Welcome to the weekend. How is it already mid-July? This week on The Daily, we covered some intergalactic news. More on that, and our latest episode of Modern Love, below. |
The Big Idea: Capturing the cosmos in sound |
The Daily strives to reveal a new idea in every episode. Below, we go deeper on one of those from our show this week. |
 | | NASA, via Reuters |
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I feel small in proximity to plenty of mundane, human things: navigating the towering shelves of peanut butter and toilet paper in my local bodega, fumbling through Duolingo, waiting too close to the edge of the train platform. |
Which is why my brain short-circuits when I think about space, a concept too vast to comprehend. How can I fathom the distance of a million miles? How do I make sense of the Big Bang? And how do I process an entire galaxy in one image? |
Surmounting this challenge — and making space accessible — is what our team tried to do today on The Daily. |
We were covering the rare intergalactic news story: This week, NASA released five images taken one million miles away from Earth. They are the early work of the James Webb Space Telescope, the largest optical telescope ever put into space. They also offer a glimpse of what we can expect as the $10 billion observatory sets its sights deeper into space than any telescope that has come before, examining the origins of the universe and the possibility of life in other galaxies. |
"It really does obviously remind you of our smallness," Astead Herndon, our host for today's show, said. |
"The scientists kept on saying that they were speechless. One person said that she ugly-cried when she saw the first data," added Kenneth Chang, a space reporter for The Times. |
But as a podcast, we couldn't show these images; instead, we had to rely on sound to capture their significance. So we turned to our composers, Elisheba Ittoop, Marion Lozano and Dan Powell. |
"Composing for this episode was incredibly freeing," Elisheba and Marion said. "The news can be dark and heavy, so receiving a request to write music for something exciting and out-of-this-world was exhilarating." |
They used old Hubble Space Telescope images as a reference point, staring at the brilliant colors and glittering abyss to spark ideas. Their music featured bass synthesizers, luscious pads, distorted muted drums and altered keys. They drew inspiration for these instruments from various intergalactic films, such as "Interstellar," "Don't Look Up" and "The Midnight Sky." |
The team making the episode also tried to bring the show down to Earth, examining what the Webb launch reveals about what we value as a society and an economy. |
The successful launch and the release of these photos come at a pivotal time for NASA. The future of the space administration has been in question in recent years. The space shuttle program that helped launch the Webb's predecessor, the Hubble telescope, into space was shut down more than a decade ago. Last year, three companies led by billionaires launched their own rockets carrying private citizens (and William Shatner of "Star Trek") into space. All of this left people wondering: What is the mission of NASA today? |
Kenneth, the science reporter, helped us answer that question today. "These are the things that NASA does that Elon Musk is never going to do," he quipped on the episode. |
"Are we alone? Why is there a universe at all?" he added. "These are questions that you can argue have no practical effect on your everyday life. But those are things that make people special, that we are curious. We wonder what's beyond the next hill. We want to see what's beyond the next star. We want to see what's at the next star." |
He continued: "And these are the missions that really only NASA, you know, with the European Space Agency, with the Canadians, are ever going to try because it's not a business proposition for any of the billionaires." |
From the Audio Team: 'A Mother's Secret' |
 | | Brian Rea |
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This week on Modern Love, Ayad Akhtar, who won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, shares his story about a confession his mother made to him when he was an adult. |
Growing up, Ayad thought he had a good understanding of the conflicts in his parents' relationship. "My parents had met in Pakistan in the early '60s, both ridiculously attractive," Ayad said. In spite of them having a love marriage — against the wishes of their parents — their union was rocky from the start. |
"By the time I was 4, I already knew my father had 'other women,' as my mother used to call them," Ayad explained. "An unhealthy proximity to this — their toxic central conflict — had defined much of my childhood. It had defined the narrative of their marriage. Or so I thought." |
Fast-forward to midlife, when Ayad was on vacation in Florida with his parents and brother. Ayad and his mother were sitting side by side in chaise longues, but he "sensed her stewing and wondered what was bothering her." She turned to him and asked: "Should we go for a walk along the water?" |
It was on this walk that Ayad learned a secret she had been harboring for years, which made him see her in a whole new light. Listen to Ayad's story. |
That's it for the Daily newsletter. See you next week. |
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