Adam Stoner: Recent Episodes
Adam Stoner
I make audio for Fun Kids, the UK's children's radio station, including multi-award winning Mysteries of Science and record breaking radio programme, Mission Transmission.
Boom Radio, RadioDNS and others hire me as their designer. I also write for Science+Nature magazine.
Millions of people have heard, seen, or read something I've created. Hire me to work on your project; email me@adamstoner.com.
My monthly dispatches recap what I've been up to. Tap follow to get updates in your podcast app.
If you enjoy this podcast, consider buying me a coffee: https://adamstoner.com/support
It’s August 31st 8023 – six thousand years in the future – and you are in a mountain in Nevada.
It has taken you several days to get here. You’ve had to hike, you’ve had to endure the harsh heat – the thorns – and you’ve stumbled upon a set of metal doors. This is what you’ve been looking for. The doors are a kind of crude airlock, keeping out dust and animals.
You head into the darkness of a long tunnel. There’s the mildest hint of light ahead that you slowly find your way to.
You look up.
A faint light filtering down now through giant gears, illuminating the beginning of a spiral staircase. You start climbing. It winds up the outer rim of the tunnel, rising towards the gears and faint light overhead. The stairs are carved out of the rock.
After climbing about 100 feet you encounter a large bronze egg filled with concrete. It’s about the size of a small car and weighs 5,000 kilograms. After you pass the weights you keep climbing, pass more giant gears, some over 8 feet in diameter – and then you find it. The world’s slowest computer. And it plays a chime for you. Simple bells, but a unique combination nobody in living memory has ever heard, nor will ever hear again.
This is a clock.
I started just thinking about, just as a project for myself, the idea of building a very slow clock that would last for 10,000 years. Sometime in the 1990s, I started noticing the year 2000 was kind of a mental barrier for people. It was hard for them to think past it. And so I started just thinking about, just as a project for myself, the idea of building a very slow clock. And 10,000 years being a kind of nice number because our history is kind of 10,000 years old. So we ought to have a future that’s as big as our history.
It’s not a work of science fiction. It’s real.
Danny wanted to design a symbol of the future in the same way the Pyramids of Giza are a symbol of the past. If you go to the pyramids in Egypt and you touch those stones, I mean those are stones that human hands touched thousands of years ago. Is there anything we can put into the world where you would be touching this thing and this thing would endure and you would know that people in the year 7000 or something might also touch that same thing and think about you and does that build some kind of a connection across time?
The 10,000 Year Clock, or the Clock of the Long Now, is the work of the Long Now Foundation.
The Long Now Foundation is a nonprofit here in San Francisco that’s trying to help people think about the next 10,000 years. And the way we want to do that is by also helping them think about the last 10,000 years. When we’re thinking about the future, there’s so many organisations or cultural narratives that want to convince people or talk about how we’re at the end of the civilisational narrative. That’s the idea is that you’re really looking out at a multi-thousand year time horizon. You’re thinking about how the decisions that you’re making today affect people in 400 human generations. You’re going to do things a little bit differently. And that might actually be really important.
This clock really encapsulates everything that I love.
It’s oddly obsessive about something that’s impossible to predict. It’s incredibly philosophical and I think it’s really important. It’s all about fostering long-term thinking. It’s all about projecting further into the future than the financial year or your five-year plan or dare I say it – you. It’s all about hope and about the possibility that that there might be a future and that’s so refreshing in a world where we’re constantly told that the clock is ticking…
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Sea Monkeys are brine shrimp.
They’re tiny – about half a centimetre wide and about the same length as your small fingernail – but the magic comes from a state of suspended animation known as cryptobiosis.
The inventor, a chap named Harold von Braunhut.
He was trying to come up with some sort of pet that he could sell through the mail and he was at a pet store and he saw some brine shrimp that were in an aquarium or a bucket or something. But he thought that that might be the perfect pet because their eggs or cysts are dry and they don’t become activated, they don’t hatch until they’re wet.
This is bonkers, right? You can hatch a living animal from a packet that’s been sat on the shelf for months…
Harold packaged these eggs into kits. You get a plastic tank and several different packets.
Packet one is labeled as water purifier and it’s mostly salts. So you’re supposed to put that in, wait 24 hours, then you put in packet number two and packet number two is labeled instant live eggs and through the science you see Sea Monkeys hatch instantly before your eyes.
There’s a little more happening here than you might realise and it’s a bit of a sleight of hand.
Part of the marketing genius behind this is there’s actually a lot of eggs in packet number one as well they’re in both packets so by waiting that 24 hours after you put in packet number one the eggs it’s giving the eggs time to hatch and the little babies time to grow a tiny bit.
You think package one is just salt. It’s not. When you add packet two, which contains dye, you see what’s already hatched from packet one, giving the illusion of instant life.
It’s genius.
It’s also what’s now called cognitive priming, that is the deep cerebral desire we all have to see what we expect to see.
There was this huge lawsuit about licensing; Harold’s widow, supposedly held the Sea Monkey secret formula in a vault in Manhattan, there was an argument over who owned the company, and values in the tens of millions being thrown around
Harold von Braunhut was an entrepreneur but he was also a con artist.
His previous inventions include Invisible Goldfish and X-Ray Specs. He also had associations with white supremacy.
And this is really uncomfortable.
The marketing is genius. It’s also based on lies. The product has entertained millions of people over the world for nearly 70 years. It’s also made by a man who supplied firearms to the Ku Klux Klan.
I’m not sure how to reconcile those things, I don’t think you can. But they’re also kind of what the story is about: a dark history that you might not associate with a children’s toy.
Sea Monkeys pretty much went the same way that most crazes do, they fidget-spun out of the limelight.
But these creatures, the animals themselves, are fascinating (and entirely oblivious to the drama surrounding them).
Dried to this day, in packets on shelves across the world, waiting for some curious kid to return them to life. And that, I think, is the real magic.
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Do you remember last week when one war criminal tried to march to Moscow to kill – or chat to, I don’t really know – the other war criminal?
What a bonkers Saturday that was!
I spent the whole day, a beautiful summer’s day, in front of the telly – and BBC were bloody brilliant, delivering half hourly updates of how far down the road the Wagner forces were… And then, by 7pm here in the UK, the entire thing was over.
The events of last weekend just left me with this horrid, empty feeling…
The most important stories in the world are non-stories because they happen over a period of time that most of us can’t comprehend. They’re slow, powerful movements.
The real news isn’t that somebody decided to bum rush the Russian capital one day in June. It’s a tale of private military companies like Wagner and their dramatic rise all over world right after the Cold War. It’s a tale of mercenary groups, of guns for hire and renegade soldiers. It’s the story of secret government funding, of switching allegiances and of the tensions that brings to foreign policy.
Sure, it might have bubbled to the surface for 24 hours last weekend, but it’s a story that’s 30 years in the making.
The real stories take decades or more to be told.
The world and what happens in it is not just a series of attention-grabbing headlines. It’s a huge tapestry of things that are deeply interconnected. These long-term stories are the ones that truly shape our world. They’re the threads that create the fabric of society. But by focusing solely on the immediate, rolling news headlines, we miss the bigger picture. We fail to see underlying patterns and deep-rooted issues that shape our world.
It’s like watching the two minute highlights of a football match without understanding the tens of thousands of hours of coaching, training and history that led up to those few goals or even the other 88 minutes where both teams try and fail time and time again to score.
And it leaves me feeling empty.
In a recent study with over 600 respondents, only 8% of people thought that following the news had no impact on their mental health. Most thought the effect was negative and I think this is the crux of why last weekend felt so bad.
I was caught in a vicious cycle, perpetually chasing the latest updates without ever gaining a true understanding of what was actually happening and why. It’s a situation I find myself in time and time again, this relentless focus on the immediate, an inability to see the bigger picture and the disregard for those deeper threads leaves me regretting – regretting the loss of my time, regretting the nice summer day I wasted in front of the telly watching BBC News.
Over four-fifths of respondents to that study that I mentioned just now had actively switched off from the news in order to protect their headspace.
And I’m one of them.
I’ve not read or watched the news all week.
I have no idea what’s going on.
And I like that!
It’s not ignorance or apathy.
It’s seeking a more considered approach. It’s hunting the long-term narratives and appreciating the gradual transformations that shape our society.
See news is to the brain what sugar is to the body. You can swallow limitless quantities of news flashes, tidbits like jelly beans, but these jelly beans don’t nourish you. They don’t give you understanding. Events, news events are just things happening flickering on the world surface. But to make better decisions you want to understand what drives these events, what generates these events. And news stories don’t tell you that. News give you the illusion of understanding and that illusion is dangerous. I came to realise, the more news you consume, the less you understand the world.
I turn 28 today.
I always get really weird around my birthday. I think it’s because I am acutely aware of time passing in a very personal way. Like, New Years and Christmas and all of that, they’re all shared holidays – a birthday is quite isolating, isn’t it?
I’ve been going for morning walks every day. They’re about 5k. They start just around the corner from where I live, in a little forest and when I exit that forest, I end up in a clearing, on the side of a hill… The very first day I did this walk, there were two little deer on the side of the hill.
I wandered out the next day and there they were again!
I started calling them my ‘deer friends’ – I don’t know if that’s weird or not – but on day three, they didn’t show up.
I turn 28 today.
Every year I do one of these little introspective calling cards; this is my third.
The first was at 26 – I basically retreated back into myself.
The second, at 27, was all about getting out there and experiencing this wonderful world we live in – I feel like I’ve certainly made good strides in that direction; every day I’m filled with awe.
Now, at 28; it’s to stop looking.
The second I stopped looking for the deer and stopped expecting them to be there was the same second they showed up again. It’s not just my deer friends. There are so many things in life like this.
We embark on journeys and traverse paths and delve into the realms of possibility, all in search of that which we seek but – like deer darting through the forest the second they hear me – our aspirations can elude us the more we chase them.
When we settle down, when we cease the hunt, in a weird way the world around us takes notice – I guess it’s a kind of surrender – and with a gentle gesture, it unveils its hidden treasures.
Opportunities that once evaded our grasp now find their way to us.
Every year I think about what I’ve learned the last and what I yearn for the next…
I want serendipity. I want to feel like the universe conspires in my favour.
It sounds so woo-woo – and I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I am not a religious or spiritual person. But I do love when the daunting labyrinth reveals a path illuminated by surprise.
I turn 28 today.
I read the opening few words of A Billion Years: My Escape from a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology by Mike Rinder.
I've been reading it this month.
Mike's story is fascinating, charting his devotion to and escape from what has been variously described as a cult, a business, and a religious movement. A Billion Years also highlights the stories we tell ourselves about the way the world works.
I could have made this month's recap about all manner of things – Westminster politics in particular. But I've kind of adopted a new modus operandi, if you like – I'm focusing on what I can control. I'm not wasting my time and energy getting angry, outraged, or even amused by what's happening in with political leaders...
If it's up to me, it gets 100%; if it's not up to me, it gets 0%.
So, with that said, I've been out and about for the Activity Quest podcast, visiting a brand new hieroglyphics exhibition the British Museum, checking out an [adventure playground at Stonor Park, and I even went out on a safari too and got to feed some giraffes...
Take a listen:
- British Museum
- Stonor Park
- Woburn Safari Park
On Apple Podcasts, we've just turned on Plus, so you can subscribe for ad-free listening and bonus episodes. That's what I've been busy building out at work. Next month, I'm off to some Christmas lights displays for the show.
And that's when you'll next hear from me – November 30th 2022.
She reigned for over 70 years and earlier this month was reduced to a box on a plinth.
How humbling those images were. A figure larger than life and so ingrained into the public psyche, suddenly startlingly small; a Standard covered coffin adorned by her subjects. Adorned by the living.
Make no mistake: This is the fate that befalls us all.
It doesn't matter whether you're a Queen or a King, a saint or a sinner, a celebrity or a civilian – we all die.
To carry a sense of the inevitable with us in the hope that it makes us remember and cherish and encourages us to make the most of every minute bestowed upon us can surely only be healthy. Meditating on mortality is only depressing if you entirely miss the point.
You'd be forgiven for thinking – given the way the Queen worked throughout her reign, right until her final day – that death is something that suddenly happens. You're alive one day and gone the next. But that's untrue. You've been dying since birth. You die every day. You're killing time by reading to this right now.
In Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman writes that our being is totally, utterly bound up with our finite amount of time. To be a human is to exist temporally, in the stretch between birth and death, certain that the end will come but unable to know when. We speak about having (or not having) time but in reality, we _are_ time.
You happen to be alive. There's no cosmic law that says you are owed that. You happen to be here and you can happen not to be here at any moment, be it through accident or a betrayal of your own body.
Your time is a non-renewable resource but it's our lack of it that is precisely what makes us human. The finite nature of our lives create meaning, purpose, priority, and urgency.
I'm not religious or a monarchist but Queen Elizabeth II was, as so many commentators said the night she died, a constant – her role imposed upon her by quirk of ancient constitution – and a reminder that even the mightiest and most God-ordained, die.
Elizabeth was born April 21st 1926 and died September 8th 2022. She was 96 years old. She got 35,205 days.
Today, September 30th 2022, I am 9,995 days...
Marcus Aurelius was an Emperor – he was Emperor of Rome. His son was an asshole, destroyed most of Aurelius' work but his diary remained.
Here's one of the greatest leaders of one of the greatest Empires writing not for longevity or legacy but therapy.
Marcus Aurelius is one of the most famous stoics. He was also a lot of other things. But his Meditations – his diary – is a beautiful bit of literature that, even 2,000 years down the line, is still wonderfully modern.
Nowadays, stoicism or 'to be stoic' means somebody who remains calm under pressure, or someone who doesn't swing between emotional extremes but that's really an English bastardisation.
It's a lot more than that. It's philosophy of thought that I've found hard to put into words.
Ryan Holiday seems to be the modern day thought leader in stoicism. He's not an academic – I don't think he'd describe himself that way – but he does write about stoicism and about the stoics. He runs The Daily Stoic, and there's a book by the same name. I've been reading that recently.
Stoicism isn't abstract, it isn't theoretical. It's something you actually do. It's something you apply.
Embodied within stoicism are a whole load of other really important ideas too.
Those of you that know me will know I'm a fan of silly, interesting or intricate time pieces. Mr Jones Watches in London makes The Accurate; its face is mirrored metal, the second hand a bright red arrow and it's a memento mori – the hour hand says 'Remember', the minute hand says 'you will die'.
Memento mori is one of those stoic ideas. Dwell on your mortality so you can live the short existence we all have to its fullest.
Amor fati – a resignation to, or love of one's fate – is another.
Activity Quest, the podcast I make at the UK's children's radio station, Fun Kids, won bronze in the very adult sounding 'Arts and Culture' category at the British Podcast Awards at the end of July.
Activity Quest has also been nominated for a Heart of the City award at the Lord Mayor's Dragon Awards. The ceremony is at Mansion House on the 27th – it's a black tie affair – I'll let you know if anything comes of it.
Either way – amor fati.
Earlier this month, I went to see Coldplay on their opening night at Wembley Stadium. There's a sense of unity and sanguineness to a Coldplay gig; say what you like about their music – they know how to put on a good show. 80,000 people, every song is a hit, everyone knows all the words, awesome lighting and pyrotechnics too – they've still got those wristbands. I loved it. I'd go again in a heartbeat.
Chris Martin is almost definitely a stoic.
Staying on the theme of music, Panic at The Disco's new album – Viva Las Vengeance – is good but I've really been playing a lot of modernlove. this month. Their debut EP, Oh My Mind, came out at the end of July. It's sort of 80s synth pop/indie/garage, with a tinge of cheesy coming of age film.
Always surprising – The 1975. I look forward to their new album, out in October. Their single, Happiness, has been on repeat.
The stoics believed you should be involved in politics and you should give yourself to public life but they also believed that you really shouldn't spend too much time stressing over that which you cannot control.
In a few days time, we'll find ourselves with a new Prime Minister at the helm of an energy, environmental, and cost of living crisis and facing heightening domestic and international tensions.
I make a poor stoic in this sense; over the past few years I've become positively anti-political but given that stoicism worked so well for one of Rome's best leaders, maybe its key rules of wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance could serve Rishi or Truss well...
Here's the Met Office's Chef of Science, Professor Steven Belcher:
"I wasn't expecting to see this in my career, but the UK has just exceeded 40 degrees Celsius for the first time. In some ways, of course, 40 degrees is an arbitrary figure because we see the impact of heat waves at lower temperatures. But for me, it's a real reminder that the climate has changed and it will continue to change. Research conducted here at the Met Office has demonstrated that it's virtually impossible for the UK to experience 40ºC in an undisrupted climate. But climate change driven by greenhouse gases have made these extreme temperatures possible and we're actually seeing that possibility now."
The role of humankind in climate change is clear.
The consensus is settled.
Greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels like coal, gas and oil are making extreme weather events like heat waves hotter, longer and more frequent.
This is not about one or two uncomfortable 'suck it up and get on with it' British stiff upper lip summer days.
This is not 'just summer'.
This is the start of fundamental ecological breakdown.
The Earth's climate is changing faster than scientists predicted and our inaction will only worsen the consequences.
A 40 degree UK summer is indicative of a planet globally warmed by 1.5º.
Impossible, if not for human caused climate change.
One expert commission predicted that if we don't change course, there would be up to 1 billion climate refugees in the balance of this century. – Al Gore
We have now gained enough information and knowledge to be able to begin safeguarding our living conditions and our wellbeing. – Greta Thunberg
This is the very last moment we have in which we can actually hope to stem some of these disasters. – David Attenborough
We're facing the greatest existential crisis that humanity has ever faced. We're facing the potential collapse of our life support systems, a domino effect as one Earth system pulls down the others until basically, the habitable space and the planet collapses into a completely different equilibrium state for which we did not evolve. – George Monbiot
So here's a message to the future, a form of accountability that the people leading us seem to severely lack:
We know what is happening.
We know what needs to be done.
Our survival as a species depends on us acting on the knowledge we have with the tools we have.
We still have everything in our own hands and we can still fix this.
But only you, whoever you are, wherever you are, and whenever you are, will know if we have done so.
Home isn't just a place.
Home is more than the city you were born in, or the town you grew up in, or the street where your school was. It's more than the place where your bed is, or your stuff is, or your clothes are.
Home is subjective.
Home is a bright spring morning in 2014, walking past the daffodils on Grafton Road in Cheltenham.
Home is the taste of the local Indian takeaway or the smell of childhood holidays.
Home's the second after laughter in pub conversations with friends.
Home's the way mid-winter sunset pierces through train windows as it dances between hills and middle-of-nowhere countryside villages.
Home is a feeling.
I'm now living in a new place. It's a new layout of walls and doors and appliances and it's very nice but it's not home. I didn't 'move home'; home moved with me.
There's a moment in every house move where all of your belongings are in the back of a lorry – everything you own; a lifetime of things stuffed neatly into boxes – and you haven't yet gained access to the property on the other side.
It would be easy to say that 'your life is in that van' but that's not true either...
Your life is not the cast iron pot you were given for Christmas or the penknife you got for your birthday.
Your life is not the collection of magazines or books or records or shoes or bags or tea towels you have.
Home, for me, is the pauses between moments – that intense sense of quiet contentment – and life, for me, is most lived in those moments.
Moving was the biggest thing I did this month but I also had time for a few extras too...
I saw Queen of The Night, a Whitney Houston tribute act in Aylesbury last week. There was a full live band and backing singers with Elesha Moses singing as Whitney. It was great!
The village where I lived prior to my move also hosted the International Pig Racing Festival at the start of the month. It's something they do every year but it happened to clash with the jubilee which meant more merriment than normal. Kevin Bacon won which is a crying shame because the name seems somewhat obvious. In previous years, Rasher Sunak has been a participant as has Albert Einswine.
That event was hosted by Helen Browning, resident and organic farmer. They're hosting lots of other events too including wildlife photowalks, foraging expeditions, and gin safaris – they've just launched their own organic gin and it tastes great.
In other news, Activity Quest, the podcast I make at Fun Kids was nominated at the British Podcast Awards in a very grown-up category: Best Arts and Culture. Also, The Santa Daily, King Frank and the Knights of the Eco Quest, The Week Junior Show, and a commercial campaign we put together for Ed Sheeran's Mathematics Tour were nominated too. Results come on the 23rd.
You'll next hear from me on July 31st 2022.
Radio professionals from around the world gather at RadioDays Europe each year, a three-day conference all about the future of the industry. The risk with any conference is that you spend your time in a culturally-devoid alien bubble of city-limits conference centres and don’t get see any of the country that hosts it.
Luckily, that didn’t happen here! I spent Saturday 14th in Copenhagen with Paul and Meg from Fun Kids and Sunday in Malmö, Sweden before two busy days writing for RadioDays. You can read some of those posts on the RadioDays Europe website.
One of my favourite talks was from Denmark’s P3 about their show, Songwriter. Together and against the clock, a group of stars write a song inspired by a listener. Jonas, Songwriter’s host, jokingly said that the great thing about the programme is that all roles disappear as they try to create against the clock – ‘I’m no longer the host. You’re no longer the guest. We’re both fucked!’
This was my first trip abroad in two years and my second time at RDE. Destination and cultural experiences aside, I’ve missed getting on a plane! The wonder of seeing countries below you is always so profound. It’s a mini-overview effect I love to meditate on after a trip.
Probably triggered by bit of airplane window-gazing, I wrote a piece on my 27th birthday all about the importance of perspective and getting an ultra-wide view of what’s going on in the world. Call it a ‘new birth year resolution’ if you like.
I’ve been packing up my home these past few weeks ready for a move and in doing so have rediscovered The Minimalists podcast and have been moving to make all things digital. I purchased a bunch of digital books (I use Apple Books) this month including a Matt Haig book I’ve been meaning to read for a while.
Here’s a stand-out quote from that:
If you truly feel part of a bigger picture, if you can see yourself in other people and nature, if this you becomes something bigger than the individual you, then you never truly depart the world when you die. You exist as long as life exists. Because the life you feel inside you is part of the same life force that exists in every living thing.
Queued up to read this month, The Journey of Humanity, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art and You’re Not Listening.
I’m thrilled that Netflix hit Heartstopper has been renewed for seasons two and three. It’s vital that people see themselves represented on screen and this is a perfect example of Netflix getting it right.
I’ve also been oddly fascinated by the Johnny Depp v Amber Heard trial. On YouTube, it’s become something of a sport with countless YouTube channels streaming testimony with live, expert commentary. We can argue whether cameras in courtrooms are good or bad for justice but I’m left with a greater respect for the legal system as a whole because of this case. Watching it has opened my eyes to the inner workings of a courtroom, to how arguments are won and lost, and to how justice – the corner stone of modern democracies – is served.
If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got lots more to pack...
You’ll next hear from me on June 30th 2022.
I’ve always had this strange fascination with time and how the clock runs our lives.
When I was younger, years would feel like forever and now they don’t feel like they happen at all. You’ve had this experience too. Why does two minutes waiting for the next tube feel like an eternity but two minutes waiting in line for coffee seems totally reasonable?
I used to get really anxious about time and wasting it.
Professor Brian Cox once said that there’s a cruelty to a human lifespan. That in a seemingly vast and expansive universe – a place that’s existed for 13.7 billion years and will until the last star dies in 100 trillion years and life becomes impossible – a human life is so impossibly short.
I turn 27 today.
I still feel like I have a dizzying number of tomorrows but I’m also increasingly aware that the clock is ticking and also on the precipice of the epiphany that’ll finally reveal that my inbox will never be empty, my bookshelf will never be read, my work will never be finished, and in the same way the universe will only get to experience a minute proportion of me, I get to experience an even minuter proportion of it.
I’m incredibly fortunate to have travelled an awful lot as a child. I’ve visited countless countries and experienced a tremendous wealth of world culture…
When I was at university and stressed about the very few life responsibilities I had at the time, I had a little motto: Everything in perspective. I might’ve needed to hand my dissertation in pretty pronto and that might’ve be a bit of a pain but I had food and shelter and that was a lot more than most I had seen. In other words, whatever was going on in my life wasn’t the be-all and end-all of all life. That filled me with a tremendous sense of wellbeing.
I graduated over half a decade ago and in that time I’ve forgotten how important that motto was to me. The clock has been running my life; I’ve been getting faster and faster, doing more and more, but achieving less and less. With your nose to the grindstone, it’s impossible to see the horizon, impossible to get a birds-eye view on what’s going on, and therefore impossible to see everything in perspective.
It’s not just me; this has been happening for decades. We demand more and more. Faster and faster. Same day delivery. 10 second videos. 30 minutes or it’s free. We’re inertly racing to an imaginary finish line, dragged down with day-to-day minutiae only to realise that when we get there, it’s cripplingly disappointing.
What makes travel so rewarding? What makes university so fun? It’s not the plane ride home, nor the sheet of paper that says you’ve done it; it’s the experience you have along the way and how that experience connects you to a grander story. Something more than your finite existence. Something bigger.
At 27, it’s time to remind myself of that motto and rekindle that sense of empathy and wonder that shrank my world, that reminded me that we have more in common than we have differences, and that made me fall in love with a wonderfully finite existence.
Mysteries of Science was nominated several times at the Publisher Podcast Awards earlier in the year. The ceremony was just a few days ago and Mysteries of Science walked away with two wins! One for Best Science & Medical Podcast and another for Best Launch.
To celebrate, would you like some more episodes?
The latest looks at the stuff of sailor's nightmares, an enormous creature so aggressive that it drags ships to their watery graves: the Kraken. I even wrote the piece for their magazine which is on newsstands right now.
Entering awards always makes me feel odd. I tell myself that it's just a form of ego masturbation and ultimately pointless– and there's some truth to that – but really I'm just afraid of failure...
Juggling the threat of failure with a greater need to progress is the theme of Return to Space, the story of Elon Musk's SpaceX.
I didn't know much about him before last month. I knew he was the CEO of a car company and a space thing but not much more than that. Watching Return to Space, Inspiraition4 and hearing Elon interviewed on TED; all of that has really opened my mind. He's clearly very intelligent and I have a wide sense of confidence in his vision.
Elon Musk is The Current Thing and one of the weirdest things has been watching the throng of shrill voices complain about his takeover as if anything's really going to change and as if billionaires don't already own huge swathes of the media landscape...
I've also been glued to WeCrashed on Apple TV+, a fable of startups gone sour about the rise and fall of co-working empire WeWork. Starring Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway, it a thrilling watch. You can see the entire series now.
In the world of music, Bloc Party's Alpha Games is a return to their familiar sound and I'm excited for Florence and The Machine's new album, Dance Fever too.
Josh Ramsay's written some of the biggest pop songs of the past decade including Call Me Maybe and hits for 5 Seconds of Summer. The Josh Ramsay Show is his debut and one of the best albums I've heard so far this year with each track being a different genre. Miles and Miles is one of my favourites.
I've got a busy month ahead. In a few weeks I'll be in Malmo at RadioDays Europe. If you're going to be there, let me know. I'm also moving house towards the end of the month too. More on those things next time.
You'll next hear from me on May 21st 2022 – my 27th birthday.
Countless horrors have been inflicted on the citizens of one country by another this month. There are no answers here, just thoughts on the consequences of war.
The rainbows of 2020's pandemic have become Ukrainian flags – I've seen them on cars, painted on rocks, atop poles, affixed to bridges, in window displays, on churches, and in the favourite tool of armchair activists: Twitter handles.
To forget that there are victims on both sides of conflict is to think in binaries and further fuel an us-versus-them environment that got us into this mess to begin with. People from different countries often have different positions. We come from different doctrines, with different histories, have had different experiences, heard different media, and hold different prejudices, and yet we all have the same basic human needs; shelter, safety, and sense of connection.
War is anathema to these things. War is an obliteration of individuality, an eradication of reason, a genocide of culture and, in a world where superpowers have means to launch world-ending weapons on hair-trigger notices, any war is one against all of humankind.
Countdown to Zero is a great documentary from the makers of An Inconvenient Truth all about why we must abolish nuclear weapons. Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator is also very good. Filmed during World War II, Charlie plays both a persecuted Jewish barber and a ruthless dictator. I've been thinking a lot about his closing speech this month.
I think one of the most interesting things this month has been Facebook's take on the whole invasion. They suspended quality controls in the region allowing Ukrainians to call for violence against its aggressor, turning against the very country that used their platforms to destabilise elections in the West just a handful of years ago. Although a correct decision, it further cements the company in my mind as entirely lacking in any kind of integrity.
The Perfect Weapon by David E. Sanger is a great read and shines more light on warfare in the internet age. There's plenty about nuclear weapons, cyber sabotage and the usual bad actors in there. Meanwhile, LikeWar is all about the weaponisation of social media. It was published in 2018 but there's plenty about Ukraine's conflict in the context of Crimea's annexation.
The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough – Ralph Waldo Emerson
When news broke 36 days ago that the next prolonged bad news story was finally here, it perhaps wasn't surprising I felt bummed out – a small, personal consequence of war.
When we look out into the world, we can see the horizon. It's where each day begins and ends but it's also in the headlines we consume and the stories we tell ourselves of the way the world works.
Our horizon has shrunk. For the past two years, we've never been able to see much beyond the next lockdown. I've found the news distressing and appalling and I've found myself doing what I did when the COVID 19 crisis first hit and scheduling breaks away from rolling news coverage. The link between doom-scrolling and poor mental health is both scientific and anecdotal fact; it's in these moments that news organisations like Delayed Gratification, Tortoise, and Positive News come in handy.
There's also hope in the horizon; we can only see so far ahead but we know there is so much more that lies beyond it. There's so much more to be seen, to be enjoyed, and accomplish, so much more to give, and so much more to live.
That's the hope I'm taking into next month.
You'll next hear from me on April 30th 2022.
Yesterday, I sent a message to space.
By the time you hear this, the transmission will be 12 billion miles from Earth, 7 times farther away than Neptune. Photons from the broadcast will continue to move at light speed through the universe until the universe itself dies, trillions of trillions of years from now.
The broadcast was sent into space from an array of transmitters all over the world and the UK's children's radio station Fun Kids simulcast the transmission, setting a world-first Guinness World Record in the process: the first radio programme beamed to deep space.
We called the project Mission Transmission. The result was almost thirty minutes of audio featuring children's hopes, aspirations and questions to extraterrestrial life. Thousands of children from all around the world entered and hundreds made it into our programme. Tens of thousands of people visited the Fun Kids website during the six weeks submissions were open and hundreds from press and PR to astronomers and astrophysicists were involved in bringing this thing to life.
Yesterday morning, Mission Transmission was on BBC Radio Sussex, BBC CWR, BBC Radio Gloucestershire, BBC Radio 2, and BBC Radio 4's Today programme. In the evening I was on BBC Points West. Tonight, you'll see some of the event on The One Show. Tomorrow, an interview I did with the Radio Academy has a rundown of exactly what happened too.
At 7pm last night, astronaut Tim Peake, KIDZ BOP and a bunch of children who're featured in our programme all hit a big red button at the Royal Observatory Greenwich. At that moment, transmitters across the world streamed our radio programme to the stars and started it on a journey that will never end.
It was a literal love letter to the universe and has been a personal labour of love for so much longer. In fact, this entire project has given me an incredible sense of wellbeing, reminding me that the things that unite us far outnumber things that divide us.
So, the next time you gaze up at the stars and picture the wonders of the universe or life on some far-flung and as-of-yet undiscovered planet, remember that among all those twinking stars exists a tiny token from home, and that wrapped up in that signal are some of the things that make us, us: our sounds, our people, our science, and music.
You'll next hear from me on March 31st 2022.
If you're a journalist or influencer and you'd like to cover the first radio programme sent to deep space or chat about anything else, you can email me@adamstoner.com.
If you submitted audio to Fun Kids Mission Transmission, you can find out if it was included in the broadcast by heading to FunKidsLive.com.
2022 started in the best possible way. Four days into the new year, I launched Mission Transmission on the UK's children's radio station, Fun Kids; our record-breaking, history-making project to send the voices of our listeners to deep space.
Mission Transmission got some nice tweets, was on the front page of Express.co.uk, on RadioToday, in the Week Junior magazine, First News, and Science+Nature too. There's an entire episode of Mysteries of Science dedicated to it – that one's called How to Talk to Aliens. The Radio Academy interviewed me – that's forming part of a new podcast they've got coming out this coming month – and I was on BBC Radio Gloucestershire. My university also spoke to me about the behind-the-scenes work that goes into something like this.
By far the most rewarding thing this month has been hearing literally hundreds of voices sent in around-the-clock from kids across the world who want to be a part of our broadcast. I feel so grateful to share this experience with them and know that if I were twenty years younger, I'd be submitting my own voice too.
This is the biggest thing I've ever done. It's filled with prestigious people and places; the Royal Observatory Greenwich, Guinness World Records, KIDZ BOP creating a song for us, covering two of the biggest bands in the world, BTS and Coldplay. The 1975 are letting us use their song featuring Greta Thunberg and there's loads more up our sleeve.
214 email chains (some 40 messages deep), 24 hours of submitted audio, 12 interviews with space experts around the world including Jon Lomberg, creator of the Voyager Golden Record, and over 120 other people have been involved in making this thing a reality. Soon, we'll reach a point where the radio programme is finished. All it takes is the click of a button to stream it to 10,000 of Earth's closest stars and start it on a journey that will last forever.
There's still time to get your voice into space at FunKidsLive.com 📡
Say hey 👋 me@adamstoner.com
You'll next hear from me on February 28th 2022.
Oh, and make a note in your calendars: Fun Kids, February 21st, 7pm.
Over the past six months, I've been working on something rather special and at 07:30 this morning, all was revealed on the national children's radio station, Fun Kids.
We're sending a message to space.
The project is called Mission Transmission and has been a personal labour of love for the past half-year. Earlier today, KIDZ BOP – who have recorded a version of Coldplay and BTS's song My Universe which we're dubbing the official anthem of the project – and Dr. Emily Drabek-Maunder from the Royal Observatory Greenwich launched it with Sean on the Fun Kids breakfast show.
Head to FunKidsLive.com to answer a few questions and submit the voice of yourself or a loved one.
We're then editing those submissions into a thirty-minute 'love letter from Earth' that'll be beamed to the starts from the Royal Observatory Greenwich at 7pm on February 14th 2022 – Valentine's Day – where it'll travel until the end of the universe.
Submissions close on February 10th 2022.
Fun Kids is the UK's children's radio station. You can listen to Fun Kids on DAB Digital Radio, online, on the free Fun Kids mobile app and on your smart speaker – just say 'play Fun Kids'.
You'll next hear from me on January 31st 2022.
World leaders have an uncanny knack for making even the most exciting of things thoroughly depressing. Given their rhetoric, you'd be forgiven for thinking that humankind is in no better position at the end of this year than we were last, but that's not the case at all.
Our collective human story has always been marred with setbacks and challenges but 2021 is proof that the wheels of human progress will restlessly turn.
It was also a reminder that it's up to us to steer the vehicle.
His body blue, no blood pressure to speak of, and no pulse to find, artist Andy Warhol was declared dead on arrival at Columbus Hospital in New York City – 4:51pm on June 3rd 1968 – having just been shot by a former colleague at his workshop, The Factory.
Bleeding on the gurney, a senior doctor took a fleeting look at the corpse, peeling back an eyelid and watched as its pupil contracted in the bright emergency room lights.
Andy Warhol wasn't dead.
A reminder that there's a written version of this podcast also available at adamstoner.com
In 1964, a few years prior to Andy's shooting, he had his photo taken in front of a bare Christmas tree, a blue spruce, stripped of all decoration.
Warhol's tree was left out of the cheery full-colour spread that filled Ladies' Home Journal that year and became known as his 'anti-Christmas tree', but neither Matt or I think that was his intention... Warhol's tree captures precisely what makes Christmas so special because whether you're a fan of the theatrics of religion or of commercialism, this time is a blank canvas to decorate as you see fit.
There is no right or wrong way to celebrate the holidays. Whether you spend this time surrounded by family, binge-eating food or in quiet contemplation of the year just gone, I hope you enjoy it.
Here's how Warhol spent his final Christmas in 1986:
I went to the church of Heavenly Rest to pass out Interviews [his magazine] and feed the poor. Got a lot of calls to go to Christmas parties but I just decided to stay in and I loved it.
Merry Christmas.
You'll next hear from me on December 31st 2021.
The story of civilisation is one told entirely on two legs. It's only because our ancestors decided to wander out of Africa 80,000 years ago that you and I are fortunate enough to be here today. From settlements to silk roads, those initial ramblers laid the foundation for everything to come.
The presence of humans in Britain has only been continuous for about 12,000 years during half of which, the Ridgeway – an ancient trail running from the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Avebury to Ivinghoe Beacon – has been used by traders and travellers.
Last week, I decided to walk all 87 miles of it.
A reminder that there's a written version of this podcast also available at adamstoner.com
Walking the Ridgeway imbued me with a great sense of sonder – the realisation that everyone around you is living a life as complex as yours with their own stories and their own successes and failures – and not just now but throughout all of human history. My footprints on that 5,000 year old road will fade like the footprints of the travellers and tradespeople before me but for a few days in October, our stories became one. I realise that I depend on them in the same way we all depend on each other.
I didn't manage to walk the whole trail in five days as I had planned – zero training, poor pacesetting and overly ambitious targets don't make for good ultra-distance walking – but I did cover a significant chunk of it and I'll walk the rest of the Ridgeway over the coming weeks and months and continue my journey along Britain's oldest road one step at a time.
And that's the same spirit in which we need to tackle the challenges that bring leaders together for the COP26 conference today. We have a long distance to walk and there is much ground to cover but the solutions to the challenges we face are in essence the same solutions that got you and I here today: curiosity, collaboration, and unflinching determination in the face of adversity.
Humankind is is not inept; we are adept to change and we must adapt in the next 8 years to see the next 80,000.
You'll next hear from me on December 1st 2021.
When astronaut John Glenn commenced mission Mercury-Atlas 6 to become the first American to orbit the Earth, he had something strange strapped to his silver spacesuit: a stopwatch.
Seconds after launch, Glenn starts the stopwatch in sync with tracking stations across the world and at that moment Mission Elapsed Time begins counting up from zero. And so a new timezone shared between a handful of specialists on Earth and one man in space is created: a new epoch.
As a reminder, there's also a written version of this podcast that I send out as an email newsletter. They're intended to be consumed side-by-side – adamstoner.com/epoch is the place to read it.
Talk of 'the new normal' is gauche this far since the epoch moment of March 23rd 2020 when the UK entered its first lockdown. Yet, over the past few weeks, in conversations with friends and colleagues, and as I walk around London and visit museums and galleries and live comedy shows, a realisation has come to pass: the pandemic is over.
Not scientifically – the pandemic is still there – but attitudes towards it have changed. Gradually, we've shifted our perspective. The news agenda has moved on, offices have re-opened, restrictions relaxed, the vast majority of people have the most effective vaccine in them, and we're emerging from the nineteen month tunnel dazzled by a new dawn.
Mercury-Atlas 6 was the name of the mission. The spacecraft itself John got to name. He chose Friendship 7. After three orbits – 4 hours, 55 minutes and 23 seconds – John splashed down safely in the North Atlantic. After, he uttered just a few simple words:
We have an infinite amount to learn from both nature and from each other.
I think that sentiment is just as poignant today as it was when John uttered it 59 years ago.
We are in a new epoch and we have an infinite amount still to learn.
I left this space 2,572 ago on my 26th birthday, exhausted and anxious.
Living online for the past fifteen months had worn me out in a way interacting in person never did and whilst working, writing, podcasting, and publishing fulfilled a desire to be heard, it came at a cost of being seen.
More people saw, read, and listened to things I had made in those fifteen months than Belgium, Barbados, Bermuda and Bahrain have people, combined. Previously taught that your value as a creative is not in what you make but in what you market, I took time over the past few months to take a different tact: doing what I want.
As a reminder, there's also a written version of this podcast that I send out as an email newsletter. They're intended to be consumed side-by-side –adamstoner.com/return is the place to read it.
I'm now back – and better (thanks for waiting) – and in the several months that have passed since we last spoke, two billionaires touched the edge of space, Wimbledon, the Euros, and the Olympics all came and went, and almost one million more people laid eyes or ears on my work.