Moon Graffiti – The Truth
To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, the Truth has replayed (repodcast?) their first ever episode, back from 2010. The story is inspired by a real contingency speech written in 1969 by William Safire for Richard Nixon titled “In Event of Moon Disaster.” If you were going to be left to die on the moon, wouldn’t you want to write your name in moon dust too?
The Quiet in the Land – Glenn Gould
As well as being an extremely gifted pianist, Glenn Gould also made film and audio documentaries. Excellent, weird ones. This audio documentary is about Mennonites in Manitoba. We hear the intimate, raw, sometimes certain and sometimes confused reflections of Mennonites as they consider the impact of modern life on their culture. I’m not sure if Gould intended this to be listened to on headphones or not. There are often two entirely different tracks playing on the left and right channels. You might hear a sermon in one ear, and a Mennonite man talking about how many in their community now have TVs in the other. In headphones, you can kind of switch the sides of your brain to concentrate on one or the other. But on a speaker, it comes out as a very confusing cacophony of words and sound.
The Quiet in the Land was made for CBC Radio in 1977 and is the third part of the Solitude Trilogy, three documentaries united by the theme “withdrawal from the world”. Part one of this trilogy, is The Idea of North an entrancing mash-up of voices talking about Canada’s far north. This track is an except, but you can listen to the whole thing on Spotify here (there’s also a few bootlegs on YouTube). Thanks to Andrea Valentino for sharing this recommendation in the Bello Collective.
How modern life is changing our feet – BBC The Compass
This is the first of a three part series called ‘Changing World, Changing Bodies’. It covers depressing changes to our feet, backs and faces as a result of our sedentary and tech-filled modern lifestyles (spoiler alert the common theme is decay). It’s a pretty straight-up BBC doco style but full of interesting info, such as thr delightful tidbit that will make you feel smug if you live in Australia – turns out our outdoor living is good for our eyesight.