Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in a literature class.

Professor: All right, so let me close today’s class with some thoughts to keep in mind while you are doing tonight’s assignment. You will be reading one of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s best-known essays ‘Self-Reliance’ and comparing it with his poems and other works. I think this essay has the potential to be quite meaningful for all of you as young people who probably wonder about things like truth and where your lives are going – all sorts of profound questions. Knowing something about Emerson’s philosophies will help you when you read ‘Self-Reliance’. And basically, one of the main beliefs that he had was about truth. Not that it’s something that we can be taught, Emerson says it’s found within ourselves. So this truth, the idea that it’s in each one of us, is one of the first points that you’ll see Emerson making in this essay. It’s a bit abstract but he’s very into…ah… into each person believing his or her own thought, believing in yourself, the thought or conviction that’s true for you. But actually, he ties that in with a sort of ‘universal truth’ – something that everyone knows but doesn’t realize they know. Most of us aren’t in touch with ourselves in a way, so we just aren’t capable of recognizing profound truth. It takes geniuses, people like, say, Shakespeare, who’re unique because when they have a glimpse at this truth, this universal truth, they pay attention to it and express it and don’t just dismiss it like most people do. So Emerson is really into each individual believing in and trusting him or herself. You’ll see that he writes about, well, first, conformity. He criticizes that people of his time for abandoning their own minds and their own wills for the sake of conformity and consistency. They try to fit in with the rest of the world even though it’s at odds with their beliefs and their identities. Therefore, it’s best to be a non-conformist

– to do your own thing, not worrying about what other people think. That’s an important point. He really drives this argument home throughout the essay. When you are reading, I want you to think about that and why that kind of thought would be relevant to the readers of his time. Remember this is 1838, ‘

Self-Reliance’ was a novel idea at the time and the United States’ citizens were less secure about themselves as individuals and as Americans. The country as a whole was trying to define itself. Emerson wanted to give people something to really think about, help them find their own way and what it meant to be who they were. So that’s something that I think is definitely as relevant today as it was then, probably, um, especially among young adults like yourselves, you know, uh, college being a time to sort of really think about who you are and where you’re going. Now we already said that Emerson really emphasizes non-conformity, right, as a way to sort of not lose your own self and identity in the world, to have your own truth and not be afraid to listen to it. Well, he takes this a step further. Not conforming also means, uh, not conforming with yourself or your past. What does that mean? Well, if you’ve always been a certain way or done a certain thing, but it’s not working for you any more, or you’re not content, Emerson says that it’d be foolish to be consistent even with our own past. ‘Focus on the future,’ he says,

“That’s what matters more. Inconsistency is good.” He talks about a ship’s voyage and this is one of the most famous bits of the essay – how the best voyage is made up of zigzag lines. Up close, it seems a little all over the place, but from farther away, the true path shows and in the end it justifies all the turns along the way. So, don’t worry if you are not sure where you’re headed or what your long-term goals are. Stay true to yourself and it’ll make sense in the end. I mean, I can attest to that. Before I was a literature professor, I was an accountant. Before that, I was a newspaper reporter. My life is taking some pretty interesting turns and here I am, very happy with my experiences and where they’ve brought me. If you rely on yourself and trust your own talents, your own interest, don’t worry, your path will make sense in the end.

Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in an Astronomy Class.

Professor: Last week, we covered some arguments against going back to the Moon. But there are compelling reasons in favor of another Moon landing too, um… not the least of which is trying to pinpoint the moon’s age.

We could do this in theory by studying an enormous impact crater, known as the South Pole- Aitken Basin. Um…it’s located in the moon’s South Polar Region. But, since it’s on the far side of the moon, it can only be seen from space. Here is an image of…we’ll call it the SPA Basin. This color-coated image of the SPA Basin, those aren’t its actual colors obviously, this image is from the mid 90s, from the American spacecraft called Clementine. Um… unlike earlier lunar missions, Clementine didn’t orbit only around the moon’s equator. Its orbits enable it to send back data to create this topographical map of … well, the grey and white area towards the bottom is the South Pole, the purples and blues in the middle correspond to low elevations – the SPA Basin itself, the oranges and reds around it are higher elevations.

The basin measures an amazing 2,500 km in diameter, and its average depth is 12 km. That makes it the biggest known crater in our solar system and it may well be the oldest. You know planetary researchers love studying deep craters until learn about the impacts that created them, how they redistributed pieces of a planet’s crust and in this case, we especially want to know if any of the mantle, the layer beneath the crust, was exposed by the impact. Not everyone agrees, but some experts are convinced that whatever created the SPA Basin did penetrate the Moon’s mantle. And we need to find out, because much more than the crust, the mantle contains information about a planet’s or Moon’s total composition. And that’s key to understanding planet formation. Um… Dian?

Dian: So, the only way to know the basin’s age is to study its rocks directly?

Professor: Well, from radio survey data, we know that the basin contains lots of smaller craters. So it must be really old, about 4 billion years, give or take a few hundred million years. But that’s not very precise. If we had rock samples to study, we’d know whether the small craters were formed by impacts during the final stages of planetary formation, or if they resulted from later meteor showers.

Dian: But if we know around how old the Basin is, I’m not sure that’s reason enough to go to the Moon again.

Professor: No…, but such crude estimates…um…we can do better than that. Besides, there are other things worth investigating, like is there water ice on the moon? Clementine’s data indicated that the wall of the south-polar crater was more reflective than expected. So some experts think there’s probably ice there. Also, data from a later mission indicates significant concentrations of hydrogen and by inference water less than a meter underground at both poles.

Student: Well if there’s water, how did it get there? Underground rivers?

Professor: We think meteors that crashed into the moon or tails of passing comets may have introduced water molecules. Any water molecules that found their way to the floors of craters near the moon’s poles, that water would be perpetually frozen, because the floors of those craters are always in shadow. Um…furthermore, if the water ice was mixed in with rock and dust, it would be protected from evaporation.

Dian: So are you saying there might be primitive life on the moon?

Professor: that’s not my point at all. Um… o.k., say there is water ice on the moon. That would be a very practical value for a future moon base for astronauts. Water ice could be melted and purified for drinking. It could also be broken down into its component parts – oxygen and hydrogen. Oxygen could be used to breathe, and hydrogen could be turned into fuel, rocket fuel. So water ice could enable the creation of a self-sustaining moon base someday, a mining camp perhaps or a departure point for further space exploration.

Student: But holding tons of equipment to the moon to make fuel and build a life support system for a moon base, wouldn’t that be too expensive?

Professor: Permanent base, maybe a ways off, but we shouldn’t have to wait for that. The dust at the bottom of the SPA Basin really does have a fascinating story to tell. I wouldn’t give for a few samples of it.

Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in a literature class.

Professor: Now we can’t really talk about fairy tales without first talking about folk tales because there’s a strong connection between these two genres, these two types of stories. In fact, many fairy tales started out as folk tales. So, what’s a folk tale? How would you characterize them? Jeff?

Jeff: Well, they are old stories, traditional stories. They were passed down orally within cultures from generation to generation, so they changed a lot over time. I mean, every story teller, or, maybe every town, might have had a slightly different version of the same folk tale.

Professor: That’s right. There’s local difference. And that’s why we say folk tales are communal. By communal, we mean they reflect the traits and the concerns of a particular community at a particular time. So essentially the same tale could be told in different communities, with certain aspects of the tale adapted to fit the specific community. Um, not the plot, the details of what happens in the story would remain constant. That was the thread that held the tale together. But all the other elements, like the location or characters, might be modified for each audience. Okay. So what about fairy tales? Th…they also are found in most cultures, but how are they different from folk tales? I guess the first question is: what is a fairy tale? And don’t anyone say “a story with a fairy in it” because we all know that very few fairy tales actually have those tiny magical creatures in them. But, what else can we say about them? Mary.

Mary: Well, they seem to be less realistic than folk tales…like they have something improbable happening – a frog turning into a prince, say. Oh, that’s another common element, royalty – a prince or princess. And fairy tales all seem to take place in a location that’s nowhere and everywhere at the same time.

Professor: What’s the line-up? How do all the stories start? Once upon a time, in a far away land… oh, in the case of folk tales, each story teller would specify a particular location and time, though the time and location would differ for different story tellers. With fairy tales, however, the location is generally unspecified, no matter who the story teller is. That land far away… We’ll come back to this point in a few minutes.

Student: Um… I, I thought that a fairy tale was just a written version of an oral folk tale.

Professor: Well, not exactly, though that is how many fairy tales developed. For example, in the late 18th century, the Grimm Brothers traveled throughout what’s now Germany, recording local folk tales. These were eventually published as fairy tales, but not before undergoing a process of evolution. Now, a number of things happen when an oral tale gets written down. First, the language changes. It becomes more formal, more standard – some might say, “Less colorful”. It’s like the difference in your language depending on whether you are talking to someone, or writing them a letter. Second, when an orally transmitted story is written down, an authoritative version with a recognized author is created.

The communal aspect gets lost. The tale no longer belongs to the community. It belongs to the world, so to speak. Because of this, elements like place and time can no longer be tailored to suit a particular audience. So they become less identifiable, more generalizable to any audience. On the other hand, descriptions of characters and settings can be developed more completely. In folk tales, characters might be identified by a name, but you wouldn’t know anything more about them. But in fairy tales, people no longer have to remember plots. They’re written down, right? So more energy can be put into other elements of the story like character and setting. So you get more details about the characters, about where the action takes place, what people’s houses were like, ur, whether they’re small cabins or grand palaces. And it’s worth investing that energy because the story, now in book form, isn’t in danger of being lost. Those details won’t be forgotten. If a folk tale isn’t repeated by each generation, it may be lost for all time. But with a fairy tale, it’s always there in a book, waiting to be discovered, again and again. Another interesting difference involves the change in audience. Who the stories are meant for? Contrary to what many people believe today, folk tales were originally intended for adults, not for children. So why is it that fairy tales seem targeted toward children nowadays?