Why a concert will take 639 years to finish

0:03 Kalarogashok Media. Hi there, I'm Johnny Mack. I'm bewildered by this first story. Hi, I'm John with five good news stories. In Germany, a concert has been going on for twenty five years already, and they're just getting started. This is happening in a medieval church in Halberstrad and organ is performing a composition by American composer John Cage. The performance started in two thousand and one. It is scheduled to end in I'm not misspeaking here, write this down twenty six forty. Yes, the year twenty six forty. The entire performance will take six hundred and thirty nine years. The composition is called Organ to slash ASLSP, where ASLSP stands for as slow as Possible. Cage originally wrote the piece for piano in nineteen eighty five and adapted it for orgon two years later. His basic instruction was simple, played as slowly and softly as possible, passed away. In ninety two, some musicians and scholars decided to take that instruction very, very seriously. They created the John Cage Organ Project and stretched the composition around six hundred and thirty nine years.

1:12 Why that number. Well, you see, Halbustrat was home to an important organ dating to thirteen sixty one, and between thirteen sixty one and the Cage Project in two thousand, exactly six hundred and thirty nine years had pass. Organizers decided their performance should also be six hundred and thirty nine years. The concert began in September fifth, two thousand and one, which would have been Cage's eighty ninth birthday, and it began with silence, a lot of silence. Nothing could actually be heard until February of two thousand and three, when the first organ chords finally sounded. How does this work? An electric blower continuously push his air through the organ pipes, allowing individual notes to continue for months or even years. Every once in a while, somebody actually changes the chord, and that's a major event. More than one hundred and fifty people packed into the church recently to witness the seven teenth chord change in nearly twenty five years. The existing chord contained seven notes for three minutes, everyone listened to it. Then an eighth organ pipe was added, and suddenly there was a new chord. The project even helped save the building where it's being performed. The church had been largely been in ruins. Money raised for the cage project helped pay for a new roof and other repairs, and because the organ produces a continuous sound, simply walking around the church changes what you hear and if you're planning on being around On September fourth, twenty six forty, they are selling tickets. They cost twenty six hundred forty euros, which sounds like a lot of money, but I bet six hundred years from now that's a bargain and good news.

2:39 The tickets are inheritable if you want to put them in the family trust or something. I kind of want to do it. Congratulations to Mohammad, a Paralympic medalist who has swam around Manhattan, cycled three thousand miles across the country, and then ran three hundred miles on a prosthetic leg. It is the Triathlon across America. Muhammad finished on July twenty ninth, ninth, forty seven days after setting out from New York City. By the time he had reached Las Vegas, had he already completed a twenty eight and a half mile swim around Manhattan, cycled across sixteen states, climb more than one hundred thousand feet along the way. Then he had to run from Las Vegas to La He told Runners World that running on a prosthesis comes with challenges you don't even consider. Blisters can stop the journey, and if you get an infection, it's over. He and his support crew had a routine. After every two miles they stopped, he would clean the prosthesis, inspect to skin, hydrate, and apply creams to reduce friction. He said, I battled boils in constant pain. There were times where we had to stop, treat the wounds, adjust the prosthesis, and final way to continue.

3:38 Congratulations on that one. That is amazing. In Guatemala, conservationists are trying to bring back one of the rarest lizards from the brink of extinction, and they have a new generation of baby lizards to help them do it. The Guatemala beaded lizard is found naturally in only one place, the Motaga Valley in Guatemala, and there aren't many left. Conservationists think there's around five to seven hundred adults in the wild. Breeding program at the La Aurora Zoo in Guatemala City is raising young beaded lizards, with the goal eventually releasing them into their natural habitat. Their local nickname is the Sleeping Child. However, despite the cute name, they are venomous lizards, luckily not fatal to humans. Roland leads the conservation project and said, we're just getting them used to feeding, getting them used to being able to climb, and all the things they'll need to be able to do when they're released into the wild. The young lizards will first be moved into large enclosures located within their natural habitat. All right, good news. Connecticut, Maryland, and New Jersey have become the first states to pass laws restricting the practice of surveillance pricing. Seeing here's what the companies are doing. They're collecting data about you, things like browsing, history, shopping habits, other personal data. Surveillance pricing occurs when a business uses that information to, you know, change the price.

4:50 Oh notice you were looking for sneakers being what's up the price there? That's not cool. Two people could potentially shop for the exact same product and be offered different price is based on what a company knows about them. The new law puts limits on that. In New Jersey, the governor said New Jersey families already feeling the pressure of higher cost the last thing they need is companies secretly easing their personal data to charge them more than someone else for the exact same product. And in Chicago was the annual Chicago ducky derby. A truck dumped an enormous wave of bright yellow rubber ducks from a bridge into the Chicago River, and then there's a race. The ducks form what looked like a giant yellow pool before the current carried them along the skyscraper lined river. About fifteen minutes later, officials plucked out the winning rubber duck.

5:34 The event raises money for the Special Olympics Illinois. This year, the derby raised more than four hundred and eighty thousand dollars. People can sponsor an individual duck. I've done this in the local pond. It's fun for ten dollars, which is enough to provide lunch for an athlete at the Special Olympics competition. Thirty dollars gets you a quack pack of six ducks. Thousands of people turned out for the race, posing with giant inflatable ducks, wearing duck themed t shirts, and completing the sentence I adopted up because the person who sponsored the fastest duck wins an suv. The runner up receives twenty five hundred dollars. Not bad. Those are your five good news stories for today. If you would like this program without commercial interruption and you're on Apple Podcasts, click the banner that says Uninterrupted Listening short version five bucks a month, thirty day free trial. You also get other shows on the network without the commercials, including Palace Intrigue where we talk about the royal family every day.

6:24 That's a fun show, and Daily Comedy News, which I host and talk about comedy and comedians. That's seven days a week and a nice fun way to start your morning. Have a great day.