Tracy Mumford
speaker
8,886 appearances
123 recordings
3 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard yesterday
Tracy Mumford’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 115 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 22.
Appearances
He was not a scientist.
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And he actually really did not enjoy going up there.
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Akiyama was a TV journalist in the 1980s when his network got a great idea for a ratings stunt.
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What if they sent one of their employees to space?
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They spent $35 million on the idea, paying a big chunk of that directly to the Soviet Union for a seat on a Soyuz spacecraft.
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Once he was up there, Akiyama didn't give any heroic one-small-step style dispatches back to Earth.
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Instead, his first words when the camera turned on were, Is this live?
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From there, over a week of broadcast reports, he just told it like it was.
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He described how he'd been told to pack light so he didn't bring enough underwear.
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He talked about his headaches, how he really, really missed cigarettes, how bad the food was, how nauseous he felt.
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The Soviets on board later said they had never seen a man vomit so much.
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When he got back down, he vowed never to return to space, saying, I don't particularly want to see it again.
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It's not a very fun place.
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But his time floating up there did seem to change him.
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Akiyama said that after seeing Earth from above, I felt a message from nature, adding, It made me think about how I should live after returning to Earth.
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Within a few years, he'd abandoned his TV career and went on to teach agriculture and ethics after working as an organic farmer of Shiitake mushrooms.
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Those are the headlines.
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I'm Tracy Mumford, we'll be back tomorrow, and if you are not a Times subscriber yet, you can get a full month of free access to all of the journalism we publish when you download the Times app now.
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From The New York Times, it's The Headlines.
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I'm Tracy Mumford.
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Showing 461–480 of 8,886 · page 24 of 445
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