Happy Friday! If you're new to Now I Know, you'll notice that today's format differs from the rest of the week. On Fridays, I pause to write the "Weekender," my  "week in review" type of thing, or to share something else I think you may find interesting. Thanks for reading! — Dan

Hi!

Two days ago, NASA launched the first crewed mission into the Moon’s orbit in my lifetime. The crew — NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen — will spend almost two weeks soaring through space, orbiting but not landing on the Moon, and returning to Earth. You can read more about the mission on NASA’s website, here, and NASA has a real-time status tracker here.

And I barely care, if at all.

I have to admit, I’m surprised by this. As longtime readers know, I’m a huge Star Trek fan. I loved reading The Martian and Project Hail Mary (and the movies, too). Interstellar has become one of my favorite movies. I don’t want to live on the moon or anything like that, but the idea of humans exploring space fascinates me.

Artemis — not so much. Maybe it’s because we’ve already been to the Moon a few times and there’s not much there. Maybe it’s because even though NASA says they want to build a moon base in the 2030s, I don’t buy it — or see a lot of value in a human colony on a rock floating in space. Maybe it’s because “a human on Mars” — not a return to the Moon — has always felt like the next step in space exploration (even if that’s probably not a great idea). Maybe it’s because of more macro societal concerns that I don’t speak about in this newsletter. But whatever it is, I just am not into this.

But what surprises me the most is that I’m surprised by this. If you ask a random person to name the first person to walk on the Moon, there’s a good chance they’ll get that right. Ask who stepped on the Moon second, you still have a good chance. The name of the person who remained on the command module? I’d say it’s well under 50/50. And the other 10 people who walked on the Moon? Most people probably can’t name more than one or two, if that. (Honestly, I think most people couldn’t accurately tell you how many humans have walked on the Moon.) And — perhaps most telling of all — by 1970, just one year (!) after the first successful Moon landing, fewer than half of all Americans could recall the name of the guy who took one small step for (a?) man.

Maybe it’s not just me — maybe we really don’t care about the Moon. Except for that one brief moment in the summer of 1969, we’re a lot more concerned about life back here on Earth. And that kind of makes me sad, because while the Moon may just be a rock, there’s a lot of stuff to discover and learn about out there in space.

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Monday: The Shot That Saved Lives: An actually heroic March Madness shot.

Tuesday: The Billboard That Became an LA New Year’s Tradition: Kinda morbid, though.

Wednesday: A Sinister Hamburger: An April Fools joke that made some people feel left out. (That’s a pun, on a bun.)

Thursday: The Invisible Wall Around Most of Manhattan: You’d never notice it and it probably wouldn’t matter to you if you did, but it helps a few people keep their doors locked.

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And thanks! — Dan

Here are a few things you may want to check out over the weekend:

1) “I Thought I Would Be Caged My Whole Life” (New York Times/gift link, 14 minutes, March 2026). The subhead: “Doctors believed that Woody Brown would never be able to speak or process language. He went to graduate school and is publishing his debut novel.”

2) “The story behind that surprisingly catchy Social Security hold music” (Washington Post/gift link, 17 minutes October 2025). I feel like I shared this before — I checked, couldn’t find it, but again, there’s that feeling that I did — so apologies if this is a rerun for you. Anyway, here’s how it starts:

And then there’s a five-minute audio clip of that repeated segment — you can listen to it you’d like. You’ll probably find it annoying, but a lot of people apparently really like the tune. This is their story.

3) “The Champions” (Truly Adventurous, 32 minutes, May 2023). The subhead: “As the arcade craze explodes, three women compete to become the world champion of Centipede, even as the genius behind it, gaming’s first female designer, fights to stop her creation from being stolen.”

A happy Good Friday and Easter to those who celebrate. Have a great weekend!

Dan