Trailer

This is the way up. Hundreds of years ago, people looked through their telescopes and saw a planet that reminded them of home. It had days that lasted about 24 hours. It had something that looked like ice caps at the poles, and something that looked like clouds rolling across the sky. The planet was Mars. And ever since then, humans have been dreaming about going up there. This is absolutely the weirdest landscape I've ever seen. This is one of the few places on Earth that you can get pretty close to actually physically being on Mars without being on Mars. We're so damn close to that dream now, we can almost taste it. Soon, maybe very soon, we could be sending the first humans to Mars. Before we take some people and send them hurtling through space to a desolate planet where they'll have only each other for company, we need to know, will they survive the trip? And will they survive each other? And so, on a remote mountain in Hawaii, somebody built a fake planet, Mars. Oh, is it coming over the horizon? Yes, that's it. I'm Lynne Levy, and this is The Habitat, a brand new podcast from Gimlet Media. Today, I will just give you a tour of the hub. It's a geodesic dome, so it's a dome made out of a bunch of triangles, and it's 36 feet in diameter. I'm going to count the steps. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. The Habitat is the true story of six people who agreed to spend one year on this fake planet, secluded in a tiny white dome. 32, 33, 33 steps, the longest commute I will ever do here. They will be the subjects in a very unusual experiment. Researchers will be watching as they walk, talk, eat, sleep, and breathe as though they were actually on Mars. They won't have Facebook or Twitter, they won't be able to call home or see their families. They'll give up almost every link they have to the outside world, but they will have the audio recorders I gave them. And in their own words, they'll tell the story of what it's like to spend 365 days in something kind of like outer space. Hey, Lynne. Hello, Lynne. Good morning, Lynne. Okay, let's see. The question is, how do I feel? How have I changed? I don't know how I've changed other than I really, really miss nature and I miss the outdoors. Just sitting in the sun, feeling the sun on my skin, feeling the wind. Okay, so I am in the shower. Oh my, Lynne, that's cold. You never feel like you're by yourself. People can just kind of glance and I see if my light is on or if my door is open or what I'm doing. If it is open, can they hear me talk? Can they hear me watching this show? If I go and start to get naked for a shower, are they going to knock on the door? They definitely feel like a bit, yeah, almost like an animal that's in a cage. What do you think will happen in the next six months? We'll probably come across our first murder. I wonder who it will be. I don't wonder. I need to be like that. I'm trying to pretend mysteriously. Okay, there's no murder, but there is romance and drama and exploration and funny stuff and sad stuff and gross stuff, all in one little dome. Sorry. Crown control to major tongue. The Habitat from Gimlet Media, the true story of a fake planet. Listen to all the episodes for free on Spotify.