Radiolab for Kids

In 2007, Bruce Robison’s robot submarine stumbled across an octopus settling in to brood her eggs. It seemed like a small moment. But as he went back to visit her, month after month, what began as a simple act of motherhood became a heroic feat that has never been equaled by any known species on Earth. This episode was reported and produced by Annie McEwen. Special thanks to Kim Fulton-Bennett and Rob Sherlock at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Center. And thanks to the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra for the use of their piece, “Concerto for Bassoon & Chamber Orchestra: II. Beautiful.” SupportRadiolab today atRadiolab.org/donate [https://pledge3.wnyc.org/donate/radiolab-it/onestep/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=notes&utm_campaign=membership&utm_content=radiolab]. If you need more ocean in your life, check out the incredible Monterey Bay Aquarium live cams (especially the jellies!):www.montereybayaquarium.org/animals/live-cams [https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/animals/live-cams] Here’s a pic of Octomom sitting on her eggs, Nov. 1, 2007. (© 2007 MBARI)

We'll kick off the chase with Diana Deutsch, a professor specializing in the Psychology of Music, who could extract song out even the most monotonous of drones. (Think Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller. Bueller.)For those of us who have trouble staying in tune when we sing, Deutsch has some exciting news. The problem might not be your ears, but your language. She tells us about tone languages, such as Mandarin and Vietnamese, which rely on pitch to convey the meaning of a word. Turns out speakers of tone languages are exponentially more inclined to have absolute (AKA 'perfect') pitch. And, nope, English isn't one of them. What is perfect pitch anyway? And who cares? Deutsch, along with Jad and Robert, will duke it out over the merits of perfect pitch. A sign of genius, a nuisance, or an evolutionary superpower? You decide. (We can't). Do you want to hear Dr. Deutsch's musical illusions? Check them out here [https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/292109-musical-illusions]!

We kick things off with one of the longest-running experiments in the world. As Joshua Foer explains, the Pitch Drop Experiment is so slow, you can watch it for hours (check out the live cam [http://smp.uq.edu.au/content/pitch-drop-experiment]) and not detect the slightest movement. But that doesn't mean nothing's happening. Professor John Mainstone tells us about his desperate attempts to catch the flashes of action hiding inside this decades-long experiment. Then, Carl Zimmer joins us for a little recalibration. It’s hard to imagine anything faster than a thought that just pops into your head. But that kind of thinking is actually wrong-headed. In reality, thoughts are achingly, even disturbingly slow. Seth Horowitz, author ofThe Universal Sense: How Hearing Shapes the Mind, helps us discover our fastest possible thought, and fight our way back into the now.

According to one theory, the moon formed when a Mars-sized chunk of rock collided with Earth. After the moon coalesced out of the debris from that impact, it was much closer to Earth than it is today. This idea is taken to it's fanciful limit in Italo Calvino's story "The Distance of the Moon" (from his collectionCosmicomics, translated by William Weaver). The story, narrated by a character with the impossible-to-pronounce name Qfwfq, tells of a strange crew who jump between Earth and moon, and sometimes hover in the nether reaches of gravity between the two. This reading was part of a live event hosted by Radiolab and Selected Shorts, and it originally aired on WNYC’s and PRI’s SELECTED SHORTS, paired with a Ray Bradbury classic, “All Summer in a Day,” read by musical theater star Michael Cerveris. Hosted by BD Wong, you canlisten to the full show here [http://www.wnyc.org/shows/shorts/2013/apr/07/].

Back in 2012, when we were putting together our live showIn the Dark, Jad and Robert called up Dave Wolf to ask him if he had any stories about darkness. And boy, did he. Dave told us two stories that became the finale of our show. Back in late 1997, Dave Wolf was on his first spacewalk, to perform work on the Mir (the photo to the right was taken during that mission, courtesy ofNASA. [http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4225/sts86/photo/sts-86-photo-36.htm]). Dave wasn't alone -- with him was veteran Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Solovyev. (That's a picture of Dave giving Anatoly a hug on board the Mir, also courtesy ofNASA [http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4225/sts86/photo/sts-86-photo-27.htm]). Out in blackness of space, the contrast between light and dark is almost unimaginably extreme -- every 45 minutes, you plunge between absolute darkness on the night-side of Earth, and blazing light as the sun screams into view. Dave and Anatoly were tethered to the spacecraft, traveling 5 miles per second. That's 16 times faster than we travel on Earth's surface as it rotates -- so as they orbited, they experienced 16 nights and 16 days for every Earth day. Dave's description of his first spacewalk was all we could've asked for, and more. But what happened next ... well, it's just one of those stories that you always hope an astronaut will tell. Dave and Anatoly were ready to call it a job and head back into the Mir when something went wrong with the airlock. They couldn't get it to re-pressurize. In other words, they were locked out. After hours of trying to fix the airlock, they were running out of the resources that kept them alive in their space suits and facing a grisly death. So, they unhooked their tethers, and tried one last desperate move. In the end, they made it through, and Dave went on to perform dozens more spacewalks in the years to come, but he never again experienced anything like those harrowing minutes trying to improvise his way back into the Mir. After that terrifying tale, Dave told us about another moment he and Anatoly shared, floating high above Earth, staring out into the universe ... a moment so beautiful, and peaceful, we decided to use the audience recreate it, as best we could, for the final act of our live show. Pilobolus creates a shadow astronaut during Dave Wolf's story on stage (photo by Lars Topelmann): The audience turns Portland's Keller auditorium into a view of outer space with thousands of LED lights (photo by Lars Topelmann): Here's Dave Wolf in the dark darkness of space, performing a spacewalk in 2009 (courtesy ofNASA [http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/shuttle/sts-127/html/s127e007210.html]): To give you an idea of what it looks like during the brightness of day, here's another photo taken in 2009 -- more than a decade after the adventure described in our podcast -- this time of astronaut Tom Marshburn (Dave Wolf is with him, out of frame, photo courtesy ofNASA [http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1425.html]): This episode was produced by Matt Kielty and Soren Wheeler. Support Radiolab today atRadiolab.org/donate [https://pledge3.wnyc.org/donate/radiolab-it/onestep/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=notes&utm_campaign=membership&utm_content=radiolab].