Aug. 27, 2026

Why a concert will take 639 years to finish

Show Notes
Transcript

Johnny Mac shares five good news stories: a 639-year performance of John Cage’s Organ2/ASLSP in a medieval church in Halberstadt, Germany, begun in 2001 and scheduled to end in 2640, using an electric blower to sustain notes and drawing crowds for rare chord changes while helping fund church repairs; Paralympic medalist Mohammed completing the Triathlon Across America by swimming around Manhattan, cycling 3,000 miles across 16 states, and running 300 miles on a prosthetic leg with careful wound-management stops; Guatemala’s La Aurora Zoo breeding Guatemalan beaded lizards for eventual release into the Motagua Valley; Connecticut, Maryland, and New Jersey passing laws restricting surveillance pricing; and Chicago’s Ducky Derby raising over $480,000 for Special Olympics Illinois, with prizes including an SUV.

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Kalarogashok Media. Hi there, I'm Johnny Mack. I'm bewildered by

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this first story. Hi, I'm John with five good news stories.

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In Germany, a concert has been going on for twenty

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five years already, and they're just getting started. This is

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happening in a medieval church in Halberstrad and organ is

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performing a composition by American composer John Cage. The performance

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started in two thousand and one. It is scheduled to

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end in I'm not misspeaking here, write this down twenty

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six forty. Yes, the year twenty six forty. The entire

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performance will take six hundred and thirty nine years. The

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composition is called Organ to slash ASLSP, where ASLSP stands

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for as slow as Possible. Cage originally wrote the piece

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for piano in nineteen eighty five and adapted it for

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orgon two years later. His basic instruction was simple, played

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as slowly and softly as possible, passed away. In ninety two,

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some musicians and scholars decided to take that instruction very,

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very seriously. They created the John Cage Organ Project and

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stretched the composition around six hundred and thirty nine years.

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Why that number. Well, you see, Halbustrat was home to

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an important organ dating to thirteen sixty one, and between

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thirteen sixty one and the Cage Project in two thousand,

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exactly six hundred and thirty nine years had pass. Organizers

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decided their performance should also be six hundred and thirty

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nine years. The concert began in September fifth, two thousand

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and one, which would have been Cage's eighty ninth birthday,

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and it began with silence, a lot of silence. Nothing

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could actually be heard until February of two thousand and three,

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when the first organ chords finally sounded. How does this work?

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An electric blower continuously push his air through the organ pipes,

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allowing individual notes to continue for months or even years.

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Every once in a while, somebody actually changes the chord,

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and that's a major event. More than one hundred and

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fifty people packed into the church recently to witness the

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seven teenth chord change in nearly twenty five years. The

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existing chord contained seven notes for three minutes, everyone listened

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to it. Then an eighth organ pipe was added, and

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suddenly there was a new chord. The project even helped

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save the building where it's being performed. The church had

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been largely been in ruins. Money raised for the cage

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project helped pay for a new roof and other repairs,

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and because the organ produces a continuous sound, simply walking

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around the church changes what you hear and if you're

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planning on being around On September fourth, twenty six forty,

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they are selling tickets. They cost twenty six hundred forty euros,

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which sounds like a lot of money, but I bet

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six hundred years from now that's a bargain and good news.

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The tickets are inheritable if you want to put them

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in the family trust or something. I kind of want

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to do it. Congratulations to Mohammad, a Paralympic medalist who

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has swam around Manhattan, cycled three thousand miles across the country,

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and then ran three hundred miles on a prosthetic leg.

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It is the Triathlon across America. Muhammad finished on July

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twenty ninth, ninth, forty seven days after setting out from

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New York City. By the time he had reached Las Vegas,

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had he already completed a twenty eight and a half

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mile swim around Manhattan, cycled across sixteen states, climb more

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than one hundred thousand feet along the way. Then he

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had to run from Las Vegas to La He told

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Runners World that running on a prosthesis comes with challenges

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you don't even consider. Blisters can stop the journey, and

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if you get an infection, it's over. He and his

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support crew had a routine. After every two miles they stopped,

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he would clean the prosthesis, inspect to skin, hydrate, and

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apply creams to reduce friction. He said, I battled boils

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in constant pain. There were times where we had to stop,

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treat the wounds, adjust the prosthesis, and final way to continue.

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Congratulations on that one. That is amazing. In Guatemala, conservationists

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are trying to bring back one of the rarest lizards

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from the brink of extinction, and they have a new

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generation of baby lizards to help them do it. The

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Guatemala beaded lizard is found naturally in only one place,

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the Motaga Valley in Guatemala, and there aren't many left.

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Conservationists think there's around five to seven hundred adults in

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the wild. Breeding program at the La Aurora Zoo in

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Guatemala City is raising young beaded lizards, with the goal

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eventually releasing them into their natural habitat. Their local nickname

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is the Sleeping Child. However, despite the cute name, they

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are venomous lizards, luckily not fatal to humans. Roland leads

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the conservation project and said, we're just getting them used

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to feeding, getting them used to being able to climb,

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and all the things they'll need to be able to

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do when they're released into the wild. The young lizards

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will first be moved into large enclosures located within their

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natural habitat. All right, good news. Connecticut, Maryland, and New

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Jersey have become the first states to pass laws restricting

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the practice of surveillance pricing. Seeing here's what the companies

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are doing. They're collecting data about you, things like browsing, history,

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shopping habits, other personal data. Surveillance pricing occurs when a

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business uses that information to, you know, change the price.

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Oh notice you were looking for sneakers being what's up

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the price there? That's not cool. Two people could potentially

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shop for the exact same product and be offered different

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price is based on what a company knows about them.

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The new law puts limits on that. In New Jersey,

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the governor said New Jersey families already feeling the pressure

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of higher cost the last thing they need is companies

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secretly easing their personal data to charge them more than

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someone else for the exact same product. And in Chicago

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was the annual Chicago ducky derby. A truck dumped an

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enormous wave of bright yellow rubber ducks from a bridge

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into the Chicago River, and then there's a race. The

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ducks form what looked like a giant yellow pool before

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the current carried them along the skyscraper lined river. About

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fifteen minutes later, officials plucked out the winning rubber duck.

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The event raises money for the Special Olympics Illinois. This year,

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the derby raised more than four hundred and eighty thousand dollars.

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People can sponsor an individual duck. I've done this in

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the local pond. It's fun for ten dollars, which is

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enough to provide lunch for an athlete at the Special

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Olympics competition. Thirty dollars gets you a quack pack of

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six ducks. Thousands of people turned out for the race,

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posing with giant inflatable ducks, wearing duck themed t shirts,

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and completing the sentence I adopted up because the person

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who sponsored the fastest duck wins an suv. The runner

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up receives twenty five hundred dollars. Not bad. Those are

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your five good news stories for today. If you would

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That's a fun show, and Daily Comedy News, which I

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host and talk about comedy and comedians. That's seven days

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a week and a nice fun way to start your morning.

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Have a great day.