My name is marie arana and find the literary director of the library of congress. Our program today focus on a fascinating new book by kate greene. Its called once upon a time i lived on mars. In 2013, she was the crew writer and secondincommand on a fourmonth Simulated Mars Mission for the nasa funded high seas project. Her book is a vivid chronicle of that experience here she is a poet, essays, former laser physicist whose science journalism has appeared in major publications around the world. She has taught writing at numerous universities and that i and ear for expressive writing are very much in evidence in her new book. Its a beautifully written book. Both upload street at a total absorbing account of her many months of isolation in nasas simulation of a mars mission pitched 8000 feet up the hawaiian volcano. It was some plan this way of course, but publish now and a time when the whole world is sheltering in place because of the coronavirus pandemic, her book tells a great deal about the effects, physical, mental, social, even spiritual, of forced isolation. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for the beautiful introduction. Its a pleasure. Its great to meet you. Congratulations on your book. Tell us first about these analogs that nasa looks up and develops to prepare astronauts for missions to mars or elsewhere. How did they come to be . How did they decide to do Something Like this . Going to space is a a complicated thing and you really want to practice as well as you possibly can here on earth before you send astronauts out on these adventures for explorations. Even in the early days from mercury, gemini, apollo missions, nasa was looking for ways to train astronauts for how to do things, just prepare them. Thats really get than neutral buoyancy lab. If youve ever seen pictures of best astronauts in space suits in a giant pool. Thats a simulation that is train astronauts for how to fix things on the International Space station. The idea of going to the moon for a long time which is what some people talk about anything going to mars, thats not just about figure out how to fix something on the exterior of the space station. That entails all sorts of challenges and largely psychological. Of course there are huge technological challenges but really it on a mission to mars you were to and half years away from earth. That sort of isolation is something thats never occurred in human history. So far away for that long. These simulations looks at the ways groups of people, after not like subjects, come together and other work as a team. And then the challenges they encounter as they are isolated from essentially earth. I would imagine that entails psychology of people and figuring out if they have the coping strategies you would need to be in a confined i mean, youre in a piece of metal in ia can really flying around outer space. It makes me want to ask you, how were you chosen . What were the characteristics that you have, kate . You obviously have them. You survived the whole thing. What were the characteristics in you that they saw would work, being a guinea pig really in this experiment . To be clear, our mission was only four months long and theyve done even a yearlong project. Thats completely different beast. But but i was on the first missn and i dont know exactly what it was. I do know theyre looking for after not like people. You had to qualified terms of your educational experience, their background. I have a science background. Some aspect of personality. Kim been said who is the lead of the missions has that nasa is looking for on these Long Missions people with thickskinned, a long fuse and an optimistic outlook. There were 700 people who applied worldwide, and based on resumes, the high seas project broke that down to 150 highly qualified candidates, and then from there, like roughly 30 candidates that the interviewed over skype. Its a little bit like what a lot of us are doing now. There was a video interview. There were nine of us that were brought to ithaca because this is a joint project with Cornell University at the university of hawaii, to do a food study. That was like the main push of the high seas, they very first high seas project with the study astronaut food and the way astronauts get bored eating the same foods over and over again. That was one of the major aspects of our mission. They brought us to cornell and in a test kitchen they set us all up and saw how we worked together. Something about that made the difference, i dont know, but really all nine people who brought him would be great on the mission. You get people are really interested and you meet them and you just kind of feel like this is someone you ask is a somewhat i would want to spend four months with . Thats what it was about. At the same time its a little bike makebelieve. Youre all pretending to be on this mission. Are there moments when you say, you know, you goof off when you say this is really, were just kidding here . Or did you maintain that sort of fantasy the whole time that you are on it . Four months as a long time to spend reality. Right. We had a lot of things helping us with his isolation, helping us believe that we were not really on earth. One of those was the fact that argumentation was delayed by 20 minutes each way. We couldnt have call so. There was a realtime internet. Certainly no social media which a blessing really. But at the same time that really made us feel disconnected. Things like that that worked to instill in us the isolation. Not necessarily that we were on mars because we had a window you could look out and you could see the lights on the telescope on the other volcano and on a clear day you can actually see maui which was nice. It was a nice thing. But there were other aspects of the isolation. We had to were spacesuits when you left the dome, and so you were never really outside. You never get the feeling about side. In terms of actually believing you are on mars that was hard for me to do, but in terms of feeling isolated or cut off or separated from earth, that was kind of always there. Tell us about that physical space, that geodesic dome, that very forbidding geodesic dome and try to make it like a home for yourself. Tell us a little bit about what it was like physically. Physically, there was actually a lot more space than you might presume. You walk in and the errors this great blue carpet and you would workstations come here a table, you would kitchen there cut like a normal kitchen. We had a breadmaker in the microwave. We had a little tiny refrigerator. Really the kitchen is of made it feel quite a lot like him and the fact with a dining table that we all ate at every day. But when we slept at night was in this mezzanine level up above, and our bedrooms were essentially oversized closets, not very large. And they were all stacked can of like eyepieces, like wages of a pipe. So the rooms, our personal space in our rooms was a very large, but the common space was quite large and expensive because of that dome ceiling. He gave you in every feel it gave you and every feel. Did you sit together as a family might . Yes. You talk a lot about the food. Food is so important in isolation and i think we are seeing that now, that so many people hashtag breads in quarantine and just seeing so many Beautiful Creations that my friends are making and posting on instagram. Our main purpose on this study was to look at food and how much the main question was might it be better to include at least some shelfstable ingredients, some options you could create a novel neo, a novel dish once you land on mars and that have acco gravity again. You could make a stirfry or bake a cake for someone. Or Something Like that. Right now astronauts on the iss on the really a food that comes in pouches that you just add water and heat two. Scientists have learned over time they eat less, astronauts eat fewer calories and secondly to some Health Problems down the road. On a two and half year mission that could be disastrous. That was one of the questions. My to make sense to just include other kinds of food . Theres a packaging staple freezedried foods and you are allowed to be more creative things. For us we decided to eat every neo together and not every crew did that, but one of the other aspects of mars mission is theres going to be high crew autonomy. Its not like Mission Control and astronauts on the iss where the schedule is given, is dictated by houston and thence into the astronauts astronauts every day. Its a very strict schedule. It would be more like an antarctic expedition where that expedition crews actually in charge of how things go. They are not checking back in with home all the time. Thats a function of the delay and just the distance. So for our crew we got together and decided a lot of own rules like how we would split of chores, if we would eat our neos together, where we would work and try to make sure we were not inadvertently self isolating within the isolation because that can lead to problems of crew cohesion and just social problems on the crew. We decided to eat every neo together. I dont know if that was the best decision but thats what we ended up doing. One of the questions from twitter, this is actually from florida, and ask and i suppose its because all you have to be fit to some degree at imagine you are exercising even inside that geodesic dome. The question is, what sort of protein were you eating . With these planned neos where you are trying to get as much protein . Was a plantbased, meatbased . It was an omnivores menu for the most part. We alternated days where we ate preprepared neos like what astronauts on space station would be in the days where we would cook up something from our shelfstable stores. Basically that meant we were dipping into like canned food, that kind you would take otte camping trip, chilies, soup, all different kinds. Some had become something. Everyone on the crew ate meat but we didnt have a super heavy diet, i dont recall. It was always available. Freezedried beef, freezedried ham, chicken, all sorts of things. We definitely ate those and had all the freezedried vegetables you could rehydrate. It was all there. Were you doing physical exercising . Absolutely. One of the experiments we participate in was an experiment to look at exercise shirts, because you cant really do laundry in space. You wear your closed intelligence become too much for you to bear and then you toss them. Nasa is pretty interested in the longevity of the clothes they sent up. We were these workout shirts and then when they couldnt stand it anymore we them and we were filling out surveys after every workout. Before that study we were required to work out 45 minutes a day every five days a week. I am particular and budget others decided to do a p90 x workout because thats a form of cycle and so yes, we worked out and we ate to supplement all those calories we took all those calories back in. And when i left i was in amazing shape. Not only was it for months of working out but working out at altitude so at 8000 feet i had never been so fit in my life. It was actually pretty great, and unexpected side effect of the whole mission. Absolutely workout and eat. One of the things that tickled me in the book was your mention of antimicrobial socks, my First Impression was, why antimicrobial socks . I didnt understand that if you are only showering once a week for eight minutes and thats all you have for the shower, why antimicrobial socks . How did that get decided on . Absolutely. Its related in some ways to the exercise shirts because some of the exercise shirts had some nanotechnology, some coding was supposed to be at the microbial to keep the state the way, but socks in particular, those get stinky so you really dont want to have to bring up a ton of socks. The ones that we investigated used copper threads and antimicrobial substance. Because of close quarters . Yes. You want to be considerate of your crewmates. Right. How about privacy issues . How did that work out . You cant get away really, as people are in your lies, five of the people in your life and you can get rid of them. How about the privacy issues . We all got pretty close. We know each other pretty well by the end of it. The thing is we were all aware of that, and pretty respectful. If some was in the room with the door close you dont necessarily come to kind of leave them alone. We spent so much time together so that when youre off by yourself the wasnt necessarily a need to continue to be social. But yeah, i dont know. We really just respected everyones space. You just have to. When things come up you actually need to talk about them. One of the examples of space and light shared space is theres only a few shells in the shower and so i think early on one person had to put a number of toiletries in the shower and took up more space than seemed reasonable for one person out of six. Then there was another person who noticed that instead maybe it would make more sense every ring are things to the shower every time instead of claiming the shelf space. That was fine, no ones feelings were hurt and the problem was solved. Its kind of like on that level, just like seo we can be respectful of each other. Honestly, for four months it is manageable. I can imagine. Are such challenges in isolation. I think were feeling now. How small things can become annoying, personal little human habits. You mentioned the sad to somebody chewing or somebody the sound someone clearing those third all the time. I have a daughter who clears her throat all the time and in the middle of the night if youre in the same route they can get annoying. How did that work . You really start to notice those things. Well, you notice them and you either let go of them or you hold onto them. Those are two options and then you have a third option i guess to talk about them, engage in some sort of discussion to figure how to make it better which can be complicated. Maybe more complicated than letting things go. We didnt have too many incidences. As a writer i noticed the Little Things. I found myself getting a little annoyed and then having to work very hard to let it go. There were a few instances where i still remember stories i tell my friends, how a crewmate sitting across me at the table and she would just tap my shin jelly with the little slip or not realizing she was doing it. I would talk my legs further and further under my chair but somehow she always found my shin and that was something i decided to just never talk about but evidently all these years later i still think about it. We have talked about it since and she just laughs. She said i wish you wouldve told me. But in the end it wasnt that big of a deal but its funny to realize i am still focusing on it. I think when they come out of this situation that were all in now we will all remember those Little Things that really made isolation challenging, or just memorable, just like this is a feature of this isolation for all of us. If you are a writer, as you are, youd notice Little Things. Thats what writers do. And you were the crew writer so you are taking these things down all the time. I imagine you were more detail oriented in that respect than most. Yeah. I think its a bit of an occupational hazard to be prone to noticing the Little Things. Yeah, where as of the people might more easily have been able to let things go, i would notice and record and then maybe think about it again and then a few more times. It was a bit of a challenge. You are also, apart from being a writer, you are the person of science. You follow signs for your whole career. You devoted yourself to science. As i mentioned earlier you were a laser physicist before you even started to do the writing. Within this whole challenge of isolation, the social impact, you are also doing problemsolving picu doing scientific experiments. Tell us about that. Absolutely. All of us who are on this mission had a scientific background, and those are really nice commonalities because we were working, were conducting experiments and we were part of the experiment ourselves. We all understood the importance of Data Collection and sort of just the burden of all the surveys went to fill out. It was part of the site. I see burden, it wasnt super burdensome. He was just like the same day, same surveys and we had to do so many of them. The most interesting thing to me about this experience was, one of the most interesting things about this experience is that it was a science a science experia focus heavily on the domestic, like the internal sphere and usually science as we get these great big grand questions outside but this is looking at six People Living together in the way we felt in the way we interacted. It was this amazing combination of how you do science and leukocytes and be a part of science but then this unexpected domestic sphere. So much of the conversation of the conversation we weve been talking what is what people are experiencing now during this isolation in hell. We were forcing this isolation and asking questions about it. That was very interesting. It actually, a lot of it reminded me of my grad School Experience as a laser physicist, which was pretty isolating. I worked for a closer with two graduate students, and work in the basement laser lab and did not see a lot of daylight during a couple of years when were getting the lap up and going and asking questions. Big differences are that when youre a physicist, you were able to control a lot of the experiment. You only had that one variable and then an artiste because its the social experiment, there are so many variables that are so difficult to control. That was something we were always aware of, just doing that on the other end the Data Analysis would reveal some of the truths of what we are all experiencing. Right. We can identify with you because being at home in the pandemic you are doing problemsolving yourself. How are you going to get this done, that done, indicating so you can get things done . Absolutely. That brings up such a great point. You are living now a life that is so different than you were. In the first weeks when we moved in that mars space, it was a whole new world for us. We had to figure out what this home was and how were going to live in it, how were going to communicate and get will be needed and how were going to give to each other. It was destabilizing, unsettling and folo problemsolving, figuring it out. Where do you live now, kate . I am in new york city and washington state. How is live for you now . Are you having sort of flashbacks of your experience . Geek it out at all . I definitely have flashbacks. In the early weeks i went out and i wrote she shopped and the cup a lot of show table food that we had on the mission. I want to make the neos that reminded me of mars and actually some of the snacks. It was such an interesting time. It was an overall very positive experience for me, and so thee was something about the uncertainty of isolation now that was made a little bit less uncertain by getting the food that i was familiar with in that situation. New york right now is pretty interesting. It feels like it is waking up again at this stage in the pandemic. You could hear an Ice Cream Truck outside my window perhaps as a people out and about and taking care of business here. In the early days, like midtolate march it was, new york, this neighborhood in particular felt like a ghost town. It felt a little haunted. Things are little bit different now. There are more people around. I could imagine. Heres a question from facebook that relates to question i was going to ask you anyway, and the question says, what can you tell us about your sequestered life . Doesnt make you a better person . My question whether been, how did mars change you or how did it, this experience of sequestering and isolating and thinking, attending, fantasizing that you in a very faraway place with people for a very long time, how does that change your own psychological makeup . Did you come out of it changed in any way . Yeah. I came out of it, like i think about the first few days when we were outside, right . Anna do feel everything on my skin, and surprised by. It takes a couple of days for me not to feel the breeze on my skin. The sun on my face, that something that you dont think about all the time. I mean, i in particular and prone to sunburn and so i i was very careful when it came out to use a ton of sunscreen as an assault my crewmates in hawaii and every getting some color back and i wasnt. Finally i just said, you know what, im just going to standard for five minutes and i burned. I was so sensitive to the sun. But in addition to that, loud noises frightened me. I just have not had a lot of unexpected things happen, so i was at a beer garden with the front end of the dogs that barked and the page and get away and it was a little bit terrifying. Of course i realize now, i realize what was happening, but just like that sort of simulation had not occurred in many, many months. In that way when it first came out i was change but i think overall i start thinking about things a little bit differently. I really did appreciate nature more. Ive always liked to hike and swam and camp, but i truly, like in a way i hadnt before, i saw the majesties of this planet and just thinking about earth versus mars and where do you want to live. This is a pretty sweet spot. I really, i really came to appreciate that, and i love spending time in nature these days. And Little Things, to. I came aware were of how littlr you actually need to bathe her wash dishes. I became aware of my body in the way that it uses resources. In this mission you are always aware of how the race in and calories out. You can essentially like an astronaut in some ways into the Mechanized System of the spaceflight. You have engineered through designing capsules and transfer vehicles and so what to do with the person . You have to turn them into numbers. So in some ways i became aware of what inputs and outputs more than i had before. Realizing that that is all of us and were all on this planet, there are 8 billion of us on this planet. So, what do you hope at the end of the reading of this book, anybody who picks this book up, what do you hope they take away from your story, from your essays . I ask a lot of questions in the book, and so i guess i do hope that a reader might come away asking their own questions, or asking different kinds of questions than they might otherwise about what it is to think about space exploration, what it is to live on earth. You do learn a lot about science in this book and you learn a lot about the human animal, and you learn a lot about social relations, psychological stress and all of that, but mainly as i said before it is a a beautiful rea, kate. Congratulations for your book. Its called once upon a time i lived on mars published by saint martins. I wish you every success. Thank you so much, and thank you so much for this conversation. It was really nice. Thank you for joining me. It was a pleasure. John boltons new book the room were to happen is being released on tuesday but news organizations have obtained copies underreporting on its contents. According to the wall street journal the former National Security adviser to President Trump writes that the president ran the white house where quote obstruction of justice was a way of life and that the president was stunningly uninformed. The white house says that none of these allegations are true and that the book contains classified information which makes publishing it quote inexcusable. The Justice Department has sued to stop the book from being released by its publisher Simon Schuster plans to make it widely available next week. Look for the author in the near future on booktv and cspan. Good