9.24.25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome. This is Marsha for RADIOI, and today I will
be reading National Geographic magazine dated September twenty twenty five,
which is donated by the publisher. As a reminder. RADIOI
is a 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 continuation of

(00:21):
the article I began last time, entitled The Great Moon
Rush by Charles Fishman. For the imaginable future, any company
or nation or science institution operating on the Moon will
be operating from Earth, which is where the enforcement leverage
comes from and where any sanctions can be imposed. And

(00:43):
one of the unspoken rules of the High Seas is
that presence matters. The US has eleven aircraft carrier strike
groups for the Seven Seas. The Chinese Navy has added
ships steadily in the past decade and now has more
warships than the U. S. Navy. The same principle will
be visvidly true on the now empty Moon. This Moon

(01:03):
race is about adventure, opportunity, science, but also presence. Whoever's
activity is dominant on the Moon will most powerfully influence
its rules and shape its future. Going to the Moon
to live in. Work will demand the combination of hubris
and humility that other crazy human enterprises have required the
Transcontinental Railroad and the Trek to the Poles, the invention

(01:26):
of the Internet, than the original moon landings themselves. We
are certainly underestimating the consequences, as we did with each
of those projects. The Moon is going to be harder
in reality than everyone hopes. Since twenty eighteen, there have
been fifteen missions to put landers on the surface of
the Moon from a range of countries and companies. Only

(01:46):
six succeeded a sixty percent failure rate. With twenty first
century technology, one pioneering company, Intuitive Machines, became the first
private company to soft land a spacecraft on the Moon
and not crash, something only five nations have done. Intuitive
Machines did this twice, stunning achievements for a small company,

(02:09):
and both landers survived their arrivals on the Moon, but
they weren't able to perform their missions for a simple,
sobering reason. In each case, as it landed on the
uneven terrain near the Moon's south pool, the spacecraft toppled over,
rendering it mostly useless. After years of work and tens
of millions of dollars in investment. If the Moon proves

(02:30):
harder than companies like Intuitive Machines hope their investors could
get exhausted if the promise of water fades, so could
invest your enthusiasm. We could spend two decades trying to
make life on the Moon work, trying to spark a
self sustaining moon or economy, and it could all peter out,
leaving the Moon littered with the remnants of what could
have been moon bases, much the way terrestrial developments stall,

(02:54):
leaving robar sticking up from half finished walls. Those would
stay on the Moon a test to our failures for
millions of years. Indeed, the Moon is about to be
a very busy place, with eighty four announced national and
commercial missions just between now and twenty thirty. Economics will
ultimately drive what happens after. But what's so striking is

(03:15):
a different motivation, expressed equally by the entrepreneurs, the engineers,
the scientists, the astrophysicists like Joseph Silk and Nivedita Mahesh. Wonder.
Our fascination and appreciation for the Moon are built on wonder.
You can feel the wonder here on Earth. When you
step outside on a summer evening and a full moon

(03:37):
is rising, low and large and shining on the horizon,
you can feel the wonder and the hypnotic appeal of
pictures from the Moon's surface. You can hear the wonder
in the voices of the Apollo astronauts from the surface.
Wonder is driving the age of the new Moon as
much as opportunity. Far reach is a stretch, as is

(03:57):
the life spotting hyper telescope, but no more than the
Apollo missions, or the Internet or the Manhattan Project. Mahesh
hopes Farview's team will see some test radio antennas on
the Moon as soon as next year, with a larger
array as soon as twenty thirty. To install one hundred
thousand antennas, she says, you first have to do one.

(04:19):
Understanding the astrophysics of the thirteen point eight billion year
old universe has tremendous urgency for Mahesh, driven by both
the opportunity the moment presents and the wonder. How could
we not explain the origins of the universe If we
have the ability to do it, we have to complete
the pictures, says Mahesh. Don't don't we want to know

(04:41):
where the first star came from? We are Stardust, don't
we want to know where we came from? This is
the only way to do it. How to start building
on the Moon. The next several decades will stand out
as unlike any others in the Moon's four point five
billion year history. If all goes to plan, the Moon
will become an outpost, perhaps with a bit of the

(05:01):
feel of a nineteen fifty sci fi show crossed with
the industrial outskirts of Newark Airport. By twenty eighty, there
could be a thriving lunar economy supporting game changing science.
But to build it, scientists and engineers will need to
start small and take three million three milestone steps. Phase

(05:24):
one build with dirt. Rocket launchers are pricey. To keep
costs down, will need to start working with the most
abundant resource already on the Moon, mega regolith or lunar soil.
Phase two develop lunar power. A permanent base will need
to be self supporting with its own electric power sources
to grow food and protect people's long term well being.

(05:47):
Phase three open for business. A lunar base will thrive
only if it can stain itself economically selling rare and
valuable resources back to Earth, like minerals or electric power.
Next article What Katrina taught us. Two decades after the
hurricane devastated New Orleans, fourteen billion dollars has been spent
on an elaborate coastal defense system. Will it be enough

(06:10):
to stop the next vegas storm? It's been twenty years
since Hurricane Katrina made landfall in coastal Louisiana, leaving nearly
fourteen hundred dead and causing some one hundred twenty five
billion dollars in damage. Much of the devastation resulted from
huge volumes of water that heaved inland via estuaries and canals,

(06:31):
flooding New Orleans. Healthy coastal wetlands would have absorbed some
of that storm surge had decades of development not wrecked
habit on the Delta. Shipping canals and oil infrastructure up
ended its hydrology. Dams and levees robbed it of replenishing sediment.
Months after the storm, Louisiana created the Coastal Protection and

(06:53):
Restoration Authority, a state agency that developed a fifty year
blueprint to prevent land loss and build infrastructure augmenting coasts
natural defenses. Louisiana has since spent nearly fourteen billion dollars
on some one hundred seventy projects, though not without setbacks.
Earlier this year, after bemooning costs and impacts on fisheries,

(07:16):
the governor suspended a cornerstone of the plan that would
have diverted fresh water and sediment to a much eroded basin.
Questions linger about funding another roughly thirty years and thirty
billion dollars worth of projects. Sure it's expensive, says Alex Kolker,
a climate scientist with the Louisiana University's Marine Consortium, but

(07:39):
the cost of another Katrina would be over one hundred
billion dollars. Here's a detailed look at what the state
has accomplished and what yet can be done to bolster
a fragile, critical ups landscape. This by Boyce uphold protecting
a vulnerable coast. Informed by the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina,

(08:02):
Louisiana's efforts to better withstand storms and rising seas today
take two forms. Built defenses and restored natural ones. Projects
aim to prevent both catastrophic flooding and land loss. Water
In this infrared satellite map appears black next ninety nine
point nine nine nine percent of the deep sea is

(08:24):
a mystery. Katy Croft Bell is on a mission to
change that by deploying a new tool to help scientists
get eyes on the murky depths. This article by Andrew S.
Lewis we know almost nothing about the deep sea floor.
After decades of exploration, it is still the least understood
habitat on Earth. This blind spot has long vex's National

(08:46):
Geographic Explorer, katy Croft Bell, who has led dozens of
ocean expeditions around the world. After all, the deep sea
encompasses some two thirds of the globe and plays a
key role in sequestrian carbon and regulating the climate. So
Bell and a few other researchers recently set out to
quantify the gaps in our knowledge. The results were even

(09:08):
worse than they thought. A mere point zero zero one
percent of the deep sea floor has been visually observed.
They found that though there have been some forty four
thousand deep sea dives since the nineteen fifties, many surveyed
the same sites, resulting in only about twelve thousand unique
locations explored. Their findings also revealed that just five high

(09:31):
income countries have been responsible for nearly all the dives.
The cost of deep sea research is partly to blame
for this monopoly. The price of an advanced tool like
a deep submergence vehicle ranges from tens of thousands to
millions of dollars. For almost a decade, Bell has been
working to make the deep sea more accessible. Her pace

(09:51):
picked up in twenty eighteen when she convened nearly two
hundred fifty researchers at the MIT Media Lab to discuss
ways to increase our knowledge of the seafloor, from cheaper
sensors and machine learning to community engagement in robotics. By
the events close, Bell had a realization, why couldn't one

(10:11):
piece of technology be cheap to make, easy to operate
and suited for a wide variety of vessels that could
transform the field, Bell recalls thinking and really accelerate our
understanding of the deep ocean. The veteran ocean researcher decided
to make it a reality. Fast forward seven years and
Bell is on the cusp of debuting debuting a revolutionary

(10:35):
deep submergence vehicle that has many features of the multimillion
dollar devices, but at a cost of less than ten
thousand dollars. It will be a total game changer, Bell says,
not much bigger than a scuba tank. The tool is
being built to withstand the immense pressure that exists twenty
thousand feet below the water's surface, allowing it to reach

(10:55):
ninety eight percent of the ocean floor. Bell and her
colleagues at the Ocean Discovery ODL, a nonprofit she founded
in twenty twenty one, named it the Deep Ocean Research
and Imaging System DORIS. The finished product will be equipped
with sensors to detect temperature, depth, and saliginity, but its

(11:15):
primary goal is to capture footage with its four K
still in video cameras, which will help scientists better understand
the measurements and samples taken from the seafloor. And the
development process has the attention of major players. ODEL is
creating the prototype in partnership with tech company Blue Robotics
and receiving funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,

(11:40):
among others. Future upgrades will include the ability to collect
samples in audio. Bell's team is also collaborating with the
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute to create machine learning models
that can rapidly analyze all the data that the tool retrieves.
Bell and her odl colleagues identified thousands of locations that

(12:02):
would greatly diversify and increase the number of surveyed sites,
including spots in the Southern Ocean and the pacifics Clarion
Clipperton Zone. Exploring these points would effectively double the number
of unique locations around the world that we've seen. Bell
says Doris will help with that because of its small

(12:23):
size and ease of deployment. The new device will be
launched from vessels not typically used for deep sea research.
One example is the Ho Kulai, a double hulled canoe
used by the Polynesian Voyaging Society PVS, an organization working
to expand knowledge of traditional navigation techniques. Bell collaborated with

(12:44):
PVS as she tested early low cost instruments, and the
Hawaii based organization is planning to use a Doris prototype
on an upcoming journey across the Pacific. The quest will
be partially supported by National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Places
Ocean Expeditions, an ambitious effort that's dispatching a number of
scientists to study the world's five oceans. She also will

(13:08):
be working with other explorers on the multi year project
to deploy the new tech on their research trips. Bill
has never been more excited about the potential for discovery.
What's left in the ninety nine point nine ninety nine
percent that we haven't seen yet. While Mexico's train of
the future leave its past behind, the trend Maya Railway

(13:31):
was built to unite the country and honor ancient Maya sytes.
Now there are questions about what exactly has disappeared along
its path. This article by Michael Finkel. Roberto Royo was
inside the cave when the roof cracked open and a
massive drill churned, thundering through stalactites. Stumbling, Rojo ducked for cover,

(13:53):
holding out his phone, the biologist and outspoken cave explorer
capturing the moment that a spectacular limestone chamber in the
Yucatan Peninsula of southeastern Mexico was destroyed. A rusty steel
pillar about four feet in diameter and eighty feet tall,
was later jammed into the hole by the industrial drig rig.

(14:13):
Drill rig on the surface above the hollow pillar was
pumped full of cement, some of which spilled into the
crystalline water, partially filling the senote as a sinkhole or
cave system with an underground reservoir is known rust flakes
shedding from the pillar, mixed with loose cement, and a
dark stain spread across the pool. Nearby, a second hole

(14:36):
was punched and another pillar inserted, then a third, then
a fourth. There are now forty pillars in this senote alone,
marching through in rows of four by Rojos count more
than fifteen thousand pillars have been stabbed into the thin
Yucatan soil and a salt that may trigger a chain reaction.
The Yucatan Peninsula is bigger than Florida, but because it's

(14:58):
made of porous limestone, much of the region has no
rivers or lakes. The widespread sonotes are a crucial source
of fresh water, sustaining hundreds of species from jaguars to tapirs,
as well as millions of Mexican citizens and all of
the Taurus Maya. People have placed ceremonial objects in senotes
for over a thousand years. Most critically, many of the

(15:22):
senotes are interconnected ruin some of the water, says Rojo,
and you risk at all and they drain to the sea.
So Ooze from the pillars also attacks the Mezzo American
reef and the beaches of Cancun and the mangroves, buttressing
the coast, as well as the jungle and its wildlife.
Everything in Rojo's perspective could be lost and echo side.

(15:45):
He calls it all for the sake of a train trend.
Maya slides into the station, air conditioning pumping spotlessly clean
the seats and aisles in trim tinted teal or aquamarine.
Like the sea beyond cancuons termin all sleekly curved walls
and planters bursting with greenery clarifies why this is one

(16:05):
of the most expensive infrastructure projects in modern Mexican history.
The system fully opened in December twenty twenty four, costing
an estimated thirty billion dollars and creating a grand loop
around the Yucatan Peninsula, nine hundred sixty six miles of rail,
thirty four stops, and more than three dozen trains moving

(16:26):
in both directions at up to one hundred miles per hour.
Some tracks sits on elevated viaducts supported by steel pillars
that have been stuccoed above ground demurely in white. The
train is an incredcredible achievements. As a cologist and cave diver,
German yan Yez one of the few people who love

(16:48):
exploring the senote is as much as Robert Roho. The
two of them were once close best friends, says Rojo,
and started a caving club together. Now they hardly speak.
Trenbaya divided them, as it has cleaved friendships and families
across Mexico and beyond. How could a train so innocuous
stir up terrible fights? The conflicts are both grand and

(17:11):
not the direction of a nation. The price of a
bier and tenned to polarize society. There's a battle between
those with a far sighted need to preserve the last
scraps of wild mother Earth and those who understand that
human impact, unstoppable since our species was born, should be
celebrated when you feel it's been appropriately wrought. Tran Maaya

(17:32):
was a result is a project that's seen with two
sets of eyes. When construction started in twenty twenty, Yanyas
and Roho were both drawn to the senotes beneath the route,
but while Roho documented ruin, Yanyes helped seek treasure. For
two years, Yanyas was employed by Mexico's government and worked

(17:53):
closely with members of the National Institute of Anthropology and History,
a respected Mexican office that oversees the nation's cultural heritage
from museums to pyramids. The Institute's field unit assesses the
archaeological impact of proposed public works, and for tran Maya,
an unprecedented team of two thousand was assembled, including scientists

(18:14):
and support staff, who combed the jungle along the planned circuit.
It was the job of my dreams as Yanyas, who
was the underwater mapping division and assisted in dozens of fines,
including the first intact Maya canoe discovered in the region,
believed to be from around a D nine hundred. Likely
it will be displayed in one of the nine new

(18:36):
museums being built that will highlight trand Maya discoveries. Yanyas,
unlike Rojo, was actually on the job site every day
in uniform part of the crew, from track layers to archaeologists.
Yanyas says he sensed dedication in national pride, a belief
that the work was important because to them it was

(18:56):
the Yucatan Peninsula beyond that the tourist strips has long
been neglected with areas of extreme poverty, tran Maya has
the power to change that. In addition to taking passengers,
the rail line will soon carry large quantities of cargo,
which should reduce the price of goods from beef to
beer informally remote areas and let farmers efficiently transport produce.

(19:18):
Tourists and their cash will be distributed more equitably throughout
the peninsula. Ticket prices for locals make the train cheaper
than the bus. A study by the United Nations estimates
that by twenty thirty, the economic boost from Tranmyah will
generate more than nine hundred thousand new jobs and lift
one point one million people out of poverty. It's the

(19:40):
ideal project at the right time, supporters say, launching an
improvised region impoverished region into the future. Not building this
modern marvel would be would have been tragic. Without a train,
the area's population growth may have necessitated a more ecologically
damaging old fashioned highway. Even the pillars, to some are beneficial.

(20:01):
Elevating the train preserves the natural flow of the wildlife
beneath instead of fragmenting habitats. Rojo has documented one hundred
twenty senotes the pillars have pierced, which means Yanettes notes
that at least ten thousand others are unharmed. As for
contaminating the aquifer, sanitation experts believe a greater culprit than

(20:24):
pillars is a lack of proper sewage disposal in the area,
and the monetary stimulus of the train should help fix that.
Trand Maya, says Yanyez won't kill the Yucatan, It's going
to save it. Circling south out of Cancun, the train
rolls through jungle inland of the famous beach resorts. The
ground level tracks here have sliced open one of the

(20:46):
last places in Mexico with vast healthy forest. Otto Fahan Beartrop,
a Mexican journalist and owner of a tour guiding business,
has spent years investigating tran Maya and claims that anyone
who supports it has been brainwashed by government propaganda. Yanyas
and Rojo fought chiefly over tolerance for ecological harm, but

(21:08):
the van Bertrub family, like many others, is attempting to
maintain cordial relations while clashing over politics and sociology. Too,
and what it means to be Mexican. Etienne van bertrub
Otto's first cousin, their fathers are brothers, is an academic
specializing in sustainable development who has also intensely studied tran

(21:28):
Maya and believes that many opposed to it have been
blinded by dislike of Mexico's new leadership. Tranmaya is the
pet project of former President andres Manoel Lopez Obrador, known
as AMLO, who brought a progressive outlet to the Mexican
government for the first time in decades when elected in

(21:49):
twenty eighteen on a platform focused on reducing poverty. Amlo
mentioned the train in his inaugural address and swiftly launched construction,
which finished soon after his chosen successor, Claudia Scheinbaum, became
president in twenty twenty four. To keep the project moving,
believes Atto van Bertraub Amlo breezenly lied. The president stated

(22:12):
repeatedly that not one tree will be cut because the
train will be built over abandoned rail lines. In truth,
millions of trees were felled, and much of the route
is far from old tracks to protect wildlife. Where the
train wasn't elevated. The government promised to install animal crossings.
Plans distributed to the media showed wide, gently sloping overpasses

(22:33):
designed to look natural with trees and shrubs. None have
yet been built. Otto reported on such deceptions for the
Yucatan newspaper La Jornada Maya. He joined forces with the
Roho and other anti train activists. Rojo's videos of the
pillars were widely distributed. Dozens of Mexican scientists and academics

(22:53):
signed letters pleading for construction to halt. Mexican singers, actors,
and artists recorded video was begging the government to conserve
the forest. Demonstrations were staged in fresh clear cuts. Some
protesters cuffed themselves to machinery. Journalists around the world took notice.
A New York Times headline announced that the project barrels

(23:14):
towards disaster. The reaction of the government, expressed in Omlo's
televised speches and social media posts, was to imply that
those who opposed the train were traders enemies of Mexican progress.
That's when I got my first threatening calls, says Otto.
He has warned he could be disappeared, a terrifying concern
in Mexico, whereover a dozen environmental protesters are murdered each year,

(23:39):
more than anywhere else in the world except Columbia, according
to the non profit agency Global Witness. Fearful for his life,
Otto fell silent. I couldn't write any more. It was
too dangerous. He lauds the bravery of people like Rojo,
who kept up the drum beat, repeatedly pointing out the
project was illegal as the mandated environmental impact statements were

(24:00):
never completed. AMLO's response in November twenty twenty one was
to declare that the train was a matter of national security. Further,
AMLO put the Mexican military in charge of the project's
construction and operation, and with these strong arm tactics, as
Otto views them, the president by passed the need for
environmental assessments. In May twenty twenty three, the Mexico Supreme

(24:24):
Court ruled that such evasive actions were illegal, but AMLO
overruled the court's decision with a narrower executive order, and
construction rolled down. Even the revered National Institute of Anthropology
and History was caught up in an apparent scandal. An
archaeologist with the trend Maya team, Juan Manoel Sandeval published

(24:46):
a scathing seventy five page report detailing incidents of purposeful
destruction of artifacts so that train workers could bulldoze through
without delay. The Washington Post reported that more than twenty
five thousand antiquities, including Maya temples, were obliterated. Members of
the indigenous community, about half of the peninsula's population identifies

(25:08):
as adigious Indigenous, more than double the national average, raised
voices in protests. Some expressed that the very name tran
Maya reduced Native people to a marketing slogan. But nothing
stopped construction, and the train is done after all, that's
as Otto. The result is a cultural, environmental, and economic catastrophe.

(25:29):
Many stations are far from city centers, difficult to reach.
The early rider numbers are one fifth of government expectations.
Maintaining a high tech train in tropical weather and salty
air will be an endless expense in a handful of years.
He's certain tran Maya will lie in ruins, rusted and overgrown.
Maybe people will visit it like the temples of Tulum

(25:52):
trn Mayas. As Otto's cousin Etien van Bertraub thought, though
not free of flaws, is one of the most important
projects in Mexican history. Etienne grew up in Mexico but
now lectures on urban development at University College London. He
acknowledges the painful losses stalagmites that grew for millions of

(26:13):
years shattered in minutes, but feels that what's gained the
opportunities for coming generations a region connected outweighs the damage.
He plans to publish a book about the train. A
considerable majority of Mexican citizens, says Etienne approve of tran Maya.
An early pool puts support at ninety percent. What some

(26:33):
haters are really expressing, he says, is fear the affluent.
Those who have already attained success generally don't want a
more equitable society. Tran Maya was built so swiftly against
their wishes, and this rattled those accustomed to clout. From
Etienne's perspective, the election of AMLO marked a progressive leap
forward for Mexico. Social benefits, he says, are expanding. Poor

(26:57):
kids no longer need to drop out of school to
tran Maya represents this hopeful new sentiment in one triumphant
work on the train itself. Gliding through greenery on the
southern part of the loop, stylishly linking cities once separated
by long, rattling drives. The feeling is of a rolling celebration.

(27:17):
The passengers, primarily Mexican, lots of families walk the aisles,
snapping photos or carrying snacks from the food car. Several
Rare trand Maya caps and shirts purchased at a station
gift shop, like fans of a sports team, to aid
the visually impaired. The accessible bathroom speaks in both Spanish
and English. The door is now locked. The cleaning crow

(27:39):
passes by after nearly every stop. A region that has
experienced extensive periods of war, slavery, and resource extraction and
finally gained something back. This concludes readings from National Geographic
Magazine for to day. Your reader has been Marsha. Thank
you for listening, Keep on listing, and have a great day.