Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye and today
Speaker 1: I will be reading the Smithsonian Magazine dated April May
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six. As a reminder, RADIOI is a reading
Speaker 1: service intended for people who are blind or have other
Speaker 1: disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material. Please
Speaker 1: join me now for the first article, which is Part
Speaker 1: two of The Librea tar Pits have been sucking in
Speaker 1: visitors for millennia, Paleontologists are still finding out what lies
Speaker 1: within the ooze by Richard Konniff. In part one, we
Speaker 1: explored the Librea tar Pits as both a famous tourist
Speaker 1: attraction and one of the world's most important fossil sites,
Speaker 1: where natural asphalt has trapped and preserved animals for tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of years. Over roughly sixty thousand years, countless creatures,
Speaker 1: including mammoths, saber toothed cats, dire wolves, and smaller plants
Speaker 1: and insects, became stuck in the sticky seeps and were
Speaker 1: preserved in remarkable detail. Scientists value Librea because it offers
Speaker 1: an unusually rich and diverse snapshot of ice age life
Speaker 1: in North America, revealing a world once dominated by large
Speaker 1: predators and prey that vanished around thirteen thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: The site's fossils allow researchers to study entire ecosystems, from
Speaker 1: megafauna to microscopic remains, all preserved together. We also learned
Speaker 1: about modern scientific work at Librea, including how paleontologists and
Speaker 1: volunteers carefully excavate clean and catalog fossils while the public watches.
Speaker 1: Researchers increasingly focus on microfossils such as seeds, pollen, insects,
Speaker 1: and vital liths to reconstruct ancient environments and better understand
Speaker 1: why ice age species went extinct. Recent research suggests that
Speaker 1: climate change, human hunting, and the increased use of fire
Speaker 1: may together explain the rapid collapse of these ecosystems. By
Speaker 1: studying both large and tiny fossils, scientists hope Librea can
Speaker 1: offer lessons about environmental change that remain relevant as modern
Speaker 1: ecosystems face similar pressures today. Here now is part two.
Speaker 1: A graduate student at UCLA named Lisa Martinez had been
Speaker 1: assembling a detailed charcoal record from the critical time period
Speaker 1: using core samples from nearby Lake Elsinore. Her results were
Speaker 1: hidden at first behind an embargo of an important scientific paper,
Speaker 1: even from the paper's authors, including paleo but botanist Reagan Dunn,
Speaker 1: and then Dunn says, when I was finally able to
Speaker 1: see that thesis and I saw her charcoal record, I
Speaker 1: just nearly fell off my chair. Martinez quickly became a
Speaker 1: co author on the paper. What we saw by looking
Speaker 1: at her record is that there's hardly any fire in
Speaker 1: the system until about thirteen thousand, two hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: Dunn says, and I was like, Oh my god, it's humans.
Speaker 1: The resulting twenty twenty three study found no evidence for
Speaker 1: the over hunting theory. Instead, the researchers proposed what they
Speaker 1: called a more nuanced approach, a climate human synergy of
Speaker 1: humans and wild life adapting with a wide range of
Speaker 1: results to a climate that was rapidly changing around them.
Speaker 1: During previous periods of climate change, Emily Lindsay, a Librea palaeodcologist, says,
Speaker 1: animals were able to move freely to better habitats. If
Speaker 1: ice sheets were expanding over the northern regions of what
Speaker 1: is now the US, the animals could move south to
Speaker 1: greener pastures. But once humans began transforming the landscape, the
Speaker 1: animals faced new barriers. For Lindsay Dunn and their co authors,
Speaker 1: these findings reveal not just what happened thirteen thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: but also what seems to be happening now Over the
Speaker 1: past century. They noted southern California's climate has warmed ten
Speaker 1: times faster than it did at the time of the
Speaker 1: extinction recorded in such detail at Librea. Frequent, prolonged droughts
Speaker 1: and wildfires are common again as they were then. Ecosystem's
Speaker 1: failure to recover after fire suggests. They warned that critical
Speaker 1: thresholds for re establishment have already been crossed. Last year,
Speaker 1: wildfires driven by fierce Santa Ana winds raced through neighborhoods
Speaker 1: all around metropolitan Los Angeles over more than three weeks.
Speaker 1: The fires incinerated more than fifty eight square miles of
Speaker 1: habitat for humans and animals alike, destroyed more than sixteen thousand,
Speaker 1: two hundred homes, schools, and other structures, placed some too
Speaker 1: hundred thousand residents under evacuation orders, and killed thirty one people.
Speaker 1: Economists estimated the damage to the local economy at more
Speaker 1: than two hundred and fifty billion dollars. A Librea staff
Speaker 1: member was among the locals who lost their homes. Along
Speaker 1: with many other institutions, Librea's Page Museum shut down for
Speaker 1: two days. The site itself was unharmed, and as the
Speaker 1: city gradually came back to life, it was almost possible
Speaker 1: to go on as if nothing had changed. Soon after
Speaker 1: the fires, Let's imagine a screenwriter shows up at Librea.
Speaker 1: She opens her laptop to a script set at the
Speaker 1: tar pits, working title death Trap, Heart and Throat. Scenes
Speaker 1: of escape from catastrophe begin to fill the page, but
Speaker 1: then she starts to noodle around with a new plot point.
Speaker 1: What if a small band of determined researchers come out
Speaker 1: of Librea with the story powerful enough to save our world?
Speaker 1: And accompanying this article, did you know the Secrets of Librea?
Speaker 1: No dinosaur fossils have been found at Librea because the
Speaker 1: area was underwater at the time they roamed the earth,
Speaker 1: and the Chumash people used the area's asphalt for waterproofing
Speaker 1: baskets and sealing canoes long before the first Europeans arrived. Next,
Speaker 1: this massive collection of more than a million tools tells
Speaker 1: the striking history of jewelry making in America before computers.
Speaker 1: In Ai, beautiful trinkets were formed with a combination of hubs, dyes, finesse,
Speaker 1: and force. Kevin Potter has perhaps the world's largest assemblage
Speaker 1: of them. By Richard Grant. Look at this, says Kevin Potter,
Speaker 1: marveling at an intricate Art Deco butterfly design carved into
Speaker 1: an old, weathered block of steel. A guy made this
Speaker 1: with chisels and piles. It probably took him two weeks.
Speaker 1: This hub would have made gorgeous, top quality brooches. Potter
Speaker 1: fifty six, is a jewelry maker, but he also presides
Speaker 1: over the largest collection of artifacts from America's Golden Age
Speaker 1: of jewelry manufacturing, which he's packed into two big warehouses
Speaker 1: and a scruffy old Tucson neighborhood. Animated and loquacious with
Speaker 1: a sardonic edge, almost invariably clad in work overalls, Potter
Speaker 1: has preserved a part of American history which, even though
Speaker 1: it touched tens of millions of lives in intimate emotional ways,
Speaker 1: is now largely forgotten. People love jewelry, but most of
Speaker 1: them don't think about how it was made. Potter tells me,
Speaker 1: with an air of wistful indulgence. They don't think about
Speaker 1: the artistry involved, the craftsmanship, the techniques. They don't think
Speaker 1: about the tools and equipment. Potter's great collection is dominated
Speaker 1: by hubs and dyes, which are small blocks or pucks
Speaker 1: of steel with designs engraved on them. Back in the
Speaker 1: bygone era of industrial dye struck jewelry, factory workers would
Speaker 1: use powerful machines to press or strike these engraved designs
Speaker 1: into sheets of gold, silver, and other metals. The difference
Speaker 1: between hubs and dyes is usually described in terms of
Speaker 1: male and female. Hubs are male, the design is engraved
Speaker 1: in relief such that it protrudes from the surface. A
Speaker 1: dye is then made by pressing or striking a hub
Speaker 1: into a plank piece of steel, embedding a mirror image
Speaker 1: of the hub's design in a shallow cavity. Jewelry can
Speaker 1: be struck between the male hub and the female dye,
Speaker 1: or between the dye and the flat surface. Collectively, hubs
Speaker 1: and dyes are known as tools, and here in these
Speaker 1: extraordinary warehouses Potter has amassed, in estimates did one point
Speaker 1: two million hubs, far more than any one else in
Speaker 1: the world. In the front warehouse building tools are stacked
Speaker 1: on racks of shelving lining the walls and corridors. They
Speaker 1: fill up drawers and cabinets and invade bathrooms and office spaces. Potter,
Speaker 1: who began his career as a goldsmith, says every one
Speaker 1: of these tools took between forty and one hundred hours
Speaker 1: to make. You're looking at lifetimes of human labor and artistry,
Speaker 1: often multiple generations of the same families making these tools.
Speaker 1: Forty years ago, they would have been worth hundreds of
Speaker 1: millions of dollars, but that value evaporated when the technology changed.
Speaker 1: People sell them now as paper weights. The air inside
Speaker 1: the building has a metallic, oily industrial smell. The hubs
Speaker 1: and dies compete for space with antique engraving machines, screw presses,
Speaker 1: hulking drop hammer machines, old wooden tool boxes that belonged
Speaker 1: to master in ravers Rube Goldberg looking to contraptions for
Speaker 1: making fine delicate necklaces, hand forged anvils, including a French
Speaker 1: specimen dating to seventeen eighty nine, and a mind boggling
Speaker 1: array of other archaic machines and equipment. The sheer volume
Speaker 1: of unfamiliar visual information is overwhelming, and it's noisy too.
Speaker 1: Bang clang thud, whoosh. Because Potter and his twenty five
Speaker 1: employees are using the old machines to make jewelry and
Speaker 1: the old hubs to make new dyes. His company, Potter USA,
Speaker 1: founded in his garage in nineteen ninety seven, sells the
Speaker 1: dyes on the Internet to hobbyists, along with small hydraulic
Speaker 1: presses so that customers can use them to make their
Speaker 1: own jewelry. Those customers, he says, are predominantly older women.
Speaker 1: They number nearly fifteen thousand and live all over the world.
Speaker 1: I think it's the coolest thing, Potter says, a guy
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty years ago may this tool. Now
Speaker 1: his design is being used again and thousands of people
Speaker 1: are falling in love with his art. It's like we're
Speaker 1: bringing him back to life. The profits from this business
Speaker 1: enable Potter to keep up his voracious collecting habit. He
Speaker 1: has bought up consignments of tools from defunct jewelry factories
Speaker 1: in New York City, Newark, Attleborough, Massachusetts, as well as Paris, Prague, Helsinki,
Speaker 1: and various German cities, but a major part of his
Speaker 1: collection comes from Providence, Rhode Island, once known as the
Speaker 1: jewelry capital of the world. By the late nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: jewelry makers and Providence were using hubs, dyes, drop hammers,
Speaker 1: and heavy presses to mass produce detailed jewelry from sheet
Speaker 1: gold and other metals. It was a major departure Before
Speaker 1: die striking, jewelry was made almost entirely by hand using
Speaker 1: metal work skills dating back thousands of years. Artistry and
Speaker 1: craftsmanship were still required to make the tools, but die
Speaker 1: striking was a shift from an artisanal era to an
Speaker 1: industrial one. Many of the Providence factories were family owned,
Speaker 1: and conflicts would often arise. Potter says that a cousin,
Speaker 1: usually a tool maker, would leave in a fit of
Speaker 1: spite and start his own factory. The companies kept multiplying
Speaker 1: over time, and the whole thing kept getting bigger and bigger,
Speaker 1: until you had these giant factories three hundred square feet,
Speaker 1: which is three home depots. He said. For most of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, these factories produced millions of pieces of
Speaker 1: die struct jewelry a year, and they were being exported
Speaker 1: all over the world. Providence made good quality jewelry available
Speaker 1: to everybody for the first time in history. Potter says,
Speaker 1: rolled gold really put them on the map. It looks
Speaker 1: like solid gold, but it's a very thin layer of
Speaker 1: gold over brass, so it's affordable. At its peak, in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight, the Providence jewelry industry employed thirty two
Speaker 1: thousand people and some three thousand production facilities, ranging from
Speaker 1: giant factories to front room mom and pop operations. Soon afterward,
Speaker 1: it fell into a calamitous decline. The business was decimated
Speaker 1: by companies in Asia, which undercut prices, using cheaper labor
Speaker 1: and inexpensive lost wax casting, in which molten metal is
Speaker 1: poured into a mold. Hundreds of US jewelry companies shut down,
Speaker 1: laid off their employees, and shuttered their factories around two
Speaker 1: thousand seven or two thousand eight. When Potter found out
Speaker 1: that bankrupt jewelry companies were melting down their hubs and
Speaker 1: dies into scrap, he was horrified. I couldn't stand to
Speaker 1: see all that history and artistry destroyed forever, so I
Speaker 1: started buying up tools to save them as many as
Speaker 1: I possibly could, And that's what I've been doing ever since.
Speaker 1: Pater de Christafaro, founder and curator of the Providence Jewelry
Speaker 1: Museum in Rhode Island recalls how in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: Kevin came to Providence like a tomb raider coming into
Speaker 1: the Valley of the Pharaohs. He bought three hundred million
Speaker 1: dollars worth of tools for pennies on the dollar. He
Speaker 1: mounted an enormous collection, and he got the best potter.
Speaker 1: USA is largely a family operation. Kevin works alongside his
Speaker 1: wife Danielle, who's in charge of the office and the finances.
Speaker 1: Their son, Vincent, is a jewelry maker who dresses in
Speaker 1: overalls and a newsboy cap. From his father and his
Speaker 1: own research, he has acquired a vast knowledge of the
Speaker 1: history of American jewelry making. Vincent helps his father with
Speaker 1: the collection and the tool business, and he runs his
Speaker 1: own company, Cranston Fancy Wire, which sells bracelets and engraved
Speaker 1: strips of copper, brass and silver. We have the tools
Speaker 1: organized by the companies who made them because it keeps
Speaker 1: a better historical record, says Vincent as he shows me
Speaker 1: around the collection, which includes pieces from seventy four companies.
Speaker 1: Opening a cabinet loaded with hubs and dies, he says,
Speaker 1: this is Gorum, a company founded in eighteen thirty one.
Speaker 1: They made high end silverware and trophyware in Providence and
Speaker 1: closed in nineteen eighty six. Lovingly, Vincent shows me a
Speaker 1: gold bracelet he spotted recently in a Tucson thrift store.
Speaker 1: It was made in the mid twentieth century with one
Speaker 1: of the dyes in the Potter collection. He bought the
Speaker 1: bracelet and says he's now reunited it with the very
Speaker 1: dye that struck it decades ago in Providence. As we
Speaker 1: moved through the collection over several hours, it becomes apparent
Speaker 1: that the Potters preside over a unique record of American
Speaker 1: life in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and not just
Speaker 1: the changing fashions in men's and women's jewelry. The die
Speaker 1: striking process was also used used to make medals, silver
Speaker 1: Christmas ornaments, souvenir pins, law enforcement shields, and hood emblems
Speaker 1: for cars, to name just a few. Kevin shows me
Speaker 1: into one office that's devoted to military tools, including the
Speaker 1: dyes that struck the purple Heart, the Bronze Star, the
Speaker 1: Silver Star, and the Medal of Honor. Potter has a
Speaker 1: vintage hub for U. S. Army officer's belt buckles and
Speaker 1: one that made badges for the Space Program. In another room,
Speaker 1: displayed high on a wall, is the die that struck
Speaker 1: early badges for the Los Angeles Police Department. I've got
Speaker 1: the tools that made the pins and rings for the
Speaker 1: Skull and Bones Society at Yale, Kevin says. Moving into
Speaker 1: a different room, he rifles through a cabinet and pulls
Speaker 1: out the dyes that struck the World Series rings in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty two and nineteen forty six, and both the
Speaker 1: prize medals and the participation medals for the first Winter
Speaker 1: Olympics hosted by America at Lake Placid in nineteen thirty two.
Speaker 1: The actual metal sells for about ten thousand dollars. So
Speaker 1: what's this worth? He says? This is the die that
Speaker 1: made all those metals, the real original. Other than Kevin
Speaker 1: and Danielle, the employees at Potter USA are mostly in
Speaker 1: their twenties and thirties, and this is a deliberate strategy
Speaker 1: on Kevin's part. The techniques for making die struck jewelry
Speaker 1: weren't written down. You can't look them up in a book.
Speaker 1: It was all passed down by word of mouth. By
Speaker 1: showing the next generation how it was done. That's what
Speaker 1: I'm doing here. I don't want to see the knowledge
Speaker 1: die out. In the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties, die
Speaker 1: striking from hand engraved hubs was supplanted by computer aided
Speaker 1: design CAD software and C and C computer numerical coat
Speaker 1: control machines that engrave texture and create models for the
Speaker 1: lost wax casting process. Now those technologies threatened by the
Speaker 1: advent of artificial intelligence three D model generators. You don't
Speaker 1: even have to draw anything, says Potter. Just tell it
Speaker 1: what you want and there it is, ready for three
Speaker 1: D printing. In the spirit of meet your destroyer. We
Speaker 1: tried it and it made a perfect die from a
Speaker 1: photograph of a piece of jewelry. He thinks Potter USA
Speaker 1: will survive because it caters to hobbyists who enjoy working
Speaker 1: with their hands. But Potter has no doubt that the
Speaker 1: jewelry industry will once again be transformed. You can't fight
Speaker 1: technological change that powerful, Potter says. The artisans who made
Speaker 1: jewelry by hand for centuries were put out of business
Speaker 1: by industrial diestruck jewelry. Now AI is uppending the business
Speaker 1: model again. That's just how it goes. And accompanying this article,
Speaker 1: did you know inside Rhode Island's by gone jewelry empire.
Speaker 1: Road Island's jewelry dominance began with the economic boom that
Speaker 1: followed the Civil War. In eighteen sixty five, forty five
Speaker 1: jewelry companies employed some seven hundred workers in Rhode Island.
Speaker 1: Ten years later, there were one hundred and thirty jewelry
Speaker 1: companies in the state, accounting for nearly two thousand, seven
Speaker 1: hundred workers. By eighteen eighty, Rhode Island produced more than
Speaker 1: a quarter of all jewelry made in the United States.
Speaker 1: At that time, the state was home to one hundred
Speaker 1: forty eight firms, one hundred forty two of which were
Speaker 1: based in the major hub of Providence. Next stamps of approval,
Speaker 1: A traveling salesman built an empire on savings and changed
Speaker 1: shopping forever. By Heather Hughes. The idea of rewarding loyal
Speaker 1: customers has existed for millennia. In Ancient Egypt, merchants offered
Speaker 1: their regulars tokens that could be redeemed for staples like
Speaker 1: bread or beer. In the late seventeen hundreds, one New
Speaker 1: England merchant gave customers copper tokens to exchange for merchandise,
Speaker 1: but the first large scale loyalty program didn't appear until
Speaker 1: the late nineteenth century. In eighteen ninety one, traveling salesman
Speaker 1: Thomas Sperry came upon an intriguing incentive program in a
Speaker 1: Milwaukee department store which issued stamps with each purchase that
Speaker 1: customers could later redeem for merchandise. Sperry saw a chance
Speaker 1: to make a business out of printing these stamps and
Speaker 1: selling them to retailers. With investor Shelley Byron Hutchinson, in
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety six, Sperry founded the Sperry and Hutchinson Company
Speaker 1: known as S and H, which issued its first green
Speaker 1: and white paper stamps at stores in Jackson, Michigan, near
Speaker 1: Hutchinson's hometown of Ippsilany. For every ten cents spent at
Speaker 1: participating stores, customers received a stamp worth ten points. Once
Speaker 1: you'd acquired enough stamps to fill an sn H Green
Speaker 1: Stamps booklet, you redeemed them at an S and H
Speaker 1: show room for anything from furniture to silverware. The program
Speaker 1: was a fast success with regional dry goods stores, and
Speaker 1: soon with department stores and grocers. By its second year,
Speaker 1: SNH had expanded to sixty seven cities, and Sperry and
Speaker 1: Hutchinson began opening more showrooms or redemption centers, where customers
Speaker 1: presented their stamps for merchandise. One book could get you
Speaker 1: a porcelain lamp, while six booklets could get you a bicycle.
Speaker 1: In the early nineteen hundreds, SNH launched its catalog, which
Speaker 1: became one of the most widely circulated publications in the country.
Speaker 1: By nineteen sixty four, S and H was distributing a
Speaker 1: reported thirty two million copies a year as customers redeemed
Speaker 1: more than a billion stamps weekly. That decade saw green
Speaker 1: stamps zenith. The United States had approximately eight hundred S
Speaker 1: and H redemption centers and more than ten thousand participating businesses.
Speaker 1: Andy Warhol immortalized the stamps and the nineteen sixty two
Speaker 1: silkscreen now in the collection at the Museum of Modern
Speaker 1: Art in New York. But in the mid nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: as the U s economy stagnated, S and H began
Speaker 1: to declant decline. By the late nineteen eighties, fewer than
Speaker 1: one hundred retailers were still participating, and as many stores
Speaker 1: chose to cut out the middleman by offering their own
Speaker 1: rewards programs, s, and H Green stamps never quite recovered.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty one, the founding families sold SNH, but
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety nine one of Sperry's great grandsons repurchased it.
Speaker 1: The stamps went digital the following year, rebranded as Green Points,
Speaker 1: but this and other rebrands failed to recapture the magic.
Speaker 1: SNH was op Thanks to the phenomenon it had recreated,
Speaker 1: many retailers now offer rewards programs which are bigger than ever.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty four they accounted for twelve billion dollars
Speaker 1: in economic activity. Next, with Doonesbury, Gary Trudeau found a
Speaker 1: way to inform and entertain a generation of newspaper readers,
Speaker 1: one panel at a time. A new biography chronicles the
Speaker 1: history and evolution of the reserved artist who has always
Speaker 1: let his pen do the talking. By Brandon Tensley. It's
Speaker 1: a bit difficult today to imagine a comic strip wielding
Speaker 1: serious political power, but Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury, which ran daily
Speaker 1: from nineteen seventy to twenty fourteen, got famous by helping
Speaker 1: millions of Americans make sense of the radical shifts in
Speaker 1: their country. So immense was Doonesberry's influence that President Gerald
Speaker 1: Ford quipped in nineteen seventy five, there are only three
Speaker 1: major vehicles to keep us informed as to what is
Speaker 1: going on in Washington, the electronic media, the print media,
Speaker 1: and Doonsbury. Not necessarily in that order, Trudeau has long
Speaker 1: managed to stay out of the public eye. In Trudeau
Speaker 1: and Doonsbury, The Cartoonist Who Turned the News into Art,
Speaker 1: the first major biography of the artist, journalist Joshua Kendall
Speaker 1: offers a definitive and inviting account of Trudeau's career based
Speaker 1: on archives and interviews, including with politicians who were on
Speaker 1: the receiving end of his barbs. Kendall takes us from
Speaker 1: Saranac Lake, the village in the Adirondack Mountains where Trudeau,
Speaker 1: as a precocious elementary school exactingly directed plays in his
Speaker 1: family's home. I was a little dictator, he jokes. To
Speaker 1: Yale University. There as an undergraduate around nineteen seventy, Trudeau
Speaker 1: first confronted war as the Vietnam draft lottery loomed over
Speaker 1: him and his classmates. A scarred upper digestive tract saved
Speaker 1: Trudeau from being conscripted. The social environment wasn't the only
Speaker 1: thing that was changing. Trudeau was too. He started drawing
Speaker 1: a strip called bull Tales, first published in the Yale
Speaker 1: Daily News on September thirtieth, nineteen sixty eight, which contained
Speaker 1: the seeds of Doonsbury. In those early days, Trudeau was
Speaker 1: per his editor at the Yale Daily News, a classic
Speaker 1: male chauvinus pig. That changed when he fell for Annie
Speaker 1: her Boat, one of the first women to enroll as
Speaker 1: a Yale undergraduate in nineteen sixty nine. At first, she
Speaker 1: described his work as a sexist piece of crap. Yet
Speaker 1: the two dated and Trudeau's time with Hurlbut made him
Speaker 1: a lifelong feminist. Doonsbury debuted in twenty eight newspapers in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy, and Trudeau created bold women characters such as
Speaker 1: Jonie Caucus and troduced to nineteen seventy two, who embodied
Speaker 1: a new liberation. By the new century, Doonsbury was appearing
Speaker 1: in around fourteen hundred newspapers. Trudeau also made innovations in
Speaker 1: more recent years, creating the Amazon sitcom Alpha House twenty
Speaker 1: thirteen to fourteen, starring John Goodman. Goodman calls me the
Speaker 1: script Nazi. Trudeau told the New Yorker in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: which means I protect every period in comma. The little
Speaker 1: dictator was still at work. Trudeau drew in readers by
Speaker 1: focusing on the often bizarre and confusing daily life faced
Speaker 1: by baby boomers. Kindle rights and unlike the artist's role
Speaker 1: model Charles Schultz, the Peanuts creator, whose terrain is our
Speaker 1: often painful inner life, Kendall notes, Trudeau's is the absurd
Speaker 1: external reality that envelops us. Finally, ask Smithsonian, you've got questions,
Speaker 1: we've got experts. Are there any planets in space that
Speaker 1: don't orbit around US star? The answer is from Jennifer
Speaker 1: c Ye, Observational Astronomer, Center for Astrophysics, Harvard and Smithsonian.
Speaker 1: As planetary systems form, it's theoretically possible that some planets
Speaker 1: whose orbits haven't fully stabilized could be kicked out of
Speaker 1: their star systems through close gravitational encounters with other planets
Speaker 1: or stars. In stellar nurseries where many new solar systems
Speaker 1: are forming, The James Webb Space Telescope has detected hundreds
Speaker 1: of isolated objects smaller than Jupiter. These might be planets
Speaker 1: based on their small mass. However, they might be miniature
Speaker 1: brown dwarfs, failed stars that are too small to fuse
Speaker 1: hydrogen the way our Sun does. This concludes readings from
Speaker 1: the Smithsonian Magazine for today. Your reader has been Rebecca Shore.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening, and have a great day.