Discovering King Tut 🔍
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The Ten News Season 3: Episode 6
In today's episode:
🗞️ Ten things that you need to know right now: historically high inflation and the USA's 2022 mullet champions 🚀 Ten News Correspondent Nathalie Alonso breaks down NASA's DART Mission
⚰️ We're participating in Nat Geo Kids’ Podcast Party in honor of the 100th anniversary of discovering King Tut’s tomb
⌛Go back in time with kid correspondent Aruna, and discover King Tut's tomb!
🤔 Trivia with Tessa: do you know the word for the large stone coffin in which King Tut was laid to rest?
Links
Fat Bear Week 2022 | VOTE (explore.org)
Drone photos reveal an early Mesopotamian city made of marsh islands (sciencenews.org)America's next top mullet will soon be crowned : NPR
A rare Beijing protest calls for change ahead of a key Communist Party meeting : NPR
Van Gogh's Sunflowers back on display after oil protesters threw soup on it - BBC News
Elon Musk’s SpaceX says it can no longer fund Starlink internet in Ukraine | Ukraine | The Guardian
FDA authorizes COVID-19 Omicron booster for kids (axios.com)
Mortgage rate climb, closing in on 7% | CNN Business
Sarcophagus Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
King Tut Sarcophagus (historyembalmed.org)
King Tut's Meteorite Dagger: It Came From Outer Space (northropgrumman.com)
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TRANSCRIPT:
Pamela Kirkland 0:06
What on earth is going on here?
Ryan Willard 0:08
What's up, Pamela? We're participating in Nat Geo Kids' podcast party in honor of the 100th anniversary of the discovery of King Tut's tomb. We're going to explore Ancient Egypt.
Pamela Kirkland 0:18
Awesome. Wait, how are we doing that?
Tessa Flannery 0:23
Pete and I are putting the finishing touches on our virtual reality machine so we can experience the discovery of King Tutankhamun's tomb 100 years ago.
Pamela Kirkland 0:31
Oh, my gravy.
Pete Musto 0:35
We're ready for our first test.
Ryan Willard 0:37
Oh me, me, me, me!
Tessa Flannery 0:40
Are you sure, Ryan? It's still got some kinks. It might not work.
Ryan Willard 0:44
If there's anything VR around here. I want to be the first to try it, King Tut's tomb, here I come!
Pamela Kirkland 0:58
Woah, woah, shut it down. Ryan, are you okay? You're covered in sand.
Ryan Willard 1:10
That was... AWESOME! I felt like I was really in Egypt in 1922. Can I do it again?
Pamela Kirkland 1:18
Ryan, we gotta start the show. I'm Pamela Kirkland.
Ryan Willard 1:21
And I'm Ryan Willard. It's Wednesday, October 19th. Is it still 1922?
Pamela Kirkland 1:26
Nope, 2022 and this is The Ten News.
Sound Bit 1:30
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Pamela Kirkland 1:39
Before we try any more VR experiences, let's get Ten'ers up to date on this week's headlines.
Ryan Willard 1:47
Right here are 10 things you need to know right now. In economic news, inflation is historically high, which means pretty much everything is more expensive. That includes mortgages, loans needed to buy a house, which is at their highest rate in 20 years. There is now a cheaper option for Netflix, but it does come with ads. Netflix has announced it's creating its cheapest membership plan at $7 a month with a basic ad-free plan and only $10 a month, some are wondering if it's worth it.
Pamela Kirkland 2:22
Elon Musk is in the news again. Last week, he said that his company SpaceX would no longer fund the Starlink internet service in Ukraine. Ukraine has relied on this free internet service during the Russian invasion and Musk wanted the US government to pick up the tab. He reversed course on Saturday, tweeting that he would continue to fund the service.
Sound Bit 2:45
Thank you very much.
Pamela Kirkland 2:47
Some good news on COVID. The new booster which targets the Omicron variant is now approved for kids as young as five, very helpful timing as schools are seeing some COVID outbreaks this fall.
Ryan Willard 3:02
Protesters threw tomato soup on a famous painting of sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh. The climate activists also glued themselves to the wall to bring attention to their cause, which is apparently working since I'm reporting it now. The painting was protected by glass and is unharmed. It is back on display at the National Gallery in London. Whew. And in other protest news. It's rare to see political protests in China but protesters in Beijing hung banners opposing a third term for Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The ruling Communist Party did appoint him for a third term a break from the usual two terms for a Chinese president.
Pamela Kirkland 3:37
Wow. In southern Iraq, special drones have helped archaeologists uncover the secrets of an ancient Marsh city one of the world's oldest nearly 5,000 years ago, humans built Lagash a city on the water like modern-day Venice. It was abandoned 1,000 years later, and now many of its ancient structures can be studied.
Ryan Willard 4:00
Excellent. The USA's mullet championship has announced their kid and teen winners. The best business in the front party in the back hairstyle awards have gone to Emmett Bailey and Caden Kershaw both from Wisconsin. That's a win for Wisconsin and kids with mullets everywhere.
Pamela Kirkland 4:16
Oh, yeah. In some sad news from the entertainment world, Angela Lansbury, the voice of Mrs. Potts in Disney's Beauty and the Beast, and Robbie Coltrane, the actor who played Hagrid in the Harry Potter films have both died. They and the characters they created are beloved and will continue to delight kids for generations to come.
Ryan Willard 4:41
And we'll close with an update on our story from last week. The overall winner of Fat Bear Week and cut mine National Park in Alaska with the most votes was drumroll, please... Bear 747! Congratulations to all the thinner bears who lost the competition.
Pamela Kirkland 5:01
And that is the 10 things you need to know right now. Data transfer complete.
Ryan Willard 5:11
Hey, Pam, I just found an extra headline something about NASA punching an asteroid.
Pamela Kirkland 5:16
Yeah.
Ryan Willard 5:17
Why is NASA fighting space?
Pamela Kirkland 5:19
Whoa, whoa, whoa, Ryan, they didn't actually punch an asteroid, but they did forcefully redirect it. NASA's DART Mission is designed to change the path of asteroids, you know, just in case everyone is headed towards Earth. Oh, let's go to Ten News correspondent Nathalie Alonso for a breakdown of the test.
Nathalie Alonso 5:42
Hollywood loves to make movies that involve an asteroid heading toward earth and threatening mankind.
Sound Bit 5:48
It's what we call a global killer. The United States government just asked us to save the world. Does anybody want to say no?
Nathalie Alonso 5:54
The late '90s had a young Ben Affleck starring in Armageddon. And recently, Don't Look Up, was popular on Netflix.
Sound Bit 6:01
We discovered a very large comet. It's headed directly toward Earth.
Nathalie Alonso 6:07
An asteroid, as you may have learned, is a chunk of rock smaller than a planet that orbits the Sun, just like the Earth does. And you may have heard that it was an asteroid collision that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs some 66 million years ago. Needless to say, the thought of an asteroid crashing into Earth is pretty scary, Scary as then the collision could be powerful enough to wipe out all life on the planet. Luckily for us, most asteroids are too small to pose a danger to Earth. And we have telescopes and other technology that would allow us to determine ahead of time if a dangerously big asteroid was headed toward us. But the unanswered question is if an asteroid ever did pose a threat to civilization, would we be able to do anything about it? Scientists want to know too.
Sound Bit 7:09
It does not look like one single rock today. We're getting close.
Nathalie Alonso 7:13
On September 26th, NASA and the John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory conducted the double asteroid redirection test or DART for short. Scientists crashed a satellite into an asteroid... on purpose. You're kidding me. The asteroid’s name is Dimorphos, and it orbits an even bigger asteroid called Didymos. NASA wants to know if the impact of such a crash is enough to change the movement of the asteroid in space. But don't worry, this asteroid was not about to crash into Earth. The mission was just an experiment to see if it would be possible to change the trajectory of an asteroid. If one were ever on a collision course with our home planet. It'll be a few more weeks before scientists know if the crash had any effect on the movement of the asteroid in space. In the meantime, I guess I'll just go rewatch Armageddon.
Pamela Kirkland 8:10
I don't know about you, Ryan. But I feel better knowing NASA was successfully able to redirect Dimorphos.
Ryan Willard 8:17
Definitely. And if NASA ever does decide to fight space, I took basic karate in college and I'm ready to help. Hey, Pete and Tessa. Is the VR machine fixed yet?
Pete Musto 8:33
Ready and waiting?
Ryan Willard 8:36
Yes!
Tessa Flannery 8:36
But not for you, Ryan.
Ryan Willard 8:38
What? Why?
Tessa Flannery 8:39
Because we have one of our kid correspondents, Aruna coming by.
Ryan Willard 8:43
Oh, right.
Aruna 8:46
Hi, Ryan!
Ryan Willard 8:47
Aruna, you're going to do the VR, King Tut tomb discovery?
Aruna 8:51
Yeah, but first, let me tell you all about King Tut. Tutankhamun, the famous King or Pharaoh of Egypt, may be the only Pharaoh you know, but what do you actually know about him? King Tut became Pharaoh in 1333 BCE when he was just nine years old. He ruled for less than 10 years and he wasn't very powerful. In fact, he may not have been in charge very much at all, because he was just a kid. His royal advisors were the ones making all the decisions. When he was 18, Tut died mysteriously something she was murdered. Others think he died of malaria or another illness or even a disease he inherited from his family. There's even a rumor about a hippopotamus attack. Oh, but that's not even why he is so well known. His tomb, it's all about his tomb. Sometime after his death and 1323 BCE, King Tut's tomb was lost. It was located in the Valley of the Kings a place on On the western banks of the Nile River,, the Valley of the Kings was where pharaohs were buried over 500 years of Egyptian history. Oh, but no one was quite sure where Tut's tomb was, or how to find the entrance. Historians are salivating over a chance to study this tomb for a very long time. Since no one had to serve Tut's time and eternity, no grave robbers and taking anything from the top as they had for so many others. King Tut's tomb was the perfect place to take a deeper look into ancient Egypt, its history, culture, and what they thought about life death, and everything else in between. That's incredible. So yeah, this tomb was kind of a really big deal.
Sound Bit 10:46
Program terminated.
Pete Musto 10:50
Alright, Aruna, are you ready to check out the tomb in VR?
Aruna 10:54
Let's go!
Tessa Flannery 11:04
These readings are off the charts.
Ryan Willard 11:11
Where did Aruna go?
Tessa Flannery 11:13
Oops. We invented time travel.
Ryan Willard 11:17
Pamela, Pete & Tessa accidentally sent Aruna back in time to the moment when King Tut's tomb was discovered.
Pamela Kirkland 11:25
Hello, Aruna, you're okay. Do you want to report on what you saw in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt in 1922?
Ryan Willard 11:38
Tell us about the gold.
Pamela Kirkland 11:41
Alright, Aruna, take it away.
Aruna 11:47
I'm on the ground in the Valley of the Kings. British archaeologist Howard Carter. Everyone told him there was a myth, a story not really history. But for years Carter searched the Valley of the Kings, his patron, Lord Carnavon. And on November 4th, 1922, Carter found the door. Carnavon was in England and came to Egypt as fast as we could. And now here we are on November 23rd, having just opened the door. Nothing has been touched since the tomb was originally sealed. There are even footprints in the dust from the Egyptians who had been there last. And in the form of this tomb is the discovery of a lifetime. It's the tomb of Tutankhamun!
Ryan Willard 12:35
What do you see?
Aruna 12:37
Ryan, there's so much gold. In the center of the room, the dazzling jewel is the mummy of Tutankhamun himself and a really cool sarcophagus or his crib as the young people might say. He does not have just one coffin, not two coffins. He has three. Extra, very extra. Egyptians were one of the wealthiest kingdoms in history. And wow, they didn't skimp on this to the two outer coffins are made of wood and covered in gold and semi-precious stones. But the third, the third is solid gold. And that's not even all because Tut's mummified head is a death mask made of 22 pounds of solid gold and inlaid with a semi-precious stone. It's truly a masterpiece of ancient Egyptian art. Awesome, Ryan, all the accessories of the Pharaoh are here, the false spirit that symbolized his strength, the cook in the flail that represented his divine right to enroll, and the lavish collar made of you guessed it, more precious stones. Wow, this is a major discovery and it's one that will be talked about for hundreds of years. What's this? A spell from the Book of the Dead an ancient guidebook to the afterlife that protected Tutankhamun from any harm that could come his way in the Egyptian underworld. It's inscribed on the back of the mask. I think I should get out of here. Wait, wasn't there a curse on this tomb?
Ryan Willard 14:23
A curse? We're not taking any chances. Tessa, Pete, bring a word back now.
Tessa Flannery 14:36
Thank goodness you're back, Aruna.
Aruna 14:38
That was amazing. Can I go again?
Ryan Willard 14:42
Aruna, are you okay? Did you bring back a curse with you? Are curses real?
Aruna 14:46
Well, I seem to be okay. But a lot of Pharaohs’ tombs were said to be cursed to scare away grave robbers. It didn't work. But the curse of King Tut seemed to have been real because Lord Carnavon died just five months after the tomb was discovered. Revenge of the Mummy? Nope. Carnavon just died of blood poisoning from an infected mosquito bite. But he wasn't the only one who died. Two other people who visited his tomb died and illness. And when Carter gave her friend some souvenirs from the tomb, his friend's house then burned down. And when it was rebuilt, the house was then flooded. Coincident or deadly mommy curse? You be the judge.
Ryan Willard 15:27
I like this kid more and more and more.
Pamela Kirkland 15:29
Thanks, Aruna!
Tessa Flannery 15:41
Welcome to the trivia room.
Aruna 15:44
I just traveled 100 years to try out the trivia throne!
Tessa Flannery 15:48
Aruna, I'm so glad you made it back. Sorry about the accidental time travel thing.
Aruna 15:52
It's fine. It was actually really cool.
Tessa Flannery 15:55
Well hop on up on the trivia throne and get ready for today's trivia question.
Sound Bit 16:03
What is going on here? Trivia on the Ten.
Tessa Flannery 16:12
The burial of King Tutankhamun in Egypt was truly impressive. But do you know the word for the large stone coffin in which King Tut was laid to rest? Is it a) cartouche, b) sarcophagus, or c) amphora? Ten'ers, did you guess it? Aruna, what's your answer?
Aruna 16:32
Oh, I know this, it's B!
Tessa Flannery 16:34
The answer is B. Egyptian Pharaohs and their families were often buried in large stone coffins called sarcophagis’, or sarcophagi. King Tut's was made from a single block of red quartzite a type of stone.
Aruna 16:51
Well, that's cool. And you know, coffins must be really comfortable. Everyone's just dying to get into them.
Tessa Flannery 17:00
Thanks for coming by the trivia room, Aruna. Ten'ers, do you want to sit on the trivia throne and share your trivia knowledge? Visit thetennews.com/contact to get in touch and we might have you on the show.
Pamela Kirkland 17:13
You know, there's actually a pretty cool connection between King Tut and space.
Ryan Willard 17:18
Ancient Aliens!?
Pamela Kirkland 17:19
No, no, King Tutankhamun had an iron dagger, but he lived during the Bronze Age before humans could extract iron from the Earth.
Ryan Willard 17:29
So, how did he have an iron dagger?
Pamela Kirkland 17:31
Well, the iron in King Tut's dagger was actually from a meteorite and Egyptian sources at the time called it iron from heaven, meaning they knew the metal came from meteorites that fell from the sky.
Ryan Willard 17:47
Holy flaming space daggers.
Pamela Kirkland 17:48
Exactly. And with that, I think we should wrap up the show,
Ryan Willard 17:53
Ten'ers, if you're interested in listening to more of the podcast party, check out the Big Fib and their episode on Pharaohs on October 20th.
Pamela Kirkland 18:00
And before we go, here's a quick note for the grownups.
Ryan Willard 18:04
Thanks for listening to The Ten News. Our show is now weekly and drops every Wednesday. But if you want some bonus content, you could join the Ten'ers Club on our website or on Apple podcasts.
Pamela Kirkland 18:13
The Ten News is a coproduction of Small But Mighty Media and Next Chapter Podcasts.
Ryan Willard 18:19
The Ten News creative team is punching asteroids and includes Tracey Crooks, Pete Musto, and Tessa Flannery. Nathalie Alonso and Ten'er, Aruna contributed to this episode.
Pamela Kirkland 18:28
Our production director is Jeremiah Tittle and our executive producers are Donald Albright and show creator Tracy Leeds Kaplan.
Ryan Willard 18:35
I'm Ryan Willard.
Pamela Kirkland 18:36
And I'm Pamela Kirkland. Thanks for listening to The Ten News. Now, I'm off to go walk like an Egyptian!
