The Distance of the Moon

Radiolab

WNYC Studios

Science, Natural Sciences, History, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.6 • 43.5K Ratings

🗓️ 12 April 2024

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In an episode we last featured on our Radiolab for Kids Feed back in 2020, and in honor of its blocking out the Sun for a bit of us for a bit last week, in this episode, we’re gonna talk more about the moon. According to one theory, (psst listen to The Moon Itself if you want to know more) the moon formed when a Mars-sized chunk of rock collided with Earth, the moon coalesced out of the debris from that impact. And it was MUCH closer to Earth than it is today. This idea is taken to its fanciful limit in Italo Calvino's story "The Distance of the Moon" (from his collection Cosmicomics, translated by William Weaver). Read by Liev Schreiber, the story is narrated by a character with the impossible-to-pronounce name Qfwfq, and 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, hosted by BD Wong and paired with a Ray Bradbury classic, “All Summer in a Day,” read by musical theater star Michael Cerveris. Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected]. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, this is Radio Lab. I'm Lulu Miller. And even though the solar eclipse is a couple
0:06.2	weeks in our wake, as is our big show all about the moon, it turns out we're not quite done waxing poetic about the moon. It turns out we're not quite done waxing poetic about the moon. We've got
0:15.8	we've got one more little piece we'd love to play for you. It comes from the
0:20.5	archives and it is truly one of the most delicious imaginative looks at the
0:27.5	moon I've ever heard.
0:30.0	This version of the story comes from a night of live storytelling hosted by
0:33.7	Jad and Robert for the program Selected Shorts, which is a lovely series that's been
0:39.2	around for a long time that basically gets fancy actors to read really good short stories.
0:45.6	It's a lot of fun and so yeah I'm gonna just zap you over to New York City, to the symphony space where Jad and Robert are just taking the stage.
0:59.2	Yeah, wait, you're, wait, you're, okay?
1:01.6	Okay. Okay. You're listening to radio lab. From you're listening to Radio Lab.
1:07.0	From WNYC,
1:12.0	WNYC.NyS.C.C.
1:13.0	Rewind.
1:19.0	There is a theory about 25 years old now that explains how the Earth got a moon and it goes like this.
1:27.0	So about four and a half billion years ago, the Earth was fresh new planet planet was going around the sun and the solar system
1:35.2	was it having a sort of a fiery sort of chaotic period and then into the mix a very large
1:41.0	planetoid about the size of Mars kind of went rogue and began bopping around
1:46.1	and there was a pit-on collision between the Earth and this planet.
1:50.8	And the two went... and the incoming one melted much of the earth.
1:56.4	The earth became sort of vaporous and everything on the earth just went to gas and sort of
2:00.9	flew up.
	...

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