerican flag. Yeah, it is interesting,
right, A lot of that aheadof time. It's not like,
I don't know, maybe it wasinspired at that moment to say that,
but he'd probably been thinking for weeksor maybe months about right, we've got
to have a great line for whenthis happens the story. Can you imagine

(40:19):
if he just like fumbled it,it's like, right, one small leap
for me. Yeah, I don'tknow, there's all kinds of ways that
couldn't happen. Well, that that'swe're going to leave the Space race from
here. We're going to go aheadand jump to our final ad break and
we're going to come back and we'regoing to talk more about sort of the
actual geography of the Moon, howit impacts our planet and and maybe humans

(40:42):
and wildlife and that kind of stuff, because it does have a more physical
impact, yes, as it turnsout, at least at least on some
some aspects of our planet. Soand there's a geographic expression to that.
Yep. Absolutely, So we're goingto do our last at break and we'll
be back. So come back afterthese ads, Thank you, and we're

(41:12):
back. We're talking all about theMoon today on the Geography Is Everything podcast.
We just ran through sort of somespace race stuff, some other history
stuff. Now we're going to talkabout what is probably the actual geography of
the Moon, sort of how doesthe Moon impact things right here on the
planet. So there there's this ideathat, like we are all attuned to

(41:36):
a Cicadian clock, the Circadian rhythm, which is sort of the rhythmic cycle
of days and nights, and thisis true to an extent, right Hunter,
you probably I don't know about yoursleeping schedule, but you probably went
to bed sometime last night, Idon't know, ten eleven pm, and
then you probably woke up sometime thismorning between seven eight nine am something like.
That's what most people generally do,right, right, when it's dark,

(41:59):
it's time to sleep, kind ofYeah, exactly, that's the standard
thing. In fact, we're toldthat if you if you don't do that,
then it's unhealthy for you. Right, Yeah, So there's you know,
obviously there there are people who workovernight, so they have jobs that
take place during the nights. Alot of people do, right, That's
not not most people probably, buta lot of people do that. That's

(42:21):
right. You know, we're toldthat, we are told I don't,
I don't. I don't have thescience here to back this up, but
we are told, you know,generally that if you do that, there
are certain health implications there something youknow, X y Z bad. I
don't know. I'm gonna leave itat that. There are you know,
while this is common for most creatures, right, dogs, cats, deers,

(42:44):
I don't know, other things outthere, there are species out there
that are not tuned to the circadianrhythm to day night cycle. However,
they're at tuned to what is calledthe circa lunar rhythm, and this largely
applies to things that live in theocean. Do you know why why might
this be? No, okay,it has to do with sort of what

(43:08):
the moon is directly doing to oceans, particularly around our coasts, our shores.
Oh right, So it's the tides, right, impacting the tides,
and that impacts the availability of food, I suppose for exactly. So we
again, listener, were we divea little bit more into the science behind

(43:28):
this with with our guests on Thursday'sdive a little bit more into sort of
what all this does and how itmeans. But let's talk a little bit
about the tides now, because thetides do change and come in and out
with the moon, right, It'sit's not necessarily it's not a it's obviously
it's not a circadian thing. It'snot like every day at night times the

(43:50):
tides go out and every day duringthe daytime the tides come back in.
No, it's whatever the moon isdoing at the time. And so because
of this, there are certain speciessuch as the fiddler crab, which always
forages at low tide, which hasn'tbeen attuned and evolved to be the circle
lunar wildlife. So in fact,there's another term for it. I mean,
circle lunar is sort of the circlelunar rhythm, but circa tidle clock

(44:14):
is sort of the more precise verbiageto use for this species. So apparently
the fiddler clab, fiddler clap,fiddler crab, there we go. Their
circa tidle clock is twelve hours andtwenty five minutes long, exactly the time
between two low tides, rather thantwenty four hours, which is what our

(44:35):
clock is. Strikingly, even whenthey're under constant light and temperature in captivity,
fiddler crabs are most active when thetide is out, so the light
the light apparently has no change insort of their their evolutionary biology, which
is fascinating programmed that way, orthey're geared towards that after so many years.
Yeah, I mean, it's it'sprobably embedded in their genetic code at

(44:58):
this point, right, and soso that's the fiddler crab. Now there's
also there's this popular idea that humansare also affected by the phase of the
moon. Do you know you knowwhat I'm talking about here, I'm perhaps
you're referring to the idea that whenthere's a full moon, people get a
little wild. There's lots of erraticbehavior. And you hear this, I

(45:21):
think every month. Usually it's like, wow, that was there's some weird
energy out there. Well it wasa full moon exactly. So this is
a very common myth out there thathumans are impacted when there's a full moon.
Exactly what you said, Things geta little more crazy, people are
not whatever. Not everybody would callit a myth, I suppose, you
know, I don't want to denyscience, but some people have this pretty

(45:45):
strong belief that, yeah, thisis this is a thing. Fair well,
it is a as far as scienceis concerned. It is a common
misconception that humans are at all impactedby the phase of the moon. So
there's there's just nothing there to backit up. So this is this idea
stems from an old belief that themoon exerts influences and influence on the oceans

(46:07):
and there's and because it can dothat, right, it can you know,
change the tides and everything. Becauseit can do that, it must
also do so on human bodies,right, this gravitational poll and therefore that
is causing chemistry, you know,imbalances that impact people. However, as
it turns out, this idea that'sthe gravitational poll that also impacts the tithes

(46:30):
that impacts us can't be true becausethe moon's gravitational poll on the human body
is so weak that it can't evenbe measured. Really, Apparently, a
passing fly, one of those thingsbuzzing around you right now because it's summer
and it's so annoying, right,a passing fly exerts a greater gravitational poll
on your body than the moon,the Sun, and all the stars in

(46:53):
the universe combined. So that's Idon't know how they Yeah, well,
you know, we have a termin the English language that refers to this
idea that people go crazy and thefull moon. You know what word that
is, Well, if it's thesame word I have here in my notes,
it's going to be lunatic. Ohoh it is, Oh my god.

(47:15):
Yeah, you're right. Sorry,it means it's still your thunder No
thought. It was so funny,like you brought it up at the perfect
time. Yeah, lunatic is likeI didn't know this before this. When
I was playing together my notes andI was doing the research, I was
reading this book and it's like,oh yeah, I mean at this point,
if any word in the English languagestarts with lun maybe an a in

(47:35):
there too, you just assume thatit's factoring in the moon some way,
right, I think this must comefrom Latin or something. And then I
think it was also used to demonizewomen in particular the idea of lunatic as
well. So there's a sort ofa gendered aspect to this thing as well.
And sometimes in certain mythologies, womenare associated with the moon. So
that's that's another piece of culture that'sbeen impacted by the moon. Absolutely.

(48:00):
Yeah, Now, we just ranthrough sort of the misconception here that you
know, there's some sort of gravitationalimpact whatever on humans and this causes things
to happen. Science doesn't really backit up. You know, people have
their different beliefs and that's okay.That said, though, the moon does
have an effect on our seasons andlength of day, which could have impacts

(48:23):
on humans. Right, these wouldbe less tangible impacts, so it all
gets a bit squishy, and theI would argue that the moon's impact is
more of an indirect rather than direct, but it seems to be there so
you should come back on Thursday.We talk a little bit more about this
with Trevor, but you know,perhaps you know, because of the seasonal

(48:46):
changes. Yeah, I don't know, butever we talked a little bit more
about it, and so with that, Hunter, I thought it might be
nice just to end today's episode onmaybe a conversation around the future of the
Moon. So yeah, why notknow we're here. So in recent years,
again we talked a little bit aboutthis inside our Space Race episode,

(49:06):
the Modern Space Race, but we'regoing to talk a little more about the
future ish here. So in recentyears, a lunar base has returned as
a topic of discussion within the scientificcommunity, international scientific community. Do you
know, can you I come upwith any ideas of why we would want
a moon base? Hunter, Ican think of a few things. I

(49:27):
mean, one is the same reasonthat there was a race to get to
the Moon in the first place,which is that will sort of demonstrate the
advanced scientific power of a particular partof the Earth, right, So that's
one of the politics, in otherwords, is one of them. Another
thing is I can imagine there mightbe some advantages to conducting certain research on

(49:47):
the Moon that would provide some kindof different perspective on things, and they're
trying to instead of having to simulatethe lack of gravity that they can do
that on the Moon. Then it'sjust closer, a little bit closer to
other places. And so if youwant to get to Mars or some other
planet, seems like Mars is theone that we really want to get to

(50:07):
for some reason. I'm not surewhy that is, that this would be
a good starting point, and youknow, it takes a lot, like
you said, to get away fromthe Earth, and maybe getting off the
Moon would be easier. Yeah,exactly. I think all of what you
just said is probably I mean,that's probably what anybody would say. I
also don't know why we want togo to Mars, might be honest,

(50:29):
right, Yeah, there's I'm surethere's an answer which we don't have,
which we might have to find outat some point, But yeah, there's
this in science fiction is obsessed withMars. It seems like above all the
planet's right, right, I mean, we have a whole class of some
sort of alien called Martians that that'sright. Yeah, obviously they don't exist
because well, I guess we havesome robots out there and we haven't found

(50:51):
any Martians. I don't know,maybe there are somewhere, maybe Martians may
not be, but we certainly notrun into any recently. Well, for
all of what you just said,I mean, I think all of that
makes sense right there. There's thisidea that for one radio astronomy, which
is the idea of sending out radiosignals and getting you know, maybe getting
something back, or sending them outand getting sort of the reflection back that

(51:13):
helps us understand a lot of things. Having one on the Moon apparently would
be highly beneficial for that kind ofscientific discovery, because, as it turns
out, the Earth has a lotof background noise, and so even just
having a radio telescope and space butstill orbiting Earth is still quite noisy.
Obviously, having one on Earth iseven noisier. So that would make the

(51:35):
reception a lot more clearer. Apparentlyradio then also, yeah, radio station
on them and yeah, and apparentlyalso if we want to continue exploring space,
you know, having a lunar basewould would be a lot more advantageous.
There's this idea. You know,I watch a lot of Star Trek,
but I'm sure this is the casefor Star Wars or whatever science fiction

(51:55):
you might enjoy. But they're alwaysbuilding these really massive ships. They're not
building them on a planet, they'renot building them on Earth. They're building
them in these like space station thingsup in space. And I think that
makes a lot of sense because youdon't have to once you're in space,

(52:16):
you don't have to worry about gettingsomething out of a planet. You can
just sort of travel from place toplace, right, yeah, And so
part of the trick is launching somethingright, yeah, right exactly. So
if you can build, you know, if you want a fully habitable vessel
for let's say fifty people to goto Mars for whatever reason and you want

(52:36):
to get them there, building somethingin space that's going to be big enough
so that they can sort of livein the two year journey it might take
whatever you know and do all thethings that might need. Is going to
be a lot easier building that thingin space and sending it out to Mars
rather than building it on Earth andhaving to launch it then into space.
Right, So huge saving on rocketfuel. If it's made in space,

(52:58):
you just turn the key and go, oh it's right, plug and play
yep. Right, And so thoseare some of the starting possibility we dive
into this little bit more with Trever, so again, come back and listen
to that. I said, hehas some ideas that probably dive a little
bit deeper into sort of what whatwe've said here. Because we're not astronomers,
we're not really space people. We'revery much Earth people. Like that's

(53:20):
whole deal, that's right. ButI thought it might just be fun to
sort of like talk a little bitabout the very far distant future of the
moon. Like, so far,this might be the farthest we go into
the future as well. We starta few billion years in the back and
now we're going to go billions ofyears into the future. So according to

(53:40):
NASA and scientists, at some pointin the far distant future, we may
no longer have a moon at all. Do you know why this is hunter,
Uh, maybe gets bored as beingby the Earth and floats away,
or maybe it gets hit by anasteroid, or maybe well the gravitational pull

(54:00):
from something else pulls it away.You know, this is my science fiction
take on things. Yeah, Imean, I like your boredom aspect,
because that's kind of the one that'sprobably most true. According to NASA,
the moon drifts about one inch awayfrom Earth each year. Not that's not
a lot. It's not a lot, right, but it adds up.

(54:20):
Apparently it adds up over time.Apparently at this rate, in about fifteen
billion years, the Moon will driftaway from the planet, will no longer
be orbiting Earth. Obviously we willnever see that. In fact, given
around given how long humans as thespecies has been around, it's unlikely any
form of humans will be around infifteen billion years. In fact, it's

(54:45):
highly unlikely because the Sun is theorizedto only have about seven or eight billion
years left in it before it goesred red giant and completely engulf's Earth.
Anyways, so it may never evenreach that point before being scorched out existence.
This Yeah, it's as you're pointingout, it's nothing that we really
need to worry about right now,and we have a lot more problems than

(55:08):
the Sun burning out and what wasit seven or eight billion years, But
I still can't help be a littleconcerned. But anyways, that the Moon
is just slowly getting farther and fartheraway, floating away, the Sun is
going to engulf know that this isway off in the future. Yeah,
I better keep focused on some Earthproblems. I think there's this wild science

(55:31):
fiction sort of theory. Obviously it'sthat's all it is. But have you
ever heard of this idea of thedice in sphere. I've heard of the
dice in sphere, but I don'tI'm not sure I know what it is.
Yeah, So it's this idea thatyou build a massive structure around a
sun a star, right, andthe dice in sphere is then able to

(55:54):
control it and siphon off the infiniteamount of energy from it to then how
are everything else? Wow? Andso big circle to put around the Sun?
It's a big sphere. Yeah,it's real big, and so I
don't know. Maybe in six orseven billion years we'll just have a Dyson
sphere and we won't have to worryabout it. But we also won't have

(56:15):
a son anymore. We can justproject the Sun. I guess with the
infinite energy a creed, it willjust take care of itself really somehow one
where. That's it. That's ourepisode about the moon. Hunter tells people
where they can find you around there. Thanks Jeff, Super super interesting stuff
today. My name is Hunter Showbi. I'm a professor of Geography at Portland
State University. I'm co author ofPortland is a Cultural Atlasts in Upper Left

(56:38):
Cities, a Cultural Atlas of SanFrancisco, Portland, and Seattle. My
co author there is David Bannis,and I am co host with you,
Jeff. Geography is Everything podcasts.What you're listening to right now? Yeah,
my name's Jeff, co host ofthis podcast that you just finished listening
to. If you liked what youheard today, you thought this was a
fun, engaging conversation on the moon, please rate, review, subscribe like

(56:59):
whether this is on Apple Podcasts,Spotify, or or YouTube, it all
helps. We love seeing it all. If you want this sort of delivered
straight to your email box, justgo over to Geography as Everything dot substack
dot com. Eventually I'll do somethingmore with that page because we have a
few thousand people subscribed, but Ihaven't figured it out yet d and I
am pretty busy, so eventually maybeit'll spin on to be something moormant.

(57:20):
But if you just want it inyour email box, go over there.
Takes a good place to do that. It's not going to take seven or
eight billion years, so we'll getto it. It'll take seven eight billion
years. Yes, let's see.Yeah, go do that next week,
Hunter, what are we doing?I think next week? I think actually,
yeah, I believe is the SummerOlympics. Does that sound right?

(57:40):
Oh, that's right, yeah,because the Summer Olympics are coming up.
They are so yeah, so sothat that should be a really fun one
because the Summer Olympic, I meanone, the IOC is a fascinating,
if not diabolical organization. It's aninteresting organization, I mean, and the
Olympics is inherently geographical because they're thereare you know, there are contestants from

(58:04):
different parts of the world that cometogether in one city in order to prove
their proficiency, their dominance, theirexcellence in a very particular sport. New
sports are added sometimes, so we'llget into, you know, a little
bit of the history, some ofthe contemporary stuff, and consider some of
the various geographies of the Olympics andincluding why the modern Olympics was even recreated

(58:29):
in the first place. Absolutely,it should be a fascinating episode. I
think we haven't done one on sportsin a little while, and that's one
of one of the things we reallylike to talk about. So that it
should be really fun for both ofus, and therefore it will be fun
for you listener, because you willengage in our fun as well. That's
right. So it's a little warmup for the Olympic game, so check

(58:50):
it out and then get ready towatch them and then yeah some fun.
Yeah yeah absolutely, Okay, wellI guess. Until then, please come
back to listen to the episode.And it's been fun talking all about the
moon and all that kind of stuff. So bye, thanks for listening.