Moon Trees

Oh, wait, you're listening to Radio Lab from WNYC. Happy New Year! This past year, we lost a great one. Alice Wong, the renowned disability activist, MacArthur award winner and writer and podcaster, and so many other things, including we all feel lucky to say, friend of Radio Lab. You may remember her from an episode we did in the fall called Voice. Alice brought us a very rad and real piece about how losing her speaking voice changed, how she responded to the world and how the world responded to her. I have observed people do talk over me because I guess they don't recognize the sounds I am making as a voice. And as you can guess, I see then silently plan their destruction. And so to kick off the new year, we all wanted to pay some small tribute to Alice. And as we were trying to figure out how to do that, I went back and listened to the last conversation we ever had, which was just two months before she died. And I felt guided by this one tiny moment. To celebrate the recovery from my bed rest, I saw Lady Gaga in summer when she was in San Francisco. Oh awesome, what was that like? Oh, the energy and vibe was amazing. I dressed as Ziggy Star Dust with full makeup and a sparkly pink shirt and silver pants and boots. I was really feeling myself and I'm pursuing pleasure as much as I can while I can. Alice was so serious about what she was doing. She went to bat for disabled folks, she called out ableism, she did not mince words, but she was also so full of joy. In fact, I am seeing Stevie Nixon October in my witchy powers will be in full display. My text chain with her is full of really bad puns, memes of her mocking my children and f-bombs. So many f-bombs, women cursed like a sailor. And one thing that her Ziggy Star Dust comment made me realize that maybe not everyone knew about her is that she was really passionately in to space. In a fake obituary that she wrote for herself, she said that she lived to the age of 96 and spent the last few decades of her life living on the moon. She said she lived in a zero-gravity capsule as a member of, quote, "crips in space," a group of scientist creators and explorers. Now when I look up at the moon, I picture Alice is up there. In lower gravity, experiencing less pain. In that same obituary, she also imagined that we all organized a, quote, "multi-dimensional interstellar memorial" on her behalf. So as I wait for aliens to get back to me regarding logistical details, I figured as a little star we could play an episode about this place she dreamed of living, the moon. Funnily enough, it is also a story that ends up being about access and about how the moon itself is more accessible to most of us here on Earth than we realize. It is an episode of terrestrials. Alice was actually an advisor of terrestrials. She was always rooting for weird work and helped us make pieces that treated disability with care. So here we go. Thank you, Alice. We miss you. Please accept this humble lunar offering as a small token of our immense gratitude. Three, two, one. Imagine that you're teeny, teeny tiny and you have this hard shell. Inside that hard shell is everything you need to start growing to 200 feet tall. And you are all set to be an earthling until somebody launches you, hurls you toward the moon. And you travel 250,000 miles, the farthest that any living thing has ever been. You see the far side of the moon where all there is is stars. And then you start falling. Back, back, back toward the earth at faster speeds where nobody is sure you feel survived. But when you hit the soil, you feel the warm sun and you unfurl from your shell. You have become a moon tree. A moon tree? Yes. All right. Now is the part where I make you sing the theme song with me. To restrials, to restrials, we are not the worst. We are the best trials. Yes. Yes. You've got it. To restrials is a show where we uncover the strangeness waiting right here on Planet Earth. I am your host Lou Miller, joined as always by my song, bud. And you believe, Alan, we said to you to the moon. And today, we are joined by one of our favorite storytellers, one of the people who fat checks our terrestrials episodes to make sure everything we're saying is true. Can you please introduce yourself? Hello. I'm Natalie Middleton. So it's funny that you are the person on our team who kind of certifies truth because you are bringing us a story that sounds like science fiction, like sci-fi. Yeah. Where do we start? This whole story begins all thanks to a firefighter called Stu Smoky Russe. Ooh, Smoky is his middle name. That's his nickname. Yes. Smoky. Okay, Smoky firefighter. Originally born in Colorado in 1933, Redhead, Freckles, Tall, kind of Linky, Prankster. He's whipsmart, really good at math. And he absolutely loved trees. And after high school, he got a job with the Forest Service trying to fight this fungus called Blister Rust, which is a fungus that is really hard for trees to survive. So you're saying he loved them so much, his actual job was to protect them from getting sick? Yeah. And so every summer after that, he would go and fight fires. And he became, was called a Smok Jumper, a smoke jumper. That sounds a little scary. It's pretty dangerous. So they're jumping out of planes with a parachute basically into the fire. Wow. Are they wearing like firemen gear like the jacket? It's actually kind of similar to like an astronaut suit. Hmm. And at some point as he's floating through space, he wonders what it would be like. To float through space, higher space, outer space. So first, he learns how to fly a plane. Yes. Then he trains and becomes an astronaut. He just kind of went up higher in the sky. And one day, NASA tells him he's going to the moon, the Apollo 14, and his job, he's going to be the pilot. Whoa, he's flying the spaceship? Yes. Wow. Go Smoky. It's a big job. So the year is 1971, the spacecraft is all loaded up with gear and fuel and each astronaut gets to bring with them one little bag. It's not big. It's like almost like a pocket size. It's made of a special type of glass that won't melt until it's hotter than over a thousand degrees Fahrenheit. Whoa. That's like a furnace, very fireproof. And what can they put in there? Is it like they're licensed in toothbrush? Yes. So astronauts actually just get to bring whatever is meaningful to them. Oh. What would you bring? Oh. So I have a daughter that's two. She drew a train and yeah, I would probably bring that. What did Smoky bring? So out of everything that he could have thought to take on Earth, he chose to take tree seeds. Back to his love of trees, he can't take it. Yeah. He brought a big handful of five types of seeds. Sweet gum, leafy trees from the east coast of the U.S. Loblali pine. They're from the South. Loblali, Loblali, Loblali, Loblali, that's fun to say. We have the Redwood tree. Oh, those big giants on the west coast that are too big to even hug. Then we have the Sycamore, Super Tall leafy ones, lots of them in the middle of the country. The last one is the Douglas fir. It's like a Christmas tree. You're off in Douglas firs, right? Yes. They chose trees that could be grown all across the whole entire country. Yes. And they put them in this aluminum metal canister, very small, it fits in the palm of your hand. So 500 of these seeds fit in the palm of Smoky's hand. Wow. And so the day of the launch, he puts this canister of seeds in his little white fireproof bag, waves to the masses. steps on to the spacecraft. From a scientific standpoint, people just didn't know what would happen to a plant or a seed if you took it up into deep space. It had no one ever taken one up before. No, so this was the first time, and he had a scientific question. What would happen if we brought another living thing up into space with us that's different than us? Would it survive? Yeah. Would it survive? Would it grow differently? Would it look like a totally different kind of tree? Because as Natalie explained, they knew that space affected humans. When you're out in space, you're exposed to stronger radiation from the sun and galactic cosmic rays. And this radiation can wiggle its way into your DNA, the blueprint that tells your body how to grow and potentially warp things. Plus, the lowered gravity can weaken your bones and muscles, and oddly because of something about how time works in space you age just a tiny bit slower. Which is still a really understand, but I gotta keep moving on with the story. And so smoky, and some of his fellow tree lovers at the Forest Service wondered, would space have an effect on the cells and DNA inside trees? Did he have any hypotheses on how space travel might affect growth of these trees? I looked, there's nothing that indicates what he thought except that he thought it was a cool idea. Okay, well, lucky for you, Natalie, I put the question to a bunch of children. Oh! And would you like to hear some of their answers? Yes! Maybe I'd have to grow now with any water, it would probably have different needs instead of like water, maybe something else, different chemicals helping it grow. Maybe I would have to be growing on no gravity. So how would that make the tree look different? So, space is an arch, and then turn the spirals, trying to go upwards a little higher because of just like the generally lower gravity on the moon. And there's also gonna be berries, golden berries, brine berries, a brine's berry. Maybe like blue leaves, and white trunk. Ooh. And it looks like a palm tree, but- That's like a what tree? A palm tree. Oh, it's like a palm tree. But like, way I'm gray, but inside of the coconut is a piece from the moon. Ooh. Is it hard or soft inside? Yeah. And probably have a little metal in it. And at the end of them, they were like little moon, like half-cresses, and full-cresses, and so on. And if you touch one, you'll start to feel like tingling your hand, and if you give one to your animal, your animal will get this little moon shape on its forehead, and then they'll be able to like fly and stuff. Oh my god, Lulu, these are so- I just put the question out, isn't this great? It just catches imagination, doesn't it? It's so fitting, Lulu, because it's really thanks to a third grader that we even know about this story. Wait, what? Yeah. That story. You know, it's blast off after this short break. Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Brrrr. Blast off. Goodbye, Smoky. Goodbye. What are the other names of the other astronauts? Edgar Mitchell and Alan Shepard. Goodbye, Ed. Goodbye, Alan. Goodbye, Abby. Oh, seeds. The fuel ignites, and on the outside, the spacecraft looks pretty slow. But on the inside, everything is rattling. The metal rivets are groaning, and the seeds in the canister are bumping into each other. There's all this pressure from gravity trying to pull the spacecraft down, and then, and one is thin. It suffers ties from Earth. And suddenly, the seeds and the astronauts are floating in zero-g. And Smoky aligns his measurements and lurches the spacecraft toward the moon. Steward, how's your penis, Leonard? Not enjoying any peanut butter. This is audio from the actual space flight. Incredible. It's really a wild place up here. For four days, they soar through space as that little moon in the sky grows bigger. Bigger. Bigger. It seems so close, it's like you just reach out and touch it. Until they are right next to it. Still, we just got worried that your family is listening to you, and they're outside looking up at that great big moon. I'm sure we'd all like to be up there with you. Over. And then Stu, aka Smoky. Yeah, wish you could be. He leases Alan and Ed from the spacecraft to go land on the moon. They get to go walk on the moon? Yes. Smoky, Alan, lucky Ed. Yeah. And not only do they get to frolic around in moon dust, Alan brought a makeshift golf club and golf balls to hit. Because of the gravity, barely have to tap it, and it just flies. I'm just picturing like it's like Alan and Ed playing it on the moon, bouncing, feeling you and what they do, and Smoky doesn't get to go. Yeah. Well, that's what I thought, but actually, for every moon mission where people land on the moon, there's one astronaut that stays in orbit around the moon. And it's a really important job, because that's everybody's part, but it sounds less fun. Okay, but you'll see why I say that. So the command module, so that's what Smoky is in. Stu Russo, board Kitty Hawk. Okay. He's going to continue to orbit around, he's going to take pictures, he's going to do all these science experiments while he's orbiting and orbiting and orbiting. The 22nd lunar revolution, 23 Russo, still apparently asleep. I think he orbits. 30 second. 34th. 34 times. Oh, the moon? The moon. Wow. And what happens when you're orbiting the moon is that you end up going into the moon's shadow. Now passing over the back side of the moon, which is called the far side of the moon. And when you do that, everything gets really dark. You can't see the sun, it's cold, the temperature drops, things get like really clammy. And then you also lose contact with everyone on Earth. We have had lots of signal with the command module, Kitty Hawk. And everyone on the moon. Literally, it's Stu Smoky Russo and these seeds in his pocket are the only living things in that corner of the world. Yeah. Okay, Natalie, you're not selling me. I'm so lucky. I mean, you're just like, you are the most alone person of the entire living human race. You're cold. But guess this, you're also clammy when it's pitch dark. Okay, so guys are like having fun bouncing, playing golf on the moon. So yes, I left out the best part. So when you're going around what happens is you suddenly see just this sheet of stars that just goes on forever and ever and ever. The astronauts that have experienced that have just like plunged into that side of space that no one ever gets to see. He can't admire the infinite void forever because he's starting to run out of gas. So he brushes by the moon, picks up Alan and out. Thanks, bro. Lurches the spacecraft back toward Earth. We'll see you on the other side, over. And starts dive bombing towards it, traveling at over 16,000 miles per hour until they splash down in the Pacific Ocean under these three huge orange and white parachutes. So the seeds made it back to Earth, they traveled so far, and then during the decontamination process, the cleaning process, there was an extreme change in pressure and the bag of seeds explodes. So the seeds just exploded all over the place. And everybody thought that they had killed them. But the show must go on. The science must go on. So they sent them to Forest Service Greenhouses where they planted all the seeds and soil. The sycamore seeds which looked like tiny green pistachio nuts and the Douglas firs which looked like scales plucked from a pine cone and the sweet gums and lobloly pines and the mighty race. which all begins in a tiny package that looks a little like a flattened corn kernel. And they watered them and let the sun shine its warm rays. And then they waited. And they waited. And almost all of them came up. Whoa! And so that's how many little saplings are growing. The estimate is 420 to 450 of the 500. Yeah. And are they seeing any difference in that growth? I think about our kids and all the hypotheses, and the spiral arms, and the locality, and the crescents. Like, was there, were they seeing any difference at first? Actually, there was no difference. At first. But trees famously long-living take a long time to grow. Sometimes hundreds of years to reach their full height. So to continue the experiment, NASA planted the baby moon trees all over the country. There was a moon tree planted at the White House, at state capitals, at NASA centers, at a governor's mansion, a military fort. But then they also got planted in front of a junior high at a Girl Scout camp, right outside of a cemetery. So just all of these places all over with regular people. Yeah, did anyone just get one in their yard? Yes, people actually did. No, just like Diane and Nebraska. Yes, there are moon trees at private residence. How cool. Yeah. The funny thing is, though, so when they would do these ceremonies, sometimes they would put a plaque in. But other times, they would just have the ceremony, and they'd go along their merry way. And over time, people started to forget that these were moon trees. Time presses on. The Berlin Wall falls, and the Mount St. Helens volcano erupts, and the trees keep growing, holding their secret inside. And Smokey Rusa dies, and you are born, and the moon keeps shining, and the experiment is mostly forgotten. Until one day, a little girl in Indiana notices something funny at her Girl Scout camp. A sycamore tree with a little plaque. Yeah, it just says, like, moon tree, 1976. Huh. Nobody remembers even at the Girl Scout camp, like what this was. So she tells her third grade class teacher, Ms. Goble, about it. Ms. Goble emails NASA. Just says, hey, NASA. Dear NASA. Question. Yes. So the email finds its way to Dr. Dave Williams, who is a planetary scientist at NASA. And he doesn't know. Oh. And he told me that nobody remembered. Wow. And that there was no official record of where the trees had been planted. So Dave decides NASA should go on a recovery mission of sorts. And he starts a website that basically says, if you have a moon tree, or you know of a moon tree, let me know. Wow. And he started getting these emails from people who were like, hey, there's a moon tree in my plaza in my town. There's a moon tree in front of the hospital where I went. Slowly he's collected locations of these moon trees. Wow. As people have kind of rediscovered them in their own backyards. And made kind of like a map. He didn't make a map. I made a map. You made a map? Yeah, it's pretty cool. Really? Yeah. Oh. In my map, you can spin their earth. And then you can like click on your to see what moon tree is close to you. And we have a link to this on our website. And right here in the episode description, just click on Natalie's moon tree map. There we go. And Natalie? For about 63 miles. Continue straight. We're going to go find our moon tree now. Because there was one not too far from her in California in a town by the sea called. San Luis Obispo, cool little surfing town. I'm walking down some stairs. And I see a little creek. And it took me a while to find it. Holy cow. I found it. The plaque was very small. Like I can see how people kind of just walk right by. And I'm going to try to hug it. See if I can get my hands around it. Oh my gosh. Not even halfway around. And it smells so good. And when I saw it, it was just. I actually got kind of emotional. Like I went up to its trunk and I like touched its bark. And I started to cry. Why? Space exploration is one of those things where not that many people get to experience it. And yet it's something that humans have wondered about for millennia. Ever since we could wonder, we were looking at the stars. And the moon. So to be able to touch a living thing that has actually traveled all the way to the moon. All the way to the moon and back and survived. It's a deep thing. So for you, the thing is like. Is it almost like access? It's like almost getting to touch the moon. It's poignant. I don't know. I don't know more of a kiddie word for that. It's like. Well, how would you describe poignant for someone who doesn't know what it means? I would say it's like a joyful kind of ache. We usually tend to think of trees as rooted. And so to realize that these are travelers. And that they've traveled so much farther than I will ever travel. Yeah. And then I looked up and it just. It has redwood trees have these huge kind of feathered branches. They're just so beautiful. And there were like little threads of spider silk that were like catching the sun, little rainbows of spider silk. There was like a squirrel jumping around up there. There were birds. I kind of went and sat on a bench nearby. And there was this whole construction crew that was on lunch break. And they all went and sat under the leaves of this moon tree. And I'm pretty sure they had no idea that it had been to the moon. And then I looked up and sat on a bench nearby. And I looked up and sat on a bench nearby. ♪ I understand but I like it ♪ Hi, I'm Tommy. I'm a 11 years old, and my question is, with NASA, I've ever played seeds in space. They did. They did? Uh-huh. So, they were called like the Veggie Experiments. Okay. In recent years, astronauts took vegetable seeds up to the International Space Station to see if they could grow them in hopes of, like, if and when we kind of push our way out to Mars, the astronauts are going to have to grow their food. Like, they're not going to be able to pack all the food they need. Right, of course. So Scott Kelly, the twin, part of what he was doing in space for that whole year was trying to grow plants. Oh my gosh. Yeah, but it's hard because watering them. So, when you water plants in space, the water beads up in microgravity, and it makes it really hard for it to reach the roots. And so you have to sort of like force it into the soil. And NASA also was making him wear gloves so that he wouldn't accidentally get a mold or something from the soil. But the thing was, is that with the gloves on, he couldn't tell if the flowers were getting enough water or too much water. Oh, like, he couldn't feel the soil kind of? Yeah. So finally, he, um, he broke the rules and he took it off the gloves. He took his gloves. Also, he can feel the soil. Yeah. And a little while later, check this out. Oh my gosh. You are showing me a picture of these gorgeous orange flowers. Are these, so are these, do these blue mountain spaces? Yeah. These are called zineas. And they bloomed in space. Hi, my name is Theo and I'm nine years old. Does NASA have plans to keep studying moon trees? So the Artemis mission recently took seeds again to the moon. Oh, so moon trees part two. Yeah, moon trees part two. Okay, and I have one last question. By this point, have they located all of Smoky's original, you know, 450 moon trees? No, there's just over a hundred that they know the locations of now. Oh, so most of them are still missing. Most of them are still out there growing and nobody knows that they went to the moon. But you can look for them. Look for their little plaques. And if you find one, drop an email to [email protected] so that she can add its location to her map and more people can also touch the moon via tree. That'll do it for today. Thank you for listening and thank you again, Alice Wong, for lending your voice to this program and to this world. I just published a longer remembrance about Alice. It's called 13 questions. I'll never get to ask Alice Wong. And you can go check it out at transom.org. And if you just want more Alice, she has left behind many books and podcasts and essays and even a film. And you can find them all at disabilityvisibility.com. And I figured I'd end today with Alice's own words the way she ended her own imaginary obituary. She wrote, "Instead of flowers, donations can be made to your local animal shelter, food bank, library, or mutual aid collective. Enjoy all of Alice's good shit and may you create some good shit as well." Hi, I'm Natalia and I'm from Brooklyn and here are the staff credits. Radio Lab is hosted by Lulu Miller and Luttifnasser. Soren Wheeler is our executive editor. Sarah Sandback is our executive director. Our managing editor is Pat Walters. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Jeremy Bloom, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, R.D. Paz Gutierrez, Sindu Mian An Sambundam, Matt Kielty, Mona Madgalker, Annie McEwen, Alex Nison, Sarah Carey, Anissa Vitsa, Aryann Wack, Molly Webster, and Jessica Young, with help from Rebecca Rand. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Anna Pujo Manzini, and Natalie Middleton.