A few recent things on my mind these last few days that I’ve come across:

Marketplace’s special released recent episode. www.youtube.com/watch

Full episode required listening! I mean, Kai Ryssdal in his element is always great to hear. I need not convince regular listeners of the program on why.

I wasn’t familiar with his interviewee, Kyla Scanlon, despite her being close to my age, probably since I’m not on social media anymore. www.kylascanlon.com (As a side note, I often find that women my age who are a little nerdy adds to their overall attractiveness for me.) Super cool nonetheless!

Regular listeners of NPR in the morning have undoubtedly heard the unmistakable voice of David Brancaccio of the Marketplace Morning Report. It’s cool to see how Ryssdal and Brancaccio are good colleagues with a warm relationship. Ryssdal finished everything by talking about his unwillingness to compromise on national security as a veteran, fact based reporting, and democracy itself in his economic journalism. Respect!

On a different topic: the Epic History YouTube channel. I thought the story about the Apollo program was interesting! Like many people, I’ve been thinking about space exploration more with the successful completion of the Artemis II mission. www.youtube.com/watch I haven’t watched or listened to any of the other history videos, but I don’t doubt they’re highly informative and accurate. For the history nerds out there, Epic History appears solid.

On this topic of space, I found a short clip on the Star Talk channel, discussing how and why it’s not currently feasible to send human astronauts for Mars exploration, let alone “colonize” Mars in the way Elon Musk had allegedly mentioned. www.youtube.com/watch

Mars at its closest to Earth is still supposedly 3 light minutes away (and 22 light minutes at its furthest orbit)? For comparison, the moon is just over one light second away. Mars is so far for human travel, it’s hard to conceptualize as it would take many months each way in the fastest rocket. Just the fact that rovers have landed on the planet is pretty badass. Some of the scaled videos of I’ve seen of the solar system make it make better sense. www.youtube.com/watch

The fact humans have learned so much about the solar system and observable universe over so many decades is amazing. What a far cry from the hypothesizing of early astronomers like Newton and Galileo. When we consider our political priorities, why wouldn’t humanity want space exploration to be even a small part of what we spend? A good short video by Neil DeGrasse Tyson: www.youtube.com/shorts/Ww…