Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Marsha for Radio I. Today I will
Speaker 1: be reading National Geographic magazine dated October twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: which is donated by the publisher as a reminder. RADIOI
Speaker 1: is a reading service intended for people who are blind
Speaker 1: or have other disabilities that make it difficult to read
Speaker 1: printed material. Please join me now for the continuation of
Speaker 1: the article I began last time, entitled how to Age
Speaker 1: Like an Athlete by Chris Ballard. No neoprene, no gloves,
Speaker 1: no warm hat. Kennedy had always enjoyed pushing limits. He
Speaker 1: gave it a go immediately he took to it. In
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, at a Ribbon lake in Ireland, he attempted
Speaker 1: an ice mile, one of the most daunting and dangerous
Speaker 1: feats in extreme sports, a test of mental and physical
Speaker 1: endurance that requires covering a mile in ice swimming conditions.
Speaker 1: Most who try don't make it. Kennedy not only pulled
Speaker 1: it off, becoming the fifty fifth person in the world
Speaker 1: to do so, but that was only the beginning. He
Speaker 1: took on marathon swims, entered ice swimming championships, and in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen became the first man to complete the ice
Speaker 1: seven's challenge swimming an ice mile on all seven continents
Speaker 1: and in a polar body of water. Nothing about these
Speaker 1: swims was easy, which is part of the appeal. Similar
Speaker 1: to an ultra marathon, ice swimming forces you out of
Speaker 1: your comfort zone. The urge to quit, to just get
Speaker 1: out of the water is overwhelming, hypothermia looms. But if
Speaker 1: you stay in, the sense of accomplishment and self confidence
Speaker 1: is galvanizing. Interestingly, Kennedy credits his age, or at least
Speaker 1: his experience, as an important factor in his success. I
Speaker 1: think your own life journey and work adds to your endurance,
Speaker 1: he says. Kennedy ticks off stressers. He's faced, his body crumbling,
Speaker 1: his divorce, parenting, his job as a plumber. I think
Speaker 1: all these challenges make you pretty bloody strong. Kennedy refers
Speaker 1: to this as the endurance brain, a term he used
Speaker 1: sees as a key to success for aging competitors. I
Speaker 1: think that's why a lot of older athletes, even in
Speaker 1: American swimming, not just ice swimming, modern swimming, are achieving
Speaker 1: into their sixties because they've got all this knowledge and
Speaker 1: skills behind between motherhood and fatherhood, between screw ups and life.
Speaker 1: Now fifty four. Kennedy has completed nineteen official ice miles
Speaker 1: and competed in swimming events around the world. He is
Speaker 1: the cheer person of the Ireland arm of the International
Speaker 1: Ice Swimming Association. He doesn't take any of it too seriously,
Speaker 1: and this may be just as important as anything else.
Speaker 1: We do hard core stuff, but we also have great
Speaker 1: fun and we enjoy the company, says Kennedy, who was
Speaker 1: headed out to an Anthrax show with his mates after
Speaker 1: a recent interview. We have a few beers and we
Speaker 1: laugh at each other. He's determined to swim as long
Speaker 1: as his body will allow, and still relishes the moments
Speaker 1: when he can surprise people, like when he recently completed
Speaker 1: a swim at seventy eight degrees north latitude in the Arctic.
Speaker 1: No one expected it, he says with a grin. They
Speaker 1: were like, holy mumm, and I said, yep, the old
Speaker 1: man still got it. Looking ahead, Kennedy is planning for
Speaker 1: another ice mile. It's a theme that runs through the
Speaker 1: lives of all these athletes and countless others. You don't
Speaker 1: stop taking on challenges because you grow old. You grow
Speaker 1: old when you stop taking on challenges. Next article A
Speaker 1: game plan for fighting Father Time by Chris Cohen. Here
Speaker 1: for your brain by being social. Most people understand that
Speaker 1: making an investment in your physical health, like quitting smoking
Speaker 1: or getting in shape, could lead to a longer, healthier life.
Speaker 1: It turns out that the same can be said for
Speaker 1: investing in your personal relationships. Spending time with friends and
Speaker 1: family or signing up for a recreation sports league team
Speaker 1: could pay the dividends down the road. Maintaining social ties
Speaker 1: seems to work like mental exercise by promoting new connections
Speaker 1: in your brain and slowing down age related cognitive decline.
Speaker 1: And you don't need to be a social butterfly butterfly
Speaker 1: to reap the benefits of connecting with other people. A
Speaker 1: recent study found that having even one social interaction a
Speaker 1: month can cut the incidents of developing dementia in half,
Speaker 1: and the benefits are even greater if you connect with
Speaker 1: a person that you can confide in. It is very
Speaker 1: important to be socially active for our brains, says Suraje Samtani,
Speaker 1: a lead author of the study and a dementia researcher
Speaker 1: at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. But
Speaker 1: we don't need that much to make a big difference.
Speaker 1: Since conducting this research, Stani has ramped up his own
Speaker 1: social life through exercise. I started karate, and I catch
Speaker 1: up with friends and gopher walks every week, he says.
Speaker 1: It has just changed the way I do things. Broaden
Speaker 1: your definition of exercise. It's almost impossible to overstate how
Speaker 1: good physical activity is for your health, no matter how
Speaker 1: old you are. But you don't necessarily need to be
Speaker 1: dead lifting four hundred pounds or running an ultra marathon.
Speaker 1: Just a little bit of movement, taking the stairs, carrying
Speaker 1: groceries has significant health advantages for otherwise inactive people. Any
Speaker 1: little good that you can do is great, says I
Speaker 1: Min Lee, professor of medicine and epidemiology at Harvard University.
Speaker 1: We are only now verifying these insights, Lee says, because
Speaker 1: of a new generation of long term studies that equipped
Speaker 1: participants with accelerometers think fitness trackers, and she found that,
Speaker 1: contrary to popular thinking, the longevity benefits of walking hit
Speaker 1: much sooner than ten thousand steps. Other studies have linked
Speaker 1: shorter walks to improved mental and cardiovascular health. Similar benefits
Speaker 1: come from short bursts of more vigorous activity, such as
Speaker 1: walking up a hill. Really tiny amounts, anything from two
Speaker 1: to four minutes per day, says Immanuel Stamatakis, professor of
Speaker 1: Physical activity and Population Health at Australia's University of Sydney.
Speaker 1: In one study, he discovered that these bursts of activity
Speaker 1: are associated with a substantial reduction in the isn't incidents
Speaker 1: of various types of cancer. In other research, using comparable data,
Speaker 1: Leonard Wiermann, a professor of public health at Griffith University
Speaker 1: in Gold Coast, Australia, found that for the least active
Speaker 1: portion of the population, each hour of walking translates to
Speaker 1: six extra hours of life. That's quite a good return
Speaker 1: on investment, he says. Build up your cardio capacity. No
Speaker 1: matter what new longevity science comes out, many researchers still
Speaker 1: consider cardiovascular fitness level as one of the best measures
Speaker 1: of overall health. Luckily, it can be improved with consistent
Speaker 1: exercise and easily tracked. The gold standard for evaluating your
Speaker 1: performance level is to calculate the maximum rate of oxygen
Speaker 1: you use during exhausting physical activity, which occurs as the
Speaker 1: period during your exercise when your breathing hardest. This figure
Speaker 1: is called VO two max, and a precise measurer. Measurement
Speaker 1: of it usually requires breathing into a mass connected to
Speaker 1: a tube in a lab, but consumer wearable devices like
Speaker 1: GPS running watches provide a general estimate. Whether your number
Speaker 1: is in a good or a bad range depends on
Speaker 1: your age and gender. For example, a VO two max
Speaker 1: of forty milliliters of oxygen per kilogram per minute would
Speaker 1: be considered below average for a twenty five year old man,
Speaker 1: but excellent for a seventy five year old. Either way,
Speaker 1: that number strongly correlates to your heart health and overall lifespan.
Speaker 1: Individuals who have a high two max may have a
Speaker 1: lower risk of dying from all causes, says Martin Gibbala,
Speaker 1: a professor of kinnesy'siology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada.
Speaker 1: Over time, moderate to vigorous cardio workouts of all kinds
Speaker 1: can boost your VO two max, training your body to
Speaker 1: more efficiently process oxygen and turn it into energy. A
Speaker 1: quick workout to do just that is a high intensity exercise,
Speaker 1: for example, a twenty minute workout that includes three vigorous
Speaker 1: five minute efforts. The specific movement matters less than the intensity.
Speaker 1: It could be cycling, running, or using an elliptical or
Speaker 1: rowing machine. Don't let your muscles go to waste. Raw
Speaker 1: strength is strongly associated with a healthier life. If you
Speaker 1: train for stronger muscles and bone density now, you'll have
Speaker 1: a greater chance of remaining independent as you age. The
Speaker 1: American College of Sports Medicine recommends everyone perform some or
Speaker 1: of resistance training at least twice a week. But what's
Speaker 1: the best strategy to actually make those strength gains? The
Speaker 1: helpful answer is emerging from science and is already common
Speaker 1: knowledge at your local gym. Lift weights that are heavy
Speaker 1: for you, and try to progressively add way over time.
Speaker 1: How heavy is heavy? An important concept is muscular failure,
Speaker 1: the point at which you can't perform even one more repetition.
Speaker 1: You need to know where failure is to know how
Speaker 1: hard you're supposed to be training, explains Brad Schoenfeld, a
Speaker 1: leading strength training researcher at Lehman College in the Bronx,
Speaker 1: New York. While you can make appreciable gains in other ways,
Speaker 1: studies show the optimal strength workouts consist of low numbers
Speaker 1: of reps one to six performed relatively close to failure
Speaker 1: two or three reps away in other words, strength workouts
Speaker 1: are ideally quite strenuous, but this training only needs to
Speaker 1: take an hour or so each week. You can make
Speaker 1: very nice gains with a fairly minimal routine in three
Speaker 1: or even two days a week. Shown Feld explains, provided
Speaker 1: you train hard cultivate good eating and sleeping habits, you'll
Speaker 1: only get the gains you deserve from your workouts if
Speaker 1: they are paired with solid recovery and nutrition. And while
Speaker 1: the wellness industry would like to sell your gadgets and
Speaker 1: supplements for that, it's best to start with some basics
Speaker 1: for recovery from the gym and from life. Nothing is
Speaker 1: more important than sleep, and a foundation for better rest
Speaker 1: is simply routine. Studies indicate that people who go to
Speaker 1: sleep and wake up on a regular rhythm get more
Speaker 1: and higher quality sleep. This is because your body is
Speaker 1: hard wire to operate on a roughly twenty four hour
Speaker 1: circadian cycle. Disruptions can lead to increased risk for cardiovascular disease,
Speaker 1: increased risk for cancer, changes in mental health, all those
Speaker 1: sorts of things, says Tira Legates, a professor at the
Speaker 1: University of Maryland School of Medicine. And while the prevailing
Speaker 1: diet advice often focuses on what you can't eat. A
Speaker 1: better approach is to find a way you feel full
Speaker 1: and satisfied from whole, unprocessed foods. Fill your plate with vegetables, grains,
Speaker 1: and meat, fish or plant proteins. Stuff you enjoy. One
Speaker 1: landmark study provides some insight as to why. Researchers compared
Speaker 1: a diet of ultra processed foods factory made ready to
Speaker 1: eat items, and a diet of whole foods. While the
Speaker 1: two diets were nutritionally equivalent, study participants who went on
Speaker 1: both diets for two weeks each gained weight on the
Speaker 1: processed diet indus industrially prepared foods seem to mess with
Speaker 1: your sense of hunger. The study subjects said. The taste
Speaker 1: of the two options was equally appealing, but they ate
Speaker 1: more of the altra processed foods. All the same, the
Speaker 1: good news is that your whole foods diet can should
Speaker 1: be delicious. The more you can do to structure your
Speaker 1: life so that you're not having to constantly resist temptation,
Speaker 1: the better, says Zachary Knight, a physiology professor the University
Speaker 1: of California, San Francisco who studies the internal processes that
Speaker 1: govern hunger. That means having healthier foods at home. Next,
Speaker 1: I want to live to be one hundred. As told
Speaker 1: to Devon Gordon, these iconic athletes were the greatest of
Speaker 1: all time at what they did, so who better to
Speaker 1: ask about getting the most out of their bodies? As
Speaker 1: we age. We came in search of wisdom, but they
Speaker 1: gave us something even better motivation. Nadia Komanice sixty three.
Speaker 1: Comaniche was just fourteen years old when she scored the
Speaker 1: first ever perfect ten by an Olympic gymnast at the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six Summer Games in Montreal, and then she
Speaker 1: did six more times in what many sports historians consider
Speaker 1: the greatest performance of the modern Games. Her combination of
Speaker 1: athleticism in our artistry captivated a global television audience. Five
Speaker 1: years after her retirement, in nineteen eighty four, she defected
Speaker 1: from communists Romania to the United States and later made
Speaker 1: married US Olympic gymnast Bart Connor. They now run a
Speaker 1: gymnastics academy in Norman, Oklahoma. In my time, athletes used
Speaker 1: to compete, and then they retired. I stopped exercising in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties because there was not enough information yet
Speaker 1: on how keeping your body in good shape would help
Speaker 1: you navigate your long term health better. I thought all
Speaker 1: that came from genetics. But I was playing soccer for
Speaker 1: fun and some of my friends and I realized I
Speaker 1: was gasping to breathe, and I was like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: that doesn't seem right, especially for a former athlete I have.
Speaker 1: It's changed when I came to the United States and
Speaker 1: discovered Gold's gym. We have a house in Venice Beach, California,
Speaker 1: and the original one was right across the street where
Speaker 1: Arnold Schwarzenegger worked out. I saw him there a lot.
Speaker 1: It was an introduction to a different kind of lifestyle,
Speaker 1: and then it becomes a part of your day to
Speaker 1: day life. I realized over time that my body was
Speaker 1: developing different muscles and that I felt better. That was
Speaker 1: the most important thing. I was even thinking better now.
Speaker 1: I work out forty minutes a day no matter where
Speaker 1: I am, and I'm very realistic. Your body tells you
Speaker 1: what you can do. I don't run, for example, because
Speaker 1: I feel my joints will go out too fast. People
Speaker 1: often say to me, Nadia, you're in good shape. Then
Speaker 1: I say, yeah, like a human shape. I'm in okay shape,
Speaker 1: but don't expect me to do a double twist. If
Speaker 1: I missed that feeling, I go and get it by
Speaker 1: walking on a beam, doing some turns, getting out on
Speaker 1: the floor, doing some artistic moves. I stopped competing many
Speaker 1: years ago, but I didn't get away from the sport.
Speaker 1: It's always there for me. Carl Lewis sixty four. In
Speaker 1: an era when top American sprinters were major celebrities, Lewis
Speaker 1: was a towering figure, not just in the world of
Speaker 1: track and field, but across sports. The fastest man alive
Speaker 1: throughout the nineteen eighties and early nineties. At age thirty,
Speaker 1: he broke the world one hundred meter record, finishing in
Speaker 1: nine point eight six seconds. He likes to say when
Speaker 1: athletes started going to Las Vegas in the eighties, he
Speaker 1: hired a chef to improve his diet. Today, he's head
Speaker 1: coach of the track and field program at is alma mater,
Speaker 1: the University of Houston. It feels like everything changed. When
Speaker 1: I turned sixty. Forty was nothing, Fifty was nothing. Sixty
Speaker 1: it's a lot harder now. It's just a lot of
Speaker 1: little things. It feels like if I took. If I
Speaker 1: look at a calorie, now I gain weight and I
Speaker 1: can't sleep through the night anymore. That's one thing that's
Speaker 1: kind of frustrating. And of course I wake up twice
Speaker 1: a week wondering why does my back hurt or why
Speaker 1: is my hamstring tight? In the history of time, we've
Speaker 1: only been getting old for like three seconds. We haven't
Speaker 1: lived this long for very long, so we're finding out
Speaker 1: how so much about aging ourselves. I get fulfillment now
Speaker 1: from doing something every year that I never thought I
Speaker 1: would do. I decided I wanted to bench three hundred
Speaker 1: pounds at age sixty, which is crazy. I got to
Speaker 1: two eighty five. Then one year I went skyded for
Speaker 1: sixty three. I wanted to do a split. I started
Speaker 1: training about six months beforehand, and I still haven't done
Speaker 1: the split. It may take me until sixty five, but
Speaker 1: I'm going to do that damn split. And when I'm
Speaker 1: sixty five, I want to ride sixty five miles on
Speaker 1: my bicycle in one day. The most I've gone is
Speaker 1: like forty. I've always felt like you need to have
Speaker 1: two or three reasons why you want to push yourself.
Speaker 1: For me, I just feel better physically and emotionally when
Speaker 1: I work out and keep my weight down, and there's
Speaker 1: definitely some vanity in there. I mean, come on, let's
Speaker 1: be real. I ran around with more or less no
Speaker 1: clothes on. But also I want to live to be
Speaker 1: a hundred. I try not to fall into the tramp
Speaker 1: of saying, oh, you are a super athlete, so you're
Speaker 1: a super human. I'm a normal human. Cheryl Miller sixty
Speaker 1: one basketball player, nineteen eighty four Olympic gold medalist, Basketball
Speaker 1: Hall of Famer, four time College All American, three time
Speaker 1: College Player of the Year, two time nc Double A champion,
Speaker 1: three thousand, eighteen total career points, fifteen hundred thirty four rebounds.
Speaker 1: Women's basketball history goes back further than Miller, but she
Speaker 1: was the sport's first crossover superstar, leaving the University of
Speaker 1: Southern California to two NCAA titles in the mid nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties and being the centerpiece of the gold medal winning
Speaker 1: Team USA at the nineteen eighty four Summer Olympics in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. The w n b A didn't come until
Speaker 1: well after her retirement, but she was one of the
Speaker 1: league inaugural head coaches, with the Phoenix Mercury. The last
Speaker 1: time I played in a pick up game, I was
Speaker 1: twenty seven, maybe twenty eight, But since then I haven't
Speaker 1: picked up a basketball competitively. The pain was already too
Speaker 1: bad back then, the crunching and the popping and the swelling.
Speaker 1: It wasn't worth it. I had bone spurs in the
Speaker 1: front and in the back of my knee. I could
Speaker 1: only walk for twenty minutes, and then I'd immediately have
Speaker 1: to get home and do the icing the elevation, but
Speaker 1: there was no relief. I was miserable. But the only
Speaker 1: reason why I finally got knee replacements, one around Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: of twenty three, the other in April of twenty four
Speaker 1: is I couldn't ride a bike any more. Why do
Speaker 1: I wait so long because of that old warrior mentality?
Speaker 1: Because I was a big dummy. Now I have a
Speaker 1: second lease on life. I'm a kid in the candy
Speaker 1: store and learning how to run again. I can at
Speaker 1: least get out there and put some shots up and
Speaker 1: move around. I wake up at four in the morning,
Speaker 1: get myself organized for the day, do my Bible study,
Speaker 1: and then I'm out the door and walking up hills
Speaker 1: and jogging and it's such a joy. I'll see a
Speaker 1: pick up game and I want to possibly get into it,
Speaker 1: but I'm not quite there yet. That curiosity is there, though.
Speaker 1: It's like I wonder if I can still get up
Speaker 1: and down the floor, get hit a little bit, set
Speaker 1: a screen, try to box somebody out, grab a rebound,
Speaker 1: make that outlet pass sprint down, finish the lay up.
Speaker 1: Those are still things in the back of my mind.
Speaker 1: I wonder, with a smile on my heart, I wonder.
Speaker 1: Cherry Rice sixty two football player, three times Super Bowl winner,
Speaker 1: Pro Football Hall of Famer, twenty two thousand, eight hundred
Speaker 1: ninety five receiving yards, fifteen hundred forty nine catches, two
Speaker 1: hundred eight total touchdowns. Rice is the NFL's all time
Speaker 1: leader in catches, receiving yards, and touchdowns, and yet, coming
Speaker 1: out of little known Mississippi Valley State University, Rice faced
Speaker 1: concerns he might be too slow and too untested. He
Speaker 1: wound up playing twenty seasons as a wide receiver while
Speaker 1: earning a reputation for out working every one on the
Speaker 1: field and always staying in flawless shape. He won three
Speaker 1: Super Bowls with the San Francisco forty Niners. He still
Speaker 1: lives in the Bay Area and co founded an energy
Speaker 1: drink business, g O A T Fuel with his daughter
Speaker 1: and son in law. I wasn't the greatest athlete out there.
Speaker 1: I wasn't the fastest. There were guys so much more
Speaker 1: gifted than I was. Chris Carter, Michael Irvin, Randy Moss.
Speaker 1: What they could do on the football field was amazing.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying those guys didn't work hard, but I
Speaker 1: knew I had to work harder. I was always reaching
Speaker 1: when I played, and I'm still reaching after retiring from
Speaker 1: the game. I'm not dialing anything back now. Man. I'm
Speaker 1: always challenging myself to be the best individual that I
Speaker 1: can be. It's just in my DNA. I want people
Speaker 1: to know that after you step away from something that
Speaker 1: you've been doing for a long long time, life is
Speaker 1: not over. I actually believe that when people have nothing
Speaker 1: to do after their careers, that's when everything goes downhill.
Speaker 1: There's nothing to wake up for and be excited about.
Speaker 1: I wake up every morning and well, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to say I'm excited to work out because I know
Speaker 1: it's going to hurt, but it's going to put me
Speaker 1: in a frame of mind that hey, I really did
Speaker 1: something productive for my body, and now I'm ready to
Speaker 1: be the greatest person that I can be during the day.
Speaker 1: I'm actually down to my playing weight now, and I've
Speaker 1: been out of the game for a long time. I
Speaker 1: do a lot of peloton, a lot of CrossFit. I
Speaker 1: also have a big South African mastiff and he likes
Speaker 1: to run, so he get out there. And yet the
Speaker 1: knee is going to swell sometimes and you might be
Speaker 1: a little stiff when you get out of bed, but
Speaker 1: you've got to fight through that pain knowing that the
Speaker 1: ultimate goal is that you're still going to be flexible
Speaker 1: and active as you get older. So that's my motivational speech.
Speaker 1: Challenge yourself every day and it's going to reward you
Speaker 1: in the end. Next article How an American icon helped
Speaker 1: save Egypt's ancient temples by Kate Story. Sixty five years ago,
Speaker 1: the temple of Abu Simbal were destined to disappear beneath
Speaker 1: the murky waters of a new dam. Then Jackie Kennedy
Speaker 1: got involved to secure its future. Egypt had made the
Speaker 1: hard decision to let go of its past. It was
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty in construction had just begun on southern Egypt's
Speaker 1: a Swan high dam, which would generate hydroelectric power, provide
Speaker 1: more arable land, and control the flood prone Nile River.
Speaker 1: But for all the good a dam would do, it
Speaker 1: was also going to be disastrous for the area's archaeological wonders.
Speaker 1: The massive reservoar was expected to destroy dozens of priceless
Speaker 1: historic sites, including the majestic twin Temples of Abu Symbol
Speaker 1: built more than three millennia ago. The monument was commissioned
Speaker 1: by Rameses the Second and chiseled directly into a sandstone
Speaker 1: cliff on the western bank of the river. The imposing
Speaker 1: facade of the main temple was guarded by four towering
Speaker 1: Rameses the Second Colossi, each sixty seven feet high, and
Speaker 1: the nearby smaller temple was dedicated to Queen Nefertari and Hathor,
Speaker 1: the goddess of love, music and dance. The temple's inner
Speaker 1: sanctums were carved deep into the cliff and filled with
Speaker 1: statues of Egyptian gods and reliefs depicting victorious military battles.
Speaker 1: It was one of Egypt's finest pharoonic treasures, and it
Speaker 1: was about to be lost forever. In October nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: the nineteen ton visage of Rameses the second was carefully
Speaker 1: cut from the Egyptian Riverbank mountain, where it had stood
Speaker 1: for more than three thousand years and hoisted onto a
Speaker 1: truck headed to a new site. If not for an
Speaker 1: alley halfway around the world, Abu Symbols famous statues may
Speaker 1: have been lost to a vast lake created by the
Speaker 1: Aswan High Dam. To save Abu Symbol, an international consortium
Speaker 1: of conservationists launched an unprecedented rescue mission before the dam's
Speaker 1: completion in nineteen seventy. The plan was to cut the
Speaker 1: entire complex out of the mountain by meticulously deconstructing each
Speaker 1: stately chin, cheek and crown, more than a thousand pieces
Speaker 1: in total, and then transporting and reassembling them on higher ground.
Speaker 1: In order to succeed, it would require unheard of orchestration
Speaker 1: between United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization UNESCO, and
Speaker 1: thousands of archaeologists, architects and egyptologists from dozens of countries,
Speaker 1: but with a cost equivalent to four hundred million dollars
Speaker 1: to day, the entire undertaking seemed far too expensive to
Speaker 1: pull off, until an unlikely diplomat intervened with a bold
Speaker 1: vision to support a project that ultimately transformed UNESCO and
Speaker 1: reshaped how future leaders in her role would go on
Speaker 1: to effect change if a world away. Future First Lady
Speaker 1: Jacqueline Kennedy had been closely monitoring the fate of Abu
Speaker 1: Symbol ever since reading about Howard Carter's nineteen twenty two
Speaker 1: discovery of King Tutankhamen's tomb. She had remained fascinated by
Speaker 1: the mummies and pyramids of ancient Egypt. Years later, when
Speaker 1: a friend gave her a copy of the UNESCO Courier,
Speaker 1: the official magazine published by UNESCO, which called on world
Speaker 1: leaders to save Abu Symbol before it was too late,
Speaker 1: she vowed to protect the memory of the once mighty
Speaker 1: empire she'd learned about as a little girl. After John F.
Speaker 1: Kennedy became President in nineteen sixty one, Jacqueline got to
Speaker 1: work convincing her husband why it would be advantageous for
Speaker 1: the United States to get involved. But rather than just
Speaker 1: talking behind closed doors, the new First Lady to go
Speaker 1: through more official channels. She crafted a carefully composed memo
Speaker 1: likening the loss of Abu Symbol to letting the Parthenon
Speaker 1: be flooded, underscoring the research possibilities of the temples and
Speaker 1: how important they were to the whole of Africa, a
Speaker 1: region with which JFK was trying to strengthen diplomatic ties
Speaker 1: during the Cold War. She gave the note to White
Speaker 1: House adviser Richard Goodwin, who then helped draw the President's
Speaker 1: attention and the financial might of the U. S to Egypt.
Speaker 1: I convinced the President to ask Congress to give money
Speaker 1: to save the tombs at Abu Symbol, Jacqueline proudly recalled later,
Speaker 1: but there was a caveat. He only would if I
Speaker 1: could convince Republican Congressman John Rooney of the Appropriations Committee,
Speaker 1: who was always against giving money to foreigners. She was
Speaker 1: ultimately successful, and the U. S. Government announced its intention
Speaker 1: to cover up to one third of the cost. The
Speaker 1: rest would be financed by Egypt and UNESCO. Of course,
Speaker 1: she wasn't the first woman in the White House to
Speaker 1: use soft diplomacy as a conduit for influencing matters beyond
Speaker 1: traditional lines of negotiation. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who famously
Speaker 1: visited troops in the South Pacific during World War Two
Speaker 1: was often referred to as the eyes, ears and legs
Speaker 1: of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But prior to Jacqueline, a
Speaker 1: first lady's diplomatic duties almost always took the form of
Speaker 1: trips abroad or hosting dignitaries at the White House. A
Speaker 1: woman's credibility was part of what created liking and friendliness
Speaker 1: and cooperation, and would soothe the relationship often between the
Speaker 1: heads of state, says Elizabeth J. Nattal, author of Jacqueline
Speaker 1: Kennedy and the Architecture of First Lady Diplomacy. She created
Speaker 1: the blueprint for the way in which First Ladies used
Speaker 1: different kinds of communication tools, pointing to initiatives like First
Speaker 1: Lady Michael Obamas Let Girls Learn, a plan to increase
Speaker 1: educational opportunities for young women worldwide. Natal adds that now
Speaker 1: first Ladies can actually influence policy. The plan was put
Speaker 1: into place in nineteen sixty three and a team of Egyptian, German, French, Swiss,
Speaker 1: and Italian workers among them, mastered marble carvers from Carrara, Italy,
Speaker 1: then cut Abu symbol into enormous blocks weighing up to
Speaker 1: thirty three tons. Using a variety of tools including hand saws,
Speaker 1: the blocks were numbered and taken via flatbread trailers to
Speaker 1: a new artificial sandstone mountain two hundred feet higher than
Speaker 1: the old Nile shore line and six hundred ninety feet inland.
Speaker 1: Crane operators resurrected the grand Ferohonic work piece by piece,
Speaker 1: like a giant lego set, successfully put back together again.
Speaker 1: This concludes readings from National Geographic Magazine for to day.
Speaker 1: Your reader has been Marsha. Thank you for listening, Keep
Speaker 1: on listening and have a great day.