Space Stuff, Endnotes, and a New Episode of The Library of Lost Time
Fun reads for the weekend
It happens with every episode of our Strong Sense of Place podcast: We find far too many delightful, informative, entertaining, [insert your favorite adjective] things to squeeze into the show.
Here are a handful of wonderful bits and bobs that were cut-for-time from our latest episode Outer Space: We Are All Made of Stars:
According to this article from Smithsonian magazine, the moon is going to get its own time zone (!). People who know about these kinds of things expect travel to the moon to become more routine than it is now — which, whut? — so it’s imperative to establish a timing standard that ‘international bodies can use to coordinate their activities on the lunar surface.’ By the end of 2026, NASA must implement a time standard that, among other qualities, will deliver ‘self-sufficiency in the event that connection with Earth is lost.’ Again: whut?
Mars Needs Women is a made-for-TV movie from 1968. Here’s the setup: NASA decodes a message that reads: ‘Mars ... Needs ... Women.’ An alien named Dop leads a crew of aliens to Earth to recruit women to come to Mars and produce offspring to save the Martian species. The aliens, disguised as human men, finally select their candidates: a homecoming queen, a stewardess, a stripper, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist, Dr. Bolen, an expert in ‘pace genetics.’ It has a whopping 12% on Rotten Tomatoes. Reviews include statements like ‘One of the great awful movies.’ and ‘There's about five minutes of story, so to pad things out, someone will walk into a room, and then walk around the room, then pour themselves a drink, then walk around the room again.’ There is general agreement, however, that Yvonne Craig, a.k.a., Batgirl, is beautiful. Here’s a detailed breakdown of the movie so you don’t have to watch it. Or maybe you want to?
I don’t have anything smart to say about it, I simply like this image:
NASA’s Voyager-1 space probe has been sending messages to Earth from deep space since 1977; I talked about it in some detail in our outer space episode. Voyager-1 is currently 24 billion km (15 billion miles) away — so distant, its radio messages take 22.5 hours to reach us. Last November, something malfunctioned aboard the little probe that could, and its communiques were no longer making it to Earth. But in April, the engineering team was able to REMOTELY REPAIR THE PROBLEM, and our far-away space friends is back in touch. All the detail you need here.
Related: On Valentine's day in 1990, Voyager 1 captured this view of Earth from 3.7 billion miles before heading further out into space. We are that tiny dot.
If you would like to explore the night sky with your feet firmly on planet Earth, the Sky Guide app could be a fun way to do it. This app, only for IOS right now, helps you identify stars and planets. You can simply hold up your device and learn more about what’s right in front of you! You can also track location-specific events, like solar eclipses, planetary alignments, meteor showers, and more. The nifty time travel feature lets you go back to see comets and other celestial phenomena.
Finally, let’s all take poet Andrea Gibson’s advice and today, let yourself be the Milky Way:
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New Episode of The Library of Lost Time
In each mini-podcast episode, we discuss two books at the top of our TBR, then share a fun book- or travel-related distraction. Get all the episodes and books galore here.
In this installment, we get excited about two books: A Season for That by Steve Hoffman and The God of the Woods by Liz Moore. Then I explain why I’m so excited to get the new episode of the ‘Pack One Bag’ podcast every week.
listen | transcript
Endnotes: 12 July
Oh, to be on a sailboat off the coast of Greenland! This is Scoresby Sund, the longest fjord system on Earth. It’s the only place on the planet where you can see icebergs floating in a fjord. Here’s one for the introverts: You can also visit Ittoqqortoormiit, the most isolated town in Greenland. It’s quiet and pristine. It’s also where you have the highest chance/risk of meeting a polar bear. The first paragraph of this National Geographic story about Scoresby Sund is an excellent litmus test to know if a trip there is a good fit for you. I’m pretty swayed by the idea that I could go on an expedition to see narwhals there. If this is tempting to you, here’s a guide to visiting and a short video that captures a perfect day in Scorsby Sund.
I could not be more excited about this! Reactor has a cover reveal for Erika Swyler’s new book We Lived on the Horizon. Her novel The Book of Speculation is in my all-time Top 15.
These new covers from Penguin Vintage Classics are so pretty!
In case you’ve ever asked yourself, Which airports have the best food?
Sure, millions of us have read Murder on the Orient Express and And Then There Were None, but what about Dame Agatha’s short stories? Here are 10 of her best.
This is a pretty dreamy bookshop:
This piece has so many fun ideas about what to bring for a weekend at someone’s house.
AFAR magazine shares 10 mysteries that will take you around the world. (And here’s our list of 19 international mysteries and thrillerswith a strong sense of place.
Can You Guess the Popular Book Based on its Obscure Subtitle? (Ooh, I did really poorly on this quiz.)
This could be the thing that inspires you to move to Europe:Â 6 Charming Places in Europe That Will Pay You to Move There. Greece! Spain! Switzerland! Italy!
Break out your favorite pink outfit, London’s (fantastic) Design Museum just opened a super-fun exhibit about Barbie.
This is a really cool way to manage your reading life:Â My Sunday ritual: a reading plan for the week.
9 Unique Eats You Have to Try in Denver. ‘Watch chefs cook your meal in a live performance at Beckon, learn dessert science at The Inventing Room, or snag a booth in a former mortuary at Linger.’
Just in time for your summer getaway, here are 10 novels about vacations gone horribly, fantastically wrong.
That Julia Turshen link is excellent!
That movie looks hilarious - and so 1968! Loved the links and all the extra info (bringing an extra good maple syrup instead of vine had never occurred to me), and the lady with the space hat is fantastic! I´m about 1/3 into "The Mars House", and it´s really quite something. Looking forward to seeing how the plot unfolds; the world building is fascinating. Thanks for the recommendation!