12.10.25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome. This is Marsha for Radio I, and today I
will be reading National Geographic Magazine dated October twenty twenty five,
which is donated by the publisher as a reminder, RADIOI
is reading service intended for people who are blind or
have other disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material.
Please join me now for the first article titled Our

(00:22):
Planet from Above and Below by Marina Koran. By capturing
the same thing from various different perspectives, a NASA scientist
and a National Geographic photographer create a whole new way
of seeing our world. Earlier this year, two photographer friends

(00:43):
had just finished shooting the Grand Canyon when they began
discussing what they might capture together next. Don Pettitt was
eager to train his camera on Madagascar and sent his
friend Babak Tafreshi a text extolling the beauty of the place.
Tafreshy didn't disagree. He imagined the famous Baobab trees, with

(01:06):
their thick trunks and filigreed branches, cast mesmerizingly against a dark,
star speckled sky. So, even though he was tired from
a good bit of traveling, he boarded a flight from
Boston to Paris, and then another to Atta Nonevo, Madagascar's
capital city, where he stayed overnight before renting a car

(01:26):
and driving out to the remote realm of the Baobabs,
a dirt road lined with dozens of the ancient trees.
Pettitt's journey was simpler. He floated from one room to
the International Space Station to another towards the windows that
looked out onto the world. During his seven month mission
on the ISS, Pettitt, who's been an astronaut for nearly

(01:46):
thirty years, worked with Tafreshe, a photographer and National Geographic Explorer,
on an inventive project to photograph the same location or
phenomenon from two wildly different perspectives, one photographer standing on
the Earth, the other floating two hundred fifty miles above it. Together,
they coordinated ten photoshoots across four continents. The result is

(02:11):
a celestial scrapbook of our planet with spell spellbinding scenes
that can make you feel grounded and weightless at the
same time. The pair initially connected not long after Pettit's
first day on the then newly assembled ISS in two
thousand three. Pettit, an amateur photographer since sixth grade, had
brought his digital cameras with him, and he'd used some

(02:33):
scavenged stage materials to fashion a camera mount that provided
the stillness necessary to capture the night sky without smears
of starlight. Pettit, a scientist by training, is among Nassau's
craftiest astronauts. He once designed a drinking cup to make
sipping coffee easier in micro gravity. At the time, Tafreshi

(02:56):
was working as an editor at the Iranian astronomy magazine Nojun.
He had taken up photography as a teenager, focused on
the night sky and the national wonders that became visible
in the absence of light pollution. When Pettitt's pictures reached Earth,
Tafreshey emailed the astronaut with compliments. Soon they became pen pails.

(03:17):
Years later, as their correspondence grew into a photo project,
Pettit and Tafreshy found that it helps to have different
approaches to telling visual stories about Earth. Pettit, in particular,
felt a duty to share his orbital vantage point with
his fellow humans on Earth. You want to share that
imagery to people that don't necessarily have the wherewithal to

(03:38):
be there in orbit, Pettit said. Over the course of
their project, the duel sought to synchronized their photoshoots, which
required a tremendous amount of planning. They needed to account
for orbital mechanics. From his perch on the ISS, Pettit
circled the globe every ninety minutes, racing sunrises and sunsets.
The trajectory of the space station mattered as well. When

(04:00):
the pair first started brainstorming potential areas of interest, Tafreshy
had plenty of ideas. I told him, you know, Iceland
is great, to Freshy recalled, but the ISS, Pettit replied,
never flies over Iceland. Earthly considerations influenced the project too.
Pettitt once once suggested a couple of regions that appeared

(04:22):
photogenic from hundreds of miles up, but they were along
the borders of countries in conflict India and Pakistan and
North and South Korea, so I couldn't travel there because
of safety matters, to Freshy said. Pettitt meanwhile, had to
work around his astronaut duties. When you're on station, you've
got a pretty encompassing day job. Pettit, who has locked

(04:42):
nearly six hundred days in space across four missions told me,
you need to make sure that there's a hole in
your work schedule where you can run to the kubola
and take a few pictures. Sometimes the universe went easy
on them. A comet visiting from the edges of the
Solar System showed up a week after Pettit reached orbit.
Tafreshe observed the bright object in Puerto Rico, but Pettit

(05:05):
had the best view without Earth's hazy atmosphere with its
pesky clouds in the way. Not long after that, a
major Aurora storm appeared in the skies over to Frayshe's house. Now,
how convenient, and the photographers captured the event within hours
of each other, their best timing of the entire endeavor.

(05:25):
When it comes to the rippling mystical green lights, two
views are better than one. If you look at the
same ripple from orbit, you might find that it's actually
an oval, Pettit said, It's as if they had surrounded
the shimmering phenomenon, revealing its true nature. While Pettit was
spared the difficulties that can ruin a photographer's day on
the ground rainy weather, for example, his cameras would occasionally

(05:49):
malfunction because of the constant invisible barrage of cosmic radiation,
and now and again artifacts of astronaut life sneaked into
his shots. Once Tafrashier was scanned Pett's images of the
Baldives in the Indian Ocean when he noticed an intriguing
patch of green in the water and algal bloom. I
was so excited until I got the next few shots

(06:10):
and I realized this patch is moving very fast, Afreshi said.
It turned out to be a weight lifting machine reflected
in the space station's windows. Every crew member works out
on this machine for an hour and a half a day.
Pettitt said he would occasionally ask his colleagues if they
wouldn't mind turning off the lights and working out in
the dark just for a few minutes. Not everyone obliged.

(06:32):
Pettit and Tafreshy both believe that space photography is better
done by people. There are plenty of satellites that take
images of Earth from orbit, but often these pictures are
flat and textureless. Pettitt can play around with light and shadow,
creating a richer portrait, and an orbital view of Earth
is more meaningful when there is real emotion behind it.

(06:54):
Karen Nyberg, and a retired Nassau astronaut, told me that
she liked photographing the places where she knew her loved
ones were. I would go over Houston or go over
when they were visiting upstate New York and feel very
connected to them because I was only two hundred and fifty
miles away, just directly above them, Iberg said. And then
I would actually start to feel kind of this connection

(07:15):
with people in other places on the Earth that I
don't know. There's also perhaps a hint of triumph in it.
Human bodies were not made to be in outer space,
but there astronauts go, soaking up the wonder and sharing
it with the rest of us. In more than two
decades of friendship, Heatitt and Tafreshy have met in person
only a handful of times. They communicate mostly via text

(07:38):
and email. They told me they don't really talk about
their personal lives or get too philosophical. Despite the nature
of their work, their conversations are the stuff of true
shutterbug geegree, all about f stops and imaging software. Still,
they're not just photography buddies. When Taffrisia was robbed in
sicily and lost most of his equipment. He withheld the

(07:59):
depressing details from Pettit because he didn't want to worry him,
explaining to me that it's best practice not to upset
an astronaut far from home. Pettit gently roused him, saying
that Tafreshe should be more careful about where he keeps
his passport, which had been stolen too. The Madagascar shoot
was their last session before Pettit returned to Earth. The

(08:20):
region has little artificial light, so Pettitt's shot hinged on
the very alignment of selestial bodies the presence of a
full moon to illuminate a landscape shrouded in night time.
Tafreshe stood in the brush, in the brush, taking in
the shimmer of the milky Way in the unspoiled sky.
It was surreal, he said. The evening quiet was punctuated

(08:41):
by the nocturnal murmurings of unseen wildlife and of villagers
passing by in carts pulled by mules. From above, Earth
is a gleaming world with a wispy atmosphere in an
inky void. From below, it is a tangle of florofauna
and humanity that as far as we know doesn't exist
anywhere else. The resulting diptychs present Earth as it truly

(09:04):
is just another planet and our only home. Next, I
want to live to be one hundred longevity. Learning from
the legends. As told to Devon Gordon, these iconic athletes
were the greatest of all time at what they did.
So who better? Day asked about getting the most out
of our bodies as we age. We came in search

(09:25):
of wisdom, but they gave us something even better, motivation.
Nadiya Komenich was the first gymnast to achieve a perfect
ten at the Olympics. While she hasn't competed in over
forty years, she stays in shape by exercising every day,
and when she misses the feeling of being a gymnast,
she heads to the balance beam. Next article from National

(09:47):
Geographic History Percy Fawcett tragic search for lost city of z.
Convinced by old documents that a lost civilization lay in
the Amazon rainforest, Fawcet set out to find it in
nineteen twenty five. His disappearance sparked a century of speculation
as to his fate. When the Spanish first ventured into

(10:09):
the Amazon basin, in the fifteen forties, they recorded indigenous
accounts of a lost city of fantastic wealth that they
called El Dorado the Golden Over the centuries, many vain
attempts were made to locate a lost civilization in the
Amazon Forest. The last significant attempt to find such a
culture was undertaken by British explorer Percy Fawcet. Between nineteen

(10:31):
o six and nineteen twenty four, Fawcet made seven expeditions
across the Amazon basin, concluding with his doomed quest to
find the city called z Fawcet was inspired by his
extensive reading of historical sources, including a mysterious document known
as Manuscript five twelve. A man of extraordinary mental and
physical stamina, Fawcet was working at a time when the

(10:54):
Amazon region was still largely undocumented by Europeans who sought
to explore its jungles and water wins, seeking ancient cities
and riches. His disappearance during his search for Ze in
nineteen twenty five in the Matto Grosso region of Brazil
continues to intrigue writers and filmmakers yearning to explore. Percy

(11:15):
Harrison Fawcett was born in eighteen sixty seven in Torquay, Devon,
the English county that had produced many famous explorers and mariners,
including Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh. The son of an
aristocrat who had lost his fortune, Fawcet described his childhood
as lacking in affection. At age nineteen, he was commissioned

(11:36):
as a lieutenant in the Royal Artillery and sent out
to outposts of the British Empire. In nineteen oh one,
Fawcet joined the Royal Geographical Society of London and traveled
to Africa as a surveyor in the service of the
British State, tasked with gathering military intelligence. In nineteen o six,
he was commissioned by the Society to lead an expedition

(11:57):
to the Amazon. Arriving in South America was the moment
his whole life changed. Setting out from La Pause to
map the vast territory on the border lands of Bolivia
and Brazil, Faucet often faced hostility from indigenous peoples angered
by rubber barons who had invaded their lands to extract
rubber for use in car and train manufacturing. For nearly

(12:20):
a decade, he roamed the Amazon basin, often the first
European to record geographical features such as waterfalls. His writing
gives a sense of the awe he experienced above us
Rode Rose, the Ricardo Franco Hills, flat topped and mysterious,
their flanks scarred by deep Quabardin's ravines, they stood like

(12:41):
a lost forest to their tops, and the imagination could
picture the last vestiges of an age log vanished. The
outbreak of World War One interrupted this rich period of exploration,
forcing him to return to Europe. Although in his fifties,
Faucet was in peak physical condition and he proved to
be an outstanding soldier a mysterious manuscript, Fawcett could not

(13:05):
shake off the allure of South America, however, so when
the war ended, he returned to Brazil, where he would
pursue an idea that led him to his last great
adventures and ultimately his mysterious death. Although Fawcet often relied
on racist tropes and ideas when he wrote of Brazil's
indigenous peoples, he also made great efforts to understand their
customs and languages. He lamented the effects of colonialists greed

(13:30):
on these societies and became convinced that Spanish and Portuguese
accounts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of complex civilizations
in the Rainforest may have had merit. Such accounts mentioned
very large settlements as well as fine roadways in the interior.
One document in particular fascinated Fawcet. Known as Manuscript five

(13:53):
twelve and written in Portuguese, it is purportedly an account
of adventurers and fortune hunters in fifty three in search
of precious metals. The adventurers found a ruined city boasting
monumental buildings, roads, and a plaza, in each corner of
which is a spire in the style of the Romans.
Scholars are divided about the manuscript's authenticity. Skeptics consider it

(14:17):
a forgery. Brazil achieved independence from Portugal in eighteen twenty five,
It would have been useful for a new and secure
republic to discover a document that described ancient civilizations in
its territory, akin to the Great Maya sites in Central America.
Many at this time, however, accepted the manuscript's authenticity, including Fawcet,

(14:38):
Already convinced that early accounts of complex civilizations in the
Rainforest were accurate. He became obsessed with finding such a
place in search of Z. Although Fawcet was inspired by
Manuscript five twelve's claim, he never intended to find the
city it described. The settlement in that document lies supposedly

(14:58):
in Brazil's northeast. Citing other sources which he did not name,
Fawcet became convinced that a lost civilization existed in the
wild central western region of Mato Grosso. He named the
city Z. In April nineteen twenty five, Facet set out
from Cuiaba to find it, accompanied by his eldest son,

(15:20):
Jack and his son's best friend, Raleigh Rimmel. The last
news from them was in a letter Facet sent to
his wife, we shall disappear from civilization until next year.
Imagine us in for us so far untrodden by civilized man.
And then they really did disappear. Were they killed by
animals or people? Several expeditions were launched in an attempt

(15:41):
to clarify what happened, including one headed by Peter Fleming,
brother of the James Bond character creator Ian Fleming. Many
of these venturers also ended in tragedy, and none shed
any light on what happened to Fawcet. In nineteen fifty two,
anthropologists Orlando Viias announced he had found the bones of

(16:02):
the explorer and that Calopolo Indians had confessed to killing him. Later,
forensic analysis showed the remains did not belong to Fawcett.
Fawcett's story has had an enduring cultural impact. He is
one of the inspirations for the character Indiana Jones. The
Walt Disney Company is a main majority owner of National

(16:24):
Geographic Media. The English Explorer was also the subject of
David Grand's The Lost City of z a tale of
deadly obsession in the Amazon, the basis for a twenty
sixteen feature film. In his book, Grand quotes Kalopolo Indians
who insist they had not killed Fawcett. They had seen
the smoke from Fawcett's camp for a few days until

(16:45):
it stopped. They say he likely died at the hands
of hostile people in territory to the east. Although the
mystery of his last days may never be fully resolved,
Fawcett's quest for a lost city may be at an end.
In the decade since his disappearance, exploration of northeastern Manto
Mato Grosso has uncovered the remains of large urban settlements

(17:09):
now located in Shingu Indigenous park named Kihukugu. The complex
includes remnants of streets, bridges, and large squares. Modern light
our scans further suggest that between fifteen hundred and four
hundred years ago, this part of the Amazon was indeed
the site of a large settlement. Whilezi's exact itdentity and

(17:31):
location are still a mystery, Faucet's hunch about a hidden
ancient city in the region seems to have been correct.
This article by Jordi Canal Solar Next Phoenician ties to
an ancient Spanish culture Tartisos. When Phoenician colonists arrived on
the southern shores of the Iberian Peninsula ninth century BC,

(17:54):
their contact with the peoples of Kadiz, Seville and Yelva
sparked a rich, sophisticated society called Tartisos by Sebastian Selestino Perez.
To this day, historians can't fully explain the mysterious disappearance
of the thriving ancient society of Tartisos. New questions arise

(18:16):
as excavations reveal more about the advanced multicultural civilization that
seemingly vanished over night, rising to power along the southern
coast of the Iberian Peninsula. Tartisos is believed to have
strong ties to a group of seafaring traders, the Phoenicians,
who first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula in the tenth
century b C. They originally hailed from modern day Lebanon, Syria,

(18:40):
and northern Israel, and were known across the Mediterranean as
skilled sailors and expert merchants. Given the name Phoenician by
the Greeks for the exquisite purple dye they crafted, they
never created a unified kingdom. Tartisos is believed to be
the resulting outgrowth of Phoenician culture combined with the indigenous
culture of peoples living on the Iberian Peninsula. Some scholars

(19:03):
still believed that Tartisos itself could predate these Phoenician influences,
and new discoveries continued to fuel the debate legends of Tartisos.
Tales of Tartizos stretch all the way back to the
mid seventy century BC. A Greek trader called Colia was
set sail from his home island of Samos off the

(19:25):
coast of present day Turkey. He was headed for Egypt,
but during the voyage, Colaius' ship was surprised by strong
winds from the east that pushed it westward across the Mediterranean,
beyond the Pillars of Hercules and into the Strait of Gibraltar.
Coleas and his fellow soldiers arrived in Tartisos, a commercial
emporium previously unknown to merchants from Greece. Coleas began to

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trade with the Tartisians and turned a large prophet, mainly
thanks to the silver over a ton in three quarters
that he amassed there. This traveler's tail is found in
Greek historian Herodotus's histories, written in the fifth century BC,
and although the narrative has no doubt embellished, Herodotus did
live for a time in Samos, where he may have

(20:11):
heard of Coleus's adventure. Other classical texts also contained references
to a town called Tartisos in the lands around the
Gulf of Cadiz in the southern Iberian Peninsula. From these mentions,
historians and archaeologists are working to build up a picture
of this enigmatic civilization steeped in legend Tortisos's beginning. One

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of the most controversial issues has been when Tortissos was founded.
Until the late twentieth century, most experts believed that Tartisos
emerged as far back as the Bronze Age. The culture
was thought to have spread over a large area in
the southwestern Iberian Peninsula between the settlements of Huelva, Seville,
and Kadiz the Tartisian's Corps. If so, Tartisos would have

(20:58):
existed even before the first Phoenician colonies were established in
the tenth and ninth centuries b C. However, an archaeological excavation,
as they continue, this hypothesis seems increasingly unlikely. Although some
authors speak of a period called the Tartisian Late Bronze Age,
there is little strong evidence to support the existence of

(21:20):
a defined settlement in the southwestern Peninsula during the twelfth
and eleventh centuries b C. What may have existed was
an emerging social organization based on agriculture and the export
of raw materials from mining. Archaeologists have found evidence of
a community at nearby Huelva during this period. Artifacts unearthed

(21:42):
at the site and elsewhere suggest that the community was
skilled at trading with the Atlantic world. Objects made of
copper from Weiova have been found as far away as
France and the British Isles. The well established trading links
would have helped them profit from the abundant silver mines
in the area, such as those in Asna Kolar, northwest

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of modern day Seville. Phoenicians in Iberia, these early trading
communities around the Gulf of Kadiz experienced a profound transformation
with the rival of the Phoenicians. It was in the
ninth century b C. The traders from the flourishing cities
of the eastern Mediterranean settled permanently in the southwest of

(22:24):
the Iberian Peninsula. Phoenician colonizers started by building temples to
their gods along the coast. These religious complexes not only
served spiritual purposes, they also played a key role in
commerce by providing a neutral space for trading. The temple
of Melkarte or Hercules near Kadiz seems to have had

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this dual purpose. Very soon the Phoenicians built permanent establishments
called factories and later the first colonies. One of these
new city colonies, Cadiz, would become the most important economic
political and religious center in the region served as the
main port for exporting silver, tin, and salted fish. These
mining and yet agricultural products came both from Huelva itself

(23:08):
and from inland. The Phoenicians brought innovations to the areas.
They settled iron hybrid animals such as the mule, plant
species like grapevines and olive trees, the potter's wheel, and
ceramic kilns. They also introduced the alphabet, an essential element
for trade. Even the architecture would be influenced. The Phoenicians
favored orthogonal structures with right angles, which generated a much

(23:32):
more complex urban layout over the course of the ninth
and eighth centuries b c. These things would transform the
economy and way of life of the local peoples. During
this initial period of colonization, local Iberian communities gradually adapted
to the presence of the Eastern settlers. Our gaelogists are
looking for more insight as to how this integration developed,

(23:54):
but it seems likely that people migrated from inland regions
to the coastal colonies. Workforce swelled. Miners and farmers arrived,
as well as the artisans and construction workers needed for
the new cities, temples, and communication routes. In the Gaudiana
and Tagus Valleys, the dominant warrior elite may have supplied

(24:15):
labor in exchange for access to the Phoenicians iron and
technical innovations. In these inland areas, local traders would have
provided gold, tin, and agricultural products to the Phoenicians. Although
the Phoenicians had a huge impact on the colonized territories
of the Iberian Peninsula, the changes were experienced unevenly in

(24:36):
sparsely populated areas such as the guaudal Quivier Valley and
the Bay of Kadiz. The incoming Phoenicians were able to
found their own cities and incorporate the indigenous population. In Huelva,
a more established economy and defined social structure already existed,
rendering Phoenician influence weaker. It was in eighth century BC

(25:00):
interactions between the Phoenicians, the indigenous communities, and the populations
of the interior gave rise to the culture now termed Tartisian.
The word Tartisos first appears in Greek sources in the
following century. Archaeological evidence contact between Phoenician colonists and indigenous
peoples of the peninsula sparked remarkable economic development, with work

(25:22):
for potters, goldsmith's, blacksmiths, builders, stevedores, and sailors. Maritime trade
defined the society. It was labor intensive about, involving many
workers to fell trees, build ships, and create vessels such
as ampheri to move the goods. These changes likely caused
tensions between the Tartisian communities, who found themselves enjoying new

(25:44):
lucrative relations with the Phoenicians and other indigenous interior communities
who also sought to control the new economic resources. Tartisian
culture saw an evergence of new social groups and a
much more complex social organization. The society lasted some four
hundred years. How elites maintained control is not clear. Neither

(26:06):
Tartisian sites nor tombs provide evidence of much weaponry. Although
Tartisos had some notable cultural traits, it wasn't a homogeneous
society and shouldn't be considered a united kingdom let alone
in empire. Herodotus does mention a kingdom ruled by Arganthonios,
but is referring to a chief within what the Greeks

(26:28):
called Tartisos. There would have been other kings or leaders,
with each ruler maintaining their political independence despite interconnected economic interests.
This social structure was more heterarchical than hierarchical, involving various
leaders and a network of power. Mixed marriages between indigenous

(26:50):
people and Phoenicians consolidated the integration of the two communities.
This practice would explain the discoveries made in inland areas
far removed from the Tartisian nucleus, such as the treasures
of Aliseda and Tallaveria, both in Caraces, and the tomb
of Casa del Carbio Toledo, which of the rich hordes

(27:12):
found at these sites came from local workshops and were
produced by artisans trained in Phoenician goldsmithing techniques. The pieces
include many motifs of the Phoenician religion, with representations of
the gods El Baal and Astarte. In Extra Madurura and
the Tagis Valley, archaeologists have found mixed trousseau in necropoliss

(27:35):
of the Tartisian nucleus, such as La Congress in El
Proueto de Santa Maria, Cadiz. They feature both indigenous and
Phoenician elements. Recently, large Adobe constructions were uncovered beneath a
tumulus by the Guardiana River, providing more evidence of Tartisian
culture and architecture mismixing with Phoenician influences. This concludes readings

(28:01):
from National Geographic Magazine and National Geographic History for today.
Your reader, husband Marsha, thank you for listening, Keep on
listening and have a great day.