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10.29.26 · Smithsonian Magazine

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  Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Schor for Radio Eye, and today
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  Speaker 1: I will be reading the Smithsonian Magazine, dated September-October 2026.
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  Speaker 1: As a reminder, Radio Eye is a reading service intended
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  Speaker 1: for people who are blind or have other disabilities that
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  Speaker 1: make it difficult to read printed material. Please join me
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  Speaker 1: now for the first article titled, The Prehistoric Paintings on
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  Speaker 1: the Walls of Caves Have Always Been Moving. but with
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  Speaker 1: the right kind of light, some actually seem to move.
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  Speaker 1: As archaeologists study the work of ancient artists, they notice
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  Speaker 1: that the images aren't simply static. Some are painted into
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  Speaker 1: the contours of the rock, and others are set in
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  Speaker 1: motion in torchlight. By Ben Krier. Last year, I followed
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  Speaker 1: two archaeologists through a heavy metal gate into a cave
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  Speaker 1: called El Castillo in northern Spain. Artists likely visited the
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  Speaker 1: cave many times between 13,000 and 41,000 years ago, with
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  Speaker 1: only torches and rudimentary lamps to help them avoid dangerous
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  Speaker 1: falls and cave bears with claws capable of lacerating stone.
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  Speaker 1: They entered the deepest, darkest chambers and made engravings and
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  Speaker 1: drawings of not only animals, but also red discs, hand stencils,
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  Speaker 1: and geometric patterns, nearly 3,000 of which remain legible today.
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  Speaker 1: If the Paleolithic record were a book, then in El
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  Speaker 1: Castillo we have every chapter, more or less, one of
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  Speaker 1: the archaeologists Eduardo Palacio Perez told me. We have practically
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  Speaker 1: all the themes in Paleolithic rock in Europe. Nowadays, the
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  Speaker 1: area that's known as the Dark Zone, beyond the reach
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  Speaker 1: of natural light, isn't so perilous. Cave bears went extinct
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  Speaker 1: more than 24,000 years ago, and El Castillo is was
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  Speaker 1: outfitted with stairs and electric lighting for tourists in the 1950s.
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  Speaker 1: We passed through the first large chamber and turned down
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  Speaker 1: a passageway, normally off-limits for visitors. We stopped to admire
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  Speaker 1: the so-called polychrome panel, or the panel of superimpositions, where
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  Speaker 1: many artists over thousands of years had crowded a wall
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  Speaker 1: with a mixture of hand stencils and outlines of animals
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  Speaker 1: in black charcoal and red, orange, and brown ochres, faded
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  Speaker 1: to varying degrees. I would have liked to press my
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  Speaker 1: own palm against a stencil and shake hands across more
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  Speaker 1: than 30,000 years, but of course this was forbidden. For scholars,
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  Speaker 1: the wall is sacred, you can't touch anything, said the
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  Speaker 1: other archaeologist, Diego Garate, a professor at Spain's University of Cantabria.
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  Speaker 1: But obviously, for Paleolithic people, it was the contrary. They
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  Speaker 1: were in a close relationship with the walls. so close,
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  Speaker 1: in fact, that researchers from the Max Planck Institute were
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  Speaker 1: recently able to recover ancient human DNA from some decorated
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  Speaker 1: cave walls. What motivated prehistoric people to create art in caves,
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  Speaker 1: often at great personal risk? The question has preoccupied and
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  Speaker 1: divided archaeologists ever since the discovery of the exquisite red
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  Speaker 1: and black bison on a ceiling of the Altamira Cave
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  Speaker 1: in northern Spain in 1879. When Garate began his studies
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  Speaker 1: more than a century later, many scholars were still trying
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  Speaker 1: to crack the code. Different theories had slid into and
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  Speaker 1: out of fashion, that the animals were totems of different clans,
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  Speaker 1: representations of male and female fertility, or marks made by
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  Speaker 1: shamans in altered states of consciousness. Many scholars believe that
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  Speaker 1: the emergence of cave art was the moment when Homo
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  Speaker 1: sapiens became behaviorally modern. the product of a newly evolved
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  Speaker 1: capacity for symbolic and abstract thought. As Graté visited more
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  Speaker 1: caves in Spain and France, helping discover around half a
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  Speaker 1: dozen decorated caverns in the Basque country, he wondered less
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  Speaker 1: about the artists' intentions and more about their experiences in
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  Speaker 1: the sites. Nowadays, no one dares to light a smoky
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  Speaker 1: torch or touch the walls in the delicate environment of
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  Speaker 1: a cave like El Castillo, so Graté was happy, around
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  Speaker 1: a decade ago, to find a cave near a crowded
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  Speaker 1: Basque beach whose only artwork was some recent graffiti. There
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  Speaker 1: was nothing of interest from an archaeological point of view,
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  Speaker 1: he said. The first time Garate lit a torch inside
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  Speaker 1: that cave, the flame illuminated only a dozen feet or so,
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  Speaker 1: and its flickering red light moved constantly and danced with shadow.
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  Speaker 1: It was a completely different experience from exploring a cave
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  Speaker 1: with the white beam of a flashlight. Cave art is
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  Speaker 1: not like a picture on the wall, he said. Other archaeologists, too,
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  Speaker 1: have turned their attention from drawings and etchings in isolation
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  Speaker 1: to other components of cave art, like lighting, placement, sound,
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  Speaker 1: and touch. Their research is revealing cave art to be
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  Speaker 1: far more dynamic and immersive than most of us appreciate.
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  Speaker 1: when we see it in photographs, or even a film
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  Speaker 1: like Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a 2010 documentary
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  Speaker 1: about the Chauvet Cave in southern France. One pair of
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  Speaker 1: anthropologists called cave art a pre-echo of cinema, while another
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  Speaker 1: team compared it to modern installation art, which integrated the artist, viewer,
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  Speaker 1: and their physical environment in a two-way relationship that was
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  Speaker 1: constantly changing. In their view, cognitive explanations for the origins
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  Speaker 1: of cave art have overlooked its sensual side. I wanted
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  Speaker 1: to get a feel for this in El Castillo. The
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  Speaker 1: theory is that artists made hand stencils for thousands of
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  Speaker 1: years before they began depicting animals. One of the cave's
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  Speaker 1: chambers was called the Ceiling of Hands. A decade ago,
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  Speaker 1: a British archaeologist named Paul Pettit and several colleagues analyzed
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  Speaker 1: the placement of handprints along the walls. They found that
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  Speaker 1: the stencils hadn't been slapped willy-nilly around the cave. The
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  Speaker 1: artists had carefully scrutinized the cave walls before making their marks.
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  Speaker 1: The majority of hand stencils were placed near a fissure
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  Speaker 1: or an undulation in the wall, often in a gripping
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  Speaker 1: position or in a concave curve. The placement of the
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  Speaker 1: stencils suggests the use of hands to study the explorer,
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  Speaker 1: the team noted. Artists apparently maintained this close relationship with
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  Speaker 1: the walls of caves even as they started to depict
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  Speaker 1: animals around 35,000 years ago. At the polychrome panel, Karate
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  Speaker 1: and Palacio Perez used a laser pointer to help me
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  Speaker 1: discern the outlines of animals faded over the millennia. They
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  Speaker 1: occurred at different sizes and orientations against the wall, like
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  Speaker 1: the shapes left by cookie cutters and dough, but their
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  Speaker 1: placement was not as random as it seemed. Like the hands,
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  Speaker 1: many animals were carefully placed to incorporate natural features of
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  Speaker 1: the cave. A large bison's back seemed to bulge with
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  Speaker 1: muscle from a jut in the wall. Some researchers say
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  Speaker 1: that this rock surface suggests the animal, Palacio Perez told me.
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  Speaker 1: In other caves, artists used cracks in the wall to
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  Speaker 1: complete the antlers of elk and ridges to suggest the
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  Speaker 1: dorsal lines of horses. Animals sometimes seemed to emerge from
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  Speaker 1: and recede into fissures, an effect that might have appeared
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  Speaker 1: almost animated in the moving shadows projected by a flickering torch.
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  Speaker 1: Modern viewers have long admired the way in which cave
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  Speaker 1: artists used natural features, but until recently, not many have
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  Speaker 1: considered how these natural features might have inspired the art itself.
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  Speaker 1: Pettit and the archaeologist Derek Hodgson have argued that the
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  Speaker 1: visual systems of Paleolithic hunters evolved to detect the outlines
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  Speaker 1: of large and partially obscured animals, and that this primed
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  Speaker 1: them to perceive animal-like shapes in the natural forms of
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  Speaker 1: dark and disorienting caves. Izzy Wisher, an archaeologist at Aarhus
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  Speaker 1: University in Denmark, reached a similar conclusion. One's visual familiarity
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  Speaker 1: with certain stimuli, particular animals, faces, or objects, may shape
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  Speaker 1: the visual system to perceive ambiguous or fragmented stimuli as
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  Speaker 1: being evocative of familiar forms, she and colleagues wrote in 2023.
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps artists pressed into the darkest parts of caves to
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  Speaker 1: experience this confusion of the senses. They were not so
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  Speaker 1: much searching for blank canvases for their mental compositions as
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  Speaker 1: they were seeking to discover animal forms in dialogue with caves.
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  Speaker 1: The Dark Zone was not a lonely and lifeless place.
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  Speaker 1: It was filled with visions and encounters of which the
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  Speaker 1: art itself became a record. Pettit and Hodgson have called
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  Speaker 1: the Dark Zone a simulated hunting environment that provoked the
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  Speaker 1: kinds of images the human visual system was inclined to perceive.
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  Speaker 1: We continued through a long tunnel with more hand stencils
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  Speaker 1: and arrived in a large chamber whose central stalagmite featured
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  Speaker 1: the bison man, a bison that seemed to be walking
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  Speaker 1: like a person on his hind legs. Depictions of humans
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  Speaker 1: were rare in Paleolithic times, but some scholars have speculated
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  Speaker 1: that the figure could have represented a shaman wearing a hide.
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  Speaker 1: The artist had chiseled away at the stone to create
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  Speaker 1: three-dimensional textures giving extra definition to the figure's knees and thighs,
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  Speaker 1: and some scholars believe he or she had also modified
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  Speaker 1: the top of the stalagmite to create a dramatic effect.
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  Speaker 1: Garate shone his flashlight on the stalagmite, and a shadow
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  Speaker 1: that looked like the silhouette of a bipedal bison appeared
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  Speaker 1: on the rear cave wall. Garate moved the flashlight, and
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  Speaker 1: the shadow figure seemed to walk, Pettit wrote that there
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  Speaker 1: was no clearer example of the interaction between cave topography, shadow,
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  Speaker 1: and art in the Paleolithic use of deep caves. But
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  Speaker 1: Garate wasn't sure the effect was intentional. His flashlight made
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  Speaker 1: a far-reaching beam of light, but a 10-foot circle of
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  Speaker 1: flickering torchlight might not have been powerful enough to create
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  Speaker 1: the same projection. Torches aren't allowed in El Castillo. to
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  Speaker 1: avoid blackening the walls, but Garate said debate might be
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  Speaker 1: settled another way. We could light a torch in the
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  Speaker 1: computer and solve this problem with virtual reality. Garate often
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  Speaker 1: uses digital reconstructions of caves to answer these kinds of questions,
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  Speaker 1: and Wisher published a paper in 2023 using virtual reality
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  Speaker 1: to simulate torchlight in another cave called Las Monedas on
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  Speaker 1: the same hill as El Castillo. I told Garate that
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  Speaker 1: the projected shadow seemed to me too bison-like to be accidental.
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  Speaker 1: The cave suggests a lot of things, he said with
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  Speaker 1: a shrug. We left the chamber and ducked again off
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  Speaker 1: the pathway into a tiny alcove that was so low
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  Speaker 1: we had to stoop. The archaeologists wanted to show me
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  Speaker 1: a work of art dubbed The Mask of El Castillo.
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  Speaker 1: The mask was on a curtain of rock that hung
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  Speaker 1: from the ceiling and was naturally sized and shaped like
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  Speaker 1: a bison's head. The artist had painted only a black
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  Speaker 1: circle to suggest an eye and a black dash to
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  Speaker 1: suggest a nostril. It's like the head of a bison
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  Speaker 1: coming out of the wall, Palacio Perez pointed out. Of
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  Speaker 1: all the figurative art I'd seen, it was the simplest,
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  Speaker 1: just two black markings, yet the most evocative. It felt
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  Speaker 1: as though the bison itself were waiting for visitors so
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  Speaker 1: he could give advice or take confession. The work summoned
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  Speaker 1: a presence. It required no mind-altering substances, only the natural
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  Speaker 1: gropings of the human senses, an intimate encounter with space
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  Speaker 1: and stone. The artwork may have been private, but the
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  Speaker 1: artist was not alone. And accompanying this article, did you know,
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  Speaker 1: how was cave art made? By finger. Many cave creations
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  Speaker 1: aren't painting or engraving, but closer to finger painting, a.k.a. fluting,
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  Speaker 1: whereby an artist sketched with one or more fingers in
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  Speaker 1: the soft sediments covering cave walls. By children. In some caves,
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  Speaker 1: such as Ruffignac in France, researchers have argued that children
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  Speaker 1: as young as two or three are responsible for flutings.
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  Speaker 1: And by lamplight. At the famous Lascaux network of caves
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  Speaker 1: in France, researchers have discovered more than 100 lamps. Some
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  Speaker 1: feature limestone plates and a hollow central hold for combustible
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  Speaker 1: animal fat. Next, Who Dwells in a Shell? Before they
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  Speaker 1: become sandy souvenirs, the baubles in the bubbles of the
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  Speaker 1: shoreline serve as a veritable fortress for creatures like clams, mussels,
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  Speaker 1: and conchs. By Jenny Rothenberg Gritz A seashell is the
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  Speaker 1: story of a creature's life, written line by line. Soft-bodied
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  Speaker 1: mollusks protect themselves with crystals of calcium carbonate, adding new
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  Speaker 1: layers as they grow. The bands and ridges may reveal
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  Speaker 1: changing seasons, diets, and life cycles. The shell's many shapes
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  Speaker 1: also reflect how different species have evolved over the 500
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  Speaker 1: million years since mollusks first appeared. Back then, their shells
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  Speaker 1: were simple caps and coils. Today's mollusks include fan-like scallops,
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  Speaker 1: spiny conchs, and spiraled nautiluses. Yet most people who pick
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  Speaker 1: up shells on the beach don't give much thought to
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  Speaker 1: the animals that made them. The average citizen will say, well,
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  Speaker 1: I thought they were just there, says José Leal, the
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  Speaker 1: science director and curator at the Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum
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  Speaker 1: on Sanibel Island, Florida. Leal reminds museum goers that shells
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  Speaker 1: aren't simply formed by the elements the way rocks are.
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  Speaker 1: A mollusk absorbs calcium and carbon from the water and
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  Speaker 1: fuses the molecules together, generating a rock-like material out of
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  Speaker 1: a body part called a mantle. Bivalves, such as clams, oysters, mussels,
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  Speaker 1: and scallops, encase themselves between two hinged shells. Sea snails
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  Speaker 1: build a single swirling shell that resembles the top of
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  Speaker 1: a soft-serve ice cream cone. How do these creatures produce
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  Speaker 1: such a range of colors and patterns? That's the $ 64, 000 question,
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  Speaker 1: Leal says. The colors are part of a protein matrix
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  Speaker 1: that binds the crystals together. Leal's colleague, Suzanne Williams, at
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  Speaker 1: the Natural History Museum in London, has studied the pigments
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  Speaker 1: pink and yellow porphyrins, brown and black melanins, orangey carotenoids,
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  Speaker 1: and found that certain genes switch the production of certain
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  Speaker 1: colors on and off, making dots or stripes. Patterns may
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  Speaker 1: help an animal camouflage, but many sand-dwelling mollusks have spotted
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  Speaker 1: shells that make them stand out, not blend in. Distinct
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  Speaker 1: patterns may help creatures of the same species recognize one another,
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  Speaker 1: but mollusks have poor color vision. We have no idea
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  Speaker 1: about many, many things, Leal says. By the time people
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  Speaker 1: find seashells on the beach, they're usually empty. The mollusks
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  Speaker 1: once inside them have shriveled up and died, or have
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  Speaker 1: been plucked out by seabirds. The shells are still intricate
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  Speaker 1: and beautiful, but the color is often dull when the
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  Speaker 1: life inside them is gone. Once the creature dies, the
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  Speaker 1: shell becomes like any other object left in the sun
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  Speaker 1: and salt water. The crystals begin degrading, and the shell
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  Speaker 1: weathers and fades. Some tiny mollusks have clear shells that
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  Speaker 1: turn opaque when their inhabitants depart. Now and then, especially
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  Speaker 1: at low tide, a beachgoer might spot a mollusk's living
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  Speaker 1: foot emerging from a shell. This long, flexible muscle allows
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  Speaker 1: the creature to crawl, dig, swim, or grasp prey, depending
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  Speaker 1: on the species. Clams use their feet to anchor themselves
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  Speaker 1: in the sand. Conchs use theirs to leap across the
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  Speaker 1: ocean floor. Kids pay way more attention to that stuff,
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  Speaker 1: says wildlife photographer Devin Matthews, who traveled to Sanibel Island
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  Speaker 1: from his native Minnesota to shoot this story. But sometimes
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  Speaker 1: it's easy to just walk by things and not really
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  Speaker 1: look at them too closely. Matthews is an experienced macro photographer,
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  Speaker 1: capturing up-close images of tiny insects, and he found innovative
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  Speaker 1: ways to photograph mollusks peeking out of their shells. using
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  Speaker 1: special camera attachments and natural light. I think seeing photos
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  Speaker 1: of them up close may help evoke some of that
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  Speaker 1: wonder again in adults, he says. Leal remembers his own
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  Speaker 1: sense of wonder growing up in Rio de Janeiro. Back
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  Speaker 1: in the late 50s, early 60s, that place was paradise,
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  Speaker 1: he says. There was so much in the way of
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  Speaker 1: living things that you cannot see anymore because of human
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  Speaker 1: encroachment and water pollution and all that. It was magical
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  Speaker 1: going places on rocky coasts and seeing live crabs and
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  Speaker 1: live worms and the mollusks. I mean, just mind-boggling. Leal
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  Speaker 1: spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian's
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  Speaker 1: National Museum of Natural History in the mid-1990s, studying deep-sea mollusks.
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  Speaker 1: Since then, he's been at the museum on Sanibel Island,
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  Speaker 1: where much of his work is about educating the public.
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  Speaker 1: Sanibel's seashells are a huge tourism draw. The island is
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  Speaker 1: unusually broad, running perpendicular to the Florida coast, and currents
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  Speaker 1: deposit more than 400 shell species on its 15 miles
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  Speaker 1: of beaches. When visitors arrive, enthralled by the island's beauty
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  Speaker 1: and variety, Leal tells them how important it is to
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  Speaker 1: protect the creatures that live there. That means thinking about
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  Speaker 1: larger environmental systems. The water is becoming more acidic as
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  Speaker 1: carbon from the air sinks into it. That change in
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  Speaker 1: chemistry makes it harder for mollusks to form and maintain
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  Speaker 1: their thick shells. Leal also teaches people to avoid taking
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  Speaker 1: home living mollusks, which is illegal on Sanibel Island. Tourists
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  Speaker 1: are most tempted by iconic larger shells, like tulip snails,
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  Speaker 1: horse conchs, and lightning whelks. But when they see a
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  Speaker 1: foot sticking out, or when the shell feels especially heavy,
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  Speaker 1: it's important to leave the creature in peace. If you
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  Speaker 1: think the shell is cool, Leal says, now you know
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  Speaker 1: that there is a cool animal that made it. And
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  Speaker 1: accompanying this article, fun facts, more about shells and the
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  Speaker 1: animals inside them. Shells are more than 95% calcium carbonate.
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  Speaker 1: The remainder is protein and chitin that control the shell's
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  Speaker 1: strength and shape. Mollusks have the widest variations in eye
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: structure of any animal phylum. Next, Rocky is the story
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  Speaker 1: of an underdog created by an underdog that has spawned
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  Speaker 1: box office champions for half a century. Sylvester Stallone was
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: a struggling actor when he was inspired by by a
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  Speaker 1: real boxing match, to write the film that became a legend.
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  Speaker 1: This year, the origin story of the franchise turns 50.
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  Speaker 1: By Chris Cara. The crowded Ohio's Richfield Coliseum erupted on
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  Speaker 1: March 24, 1975, as Chuck Wepner hit the ropes just
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  Speaker 1: 19 seconds short of the final bell. Few had expected
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  Speaker 1: the journeyman fighter to withstand a couple of rounds against
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  Speaker 1: Muhammad Ali, let alone come achingly close to surviving the
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  Speaker 1: full 15, with the wherewithal to knock the champion to
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  Speaker 1: the canvas at one point. Not long after watching the
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: fight live in a Los Angeles movie theater via closed circuit,
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  Speaker 1: a young aspiring actor named Sylvester Stallone was moved to
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  Speaker 1: begin writing a screenplay. Completing his initial script in little
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  Speaker 1: more than three days, Stallone told the fictional story of
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  Speaker 1: Rocky Balboa, a backstreet boxer from Philadelphia who who gets
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  Speaker 1: the opportunity to challenge the flamboyant heavyweight world champ Apollo
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  Speaker 1: Creed in an exhibition match during the United States Bicentennial.
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  Speaker 1: Stallone wrote the part of Rocky for himself, and to
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  Speaker 1: ensure that he played the lead, he rejected an offer
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  Speaker 1: for the film rights from United Artists, reportedly worth $ 360, 000.
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  Speaker 1: The production company, wary of casting an unknown, ultimately paid
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  Speaker 1: Stallone a lower price, then green-lighted the movie with a
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  Speaker 1: shoestring budget of around $ 1 million. Upon its release in 1976,
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  Speaker 1: Rocky punched well above its weight, drawing more than $ 225
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  Speaker 1: million at the box office. Fifty years later, the scrappy
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  Speaker 1: hero remains shorthand for American Grit. Like Wepner, Rocky had
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  Speaker 1: no realistic chance of winning his once-in-a-lifetime bout, yet his
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  Speaker 1: determination to go the distance saw him become one of
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  Speaker 1: cinema's favorite underdogs. Amid the economic malaise of 1970s stagflation,
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: Stallone's slurring, bloodied embodiment of working-class perseverance resonated with moviegoers
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: and critics alike, earning ten nominations at the 49th Academy
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Awards and winning three, including Best Picture. The film was
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: shot on location in less than a month. and director
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: John G. Avildsen took a semi-guerrilla approach. Key scenes were
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: filmed without permits, unsuspecting locals were used as extras, and
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: the story played out among a largely unknown cast. Burgess Meredith,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: as Rocky's cantankerous trainer, Mickey, was the biggest name in
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: the credits. This intimate, authentic feel, more akin to a
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: sports documentary than to a scripted film, became one of
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: the movie's greatest strengths. A 1977 New York Times article
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: reported that many theater audiences treated the film almost as
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: a live sporting event. They shouted for their hero, suffered
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: vocally with each blow to his face, exulted when he
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: got in a good punch, and cheered loudly when it
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: was all over. Some viewers even came to conflate Rocky's
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: underdog story with Stallone's astonishing real-life ascent from a chronically
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: struggling actor to to an Oscar-nominated star and screenwriter in
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: about a year. But as Stallone told Vanity Fair in
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: September 1990, Rocky's not me. They're not responding to the
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: politics and the beliefs of Sylvester Stallone. When they're cheering,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: they're cheering for Rocky. And when they're cheering for Rocky,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: they're cheering for themselves. And with this article, fun fact,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: Rocky at the Oscars. At the 49th Annual Academy Awards,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: Rocky won Best Picture, beating out some heavy hitters, Taxi Driver, Network,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: All the President's Men, Bound for Glory. Sylvester Stallone was
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: also nominated for Best Writing, the third person to be
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: nominated for writing and acting in the same movie, joining
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles. Finally, when a carpenter in
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: California found a nugget of gold, it started a rush
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: toward nothing less than the modern world. A new book
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: by historian Nathaniel Philbrick makes the case that James Marshall's
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: 1848 discovery set in motion events from the Civil War
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: to the rise of Silicon Valley. By Lydia Kiesling On
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: January 24, 1848, a carpenter named James Marshall found a
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: nugget of gold while building a mill in the foothills
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: of the Sierra Nevada. This moment started the gold rush
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: that would bring thousands into the territory known as California.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: In The Rush, California Gold, The Civil War, and the
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Making of the Modern World, the latest book by prolific
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: historian Nathaniel Philbrick, Marshall's discovery is a decisive historical moment,
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: sending a fledgling nation hurtling toward a reckoning not only
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: with slavery but with its geographic immensity. The Smithsonian holds
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: a nugget thought to have been discovered by Marshall. The
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: Rush is built on an enormous body of existing scholarship,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: and Philbrick synthesizes this research into a lively and accessible narrative.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: California was a highly disputed land when Marshall made his
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: fateful find, poised to tip the balance between the Union's
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: 15 enslaving and 15 free states. Philbrick neatly evokes the politics, people,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: and technologies that animated the period. He refers to the
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: era's collective technological and cultural accelerations as the Rush era,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: and invokes this force as the catalyst for events as
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: disparate as the Civil War and the advent of moving pictures.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Life in California, Philbrick argues, could be cruel and unforgiving,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: but it was also filled with excitement, promise, and, if
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: you were a white American, immense freedom. As Philbrick introduces
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: us to the future barons who planned the Central Pacific Line,
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: he also reports on the lives of the Chinese workers
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: who built the railway under intolerable conditions. Alongside politicians who
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: maneuvered the union into civil war, we meet outsiders who
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: managed to drive events, including Mary Ellen Pleasant, a black
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: entrepreneur who built a laundry empire in San Francisco and
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: funded abolitionist causes. Reportedly, she even posed as a jockey
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: to travel to Virginia plantations to spread the word of
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: John Brown's planned raid on Harper's Ferry. As Philbrick describes
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: the era's personalities, vast wealth, racist violence, and deep contradictions,
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: he underlines their echoes in our own time. Californians in
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: the 19th century, he writes, wrestled with a question that
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Americans are still asking today, just who are we? The
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: book's final chapter, Palo Alto, links the events of the
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: rush to the technology boom of Silicon Valley and offers
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: a partial and foreboding answer to the question, Like it
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: or not, Philbrook observes, we are all passengers on a
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: hurtling train. And with this article, fun fact, California's population boom.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: In 1849, around 100,000 people reached California looking to capitalize
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: on the rush. That included around 40,000 people arriving by sea,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: plus 25,000 to 30,000 others arriving traveling by land across
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: the plains. Foreigners seeking a piece of the rush included
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: immigrants from China, Mexico, Chicago, Hawaii, and Europe. This concludes
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: readings from the Smithsonian Magazine for today. Your reader has
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: been Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening and have a
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: great day.