 I've got a really interesting treat for you here today. This is a vinyl record I ordered from eBay. I'm going to be opening it and seeing it for the first time myself just now. This started from a dim childhood memory of mine. I had this vague recollection of hearing a science record in which a narrator talked about the planet Earth and had a conversation with the planet itself, this big booming voice. I had no memory of the title of the record or who made it or any other details at all except this one dim memory of a voice and some retro science art. And oh wow, look at this. I'm pretty sure whatever edition I had in my family didn't have this booklet with it anyway. I didn't know how to search for it. I didn't have a name or anything but I had this vague memory again of that voice and of this art and of this blue color. I didn't know how to start searching so I just went on the eBay children's records category and just started looking at what was there and here it was. This has got to be it. So I'm going to be playing this. I'm going to record it and I'm going to be hearing it for the first time right along with you. Let's see what happens. World is so full of a number of things I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings. It seems fitting to begin the story of Mr. World with the words of Robert Louis Stevenson, the famous writer and world traveler. For now you have a world of your own filled with more wonders than you ever dreamed of and watch its countries, islands and oceans fly beneath you miles and miles above the earth. Your rep-logo globe is a miniature model of the earth itself. Because it's round, like the earth, it shows us who all our neighbors are. Look straight down at the North Pole. Isn't that a surprising view of the world? Notice how many great countries form a circle around the pole. See how close we are to northern Europe and Asia. Alaska, our vast 49th state, almost touches the coast of Russia. The Bering Strait between is only 56 miles wide. Pretend you're flying from Chicago to Tokyo over Alaska. We have a habit of saying Japan is in the Far East, but you can see now that Japan is really near west from us. Doesn't your globe give you a new idea of directions? Now look at the United States and Canada, and you'll see that they're almost the same size. On one of the best-known flat maps called a Mercator map, Canada looks twice as large as the United States and Greenland looks larger than South America. Though your globe shows you that Greenland is much smaller than Brazil. Because your globe is round, like the earth, it shows the true sizes and shapes of countries. Listen now to the thrilling sound of the space age. Here's an exciting way to use your globe. Track the path of the astronaut as he orbits the earth in 88 minutes. Use a crayon on the glossy globe's surface. It'll wipe off. Follow the spaceman as he swings into orbit over Bermuda, sails above the Atlantic and over the heart of Africa, zooms across the Indian Ocean and over Australia five miles a second, then speeds above the blue Pacific, home to the United States. And here's something mighty interesting. Even the astronaut is using a globe in his space capsule to pinpoint his position at all times. It's fun to find places you study about or hear about in the news. But there's so much more your globe can tell you about our world. All the lines and symbols on it have a meaning. Look at the lines running east and west around the globe. Then notice the lines that cross them and run from the north to the south pole. They're like streets in your city because they help us find places on earth. We call them lines of latitude and longitude. You may be surprised to know that they were invented by the ancient Greeks over 2,000 years ago. When you read your book, The Story of the Globe, you'll discover all the fascinating uses of these important lines and symbols. Because it's a true likeness, let's imagine that your globe really is the earth. Like all planets, earth is a great traveler. In fact, planet is the Greek word for wanderer. The earth is like a spinning top that never runs down. It spins very fast over 1,000 miles an hour at the equator. And as it spins, it keeps moving around the sun at the amazing speed of 19 miles a second. Mr. Whirl's trip is a long one, 600 million miles. It takes him a little over 365 days to make one journey around the sun. That's how the year got its length. It's hard to realize we're traveling with the earth at such terrific speed. If you were going 80 miles an hour in a train, you'd feel you were traveling very fast because buildings and telegraph poles would flash by as you looked out the window. But we can't feel earth's motion because all things around us are moving at the same speed, even the air we breathe. Maybe you're wondering what keeps Mr. Whirl from bumping into the sun or taking a wrong direction. Well, there are two wonderful laws in the universe that work like a tug of war to keep the earth in orbit. One is called gravity. Throw a ball up into the air and you'll see how gravity pulls it down so you can catch it. No one knows what gravity really is. It's one of the unsolved mysteries of the universe. The sun, the planets, and even the moon have the pulling power of gravity. The bigger a thing is, the greater its pull. Earth moves so fast, it would fly out into space in a straight line if it weren't for the pull of the sun. Earth's speed creates an opposite pull that equals the pull of the sun. This is the other law and it's called centrifugal force. Space scientists call it the G-force. And that's a clue to the way scientists are using these laws now. When a spaceship travels at just the right speed, five miles a second, and high enough above the earth, the inner pull of gravity and the outer pull of centrifugal force become equal and the astronaut stays in orbit around the earth. The spinning earth is always turning a new face toward the sun. This makes time different all over the world. Here's a game you can play to watch a day grow around the earth. Have someone represent the sun by shining a flashlight at your globe while you darken the room. Turn the globe so north and south America are facing your imaginary sun. Now it's daytime in this part of the world while the other half is in darkness. Keep turning your globe slowly from west to east the way the earth really turns. See the sun come to Hawaii, then Asia, Europe, and Africa. In 24 hours the earth has made one full turn the time it takes the sun to complete its round the world visit. Now you see why the clock was invented. Our wonderful old earth is responsible for the way we measure time. Your globe has a special clock that tells you what time it is anywhere in the world. It's the black and white dial over the north pole. If you set the dial at 9 o'clock in the morning in Chicago you'll find it's 3 o'clock in London and it's midnight in Japan. Here's another of earth's mysteries. Your globe tips at an angle just the way the earth is tipped. If the earth were straight up and down the sun would strike all parts of it the same way year around. We'd always have the same season and days and nights would always be the same length. Life might get very dull for some of us if we could never look forward to the joys of winter. Seaspring come with returning birds enjoy the long days of summer or thrill to the glorious colors of autumn. Earth is the only home we've ever known and it seems very big and important to us. Its surface, almost 200 million square miles would hold 65 countries the size of the United States. But do you know the sun is 12,000 times larger than earth and earth isn't the largest planet? Eight other planets revolve around the sun all different sizes and distances away. They're all members of one big family called the solar system with the sun at the head of the family. And scientists tell us that the universe contains thousands and thousands of solar systems. Our closest neighbor, only 240,000 miles away is the moon which circles the earth once about every 28 days. Some day when we travel to other planets the moon will be a good stopping off place. The moon is much smaller than earth and its gravity much weaker. You could jump six times higher on the moon but because the moon is so close we feel its gravity. It works like a magnet pulling the tides in our oceans. Twice a day our oceans rise and fall because of the moon's gravity. Scientists say some of us will learn to live on the moon but it won't be very comfortable. For one thing the moon has no air. The first astronauts will have to walk around in space suits and carry oxygen with them. As more astronauts come they'll build bases filled with air that can always be kept at the same temperature. This is important because the days are two weeks long and temperatures rise higher than 200 degrees. When night comes it also lasts two weeks with the temperature plunging to 200 degrees below zero. And the moon is a lonely place filled with huge deep craters and jagged mountains higher than those on earth with no grass or trees anywhere, not a living thing. So far as anyone knows the earth is the only world with all the right ingredients to support man. Three billion of us in fact along with half a million different kinds of animals and a quarter of a million species of plants. Earth has just the right atmosphere and its distance from the sun 93 million miles gives us just the right temperature and amount of light. Chances are we wouldn't want to trade it for any other planet. Earth speaks in many voices. Listen, there's the gentle sound of ocean surf and here's a familiar sound, a spring rain. Earth has angry voices too when it speaks in hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes. But there is one voice that has never been heard before the voice of old Mr. World himself the way he might sound if he could speak to us in our own language. Mr. World, how was this wonderful orderly earth of ours formed in the first place and how long has it been going on? The planet you call home. Scientists believe I'm at least four and a half billion years old but no man yet knows my true age. How did I begin? Many scientists think I was once part of the sun that another star approached too close and the masses which broke off became planet. Others believe I started as a spinning ball of flaming gas. I grew cooler and changed into a boiling, bubbling liquor. Ages went by before I cooled enough to form a crust on my surface but I was still very, very hot inside. Liquid fire burst through my crust breaking it up into rocks that shot high in the air and collided in a boiling mass. It took millions of years before my crust finally became a solid surface. Gradually it grew thicker rising and folding to form mountains hills and valleys. Heavy clouds closed me in hiding the face of the sun and a deluge of rain fell for thousands of years forming my streams, rivers and seas. At last the rain was over. I felt the rays of the sun. Then came the winds and all the forces that gave me weather and climate but sold the secrets of my past. Search then to learn the events that shaped my history. How long will I live? How long will the sun live? I do not know. Only the great creator of the world and universe knows the answer and a million years is as a day in his sight. Well, there you have it. Man, that was a trip, wasn't it? Very enjoyable, lots of fun. After listening to side one there I was starting to think that maybe this wasn't the thing I had in mind but then at the end of side two there they pulled it out and Mr. World himself showed up. Sure enough. Again, I don't believe this is the addition that we had in the house when I was a child. We must have had this single volume addition here which I also ordered. Unfortunately, this one arrived broken. Real shame. Anyway, it was easy enough to order this other addition with the two volume set. This one has a second volume in it. Released, it looks like, in 1962 by a company called Replogl Globes Incorporated and this was evidently intended to accompany an actual globe that could talk. Now, I remember having a globe in the house and I don't recall if it lit up or not. I think it may have had a bulb inside of it. I certainly don't remember it talking and I don't remember it having a world clock inside of it like the record described. Anyway, it was remarkable how current most, if not all of the science in this still is. I have a memory of always being aware of the nature of the solar system and of the planet Earth and it rotating on an axis that's not perfectly straight up and down in comparison to the sun and the tilt of the axis is responsible for the seasons and a year is just over 365 days because that's how long it takes the Earth to go around the sun and the Earth being billions of years old. I grew up in a house where there was plenty of science and plenty of books and this was certainly part of it. I must have listened to this many times although I only have the vaguest memories of the voice and the strangeness of it all. It turned into a real acid trip there at the end with all the sound effects and the voice. One of my favorite things about this set here is on the back here this certificate. By command of Neptunus Rex ruler of the secret domain of the deep to all sailors and land lovers wherever you may be greetings, no yee, blah blah blah you're supposed to date it and put your name on it and it is signed by Davy Jones by Neptunus Rex and is witnessed by Mr. World himself this Neptunus Rex character in the secret domain of the deep that sounds awfully specific was this some sort of pre-existing science club or something that Lowell Thomas ran? If anybody is aware of that if anyone has answers to that question leave messages below and let me know because I'd like to know anyway, the story of Mr. World there it is this was great fun I'm glad I did it it was very much worth the tiny amount of time and money it took to get this again, there were multiple copies of these things on eBay very inexpensive and if you want one for yourself go get it very much worth it see you next time