Moon Trees

In 1971, a red-headed, tree-loving astronaut named Stu ‘Smokey’ Roosa was asked to take something to the moon with him. Of all things, he chose to take a canister of 500 tree seeds. After orbiting the moon 34 times, the seeds made it back to Earth. NASA decided to plant the seeds all across the country and then… everyone forgot about them. Until one day, a third grader from Indiana stumbled on a tree with a strange plaque: "Moon Tree." This discovery set off a cascading search for all the trees that visited the moon across the United States. Science writer, and our very own factchecker, Natalie Middleton (https://www.nataliemiddleton.org/) tells us the tale. Read Lulu’s remembrance of Alice Wong for Transom.org: 13 questions I’ll never get to ask Alice Wong (https://transom.org/2026/13-questions-ill-never-get-to-ask-alice-wong/). Check out Natalie’s map to find your nearest moon tree on our show page (https://radiolab.org/podcast/the-travelers-how-moon-trees-hide-among-us)! Help us hunt for more moon trees. If you know of an undocumented moon tree, contact Natalie at nataliemiddleton.org. Check out Natalie’s essay on Moon Trees (https://orionmagazine.org/article/moon-tree/) and Space Zinnias (https://orionmagazine.org/article/astronaut-scott-kelly-flower-experiment-space/) in Orion Magazine (https://orionmagazine.org/). Visit NASA’s official Moon Tree Page (https://science.nasa.gov/resource/apollo-moon-trees/) for a list of all the Apollo 14 Moon Trees in the world. To learn more about Stu Roosa or to learn more about acquiring your own half Moon Tree, check out the Moon Tree Foundation (https://www.moontreefoundation.com/), spearheaded by Stu’s daughter, Rosemary Roosa. A reminder that Terrestrials also makes original music! You can find ‘Tangled in the Roots’ and all other music from the show here (https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab-kids/just-the-songs). EPISODE CREDITS: Terrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC Studios. This episode was produced by Tanya Chawla and sound-designed by Joe Plourde. Our Executive Producer is Sarah Sandbach. Our team includes Alan Goffinski, Ana González and Mira Burt-Wintonick. Fact checking was by Diane Kelly. Special thanks to Sumanth Prabhaker from Orion magazine, retired NASA Scientist Dr. Dave Williams, Joan Goble, Tre Corely and NASA scientist Dr. Marie Henderson. Our advisors for this show were Ana Luz Porzecanski, Nicole Depalma, Liza Demby and Carly Ciarrocchi. Support for Terrestrials also comes from the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation. Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected]. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

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  Wait, you're listening.

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  Okay.

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  All right.

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  Okay.

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  You're listening to Radiolab. Radiolab. From...

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  WNYC.

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  C. See?

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  Happy New Year. This past year, we lost a great one. Alice Wong, the renowned disability activist, MacArthur Award winner, and writer and podcaster, and so many other things, including, we all feel lucky to say, friend of Radiolab. You may remember her from an episode we did in the fall called "Voice." Alice brought us a very rad and real piece about how losing her speaking voice changed how she responded to the world and how the world responded to her.

• 0:51Speaker 02

  I have observed people do talk over me because I guess they don't recognize the sounds I am making as a voice. And as you can guess, I see them silently plan their destruction.

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  And so to kick off the new year, we all wanted to pay some small tribute to Alice. And as we were trying to figure out how to do that, I went back and listened to the last conversation we ever had, which was just two months before she died. And I felt guided by this one tiny moment.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  To celebrate the recovery from my bedrest, I saw Lady Gaga in summer when she was in San Francisco.

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  Oh, awesome. What was that like?

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  Oh, the energy and vibe was amazing. I dressed as Ziggy Stardust with full makeup and a sparkly pink shirt and silver pants and boots.

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  I was really feeling myself and am pursuing pleasure as much as I can while I can.

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  Alice was so serious about what she was doing. She went to bat for disabled folks. She called out ableism. She did not mince words, but she was also so full of joy.

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  In fact, I am seeing Stevie Nicks in October, and my witchy powers will be in full display.

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  My text chain with her is full of really bad puns, memes of her mocking my children, and F-bombs. So many F-bombs. Woman curse like a sailor. And one thing that her Ziggy Stardust comment made me realize that maybe not everyone knew about her is that she was really passionately into space.

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  In a fake obituary that she wrote for herself, she said that she lived to the age of 96 and spent the last few decades of her life living on the moon. She said she lived in a zero-gravity capsule as a member of, quote, "Crips in space, a group of scientists, creators, and explorers." Now, when I look up at the moon, I picture Alice is up there in lower gravity, experiencing less pain. In that same obituary, she also imagined that we all organized a, quote, "multidimensional interstellar memorial" on her behalf.

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  So as I wait for aliens to get back to me regarding logistical details, I figured as a little start, we could play an episode about this place she dreamed of living: the moon. Funnily enough, it is also a story that ends up being about access and about how the moon itself is more accessible to most of us here on Earth than we realize. It is an episode of Terrestrials. Alice was actually an advisor of Terrestrials. She was always rooting for weird work and helped us make pieces that treated disability with care. So here we go. Thank you, Alice.

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  We miss you. Please accept this humble lunar offering as a small token of our immense gratitude.

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  Three, two, one.

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  Imagine that you're teeny, teeny, tiny, and you have this hard shell. But inside that hard shell is everything you need to start growing to 200 feet tall.

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  And you are all set to be an Earthling until somebody launches you, hurls you toward the moon.

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  And you travel 250,000 miles, the farthest that any living thing has ever been. You see the far side of the moon, where all there is is stars.

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  And then you start falling,

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  back, back, back toward the Earth at faster speeds where nobody is sure if you'll survive.

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  But when you hit the soil?

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  You feel the warm sun, and you unfurl from your shell.

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  You have become...

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  A moon tree.

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  A moon tree?

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  Yes.

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  All right, now is the part where I make you sing the theme song with me. Terrestrials, terrestrials. We are not the worst, we are the...

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  Bestrials.

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  Bestrials. Yes, you got it. Terrestrials is a show where we uncover the strangeness waiting right here on planet Earth. I am your host, Lulu Miller, joined, as always, by my song bud, If You Believe, Alan. We're sent to see to the moon. And today, we are joined by one of our favorite storytellers, one of the people who fact checks our Terrestrials episodes to make sure everything we're saying is true. Can you please introduce yourself?

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  Hello, I'm Natalie Middleton.

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  So it's funny that you are the person on our team who kind of certifies truth, because you are bringing us a story that sounds like science fiction, like sci-fi.

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  Yeah.

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  Where do we start?

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  This whole story begins all thanks to a firefighter called Stu Smokey Russo.

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  Ooh, Smokey is his middle name?

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  That's his nickname.

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  Or his nickname? Smokey, okay, Smokey the firefighter.

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  Originally born in Colorado in 1933. Redhead, freckles, tall, kinda lanky, prankster. He was whip smart, really good at math. And he absolutely loved trees.

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  And after high school, he got a job with the Forest Service trying to fight this fungus called blister rust.

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  Which is a fungus that is really hard for trees to survive.

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  So you're saying he loved them so much, his actual job was to protect them from getting sick?

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  Yeah. And so every summer after that, he would go and fight fires. What he became was called a smoke jumper.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  A smoke jumper? That sounds a little scary.

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  It's pretty dangerous. So they're jumping out of planes with a parachute, basically into the fire.

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  Wow. Are they wearing like fireman gear, like the jacket?

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  It's actually kind of similar to like an astronaut suit.

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  Hmm.

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  And at some point, as he's floating through space, he wonders what it would be like to float through space.

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  Higher space. Outer space.

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  So first, he learns how to fly a plane.

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  Yes.

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  Then he trains and becomes an astronaut.

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  He just kind of went up higher in the sky.

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  And one day, NASA tells him. He's going to the moon.

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  Apollo 14.

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  And his job?

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  He's going to be the pilot.

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  Whoa, he's flying the spaceship?

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  Yes.

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  Wow, go Smokey!

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  It's a big job.

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  So the year is 1971. The spacecraft is all loaded up with gear and fuel, and each astronaut gets to bring with them one little bag.

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  It's not big. It's like, almost like a pocket size.

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  It's made of a special type of glass?

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  That won't melt until it's hotter than over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

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  Whoa, that's like a...

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  Very fireproof.

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  And what can they put in there? Is it like their license and toothbrush?

• 8:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, so astronauts actually just get to bring whatever is meaningful to them.

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  Oh, what would you bring?

• 8:46Speaker 03

  Oh. So I have a daughter that's two. She drew a train and yeah, I would probably bring that.

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  What did Smokey bring?

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  So out of everything that he could have thought to take on Earth, he chose to take tree seeds.

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  Back to his love of trees. He can't shake it.

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  Yeah.

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  He brought a big handful of five types of seeds.

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  Sweet gum.

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  Leafy trees from the east coast of the US.

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  Loblawli pine. They're from the south.

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  Loblawli, loblawli, loblawli. That's fun to say.

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  We have the redwood tree.

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  Oh, those big giants on the west coast that are too big to even hug.

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  Then we have the sycamore.

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  Super tall, leafy ones, lots of them in the middle of the country.

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  The last one is the Douglas fir.

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  It's like a Christmas tree is our often Douglas firs, right?

• 9:35Speaker 03

  Yes, they chose trees that could be grown all across the whole entire country.

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  Yeah.

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  And they put them in this aluminum metal canister, very small. It fits in the palm of your hand. So 500 of these seeds fit in the palm of Smokey's hand.

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  Wow. And so the day of the launch, he puts this canister of seeds in his little white fireproof bag, waves to the masses and steps on to the spacecraft.

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  From a scientific standpoint, people just didn't know what would happen to a plant or a seed if you took it up into deep space.

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  Had no one ever taken one up?

• 10:14Speaker 03

  No, so this was the first time.

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  Huh, and he had a scientific question.

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  What would happen if we brought another living thing up into space with us that's different than us?

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  Would it survive?

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  Yeah, would it survive? Would it grow differently? Would it look like a totally different kind of tree?

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  Because as Natalie explained, they knew that space affected humans.

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  When you're out in space, you're exposed to stronger radiation from the sun and galactic cosmic rays.

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  And this radiation can wiggle its way into your DNA, the blueprint that tells your body how to grow and potentially warp things.

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  Plus, the lowered gravity can weaken your bones and muscles. And oddly, because of something about how time works in space, you age just a tiny bit slower. Which I still don't really understand, but I gotta keep moving on with the story.

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  And so Smokey and some of his fellow tree lovers at the Forest Service wondered, would space have an effect on the cells and DNA inside trees? Did he have any hypotheses on how space travel might affect growth of these trees?

• 11:31Speaker 03

  So I looked. There's nothing that indicates what he thought, except that he thought it was a cool idea.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  OK, well, lucky for you, Natalie, I put the question to a bunch of children.

• 11:47Speaker 03

  Oh.

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  And would you like to hear some of their answers?

• 11:50Speaker 03

  Yes, I would.

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  Maybe it would have to grow now with any water.

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  It would probably have different needs. Instead of like water, maybe something else, different chemicals helping it grow.

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  Maybe it would have to be growing on no gravity.

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  So how would that make the tree look different?

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  So fresh as an arch and then turned to spirals.

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  Trying to go upwards a little higher because of just like the generally lower gravity on the moon.

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  Yeah.

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  And there's also gonna be berries, golden berries, brine berry, a brine berry.

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  Maybe like blue leaves.

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  And white shrubs.

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  Ooh.

• 12:31Speaker 04

  And it looks like a palm tree, but...

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  It looks like a what tree?

• 12:35Speaker 04

  A palm tree.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Oh, it's like a palm tree.

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  But white and gray. But inside of the coconuts is a piece from the moon.

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  Ooh, is it hard or soft inside?

• 12:47Speaker 04

  Tastes like yogurt.

• 12:48Speaker 05

  And probably have a little metal in it. Then at the end of them, there were like little moon-like half crescent and full crescent and stuff like that. And if you touch one, you'll start to feel like tingling in your hand. And if you give one to your animal, your animal will get this little moon shape on its forehead and then they'll be able to like fly and stuff.

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  Oh my god, Lulu, these are so-

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  This is just silly. I don't, I just put the question out. Isn't this great?

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  It just catches imagination, doesn't it?

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  It's so fitting, Lulu, because it's really thanks to a third grader that we even know about this story.

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  Wait, what?

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  Yeah.

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  That story, plus blast off, after this short break.

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  This week on The New Yorker Radio Hour, will House Democrats try once again for impeachment? Let's not make a fetish out of impeachment. Let's not make a taboo out of impeachment. We understand it's not a panacea, but it is an essential tool in the constitutional toolbox that's always there. Congressman Jamie Raskin joins us next time on The New Yorker Radio Hour from WNYC. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

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  10.

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  9.

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  8.

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  7.

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  6.

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  5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

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  Blast off.

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  Goodbye, Smokey. Goodbye. What are the other names of the other astronauts?

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  Edgar Mitchell and Alan Shepard.

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  Goodbye, Ed. Goodbye, Alan. Goodbye, fireproof bag full of seeds. The fuel ignites, and on the outside, the spacecraft looks pretty slow, but on the inside, everything is rattling. The metal rivets are groaning, and the seeds in the canister are bumping into each other. There's all this pressure from gravity trying to pull the spacecraft down. And then, in one spin, it severs ties from Earth.

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  And suddenly, the seeds and the astronauts are floating in zero G.

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  And Smokey aligns his measurements and lurches the spacecraft toward the moon.

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  Peanut butter.

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  Not enjoying any peanut butter.

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  This is audio from the actual spaceflight.

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  Incredible.

• 15:24Speaker 05

  This is really a wild place up here.

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  For four days, they soar through space as that little moon in the sky grows bigger and bigger and bigger.

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  It seemed so close. Looks like you can just reach out and touch it.

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  Until they are right next to it.

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  Stu, we just got word that your family is listening to you and they're outside looking up at that great big moon. I'm sure we'd all like to be up there with you. Over.

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  And then Stu, aka Smokey.

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  Yeah, I wish you could be.

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  Releases Alan and Ed from the spacecraft to go land on the moon.

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  Nothing like being up to your armpits in lunar dust.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  They get to go walk on the moon?

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  Yes.

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  Lucky Alan, lucky Ed.

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  Yeah.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  And not only do they get to frolic around in moon dust, Alan brought a makeshift golf club and golf balls to hit.

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  Because of the gravity, you barely have to tap it and it just flies.

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  Miles and miles and miles.

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  I'm just picturing like, it's like Alan and Ed playing on the moon, bouncing, feeling, doing what they do, and Smokey doesn't get to go.

• 16:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, that's what I thought, but actually, for every moon mission where people land on the moon, there's one astronaut that stays in orbit around the moon. And it's a really important job because that's everybody's-

• 16:57Speaker 01

  It's important, but it sounds less fun.

• 16:59Speaker 03

  Okay, but you'll see why I say that. So, the command module, so that's what Smokey is in.

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  Stu Roosa aboard Kitty Hawk.

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  Okay. He's gonna continue to orbit around.

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  Eighth revolution of the moon.

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  He's gonna take pictures, he's gonna do all these science experiments while he's-

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  Fifteenth, nineteenth, twentieth revolution of the moon.

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  Orbiting and orbiting and orbiting.

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  Twenty-second lunar revolution, twenty-three, Roosa's still apparently asleep.

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  I think he orbits-

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  Thirty-second revolution. Thirty-fourth.

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  Thirty-four times.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  The moon?

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  The moon.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  Wow.

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  And what happens when you're orbiting the moon is that you end up going into the moon's shadow.

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  Now passing over the backside of the moon.

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  Which is called the far side of the moon. And when you do that, everything gets really dark, you can't see the sun.

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  It's cold, the temperature drops, things get like really clammy. And then you also lose contact with everyone on Earth.

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  We have had loss of signal with the command module Kitty Hawk.

• 18:01Speaker 03

  And everyone on the moon. Literally, it's Stu Smokey Russo and these seeds in his pocket. Are the only living things in that corner of the world? Yeah.

• 18:20Speaker 03

  Okay, Natalie, you're not selling me. I'm still like, you're just like, you are the most alone person of the entire living human race. You're cold, but guess this, you're also clammy and it's pitch dark. And the other guys are like having fun bouncing, playing golf on the moon. So, yes, I left out the best part. So when you're going around, what happens is you suddenly see just this sheet of stars that just goes on forever and ever and ever. The astronauts that have experienced that have just like plunged into that side of space that no one ever gets to see.

• 19:09Speaker 03

  But he can't admire the infinite void forever because he's starting to run out of gas. So he brushes by the moon, picks up Alan and out, "Thanks, bro." Lurches the spacecraft back toward Earth.

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  We'll see you on the other side, over.

• 19:23Speaker 03

  And starts dive bombing toward it, traveling at over 16,000 miles per hour until... They splash down in the Pacific Ocean under these three huge orange and white parachutes. So the seeds made it back to Earth, they traveled so far. And then during the decontamination process, the cleaning process, there was an extreme change in pressure and the bag of seeds explodes. Oh, no. So the seeds just exploded all over the place. And everybody thought that they had killed them.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  But the show must go on. The science must go on. So they sent them to Forest Service greenhouses where they planted all the seeds and soil. The sycamore seeds, which looked like tiny green pistachio nuts, and the Douglas firs, which looked like scales plucked from a pine cone, and the sweet gums in Loblawli pines, and the mighty redwood, which all begins in a tiny package that looks a little like a flattened corn kernel. And they watered them and let the sun shine its warm rays.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  And then they waited.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  And they waited. And...

• 20:50Speaker 03

  Almost all of them came up.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  Whoa! And so that's how many little saplings are growing?

• 20:57Speaker 03

  The estimate is 420 to 450.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  Of the 500?

• 21:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  And are they seeing any difference in that growth? I think about our kids and all the hypotheses and the spiral arms and the low gravity and the crescents. Like, was there... Were they seeing any difference at first?

• 21:15Speaker 03

  Actually, there was no difference.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  At first?

• 21:21Speaker 01

  But trees, famously long living, take a long time to grow, sometimes hundreds of years to reach their full height. So to continue the experiment, NASA planted the baby moon trees all over the country.

• 21:32Speaker 03

  There was a moon tree planted at the White House.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  At state capitals.

• 21:36Speaker 03

  At NASA centers.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  At a governor's mansion, a military fort.

• 21:40Speaker 03

  But then they also got planted in front of a junior high, at a Girl Scout camp, right outside of a cemetery. So just all of these places, all over with regular people.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, did anyone like just get one in their yard?

• 21:55Speaker 03

  Yes, people actually did.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  Really? No. Just like Diane in Nebraska or whatever?

• 22:02Speaker 03

  Yes, there are moon trees at private residences.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Oh, cool.

• 22:06Speaker 03

  Yeah. The funny thing is, though, so when they would do these ceremonies, sometimes they would put a plaque in, but other times, they would just have the ceremony and then go along their merry way. And over time, people started to forget that these were moon trees.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Time presses on. The Berlin Wall falls and the Mount St. Helens volcano erupts and the trees keep growing, holding their secret inside. And Smokey Roosa dies and you are born and the moon keeps shining and the experiment is mostly forgotten.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  Until one day, a little girl in Indiana notices something funny at her Girl Scout camp. A sycamore tree with a little plaque.

• 22:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, it just says like, "Moon Tree, 1976." Nobody remembers, even at the Girl Scout camp, like what this was.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  So she tells her third grade class teacher, Ms. Goble, about it.

• 23:07Speaker 03

  Ms. Goble emails NASA.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  Just says, "Hey NASA, Dear NASA, question."

• 23:13Speaker 03

  Yes. So the email finds its way to Dr. Dave Williams, who is a planetary scientist at NASA. And he doesn't know.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 23:23Speaker 03

  And he told me that nobody remembered.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 23:26Speaker 03

  And that there was no official record of where the trees had been planted. So Dave decides NASA should go on a recovery mission of sorts. And he starts a website that basically says, "If you have a moon tree or you know of a moon tree, let me know." And he started getting these emails from people who were like, "Hey, there's a moon tree in my plaza in my town. There's a moon tree in front of the hospital where I went." Slowly, he's collected locations of these moon trees as people have kind of rediscovered them in their own backyards.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  And made kind of like a map?

• 24:04Speaker 03

  He didn't make a map. I made a map.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  You made a map?

• 24:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's pretty cool.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Wait, really?

• 24:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. In my map, you can spin the Earth and then you can like click on your, to see what moon tree is close to you.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  And we have linked this on our website and right here in the episode description. Just click on Natalie's Moon Tree Map.

• 24:29Speaker 03

  Here we go.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  And Natalie? For about 63 miles, continue straight.

• 24:35Speaker 03

  We're gonna go find our moon tree now.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  Realized there was one not too far from her in California, in a town by the sea called San Luis Obispo. Cool little surfing town.

• 24:46Speaker 03

  I'm walking down some stairs and I see a little creek. And it took me a while to find it. Holy cow. I found it. The plaque was very small. Like, I can see how people kind of just walk right by. And I'm gonna try to hug it and see if I can get my hands around it. Oh. Oh, my gosh, not even, not even halfway around. And it smells so good.

• 25:17Speaker 03

  And when I saw it, it was just, I actually got kind of emotional.

• 25:26Speaker 03

  Like, I went up to its trunk and I, like, touched its bark and I started to cry.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  Why?

• 25:35Speaker 03

  Space exploration is one of those things where not that many people get to experience it. And yet, it's something that humans have wondered about for millennia. Ever since we could wonder, we were looking at the stars. And the moon. So to be able to touch a living thing that has actually traveled all the way to the moon and back and survived. It's a deep thing.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  So for you, the thing is like, is it almost like access? It's like almost getting to touch the moon?

• 26:16Speaker 03

  It's poignant. I don't know, I don't know more of a kiddy word for that. It's like, um...

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Well, how would you describe poignant for someone who doesn't know what it means?

• 26:27Speaker 03

  I would say it's like a joyful kind of ache.

• 26:34Speaker 03

  We usually tend to think of trees as rooted. And so to realize that these are travelers and that they've traveled so much farther than I will ever travel.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:48Speaker 03

  And then I looked up and it just, it has, redwood trees have these huge kind of feathered branches that are just so beautiful. And there were like little threads of spider silk that were like catching the sun, little rainbows of spider silk. There was like a squirrel jumping around up there. There were birds. I kind of went and sat on a bench nearby. And there was this whole construction crew that was on lunch break. And they all went and sat under the leaves of this moon tree.

• 27:23Speaker 03

  And I'm pretty sure they had no idea that it had been to the moon.

• 27:33Speaker 05

  I wanna know the truth. Tangled in your roots, the things you've been through that make you you. I wanna know the truth. Tangled in your roots. Every leaf, every tree holds a history. Tangled in the roots. Did you flow through the shadows alone? Surrounded by a silence that no one else knows. Tangled in the roots. Were you lost in the ocean of stars where it all fades to dark and the air goes cold? Tangled in the roots. Did you go to the dark side of the moon? Would you talk about the feeling? Talk about the view? Tangled in the roots. Were you back down on the ground now?

• 28:17Speaker 05

  Just waiting around now? Hymn and a tune, waiting to bloom. Tangled in your roots, the things you've been through that make you you. I wanna know the truth. Tangled in your roots. Every leaf. Every tree holds a history tangled in the roots. Spinning towards the stars. Through your branches. Spin towards the stars. Spirals of leaves defy gravity. Spinning towards the stars. And this journey we're traveling on. The spindle of secrets sprouts from a seed. I wanna know the truth tangled in your roots.

• 28:59Speaker 05

  The things you've been through that make you you. I wanna know the truth tangled in your roots. Every leaf, every tree holds a history tangled in the roots.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  Alan Goffinski. And there's nothing else cool about to happen.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 29:22Speaker 04

  Excuse me, I have a question. Me too. Me three. Me four.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  The Badgers. Listeners with badgering questions for the experts. Are you ready? Yes.

• 29:33Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Alex Winter, also known as Bill from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  Oh, most triumphant.

• 29:40Speaker 07

  My question is, is it true that time moves differently in space? Like if I had a twin and he went to space, would we be different ages?

• 29:48Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, Earth ages faster.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  Oh, so if you went to space, you'd be younger?

• 29:54Speaker 03

  So Scott Kelly and his brother Mark Kelly are identical twin astronauts that did a science experiment. Basically, Scott went up and stayed for almost a year in space.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 30:07Speaker 03

  And because of something known as the twin paradox, time passed more slowly for Scott up in space than for his brother Mark here on Earth. And what that means is that Scott returned to Earth younger than his brother Mark.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  How much younger?

• 30:24Speaker 03

  8.6 milliseconds younger.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  I don't understand, but I like it.

• 30:32Speaker 04

  Hi, I'm Tommy. I'm 11 years old and my question is, would NASA ever plant seeds in space?

• 30:40Speaker 03

  They did.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  They did?

• 30:42Speaker 03

  Uh huh. So, they were called like the veggie experiments.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 30:47Speaker 03

  In recent years astronauts took vegetable seeds up to the International Space Station.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 30:53Speaker 03

  To see if they could grow them in hopes of like if and when we kind of push our way out to Mars. The astronauts are gonna have to grow their food. Like they're not gonna be able to pack all the food they need.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  Oh, right, of course.

• 31:12Speaker 03

  So Scott Kelly, the twin, part of what he was doing in space for that whole year was trying to grow plants.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh!

• 31:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, but it's hard because watering them. So, when you water plants in space, the water beads up in microgravity and it makes it really hard for it to reach the roots. And so you have to sort of like force it into the soil. And NASA also was making him wear gloves so that he wouldn't accidentally get a mold or something from the soil. But the thing was is that with the gloves on, he couldn't tell if the flowers were getting enough water or too much water.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Oh, like he couldn't feel the soil, kind of?

• 31:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, so finally he um...

• 31:56Speaker 01

  He broke the rules?

• 31:57Speaker 03

  And he took his...

• 31:57Speaker 01

  Ripped off the gloves?

• 31:58Speaker 03

  He took his gloves off.

• 32:00Speaker 01

  Oh, so he could feel the soil?

• 32:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, and a little while later, check this out.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh, you are showing me a picture of these gorgeous orange flowers? Are these the... are these... did these bloom out in space?

• 32:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, these are called zinnias and they bloomed in space. Twinkle, twinkle, little zinnia.

• 32:20Speaker 05

  Hi, my name is Theo and I'm nine years old. Does NASA have plans to keep studying moon?

• 32:27Speaker 03

  So the Artemis mission recently took seeds again to the moon.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  Oh, so Moon Trees, part two.

• 32:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, Moon Trees, part two.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  OK, and I have one last question. By this point, have they located all of Smokey's original, you know, 450 Moon Trees?

• 32:46Speaker 03

  No, there's just over 100 that they know the locations of now.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Oh, so most of them are still missing?

• 32:54Speaker 03

  Most of them are still out there growing. And nobody knows that they went to the moon.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  But you can look for them. Look for their little plaques. And if you find one, drop an email to [email protected] so that she can add its location to her map. And more people can also touch the moon via tree.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  And that'll do it for today. Thank you for listening. And thank you again, Alice Wong, for lending your voice to this program and to this world. I just published a longer remembrance about Alice. It's called 13 Questions I'll Never Get to Ask, Alice Wong. And you can go check it out at transom.org. And if you just want more Alice, she has left behind many books and podcasts and essays and even a film. And you can find them all at disabilityvisibility.com. And I figure I'd end today with Alice's own words, the way she ended her own imaginary obituary.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  She wrote, "Instead of flowers, donations can be made to your local animal shelter, food bank, library, or mutual aid collective. Enjoy all of Alice's good shit, and may you create some good shit as well."

• 34:22Speaker 05

  I'm Natalia and I'm from Brooklyn. And here are the staff credits. Radiolab is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser. Sorin Wheeler is our executive editor. Sarah Sandbach is our executive director. Our managing editor is Pat Walters. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Jeremy Bloom, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhu Nyanan Sambundan, Matt Keelte, Mona Madgawker, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Sarah Kari, Anissa Vitza, Ariane Whack, Molly Webster, and Jessica Young, with help from Abreko Rand.

• 35:05Speaker 05

  Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Anna Pujo-Manzini, and Natalie Middleton.

• 35:17Speaker 05

  Hi, I'm Daniel from Madrid. Leadership support from Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Terpunt Foundation. Foundational support from Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.