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In this video, we are flying over the Earth, looking down and seeing what astronauts see when it's nighttime, when lightning storms flash like June bugs, when cities look like galaxies, when you can see where people are. It's quietly astonishing.

This montage of space footage was assembled and narrated by NASA scientist Justin Wilkinson. There's another one, which takes us around the Earth in daytime.

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RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

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RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

In the hotly contested battleground state of North Carolina, Election Day arrives early. Polls open for early voting starting this Thursday in a state that President Obama won by just four-tenths of a percentage point back in 2008. Until then, the state had not voted for a Democrat for president since 1976.

Our series of conversations about swing states continues this week with John Frank. He's a political reporter for the News & Observer newspaper based in Raleigh, North Carolina. Welcome to the program, John.

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RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Well, this past week, the Russian government announced that it is dropping out of the program.

NPR's Mike Shuster has more on the consequences.

Later this year, director Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will reintroduce moviegoers to Middle-Earth, the fictional setting for J.R.R. Tolkien's epic tales.

The high adventure and climactic battles of Tolkien's world were last seen on the big screen in 2003, in The Return of the King. The final scene featured a climactic battle between the men of the West — as well as elves, dwarves and hobbits — against the forces of evil.

Jack Kerouac shot to fame after his jazz- and drug-infused book, On the Road, hit stores in 1957. During that hot period the autobiographical novelist also wrote his only play, The Beat Generation.

The play was never produced and all but forgotten. The lost work, however, was rediscovered in 2004 and is now set to premiere in the writer's hometown of Lowell, Mass.

Charles Towers, artistic director at the Merrimack Repertory Theater, remembers exactly what he thought after Kerouac's lost play was uncovered.

Mary Oliver is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet whose body of work is largely filled with imagery of the natural world — cats, opossums crossing the street, sunflowers and black oaks in the sunshine. Her most recent collection is entitled A Thousand Mornings.

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(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LIFE IS A BALL GAME")

SISTER WINONA CARR: Life is a ball game being played each day. Life is a ball game...

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Baseball playoffs moved into the league championships last night and the New York Yankees suffered a 6-4 loss. Yankees captain Derek Jeter suffered a broken ankle. NPR's Mike Pesca hasn't missed a minute of the postseason drama. He joins us now. Hey, Mike.

MIKE PESCA, BYLINE: There have been a lot of games. I think I'll cop to missing a couple of minutes but yeah, yeah.