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Ernest Hemingway Truer words were never spoken. If you’re a sleep enthusiast like Ernest, you can learn more about it in our sleep episode. |
We’re so excited that we can finally announce this - we have a book coming out! The galleys just came in today and look amazing.
Bigger announcement and Amazon link coming soon, but here are the Cliff Notes:
- It’s coming out September 3rd;
- There’s 50 stories told on our stage, transcribed and edited for your reading pleasure;
- Plus introductions by Adam Gopnik, George Dawes Green and The Moth’s artistic director, Catherine Burns.
More info coming soon, but we couldn’t keep it to ourselves any longer!
YAY! We heart The Moth.
The Amazing Underwater Forest of Lake Kaindy
What makes Lake Kaindy truly remarkable is that it contains an underwater forest. Visible on the lakes surface are the tall, dried-out tops of submerged Spruce trees that rise above the water’s surface like the masts of sunken ships. They are the only sign of the amazing frozen forest below the water’s surface.
The water is so cold (even in summer the temperature does not exceed 6 degrees) that the pine needles remain on the trees, even after a hundred years of being submerged. During the winter, the lake freezes and becomes a popular spot for ice diving.
The lake is 400 meters long and is located in Kazakhstan’s portion of the Tian Shan Mountains, about 129 km from the city of Almaty. The lake was created after an earthquake in 1911 triggered a large landslide blocking the gorge and forming a natural dam.
Holy crap.
Watch these 32 metronomes sync up, then let Robert Krulwich tell you all about it.
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Watch out for scurvy, kids. This particular description of scurvy is stolen from Nicholas Johnson’s Big Dead Place: Inside the Strange & Menacing World of Antarctica, a fantastic book you should all read immediately. |
Many wonderful cicada illustrations from A Monograph of Oriental Cicadidae, 1889-1892
(via Scientific Illustration)
Historical Map: Moscow Metro, 1980
Here’s a beautiful map of the Moscow Metro from 1980 that’s unlike anything else I’ve ever seen. I don’t think it’s an official map, as it looks quite different to other Moscow maps of the same vintage. The archive I found the map in also lists it as “Source Unknown”. It appears to have been printed on the flyleaf of a pocket-sized book, bound to the book’s front cover on the left half, with the fold just to the right of the vertical Orange Line of the map.
Have we been there? No.
What we like: One of the most unique-looking transit maps I’ve ever seen. It looks more like a map of the solar system, with Jupiter-sized interchange stations within the orbit of the Ring Line, smaller satellites (outlying stations) trailing along in their wake. Despite the unusual form, and the renowned complexity of the Moscow system, this still has a nice sense of clarity, simplicity and order to it - this map is still very usable.
What we don’t like: Some absolutely terrible registration on the printing (which appears to be all spot colours - nine different colours in total!). Some fairly crude-looking linework, which may be poor draftsmanship or the result of the printing.
Our rating: Totally unique, but still a very usable map. Four stars.
(Source: Lebedev Studio’s historical archives of Moscow Metro maps)
Love this.
A peek behind the scenes at Radiolab.
If you’ve been thinking about donating to the show, now is a great time to do it: we have a matching grant, which means, basically, your donation counts for twice as many bucks. Here’s where you can donate and make us very happy radio producers.
Portraits of New York’s Rooftop Pigeon Guys, by Zina Saunders
Each portrait comes with a short interview:
“Then we got eight milk crates, and we put them inside our room, and when we’d let the birds out, we’d open the window and the birds would fly over our beds out the window. My mother let us do that!”
Saunders also has portraits of NYC cricket players, circle drummers, bike messengers and many others.
Francis Alys - Fabiola (2008)
“The story of St. Fabiola, a 4th-century Roman aristocrat from the Fabia family who is supposed to have been an early Mother Teresa, became popular in the late 19th century, and an 1885 portrait of her by a French academician (which is now lost) has since been endlessly copied around the world.
Appearing on postcards, posters and religious trinkets, Fabiola has been a beloved subject for countless painters, most of them amateurs. The portrait’s format is almost always the same: Fabiola is seen in profile facing left, her head covered by a rich red veil.
Mr. Alys, who was born in Belgium in 1959 and moved to Mexico City in 1990, began collecting Fabiola paintings—as the genre is called—about 15 years ago, buying them at thrift shops, flea markets and antiques stores primarily in Mexico and Europe. He has previously shown his collection three times, when it was much smaller; the current presentation includes more than 300 works.”
Let NASA mesmerize you with its swirling, psychedelic, Van Gogh-style ocean current visualization.
(hat tip r/dataisbeautiful, one of my very favorite bits of the internet)
