Speaker 1: Astonishing Legends Network Disclaimer. This episode includes the usual amount
Speaker 1: of adult language and graphic discussions you've come to expect
Speaker 1: around here, but in the event it becomes an unusual amount,
Speaker 1: expect another call from me.
Speaker 2: Hey, everybody, welcome back to Scaret all the time. I'm
Speaker 2: your host, Chris Klari.
Speaker 3: And I'm Ed. And I can't see and Ed can't.
Speaker 2: See because we are wearing our safety glasses because this
Speaker 2: week on the show, we are taking a long look
Speaker 2: at the sun. Well, not directly at the sun. Don't please,
Speaker 2: don't look directly at it. We're going to take a
Speaker 2: look at solar eclipses. The next one is coming up
Speaker 2: in about a week, on August twelfth, and it's going
Speaker 2: to be visible over the Arctic, Greenland, Iceland, the Atlantic Ocean,
Speaker 2: northern Spain, and parts of Portugal. And if you're in
Speaker 2: those parts of the world and listening to this show,
Speaker 2: you probably already know that's going to be a total
Speaker 2: solar eclipse.
Speaker 3: Wait, see these glasses, we don't need these here, We.
Speaker 2: Don't need these here. We could actually take these off.
Speaker 2: Oh and then we could see all right, Oh that's better,
Speaker 2: that's better.
Speaker 3: Oh, I mean, I've been hanging on to these for
Speaker 3: the next solar eclipse for a long time and hasn't happened.
Speaker 2: So we're going to talk a little bit about these
Speaker 2: glasses in a little bit, but I want to start
Speaker 2: by saying, in modern times, solar eclipses feel fun. You
Speaker 2: order these little cardboard glasses, you go stand in a
Speaker 2: parking lot with your coworkers, you go oooh for ninety seconds,
Speaker 2: and then you go back inside and probably post about it.
Speaker 3: That is fun.
Speaker 2: But that reaction, that fun reaction, makes us historical outliers,
Speaker 2: because for basically everyone who has ever lived before us,
Speaker 2: the daytime sky going dark was the single most terrifying
Speaker 2: thing that could happen. It was a sign that either
Speaker 2: a god was dying or a demon was lose, so
Speaker 2: the world was ending, or at the absolute minimum, that
Speaker 2: you and everyone you loved are about to get eaten
Speaker 2: by some creature from the sky. And look, our ancestors
Speaker 2: were not entirely wrong to be scared. And eclips can
Speaker 2: hurt you. It can reach down out of the sky
Speaker 2: and brand a scar into the back of your eyeball
Speaker 2: painlessly in a couple of seconds, and you won't feel
Speaker 2: a thing until your vision starts to go, but as
Speaker 2: far as solar eclipse horrors go, that's honestly the best
Speaker 2: case scenario. Sovirtu your eyes and turn up the podcast.
Speaker 2: We're about to shed a little light on solar eclipses.
Speaker 3: What are we screw? When are we all the time? Now?
Speaker 3: Which is time?
Speaker 2: Full time scat.
Speaker 3: All? Right?
Speaker 2: Let me start by saying that I know solar eclipses
Speaker 2: are not exclusively a summer thing. They don't just happen
Speaker 2: during the summer, but I thought that they would be
Speaker 2: good for the summer year because we're about six days
Speaker 2: out from a pretty significant one, and solar eclipses are
Speaker 2: Sun related.
Speaker 3: Sun and Sun is summer.
Speaker 2: Sun is summer ed. I ask you what is more
Speaker 2: summery than sun? I can't think of it, literally nothing.
Speaker 2: So maybe we'll just do the sun next summer. That
Speaker 2: that's probably a good one. There are a lot of
Speaker 2: terrifying things about it. But until then, we're going to
Speaker 2: talk about what happens when it seems like it disappears
Speaker 2: from the sky completely. Before we get into our personal
Speaker 2: experiences with eclipses, as we usually start off the show
Speaker 2: with our personal fear connection.
Speaker 3: You're going to say, with the Sun, and I was like,
Speaker 3: every morning I wake up and that piece of shit
Speaker 3: it's still there.
Speaker 2: Still it's welcoming.
Speaker 3: Viting life, but also being annoying.
Speaker 2: Being annoying, burning your skin, especially out here.
Speaker 3: Yep, chasing you if you're Mario. Mm hmmm.
Speaker 2: Before we get into our experiences of solar eclipses, though,
Speaker 2: I do think it's probably good to just clue the
Speaker 2: entire audience in if they aren't aware on what exactly
Speaker 2: a solar eclipse is. So, in a total solar eclipse,
Speaker 2: the Sun seems to completely disappear from the sky. It's blocked.
Speaker 2: There are a big black circle goes in front of it,
Speaker 2: and you can't see the Sun.
Speaker 3: It's not even like an iris or like a ring.
Speaker 2: Sometimes there is, yes, but when an eclipse happens, it
Speaker 2: is being covered up or eclipsed by the Moon sliding
Speaker 2: directly between the orbit of the Earth and the orbit
Speaker 2: of the Sun. And the first crazy fact about eclipses
Speaker 2: is that the only reason they happen and the way
Speaker 2: that we see them on Earth is because the Sun
Speaker 2: is about four hundred times wider than the Moon, and
Speaker 2: it also happens to be about four hundred times farther away,
Speaker 2: which means when the Moon comes directly between the Earth
Speaker 2: and the Sun, it blocks out the Sun exactly. They
Speaker 2: look to us to be about the same side.
Speaker 3: That worked out.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's a really wild coincidence. And according to NASA,
Speaker 2: that's not a thing that has to happen scientifically. It's
Speaker 2: just a thing that happens to be true right now
Speaker 2: on Earth at this point in time, and it won't
Speaker 2: be true forever because the Moon is slowly drifting away
Speaker 2: from our planet.
Speaker 3: I get it, I've met us.
Speaker 2: Well, it's not our fault, humanity, humanity, you and.
Speaker 3: I oh yeah, yeah, we're saying, if you have the
Speaker 3: opportunity to go, go. You never hear a billionaires talking
Speaker 3: about fixing anything here, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, they talk about they want to put some
Speaker 2: bases on the moon, But the Moon is drifting away
Speaker 2: and in a few hundred million years there won't be
Speaker 2: any total eclipses at all because the Moon will be
Speaker 2: in a different position, and so it won't be able
Speaker 2: to fully eclipse the Sun. When the moon does eclipse
Speaker 2: the Sun, and.
Speaker 3: A big pizza pie.
Speaker 2: When the moon hits the Sun like a big pizza pie.
Speaker 2: As the song famously goes. NASA also tells us that
Speaker 2: the people on Earth who are located in the center
Speaker 2: of the shadow that the Moon casts will experience a
Speaker 2: total eclipse. The sky will darken almost to dawn or
Speaker 2: dusk even darker, and weather permitting, people standing in that path,
Speaker 2: depending on how clear the sky is, will be able
Speaker 2: to see the Sun's corona or the outer atmosphere, which
Speaker 2: is what I think you were talking about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's what Iran talking about.
Speaker 2: Normally, you can't see the corona because the Sun is
Speaker 2: so bright. First of all, you shouldn't be looking at it.
Speaker 2: But if you were to look at the Sun, then
Speaker 2: you can't see the atmosphere because the light of the
Speaker 2: Sun is so bright, it doesn't it doesn't appear to
Speaker 2: the eye. If you aren't directly in the Moon's shadow
Speaker 2: when it slides in front of the Sun, you'll see
Speaker 2: a partial eclipse, which is much more common. And again,
Speaker 2: depending on where you are in the world, some people
Speaker 2: are experiencing a total eclipse, while the rest of us
Speaker 2: are only experiencing a partial eclipse. They're not, They're the
Speaker 2: same celestial event. Just depends on your perspective, Okay, And
Speaker 2: if you're seeing a partial eclipse. That's the one where
Speaker 2: it looks like the moon has taken a bite of
Speaker 2: the Sun or there's a crescent.
Speaker 3: You know, they're all fun.
Speaker 2: They're all fun, they're all pretty cool. And there are
Speaker 2: three other types of eclipses that we won't really get into.
Speaker 2: There's annular, partial, and hybrid, which are all kind of
Speaker 2: majestic in their own ways, but none of them hold
Speaker 2: the same kind of power over the human imagination as
Speaker 2: a full total solar eclipse, even though we know much
Speaker 2: more now about what caused his solar eclipses than our
Speaker 2: ancestors ever did. I don't think experiencing an eclipse in
Speaker 2: the present day makes it. I don't think it's any
Speaker 2: less powerful of an experience than when people thought it
Speaker 2: was a sky god eating the Sun.
Speaker 3: No, it's cool. I mean it's it's a little less
Speaker 3: powerful experience because I have a good picture from the
Speaker 3: last eclipse of like a local news reporter just dressed
Speaker 3: like the sun and it just sucked and it was
Speaker 3: like this epic event, and then this person being like, Eh,
Speaker 3: this is Chad from w I hate my fucking life.
Speaker 3: Sun's getting the way of the moon or whatever.
Speaker 2: The Moon's getting in the way of the Sun. Let's
Speaker 2: let's keep let's try to keep that straight. It is
Speaker 2: the moon blocking out the Sun?
Speaker 3: I don't know, or yeah, I think each time it is, you.
Speaker 2: Know it is, it is every time if the Sun
Speaker 2: blocked out the moon, I don't know that you would notice.
Speaker 2: I mean, there are lunar eclipses. I guess that's what. Oh, No,
Speaker 2: the lunar eclipse is when the Earth gets between the Sun.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's what I'm saying. There's no way the Sun's
Speaker 3: the Sun's just not It's not.
Speaker 2: Possible, right right, right, The Sun is at this really
Speaker 2: far away. What's so majestic about it? Is that? And
Speaker 2: it's it's sort of because of our perspective on Earth.
Speaker 2: It's sort of hard to keep this in mind. Maybe,
Speaker 2: but we are watching a moon block out a star
Speaker 2: in real time. I mean it's about as Oh, it's
Speaker 2: force perspective, but yes, it's forced perspective, but it still
Speaker 2: is an awe inspiring force perspective. Look, I know a
Speaker 2: lot of Lord of the Rings was done with forced perspective,
Speaker 2: and that's still pretty impressive.
Speaker 3: This time, I have the glasses, all right, I don't
Speaker 3: have to be told about awe inspiring. I have the glasses.
Speaker 3: I like looking at it. It's fun. I have no
Speaker 3: money to travel for whatever this one is, but I
Speaker 3: have glasses.
Speaker 2: I think. The novelist James Fenimore Cooper captured the experience
Speaker 2: well after he witnessed an eclipse in upstate New York,
Speaker 2: and years later he recalled it vividly, saying, quote, I
Speaker 2: shall only say that I have passed a varied and
Speaker 2: eventful life, that it has been my fortune to see Earth, evans, ocean,
Speaker 2: and man in most of their aspects, he wrote, But
Speaker 2: never have I beheld any spectacle which so plainly manifested
Speaker 2: the majesty of the creator, or so forcibly taught the
Speaker 2: lesson of humility to man as a total eclipse of
Speaker 2: the sun.
Speaker 3: Well, year, do you write that? It's a long time
Speaker 3: ago before the moon landing?
Speaker 2: Yes, since before the moon landing. I don't know what
Speaker 2: year he actually wrote this.
Speaker 3: Probably is that what he's trying to convey there is
Speaker 3: what the like is what Earth rise the picture should
Speaker 3: be conveying to everyone. It seems like people have forgotten that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I would also argue that whatever lessons
Speaker 2: of humility that man was so forcibly taught by the
Speaker 2: eclipse that he witnessed were forgotten pretty quickly.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, with social media.
Speaker 2: We are not a humble species. Because the experience of
Speaker 2: a total eclipse is so majestic, people have gone to
Speaker 2: genuinely unhinged lengths to experience them for as long as
Speaker 2: possible when they happen.
Speaker 3: So ed.
Speaker 2: Have you ever heard the movie Endless Summer? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a documentary from the night of the poster.
Speaker 3: Better than I've never sat through the movie.
Speaker 2: My grandparents showed it to me when I was a kid,
Speaker 2: and I don't think I really particularly enjoyed it at
Speaker 2: the time. But as with most of the movies they
Speaker 2: showed me as a kid, I've rewatched them and gone,
Speaker 2: oh wow, they were trying to instill good taste in me.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's a great poster.
Speaker 2: It's a great poster. The movie itself, if you haven't
Speaker 2: seen it, is a documentary about a surfer who travels
Speaker 2: around the world to always be surfing in the summer,
Speaker 2: to have an endless summer where you can surf in
Speaker 2: every cool location around the globe. And in nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 2: a team of scientists sort of tried to do the
Speaker 2: same thing. Within Eclipse. They loaded onto a Concord jet,
Speaker 2: the supersonic jet that we don't use anymore less because
Speaker 2: it explodes too much.
Speaker 3: Only twice. Only twice. I mean it's a little weird.
Speaker 3: Only twice, and then we've given up supersonic flight commercially.
Speaker 3: A little weird. We had that, and then we stepped
Speaker 3: backwards as a society, and that's weird.
Speaker 2: It is a little bit. But you know, I wonder
Speaker 2: if it's partially because it was not a particularly common
Speaker 2: I mean it was common in the sense couldn't.
Speaker 3: Fly a lot of places. They had to fly over
Speaker 3: the water, so it can only fly to like New
Speaker 3: York to England.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Australia couldn't fly a lot of places, and it
Speaker 2: was an expensive ticket.
Speaker 3: It was, and wasn't. I'd be interested to see what
Speaker 3: the difference is just between a first class price now
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty six with a fucking oil crisis versus
Speaker 3: like a coach seat if that existed on that right,
Speaker 3: But it was even when it existed, the Concord was
Speaker 3: really built for a very small segment of society, and
Speaker 3: so I think two jaw droppingly awful explosions that captured
Speaker 3: the world's headlines was probably enough to make it a
Speaker 3: financially unsustainable business after that. An interesting point to that,
Speaker 3: when they were before they all blew up, they was
Speaker 3: already at a financially unstable business because they just didn't
Speaker 3: have enough routes. And I think I read something somewhere
Speaker 3: where it was like the people over there were like,
Speaker 3: we need to charge more for tickets. It's like, how
Speaker 3: much should we charge? And it was like, almost everyone
Speaker 3: who flies the Concord it's a fucking corporate expense. They
Speaker 3: probably know what they're spending. So they just were like,
Speaker 3: just charge whatever we want and see what happens. And
Speaker 3: so they charged like way more than they thought was
Speaker 3: like not it was okay, but like, ye, we'll see,
Speaker 3: we'll see, they said price, and they just kept getting
Speaker 3: tickets sold because they were all like just corporate business cards.
Speaker 3: It was no most real regular people weren't flying the Concord,
Speaker 3: but they were exclusively flown by executives first class whatever.
Speaker 3: They realized at that moment, like, yeah, these are all
Speaker 3: corporate expense accounts, Like no one's even gonna notice what
Speaker 3: we're charging.
Speaker 2: So did they ever have to bring the price down
Speaker 2: because someone did notice what they were charging.
Speaker 3: No, I think they all crash you for that happened.
Speaker 3: But I think they were like, oh shit, because it's
Speaker 3: a we could do a whole episode on the concord.
Speaker 3: But America was one of the three countries that were
Speaker 3: supposed to be like paying for it. Like a bunch
Speaker 3: of countries went in on it, and then America bailed
Speaker 3: the life minute to make the dreamline or whatever because
Speaker 3: they were like, hey, you might have more it's a
Speaker 3: very American thing to do, where basically they were like, oh,
Speaker 3: you might be able to fly a ton more times
Speaker 3: back and forth from New York to London than we can,
Speaker 3: but we'll just build a plane so big that we
Speaker 3: can sell more tickets that will come out the same.
Speaker 3: We'll have less times back and forth, but we'll have
Speaker 3: so many more fares, right and so. But I think
Speaker 3: they told them pretty late in the game and kind
Speaker 3: of left them in the lurch a little bit.
Speaker 2: Is that part of why I was poorly engineered and
Speaker 2: exploded a lot because maybe we pulled out I don't.
Speaker 3: Know, I don't know. I haven't revisited that long article
Speaker 3: in a long time.
Speaker 2: Well, in this case, the concord was used for a
Speaker 2: very unique purpose, which was this team of scientists again,
Speaker 2: this was nineteen seventy three. They got onto the concord
Speaker 2: the supersonic jet and they chased an eclipse across Africa
Speaker 2: at faster than the speed of sound. So they wanted
Speaker 2: to stay inside the totality of the eclipse as long
Speaker 2: as they could as the Earth and they were able
Speaker 2: to stay inside the total darkness for about seventy four minutes,
Speaker 2: which is the longest that anyone ever could possibly experience
Speaker 2: in eclipse. Well, I guess you could ride, you could
Speaker 2: ride the shadow for longer, but on the ground, NASA
Speaker 2: says the absolute theoretical maximum you could ever get out
Speaker 2: of a total solar eclipse is around seven and a
Speaker 2: half minutes, and that almost never happens. So they were
Speaker 2: in totality for ten times as long as any human
Speaker 2: being has ever been or probably will be. Although I
Speaker 2: didn't look up prices, apparently I saw my research. There
Speaker 2: are commercial airlines that still offer special eclipse flights, so
Speaker 2: when they know that they're going to be I think
Speaker 2: it was even just like American airlines, if they know
Speaker 2: they're going to be flying the route through the path
Speaker 2: of totality. They'll they make it like a special thing,
Speaker 2: that's fun. You can buy tickets for it.
Speaker 3: Sure, we can't afford it, probably not.
Speaker 2: But if anybody wants us to record a live episode
Speaker 2: from the SKA, yeah, while experiencing a fear of flying
Speaker 2: and eclipses, you know what to do. Send us those tickets.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Sure.
Speaker 2: Most total eclipses, the longest is seven and a half.
Speaker 2: Most total eclipses give us two, three, maybe four minutes
Speaker 2: if we're lucky. The longest one coming this millennium in
Speaker 2: July of the year twenty one eighty six.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm not gonna be wrong for that.
Speaker 2: No, but it'll clock in it's seven minutes and twenty
Speaker 2: nine seconds. So it's about the longest that anyone could
Speaker 2: ever possibly experience if you are in Colombia, Venezuela or
Speaker 2: Guyana where the totality will be visible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and say it's gonna go
Speaker 3: for forty one minutes.
Speaker 2: No, it's not, though I think is.
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna be here to find out I'm wrong,
Speaker 3: So just you heard it here. First, everyone, get down
Speaker 3: to Colombia, it's gonna be a forty one minute fucking
Speaker 3: of darkness.
Speaker 2: You heard it here first, everyone, I'm gonna bury it
Speaker 2: on a hill in Guyana so that his corps will
Speaker 2: be forced to watch him being wrong. Dude, probably market
Speaker 2: Now on the other end of eclipses, the shortest total
Speaker 2: solar eclipse happened on February third, nine, nineteen, the year
Speaker 2: nine to nineteen, and lasted just nine seconds. Since you
Speaker 2: and I ed were born in the mid eighties, the
Speaker 2: US has experienced about fourteen major solar eclipses, two of
Speaker 2: which have been total throughout lots of the United States.
Speaker 2: One of them was in nineteen ninety four. Do you
Speaker 2: remember that one?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: Okay, well this is where else this is? I guess
Speaker 2: we're all stop and ask and say do you remember
Speaker 2: ever seeing a total solar eclipse?
Speaker 3: I remember seeing eclipses. I've never stopped to confirm whether
Speaker 3: it was a partial or a total. What was it
Speaker 3: one like a year ago?
Speaker 2: Well, so that one I believe was twenty seventeen, or
Speaker 2: maybe was there one in twenty twenty four?
Speaker 3: It was just these glasses or not deteriorated to nothing.
Speaker 3: It must have been a pretty.
Speaker 2: Recent Yeah, well, you would remember if.
Speaker 3: You were ever if someone Trump looked directly at that.
Speaker 2: Was the one in twenty seventeen, that was total. That
Speaker 2: not where he was.
Speaker 3: That's where I got. That's what I'm pretty sure that's
Speaker 3: when these glasses are from.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these glasses probably are from twenty seventeen. Let's see
Speaker 2: if there's a date on them.
Speaker 3: It has a lot of like First off, it's by
Speaker 3: a company called Medical King Medical King, and I like
Speaker 3: that it conforms and meets the transmission requirements of whatever filters.
Speaker 3: But I also don't know if they just stamped that
Speaker 3: on there. Well, we'm not gonna be able to confirm that.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about that. And it's in a
Speaker 2: little bit here.
Speaker 3: But before this, I think I would have any other
Speaker 3: eclipse I looked at before purchasing this, it would have
Speaker 3: just been through my dad's welding mask. Like my dad's
Speaker 3: welding helmet. It is probably the only way we looked
Speaker 3: at shit.
Speaker 2: You would remember if you'd experienced a total eclipse, because
Speaker 2: the sky goes dark. It's not like U like the
Speaker 2: sun is blocked.
Speaker 3: Well, I was here, you know what. I don't know
Speaker 3: if even the twenty seventeen one was totally eclipse because
Speaker 3: it was because I want to say that in my backyard,
Speaker 3: they're like the dappled light right from the trees was
Speaker 3: like little crescent moons.
Speaker 2: Yes, that happens. That happens many places where you get
Speaker 2: the partial I don't know.
Speaker 3: If I ever saw a total clips.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure the one in nineteen ninety four, the Heart. Well,
Speaker 2: we've all experienced a total eclipse with the heart at
Speaker 2: one time, rightah, yeah.
Speaker 3: But never never. Don't think I've ever seen total clips.
Speaker 2: I remember maybe it didn't maybe it didn't pass over Connecticut.
Speaker 2: I feel like it must have been nineteen ninety four
Speaker 2: because in Pennsylvania, I remember, I didn't know it was
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four, but I remembered in elementary school there
Speaker 2: was definitely one that our school had. It was like
Speaker 2: a big deal, like we did a unit on it
Speaker 2: and then we had like little I think we maybe
Speaker 2: watched it through the shadow, you know.
Speaker 3: I think we built a stupid box thing. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 3: think we built like a now that you're saying it,
Speaker 3: I think our class built a dumb thing made of
Speaker 3: like cardboard. Yes, but also remember there was like an
Speaker 3: important comment around the same time. Maybe, oh, hell, Bob.
Speaker 2: Around the mid nineties somewhere there.
Speaker 3: Was something from my childhood that was comment based that
Speaker 3: we also had like a classroom exercise.
Speaker 2: For mm hmm.
Speaker 3: But I don't don't remember anything about it because I'm
Speaker 3: just remembering it right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it was definitely it was a pretty big deal.
Speaker 2: The one in La a few years ago in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3: God, that feels like yesterday, dude.
Speaker 2: I know, I know, but that was the doubt was
Speaker 2: the dappled light one. That was the one where I
Speaker 2: think I was maybe on a walk in the middle
Speaker 2: of the day and I knew, I knew it was
Speaker 2: supposed to happen, but I also knew you're not supposed
Speaker 2: to look at it, and I just remember looking at
Speaker 2: all the shadows of the leaves being those little crescent shadows.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but yeah.
Speaker 2: Eclipses are notoriously bad for people's eyesight because the only
Speaker 2: safe time to look at a total eclipse without glasses
Speaker 2: is the very moment or moments that the moon is
Speaker 2: fully in front of the Sun and actually blocking it
Speaker 2: all out. During those moments, you can safely look at
Speaker 2: the eclipse, but.
Speaker 3: But you got to be somewhere where it's like a
Speaker 3: total clips You got to be in somewhere in South
Speaker 3: America or neither Equator or something.
Speaker 2: Well, you just have to be wherever the total eclipse
Speaker 2: happens to be.
Speaker 3: So they always fall out in here, they always fall.
Speaker 2: Somewhere different depending where the shadow of the moon falls.
Speaker 3: I'm saying like, I feel like plenty people are looking
Speaker 3: right directly at it, thinking that they're safe, but they're
Speaker 3: not necessarily in a place where it's one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: Correct, And I becaun doubt. Because we are a socially
Speaker 2: responsible podcast, I would even expand that rule to just say,
Speaker 2: never look at it eclipse still directly, even if you
Speaker 2: think it is the totality of the some of.
Speaker 3: These glasses for a buck and use them for the
Speaker 3: next two hundred years, or use your dad's welding mask.
Speaker 2: Well, so here's here's the thing about using your dad's
Speaker 2: welding mask or getting these glasses for a buck.
Speaker 3: Of course, with great deals, both terrible ideas. Stop it.
Speaker 2: According to CNN, during the twenty seventeen eclipse, viewers were
Speaker 2: warned to view the event only through special glasses quote
Speaker 2: filters that meet the ISO one two three one two
Speaker 2: dash two standard, which the glasses that ED and I
Speaker 2: are holding claim to do claim to meet. Filters that
Speaker 2: meet that standard reduce the Sun's brightness to a safe
Speaker 2: and comfortable level like that of a full moon, and
Speaker 2: block harmful ultraviolet and infrared radiation as well. Rick Finberg
Speaker 2: of the American Astronomical Society said at the time, quote,
Speaker 2: solar filters that meet this standard are about one hundred
Speaker 2: thousand times darker than ordinary sunglasses, and sunglasses don't block
Speaker 2: infrared radiation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well I couldn't. I can't see you right now.
Speaker 3: I can't even see any of the lights on in
Speaker 3: this room.
Speaker 2: We're putting we're putting the paper glasses back on here,
Speaker 2: and I will say, look, you can't see anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I can't claim that this is one hundred thousand times
Speaker 2: darker than a regular pair of sunglasses, because I think
Speaker 2: once you get past the thousand times darker, yeah, it's.
Speaker 3: You know, to the paint at that point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to my eye, it's all the same, but it's
Speaker 2: not to science's eye. It's very important that it's one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand times darker. That's how well protected your eyes
Speaker 2: have to be if you want to look directly at
Speaker 2: the sun, and if you ignore those warnings, get ready
Speaker 2: to experience something called zolar retinopathy, which is a fancy
Speaker 2: science way of saying going blind forever. It can be
Speaker 2: for Okay, we've known that staring at the sun or
Speaker 2: an eclipse is bad news for the human eye for centuries.
Speaker 2: Socrates even advised that an eclipse only be watched indirectly
Speaker 2: through a reflection in water, so they were warning people
Speaker 2: back then, don't look at it. It's only relatively recently, though,
Speaker 2: that we've figured out what exactly happens if you do.
Speaker 2: This is kind of fucked up on the Sun's part
Speaker 2: and our eyes part. I think when you stare at
Speaker 2: the sun, the lens in your eye does what the
Speaker 2: lens always does. It focuses all that light down to
Speaker 2: a tiny point on the back of your eye, right
Speaker 2: on the part of your retina called the fhovia, which
Speaker 2: is the part that you use to have sharp central vision. Normally,
Speaker 2: that light that you are focusing onto the back of
Speaker 2: your retina is bouncing off the ground, the wall, a tree,
Speaker 2: a car. It's indirect You're not looking directly at it,
Speaker 2: so it's safe when it's focused onto your phobia, but
Speaker 2: when you focus the full spectrum of the sun onto
Speaker 2: your phobia, it literally cooks it. Some of the damage
Speaker 2: is thermal, like a magnifying glass over an ant, and
Speaker 2: some of it is photochemical, with the high energy light
Speaker 2: pouring out of the sun basically poisoning the receptor cells
Speaker 2: in your eye. Either way, you are burning out the
Speaker 2: most precious real estate in your visual system.
Speaker 3: Don't do it.
Speaker 2: Don't do it. What's really nuts, though, and the reason
Speaker 2: that I think it's a little bit bullshit is that
Speaker 2: it doesn't hurt because your retina doesn't have any pain receptors.
Speaker 2: So when you're standing there frying your own eyeballs out,
Speaker 2: your body sends you exactly zero warning signals. It's not
Speaker 2: like touching a hot stove.
Speaker 3: What if you, uh touched my eye? I feel it?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, but you're not touching those nerves just the
Speaker 2: light doesn't. The retina is different than your eyeball.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's all reason to be a fucking doctor about it.
Speaker 2: Your eyeball has pain receptors in it, Yeah, your retina
Speaker 2: in the very back. The retina itself doesn't have any
Speaker 2: pain receptors.
Speaker 3: Okay, So the.
Speaker 2: Place where the light is being focused and doing the burning,
Speaker 2: it's not telling anybody. It's not telling anybody. It's a secret, yeah,
Speaker 2: the secret death.
Speaker 3: It has no mouth, but it must scream.
Speaker 2: So you can stare theoretically at the sun as long
Speaker 2: as you want and you won't notice anything is wrong
Speaker 2: until a few hours or a few days later, when
Speaker 2: you notice that there's like a smudge in your vision
Speaker 2: that you can't blink away. Colors sometimes look off straight,
Speaker 2: lines can appear bent, and some people do recover over
Speaker 2: the span of weeks or months, depending on how bad
Speaker 2: the damage is, but some people are just stuck with it,
Speaker 2: and there's really no from the research I did, there's
Speaker 2: really nothing that can be done. There's no treatment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, eyeballs. I think it's like a one and done.
Speaker 2: It's just sort of like if your body bounces back,
Speaker 2: if your eyes bounce back, they bounce back. If they don't,
Speaker 2: that's it.
Speaker 3: That's so you look at a life of jagged lines. Now, buddy, Yeah,
Speaker 3: talk me about we have eyelids that and to help
Speaker 3: us sleep.
Speaker 2: Wait, let me how about you run this theory by me?
Speaker 2: Ed we have eyelids?
Speaker 3: Why that's way, you don't. You don't burn up your.
Speaker 2: Retiness looking at the sun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can close your eyes.
Speaker 2: That might be one reason we have eyelids.
Speaker 3: I feel like lids are at least one hundred thousand
Speaker 3: times darker than sunglasses.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, their skin and folds or I don't know
Speaker 2: if that's the scientific term, the folds, but yeah, I
Speaker 2: think they also have evolved because the eyelid is what white,
Speaker 2: is what keeps your eyes clean, it's what helps moisturize them.
Speaker 3: I'm just throwing lids of bone here that look.
Speaker 2: I hate to be such a contrary, and you're suggesting
Speaker 2: a lot of ideas about eyes that I actually can't
Speaker 2: tell you if you're right or wrong.
Speaker 3: Well, the problem is that every week you bring up
Speaker 3: another like Greek guy who has the craziest ideas about
Speaker 3: secret eye. But when I say maybe LEDs er to
Speaker 3: keep the sun out, all of a sudden, I'm a
Speaker 3: big idiot.
Speaker 2: So one of the reasons I keep saying I want
Speaker 2: to talk about these glasses is because after the twenty
Speaker 2: seventeen eclipseple counterfeited them. Doctors at the Eye and Ear
Speaker 2: Infirmary at Mount Sinai in New York examined a twenty
Speaker 2: six year old woman named Nea Payne, who had glanced
Speaker 2: at the partial eclipse over the city for what she
Speaker 2: described as quote a few seconds, Okay, within hours, her
Speaker 2: central vision was distorted and dark, and when doctors used
Speaker 2: a fancy imaging technique to actually photograph the layer of
Speaker 2: cells at the back of her eye, they found a
Speaker 2: burn shaped like a crescent. Oh, the exact shape of
Speaker 2: the partially eclipsed sun over New York City was burned
Speaker 2: into the back of her retina like a film negative.
Speaker 3: That's sick.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, if you're going to lose your vision,
Speaker 2: that's a pretty fucking cool way to do it, I guess.
Speaker 3: Yeah, even a cool discovery to be made.
Speaker 2: I put the actual picture in the show notes, so
Speaker 2: if you want to see it, it looks at the retina
Speaker 2: they photo. Yeah, they somehow photographed her retina or scanned
Speaker 2: it or whatever. And you can tell it does look
Speaker 2: like an eclipse. You're like, you're looking at the sun
Speaker 2: being eclipsed. And I know this all seems like, oh,
Speaker 2: come on, girl, don't be stupid. You looked at the
Speaker 2: sun blah blah blah. The thing that is potentially really
Speaker 2: good for people to learn on this podcast is that
Speaker 2: the damage that she experienced on her retina was likely
Speaker 2: not from the few seconds of direct exposure that she had.
Speaker 2: It wasn't smart obviously don't look directly at the sun.
Speaker 2: But after she looked away, she borrowed another bystanders glasses
Speaker 2: to look directly at it. And according to CNN quote,
Speaker 2: doctors believe that the eclipse glasses pain used were not
Speaker 2: up to international safety standards. The American Astronomical Society had
Speaker 2: warned that it had received alarming reports of potentially unsafe
Speaker 2: eclipse glasses flooding the market. Some bore a fake stamp
Speaker 2: to claim that the filters met the ISO one two
Speaker 2: three one two dash two standard.
Speaker 3: I mean, I would like to quote the Simpsons here
Speaker 3: when they go to there's like one of the great
Speaker 3: Simpson sign gags, because it do not enter sign and
Speaker 3: it says do not enter, and then below it like
Speaker 3: it tilts down whatever and it says, or do I'm
Speaker 3: a sign, not a cop. And it's like for the
Speaker 3: same thing here, like we have no way of confirming
Speaker 3: or well, there's no one doing anything about this.
Speaker 2: I'd like to quote you from a few minutes ago
Speaker 2: when we saw the stamp that says it meets the requirements,
Speaker 2: and you said, I guess they could have just put
Speaker 2: that on there.
Speaker 3: Well, it's a joke I had made.
Speaker 2: But Medical King I'm not. I'm not saying Medical King
Speaker 2: is faking their glasses. But we have no way of
Speaker 2: knowing who Medical King is, if he's really a king,
Speaker 2: what he rules over.
Speaker 3: Let me ask the robot, is Medical King a reputable company?
Speaker 2: Okay, stop, so can you record that?
Speaker 3: No, I can just tell people right now. So we
Speaker 3: asked the Amazon robot about this brand, Medical King, whom
Speaker 3: we won't slander. We can only just saying what.
Speaker 2: We're just gonna say what Amazon told.
Speaker 3: Amazon just told us. We asked if they're a reputable company,
Speaker 3: and it sounded like it was sad to tell us that. Well,
Speaker 3: after a long pause, super long buzz, probably just thinking
Speaker 3: it said it said Medical Kid has gone through some
Speaker 3: trouble in its career or something.
Speaker 2: Like that, right, yes, and that it is face some challenges.
Speaker 3: Face some challenges and had some legal disputes.
Speaker 2: Didn't say if it was about these glasses in particular.
Speaker 3: Probably know they make other weird broken shit, but uh,
Speaker 3: but no, I think it's my eyes are still here.
Speaker 3: I used it, no, for sure.
Speaker 2: And look I'm not I'm not saying I'm not trying
Speaker 2: to cast dispersions on any one company or even saying
Speaker 2: that you shouldn't use these glasses.
Speaker 3: But I do think you're from Ireland. That was a surprise.
Speaker 2: You do have to be very careful when it comes
Speaker 2: to this stuff, especially in an era where you know
Speaker 2: this last eclipse. Everybody, I mean, I don't know, God
Speaker 2: knows how many millions upon millions upon millions of these
Speaker 2: glasses were sold off Amazon before that eclipse. According to
Speaker 2: the University of Michigan and a NASA analysis, the twenty
Speaker 2: seventeen eclipse was the single most watched scientific event in
Speaker 2: American history. Something like two hundred and fifteen million American
Speaker 2: adults watched the eclipse. I know in some form. I
Speaker 2: don't know they did his studies.
Speaker 3: It's not like there, it's not like we know how
Speaker 3: people viewed the moon landing on CBS or whatever. Like
Speaker 3: they did it well, they got in point, look look
Speaker 3: at that. That's like about a two hundred fifty million
Speaker 3: out there.
Speaker 2: They did one of those things where like the scientist
Speaker 2: poked his head out the window and took like a
Speaker 2: sample size. He's like, well, there's fifty people in this
Speaker 2: parking lot, and if we travel from there, ten square
Speaker 2: feet and the America is six hundred gazillion square feet. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, two hundred and fifteen million people. No,
Speaker 2: a lot of people watch this thing. And I'm just saying,
Speaker 2: you know, when you're when when people are trying to
Speaker 2: fill the demand for products like this, it's a very.
Speaker 3: Enough one hundred thousand stopping film to go around.
Speaker 2: Well, we don't, we don't know. It's just it's a
Speaker 2: it's a very important medical device for a very specific moment,
Speaker 2: and you really want to make sure that it works well.
Speaker 3: Medical king has faced challenges and so I don't know
Speaker 3: if it's because of this.
Speaker 2: So after the twenty twenty four eclipse, scientists watch Google
Speaker 2: searches for the phrase quote my eyes hurt spike to
Speaker 2: their highest level in years. Oh wow, right at the
Speaker 2: moment of the eclipse, concentrated in exactly the states that
Speaker 2: the shadow patch passed over.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's really funny.
Speaker 2: Now, as we just said, solar retinopathy doesn't actually hurt, So.
Speaker 3: Maybe people have other problems. Who knows, what these are issues?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and and I you know, I didn't look up,
Speaker 2: like you know, can the sun damage other nerve endings
Speaker 2: in your eyeball itself that maybe people were experiencing or whatever.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but it was. It was a remarked
Speaker 2: upon enough moment that literally a couple of papers were
Speaker 2: written about this particular moment and the idea that we
Speaker 2: could use It was one of the first times that
Speaker 2: I think scientists really rallied around the idea that like, oh,
Speaker 2: we could actually use Google search trends to measure things
Speaker 2: that we otherwise might have trouble measuring.
Speaker 3: Conspiracy theoristies it too, they do. You'd be like, who
Speaker 3: typed in this assassination attempt four days before the assassination?
Speaker 2: Well, and you see it. You see it in UFO
Speaker 2: communities a lot now too. I'm not sure this would have.
Speaker 3: Been even know how to do that. By the way,
Speaker 3: I don't even know how to look up other people's searches.
Speaker 2: I did it once because I looked up scared all
Speaker 2: the time to see where it was most searched. And concerningly,
Speaker 2: Google told me that no one had ever searched for it,
Speaker 2: which I don't think is true because I've searched for it,
Speaker 2: So I'm not sure what doesn't count.
Speaker 3: The IP address it's originated from.
Speaker 2: I'm sure your mom or somebody at least has searched
Speaker 2: at once. Someone searched scared.
Speaker 3: All the Timebody go out there and search for it, please.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I know you see that. You see that
Speaker 2: search thing in the UFO community too, because sometimes when
Speaker 2: a new piece of evidence or something gets dropped, people
Speaker 2: go back and search. Look at the Google search trends
Speaker 2: for when like code words in or like if it's
Speaker 2: called like Operation Backwoods or whatever, they'll go like, okay, well,
Speaker 2: if this was actually a secret document that no one
Speaker 2: ever had seen until this day, why.
Speaker 3: Would someone search for that right earlier? It'd be like, yeah,
Speaker 3: oh look.
Speaker 2: It seems like right here, you know.
Speaker 3: It's from the people who make cigarette os or are
Speaker 3: those small Backwoods cigars?
Speaker 2: There is I don't think there is action Operation Backwards
Speaker 2: should be.
Speaker 3: There should be if Backwoods wants to be sponsor, I
Speaker 3: filmed or sponsors will take up smoking them.
Speaker 2: So, like I said a little earlier, Ie pain was
Speaker 2: the least of our ancestors' concerns when it came time
Speaker 2: for a total solar eclipse, and they looked up and
Speaker 2: the sun would disappear. In fact, if we were to
Speaker 2: get into a time machine that we definitely do not own.
Speaker 3: Don't have it. I also have a theory that all
Speaker 3: time machine is gonly be used once.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, elaborate just.
Speaker 3: A funnier way to look at it. Okay, all right,
Speaker 3: just as you'd have to like, it's just an inherently
Speaker 3: selfish way to use time travel. If you can only
Speaker 3: use it once, you're gonna go do the thing you
Speaker 3: want to do. You're not gonna be like anyone who
Speaker 3: gets in a time machine, in my mind, has to
Speaker 3: be like sorry, nine to eleven. I'm never gonna tell
Speaker 3: anone about you, like sorry, Hitler's gonna still exist a dinosaur.
Speaker 3: It's you. You're like, I'm gonna go see you try
Speaker 3: seratops or whatever.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, but here's okay, hold on, I don't want
Speaker 2: to get I don't want to get to you sidetracked.
Speaker 2: But I gotta pause you there for a second to say,
Speaker 2: first of all, there are very few people who would
Speaker 2: step into a one time use time machine. You have
Speaker 2: to be very sure you come back. What do you
Speaker 2: mean oh oh, it's not just literally a one way
Speaker 2: I thought you when you said one time used, I
Speaker 2: thought you meant you can just go forward or backward
Speaker 2: and you can't come back to the present day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, no, you can come back. Okay, It's just
Speaker 3: you only get one ride, right, and that's it.
Speaker 2: So Ed already used our time machine to go back to.
Speaker 3: Erase our Google search history, which unfortunately erased everyone also
Speaker 3: searching for us.
Speaker 2: Now Ed's lying. He went to the grand opening of
Speaker 2: the first Hooters. He wanted to be there and see
Speaker 2: what all the fuss was about.
Speaker 3: There's plenty of parking in clear Water.
Speaker 2: He didn't even get a number after all that.
Speaker 3: What does that mean? I don't know. You know, Snowe.
Speaker 3: You know, it's not why I go to Hooters.
Speaker 2: Well, my point is, if we were to get in
Speaker 2: the time machine that you already used and go culture
Speaker 2: by culture all the way around the planet to people
Speaker 2: who had no contact with each other, separated by oceans
Speaker 2: and centuries, and ask them, hey, what's happening when the
Speaker 2: sun disappears over here? You'd basically get the same answer
Speaker 2: over and over and over and over again, which is
Speaker 2: something's eating it. That's The answer in pretty much every culture.
Speaker 3: Is that because eclipses look like Reese's commercials, like taking
Speaker 3: a bite out of.
Speaker 2: Something that's a long way around the block. But yes,
Speaker 2: sort of, yes, it's it looks if you watch the
Speaker 2: moon move in front of the Sun, it seems like
Speaker 2: it's disappearing bit by bit. Now it's a very smooth
Speaker 2: way of eating something. I guess if the negative space
Speaker 2: is just growing, yeah, and not chunks coming out, but
Speaker 2: I get there back then. You also, they knew you
Speaker 2: couldn't look at it directly, so they're just looking at
Speaker 2: a the ripple in the water going oh no, oh no,
Speaker 2: it keeps going away. In ancient China, the oldest word
Speaker 2: for a solar eclipse was she s hih, which literally
Speaker 2: means to eat, because they believed the Sun was being eaten,
Speaker 2: and what they believed was eating it was a great
Speaker 2: celestial dragon, and the correct response, according to Chinese lore,
Speaker 2: was not to cower and scream and tell your family
Speaker 2: to look away and it'll all be over soon, which
Speaker 2: is probably what I would be doing. Ed. What do
Speaker 2: you think the ancient Chinese did when the dragon came
Speaker 2: to eat the sun?
Speaker 3: No? No, right answer here.
Speaker 2: There's no wrong answer either.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm thinking put my Chinese hat on.
Speaker 2: Well, don't put that. Don't put that on on camera.
Speaker 3: Getting their affairs in order?
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no. The people when they saw the dragon
Speaker 2: come and eat the sun, they wanted to make the
Speaker 2: dragon spit it back out, so they would run into
Speaker 2: the streets and bang drums, clatter pots and pans, shoot
Speaker 2: arrows into the sky, make generally as much of a scene.
Speaker 3: The opposite of getting your affairs in order.
Speaker 2: Well, they didn't want to get their affairs in order
Speaker 2: because they wanted to live, damn it. They wanted to
Speaker 2: survive the sun being eaten, and so they would scare
Speaker 2: the dragon off. There are accounts of this sort of
Speaker 2: noise making response lasting into the modern era. Even technically
Speaker 2: this was a lunar eclipse, but the Imperial Chinese Navy
Speaker 2: reportedly fired cannons at an Ali as late as the
Speaker 2: nineteenth century to try to get the dragonto fins.
Speaker 3: I hope they did it over the water, well, not
Speaker 3: just landing on people's fucking houses.
Speaker 2: I would assume it was the navy. I mean, I
Speaker 2: guess they could have been really close to shore. But
Speaker 2: you know, my favorite piece of Chinese eclipse lore is
Speaker 2: the oldest known reference to an eclipse, dating from between
Speaker 2: twenty one p Fifty nine and nineteen forty eight BC.
Speaker 2: So that's a large space. I'm not sure exactly why
Speaker 2: that window's.
Speaker 3: So big, but yeah, the fuck.
Speaker 2: My favorite piece of Chinese eclipse lore is the oldest
Speaker 2: known reference to an eclipse. This story dates from somewhere
Speaker 2: between a very large window of twenty one to fifty
Speaker 2: nine and nineteen forty eight BC. I'm not quite sure
Speaker 2: why that window is so large, but it's a piece
Speaker 2: of lore, so who knows how how well recorded it
Speaker 2: is anywhere. It's also probably not true, but it is
Speaker 2: something that feels like, is this scared all the time
Speaker 2: way of doing business? A little bit? So It's an
Speaker 2: ancient story about two royal astronomers, one also named She
Speaker 2: although Hsi in this case She and Ho, whose entire
Speaker 2: job was to predict eclipses so the Emperor could organize
Speaker 2: the proper drum banging and arrow firing in advance.
Speaker 3: If I was working here, and I'm sure they would
Speaker 3: not appreciate this just commentary, but I'd be like, listen, guys,
Speaker 3: every time it comes, it gets it every time it leaves,
Speaker 3: it leaves the sun. I think we're really overdue for
Speaker 3: just not banging and not doing nothing. And like, maybe
Speaker 3: it's fine, you know what I mean. I guess nobody
Speaker 3: wanted to risk that. But like, if this guy is
Speaker 3: so interested, he's only interested in wanting to know when
Speaker 3: it's gonna come again, I feel like I'd only want
Speaker 3: to know if it's gonna come again. If we had
Speaker 3: failed in the past, and they've never failed now once,
Speaker 3: if they've been unsuccessful and getting the sun out of
Speaker 3: the dragon.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that's maybe what these guys recognized because
Speaker 2: instead of predicting this particular eclipse, the story goes that
Speaker 2: they got blackout drunk, completely failed to predict the eclipse,
Speaker 2: and the dragon came for the sun while the whole
Speaker 2: kingdom was caught unprepared.
Speaker 3: Like how they were caught every other previous time.
Speaker 2: No, they had figured out a system. She and Hoe
Speaker 2: were supposed to be warning people.
Speaker 3: Know what I'm saying, But they're only trying to figure
Speaker 3: out a system now. Those a million years, they didn't
Speaker 3: have any system in place.
Speaker 2: That's true, that's true, but I'm sure that people still
Speaker 2: ran out into the streets and banged the drums and
Speaker 2: fired the arrows and were able to chase the dragon
Speaker 2: off this time. But unfortunately for She and Hoe, for
Speaker 2: their dereliction of duty, they were executed. Which is what
Speaker 2: you would do to me, or I would do to
Speaker 2: you if we ever forgot to post an episode.
Speaker 3: But I'm like, the episode actually wouldn't come out if
Speaker 3: we didn't do it.
Speaker 2: That's true, the sun would out to quote Annie, to
Speaker 2: quote little orphan, Annie.
Speaker 3: I've beaten down Orphan.
Speaker 2: So it's basically the same story everywhere across the world.
Speaker 3: I imagine it would be just with a.
Speaker 2: Local monster swapped in so instead of a Chinese dragon.
Speaker 2: In Norse mythology, the sun is being chased across the
Speaker 2: sky forever by a wolf, and an eclipse is the
Speaker 2: moment that the wolf finally catches it and takes a bite,
Speaker 2: the implication there being that someday, at the end of
Speaker 2: the world, the wolf will swallow the Sun for good.
Speaker 3: So coyote versus Roadrunner.
Speaker 2: Yes, a less interesting cartoon, but a similar situation in Vietnam.
Speaker 2: I love this one. It's a giant frog or a toad,
Speaker 2: the pet of a lord of the heavens. That gets
Speaker 2: loose and gobbles up the sun, and people there would
Speaker 2: bang on their rice mortars to make it cough the
Speaker 2: sun back up. In Korea, it's fire dogs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sorry to have another question about this. Yes,
Speaker 3: prior to Heimlich doing the maneuver, he figured out, uh,
Speaker 3: did everyone choking on things? We just banged shit in
Speaker 3: front of until they spin it up. Because it seems
Speaker 3: like there's a thousand years of written records being like this,
Speaker 3: this is the response.
Speaker 2: Yes, Well, I'm sure they would have loved to have
Speaker 2: physically rescued the physical sun from the sky gods, but
Speaker 2: that was a little bit out of the technological reach
Speaker 2: of the people of the times.
Speaker 3: What I'm hearing is you don't know, And I could
Speaker 3: absolutely be right that that was until probably seventy years ago.
Speaker 3: The way we handled people choking.
Speaker 2: Just shouting and throwing the shout and.
Speaker 3: You bang things and then like ninety nine percent at
Speaker 3: the time they die from choking, but you gave it
Speaker 3: your best.
Speaker 2: Well, when we do an episode on choking, I will
Speaker 2: look up the history of how food was removed from
Speaker 2: the throats of choking victims.
Speaker 3: It was probably more like hiccup lore for a long
Speaker 3: time you got.
Speaker 2: Scared out of someone grabbing at their throat they can't breathe,
Speaker 2: and the whole the whole villages around.
Speaker 3: Them just going like yeah, yeah, yeah, spook them.
Speaker 2: In Korea, it's fire dogs eating the sun, sent by
Speaker 2: the king of a realm of perpetual darkness to steal
Speaker 2: the Sun and moon. But the Sun is too hot
Speaker 2: to hold and the moon is too cold, so the
Speaker 2: dogs always have to drop them, and the eclipse is
Speaker 2: the bite mark left on the Sun or the moon.
Speaker 3: Gotcha too hot to handle, too cold to hold? Exactly
Speaker 3: from the Ghostbuster song.
Speaker 2: That's a great pin, although I guess if it's from
Speaker 2: the Ghostbuster song.
Speaker 3: That's from the like Ghostbusters too rap, right, We'll see
Speaker 3: what we can get away with.
Speaker 2: In Hindu In Hindu tradition, the culprit is sick. It's
Speaker 2: the severed head of a demon named Rahu who snuck
Speaker 2: a sip of the Nectar of Immortality and got decapitated
Speaker 2: for it mid swallow. So now his immortal flying head
Speaker 2: chases the Sun and the Moon and swallows them in revenge.
Speaker 2: Except he's he's just ahead, so he has no throat,
Speaker 2: and they always slide right back out.
Speaker 3: That is a ridiculous life.
Speaker 2: That's a fucking great man's killer.
Speaker 3: But I'm saying, like that's wild, that's.
Speaker 2: A great one, and it means your people don't have
Speaker 2: to do anything. It slides right back out.
Speaker 3: Everybody sleeps with the night. There no banging and clang it.
Speaker 2: I'm kind of surprised, honestly. The Hindus got there pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: They were like, rahu, he eats all this shit, it
Speaker 2: comes right back out. I'm pretty surprised that no one
Speaker 2: else seemed to. I mean, it's not like every other
Speaker 2: person in animal they ever witnessed didn't poop or pee
Speaker 2: out everything else they ate, So one would think another
Speaker 2: culture would have gotten.
Speaker 3: To like even if they're committed to it is an
Speaker 3: eating situation. Yes, they're in every scenario. There's a passive
Speaker 3: way around this, like we don't need to participate in
Speaker 3: whatever this is. You would think, yeah, but the Hindus
Speaker 3: figure it out.
Speaker 2: But no.
Speaker 3: They feel like they had some other good shit in
Speaker 3: other episodes you listened to as well.
Speaker 2: I think are going to Hell up going to hell?
Speaker 3: They had like a vibe yeah yeah yeah, or just
Speaker 3: a cool one. Yeah. Maybe it wasn't a vibe, it's
Speaker 3: going to hell vibe. But I feel like, yeah, I
Speaker 3: feel like a couple times we've raised one eyebrow to
Speaker 3: the Hindu stuff, being like this's cool.
Speaker 2: Even in North America, you get basically a version of
Speaker 2: the same legend. The pomo Oh of California have a
Speaker 2: name for solar eclipse that translates roughly to the sun
Speaker 2: got bit by a bear, and the chalk taw believed
Speaker 2: it was a mischievous black squirrel taking bites out of
Speaker 2: the sun. And they had the same fix as the Chinese.
Speaker 2: You make noise, you scare it off. I don't know
Speaker 2: if they still do this, but I found a National
Speaker 2: Geographic article from twenty thirteen in which E. C. Krupp,
Speaker 2: then the director of the Griffith Observatory here in La Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: says that and this is again, this is for lunar eclipses.
Speaker 2: But he says he orchestrates a modern day version of
Speaker 2: these efforts to chase the sky creature away. He don's
Speaker 2: a wizard's outfit and leads the public on a march
Speaker 2: in front of the observatory while banging pots and pans
Speaker 2: to chase away whatever's eating the moon.
Speaker 3: Well that's kind of fun.
Speaker 2: He notes, we're always successful.
Speaker 3: I bet I have one hundred percent success rate. Do
Speaker 3: you have you ever been to a star party up there?
Speaker 3: It's really fun.
Speaker 2: I haven't.
Speaker 3: When Felix gets older, you should take them. Yeah, right now,
Speaker 3: it's gonna be lost in his dumble head. But like
Speaker 3: it's fucking cool. So if people don't know, I'm sure
Speaker 3: they do this all over the country, over the world.
Speaker 3: I'm sure you can find it and maybe wherever you live.
Speaker 3: But it's where like a bunch of amateur astronomers who
Speaker 3: have like dope shit, not like the crummiest telescope you've
Speaker 3: ever seen, like stuff that's waily out of your price range. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And they just used the lawn of the Griffith Observatory
Speaker 3: and they set up their telescopes the interesting things, and
Speaker 3: anyone can walk up and be like, hey, can I
Speaker 3: look through your telescope? And they usually tell you to
Speaker 3: come look through your telescope and they'll tell you what
Speaker 3: it's on. And I like went up. This is probably
Speaker 3: fifteen years ago, and I uh, I was like, oh
Speaker 3: what am I looking at? You know, and it was like, oh,
Speaker 3: it's Saturn, And I was like it. Fuck, it really
Speaker 3: is huh, like like you would just see the ring
Speaker 3: and everything.
Speaker 2: It's like I really had to ask. I guess you
Speaker 2: asked before.
Speaker 3: You went yeah and it. But I was like, because
Speaker 3: it didn't look like size of a fucking medieval like
Speaker 3: like it didn't. It didn't look like a giant. It
Speaker 3: was like a regular sized telescope, not much the record telescope.
Speaker 3: I didn't think i'd be looking pretty clearly at a
Speaker 3: fucking planet. Yeah, right now, you know it was only
Speaker 3: hazy because of the atmosphere.
Speaker 2: But telescopes are really impressive pieces of technology, considering the
Speaker 2: system of mirrors and lenses that makes them work has
Speaker 2: basically been the same. Yeah, we've just developed better glass
Speaker 2: and better mirrors, but the actual physics of how you're
Speaker 2: able to see that far is the same as it's
Speaker 2: always been.
Speaker 3: And if you gave me a telescope in a hundred years,
Speaker 3: I would never be able to find like a planet.
Speaker 3: I feel like looking through that little whole, like you know,
Speaker 3: if it's sky is so big, But these guys know
Speaker 3: what they're doing.
Speaker 2: I can see you being like, there's so much to
Speaker 2: look at it there, God damn it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was it was, I can't be trusted with it.
Speaker 3: But yeah, star parties. I'm sure if you type in
Speaker 3: like the name of your town and star party, Yeah,
Speaker 3: unless it has a new that term has been co
Speaker 3: opted in a way I'm unfamiliar with. I'm sorry. If
Speaker 3: I steer you in the wrong.
Speaker 2: Direction, someone's gonna end up somewhere where they're like, damn,
Speaker 2: everyone's naked.
Speaker 3: Yeah, going on. But fifteen years ago with star party
Speaker 3: is you can go and amateur site, amateur astronomers. Yeah,
Speaker 3: could show you cool ass stuff.
Speaker 2: Let me lay this one on you. This is the
Speaker 2: last and my favorite eclipse legend, although Rahu is pretty
Speaker 2: fucking up there, but this one is a slightly different
Speaker 2: flavor that I think is heartwarming in a in a
Speaker 2: show about fears. This legend comes from the Bata Maliba
Speaker 2: people in West Africa, and in their myth, the sun
Speaker 2: and the moon are fighting during an eclipse, and instead
Speaker 2: of banging pots and pans to scare them away, the
Speaker 2: people come together to resolve old feuds and anger as
Speaker 2: a way of encouraging the Sun and the moon to
Speaker 2: do the same. Love it, Love it though, Yeah, when
Speaker 2: there's an eclipse, I don't know if it happens the
Speaker 2: moment of the eclipse. But the idea is it's like
Speaker 2: a little tradition you when the eclipse happens, it's a
Speaker 2: good time to put aside.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, that's fucking cool. I really enjoyed my time
Speaker 3: in West Africa. Everyone was cool shit there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a long time ago.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Star Pottery, Star Party era, the Star Party era
Speaker 3: of ed Now I was twenty twelve. Yeah, that was
Speaker 3: a good time.
Speaker 2: Interestingly, this trick has worked the other way at least once.
Speaker 2: Instead of us getting the Sun and the Moon to
Speaker 2: stop fighting, the Sun and the Moon have frightened us
Speaker 2: into stopping a war. This happened in five eighty five
Speaker 2: BC in what's now Turkey. Two empires, the Lydians and
Speaker 2: the Meads, had been grinding through a war for years
Speaker 2: with no end in sight. Kind of one of those
Speaker 2: old wars where I don't know all the details, but
Speaker 2: I think it was just sort of like.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of one hundred year of wars back then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's my land. No, it's my land. No, We're
Speaker 2: going to sacrifice generations of children to find out whose land.
Speaker 3: It really is.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, one day their armies are lined up
Speaker 2: against each other mid battle, swords out, and the sky
Speaker 2: just goes completely dark. Day turns into night right on
Speaker 2: top of them, And according to the Greek historian Heroditis,
Speaker 2: who wrote the story down just a couple of generations later,
Speaker 2: both armies were so completely freaked out by the sun
Speaker 2: vanishing that they just stopped fighting. They interpreted, or I'm
Speaker 2: sure at least their leaders interpreted the eclipse as the
Speaker 2: gods basically telling them to knock it off, and more
Speaker 2: or less negotiated a peace deal on the spot.
Speaker 3: Five. If I was a leader, I'd be like, just
Speaker 3: see that, we did that, and we're gonna do it again.
Speaker 3: If you bugging this doesn't give up.
Speaker 2: This is why it's dangerous. This is why I'm glad
Speaker 2: you broke the time machine, because you would be too
Speaker 2: dangerous with the ones. Too dangerous.
Speaker 3: Man, I'd be bringing big brain ideas like that to
Speaker 3: the battle.
Speaker 2: There's an apocryphal legend that was it. Christopher Columbus convinced
Speaker 2: a tribe that he was a god because he boiled
Speaker 2: an egg.
Speaker 3: We don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: There's a story. I think it's Christopher Columbus or maybe
Speaker 2: it was Magellan or something. But that and I'm sure
Speaker 2: the story is probably not true. But the story goes
Speaker 2: that they were in danger or they were concerned about
Speaker 2: how they were being received, and so they boiled an egg.
Speaker 2: And when you boil the it stands. You can stand
Speaker 2: it upright in water. I think. Is that how it
Speaker 2: works with it? Now? I can't remember, and I don't
Speaker 2: play with them after I have to cut this. But
Speaker 2: he did something where he boiled an egg and they
Speaker 2: were like, holy shit because of the way the egg
Speaker 2: acted afterwards. That's what you would do with an eclipse.
Speaker 3: Remember Mitchubishi Eclipse the car. Does that come up in this? No,
Speaker 3: I would be cool if I brought my Mitsubishi Eclipse
Speaker 3: to this battlefield. It would be cool. Revin a bunch
Speaker 3: I did that.
Speaker 2: It would be cool if you were podcasting from a
Speaker 2: Mitsubishi Eclipse.
Speaker 3: Honestly, I don't even know where you'd find one now,
Speaker 3: but I'm sure they all cost a billion dollars, like everything.
Speaker 2: Instead of bringing us each a pair of sunglasses, you
Speaker 2: should have brought us each of Mitsubishi Eclipse. Well, it
Speaker 2: would have been nice.
Speaker 3: Well, if any fans want to send us an eclipse.
Speaker 3: I think that I think the mailbox might accept it.
Speaker 3: The mailbox place anyway. Herdonis also tells us that this
Speaker 3: event had been foretold by Thaylee's the Milesia, who forewarned
Speaker 3: the Ionians of it, fixing it for the very year
Speaker 3: in which it actually took place.
Speaker 2: The Meads and the Lydians, when they observed the change,
Speaker 2: ceased fighting and were alike anxious to have terms of
Speaker 2: peace agreed on. So while the fact that these two
Speaker 2: armies stopped fighting because of an eclipse is pretty crazy,
Speaker 2: the other little fact buried in there is actually even crazy.
Speaker 3: A guy predicted it.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's if it's true, and there's a lot of
Speaker 2: debate it's whether or not it's true. But if it's
Speaker 2: true that Theyle's actually predicted this eclipse, it would be
Speaker 2: one of the earliest moments in history where a human
Speaker 2: being looked at the sky, did some math and called
Speaker 2: a celestial event in advance.
Speaker 3: But all that shits so wild to me. Like you,
Speaker 3: you know, they have like the also the Grip of Observatory.
Speaker 3: They have that like statue out front that's got like
Speaker 3: four different famous scientists. Yeah, Galileo's there and Ptolemy or whomever.
Speaker 3: I feel like all these people were doing shit a
Speaker 3: million years for each other, using like not million I
Speaker 3: meet what I'm saying, Like, yeah, big gap of time
Speaker 3: and like using like totally like one person's heliocentric and
Speaker 3: one person's whatever. And they were still like dead on
Speaker 3: about shit even th when they were using like completely
Speaker 3: different methods to get there. And it's it's just always
Speaker 3: so surprising and interesting to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I would imagine a lot of the
Speaker 2: theorizing and science that was done across those generations, a
Speaker 2: lot of the science that was successful probably did build
Speaker 2: on at least the pieces that were accurate, whether or
Speaker 2: not everyone knew that those were the accurate pieces. I
Speaker 2: would imagine the stuff that worked the best was the
Speaker 2: stuff that built on the accurate parts. But yeah, it's just.
Speaker 3: Weird that they're like, your prediction's dead on, but everything
Speaker 3: you're saying is wrong where it's like, well the earth
Speaker 3: flies around, uh it takes sixty four days for a
Speaker 3: month and blah blah blah, and like there's still predictions
Speaker 3: are dead on. But everything they said leading up to
Speaker 3: that was like observably fun. Once we got better ways
Speaker 3: to observe things, right, But I don't know how they
Speaker 3: did it. The matrix, I guess.
Speaker 2: Probably Yeah, psychics, aliens, the matrix, what have you. We
Speaker 2: live in a simulation. But yeah, so if Dailey's if
Speaker 2: he actually called this, many people who believe that he
Speaker 2: did refer to the prediction itself as the birth of science,
Speaker 2: because it literally is one of the earliest examples we
Speaker 2: have of somebody essentially doing science or observing a scientific method,
Speaker 2: or observing the natural world around them enough to go, Okay,
Speaker 2: I know when that is coming.
Speaker 3: But does that person work for either of these teams
Speaker 3: that we're fighting?
Speaker 2: No, those are those the people who named it the
Speaker 2: birth of science. I think it's a colloquial term for no.
Speaker 3: I'm saying, like this guy though, Oh, was he in
Speaker 3: Turkey or whatever? Was he part of these two groups?
Speaker 2: Well he?
Speaker 3: Or was he just somewhere else who just happened to
Speaker 3: have called it as well?
Speaker 2: We know that he warned the Ionians.
Speaker 3: But were the Ionians even fighting in that battle? I don't.
Speaker 3: I thought that was the me in the Lydians.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I don't know if maybe one of those
Speaker 2: is a subgroup of the Ionians or the Ionian.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I've seen enough Hollywood blockbusters about a
Speaker 3: science being laughed out of the room from world leaders
Speaker 3: in the first act and then saving world leaders in
Speaker 3: the third act. So I'm sure this guy was just
Speaker 3: laughed out of the room.
Speaker 2: Probably, we do know. So he didn't write down, you know,
Speaker 2: a day that he said it's going to happen in
Speaker 2: the year. Well, we know what year it happened, and
Speaker 2: we actually know what day it happened because we can
Speaker 2: run the astronomy backwards. It's actually the oldest historical event
Speaker 2: that we can pin to a specific calendar date because
Speaker 2: we can run it backwards and find that the date
Speaker 2: of this eclipse was May twenty eighth, five eighty five PC. Now,
Speaker 2: we have no surviving record of dailies or anybody else saying, yeah, but.
Speaker 3: If there's repetition to these events, then you can just
Speaker 3: run it back. You tefinitely run it back even farther
Speaker 3: than that I betually happened.
Speaker 2: Even the other time I'm saying it's easy for us
Speaker 2: to run back. We can't running it back. Didn't can
Speaker 2: firm that Thales was correct or incorrect, because he left
Speaker 2: no record of a day that he said it would happen.
Speaker 2: We just know that he said that Herdatis said that
Speaker 2: he'd predicted it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he said I thought he predicted it for
Speaker 3: that year, just in that year there'd be one.
Speaker 2: Yes, But we don't know if he predicted it for
Speaker 2: the day. And I don't know that we actually know
Speaker 2: that Thales did this or if this is just something
Speaker 2: that Heroditis claims that Thales did.
Speaker 3: Sure, so it's it could be like these these it's
Speaker 3: these these eclipse sunglasses. Just this could just be claims
Speaker 3: that they have real fucking protect their eyes sheets in them.
Speaker 2: Exactly, because it Yeah, it really would be pretty easy
Speaker 2: for Thales after the eclipse to have been like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I predicted that, you know, I don't know how. I
Speaker 2: don't know how much of a record there away anyway,
Speaker 2: predicted or not. I just love thinking of an ancient
Speaker 2: solar eclipse as basically the world's scariest ceasefire. You know,
Speaker 2: it just it's frightened hundreds of thousands, of hundreds, if
Speaker 2: not thousands of men into no longer having a war,
Speaker 2: which is pretty great. In ancient Mesopotamia, which is it
Speaker 2: was like as Syria and Babylon. Now it's Iraq, birthplace
Speaker 2: of civilization, birthplace of civilization. Eclipses were scary for an
Speaker 2: entirely different reason that also prompted an entirely different and
Speaker 2: insane results.
Speaker 3: I hope it's agricultural, it's not. Oh well, you hope
Speaker 3: for a lot of things you don't get.
Speaker 2: So. Mesopotamian priests and astrologers were very good at this.
Speaker 2: They had an entire complicated system of omens, and a
Speaker 2: solar eclipse was one of the most dangerous omens. They
Speaker 2: were pretty good at predicting them under the right conditions.
Speaker 2: They believed that if this solar eclipse rolled around at
Speaker 2: the right time of year, over the right part of
Speaker 2: the kingdom or whatever, it meant that the king was
Speaker 2: going to die. According to the met quote, ancient Mesopotamian
Speaker 2: astronomers had developed the knowledge to accurately predict eclipses with
Speaker 2: a high degree of precision. Once an eclipse was predicted
Speaker 2: and the area in which it would appear have been identified,
Speaker 2: the court and the priest took action. Ed could you
Speaker 2: please guess what action they took?
Speaker 3: Get all the pots and pants together to bang bang, no, no,
Speaker 3: you gotta we got a we got we got a
Speaker 3: hungry celestial coming.
Speaker 2: No, they found a pretty genius loophole, a loophole that
Speaker 2: I feel like you would probably come up with.
Speaker 3: I'm always thinking of loopholes.
Speaker 2: Since the omen they figured is going to kill the king,
Speaker 2: that's fine. They couldn't uneclipse the sky, but they could
Speaker 2: go get a different king. So they would take some guy,
Speaker 2: sometimes a prisoner, sometimes a criminal, sometimes just a local,
Speaker 2: unlucky person, and they would put that guy on the
Speaker 2: throne as a temporary substitute king.
Speaker 3: But like, does that person always die or is it
Speaker 3: just in case? So this eclipses don't rain daggers.
Speaker 2: Well, I think they were afraid that they were gonna
Speaker 2: Now this guy didn't have to look like the real king.
Speaker 2: He did have he did have to be a man. Quote.
Speaker 2: After he was selected, he was dressed in the king's garments,
Speaker 2: declared to be the king, and made to participate in
Speaker 2: other rituals investing him with royal identity. He was also
Speaker 2: given a young woman as a queen.
Speaker 3: Don't love this.
Speaker 2: After this, the true king withdrew from public view until
Speaker 2: danger had passed. And there's actually I didn't write the
Speaker 2: whole thing down for the episode. But in my research
Speaker 2: I found that there is some letters from ancient Mesopotamia
Speaker 2: that have been found or references to letters where people
Speaker 2: were writing to the farmer. But archaeologists believe that that
Speaker 2: was actually like a code name for the king while
Speaker 2: he was in hiding if anyone needed to communicate with him.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, he still had the dude like kingly man
Speaker 3: like he saw it matters at hand.
Speaker 2: She may have. Yeah, if they ever have this fucking court.
Speaker 3: Jester, they put a crown on to be making important
Speaker 3: decisions for the kingdom.
Speaker 2: Yes, so this this quote continues.
Speaker 3: It's like Dave from the movie Dave.
Speaker 2: Yes, it is very much like Dave. The substitute King
Speaker 2: and queen were offered as sack vices for the evil
Speaker 2: fate that was destined for the true King, taking it
Speaker 2: on themselves while he was safely hidden.
Speaker 3: I hope it's just in case. No, so they were like,
Speaker 3: we better fulfill this just in case to make the
Speaker 3: moon happy. Yeah, unhappy.
Speaker 2: Yes, the substitute king and the true king coexisted only
Speaker 2: briefly because once the dangerous eclipse had passed, the substitute
Speaker 2: King and queen were killed. The true king re emerged
Speaker 2: and the ritual was complete, the king was safe.
Speaker 3: I fink that lady got the shittiest end of the stick. Yeah,
Speaker 3: at least he got to be king for a day.
Speaker 3: She just got to be abused and then thrown into
Speaker 3: a pit.
Speaker 2: More when when you put it that way, yeah it
Speaker 2: sounds even worse.
Speaker 3: But yeah, yeah, that was the unluckiest person in the village.
Speaker 2: We do know that this it's I mean, when I
Speaker 2: first read this, I've thought this was gonna be one
Speaker 2: of those things that I did a little digging in.
Speaker 2: It's like, well, you know, we think maybe, but no,
Speaker 2: we do. There's over thirty references to this ritual in
Speaker 2: letters to Assyrian kings, including that the farmer thing that
Speaker 2: I mate, so agriculture.
Speaker 3: Did come back.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's true.
Speaker 3: I think it's like the birthplace of farming and stuff, Mesopotavia,
Speaker 3: that's why, well, except the cradle of Civiliziahda and like
Speaker 3: the birthplace of farming.
Speaker 2: Unless we believe that go Beckley Teppe was actually the
Speaker 2: birth of grain farming and production.
Speaker 3: But what episode that's not even area.
Speaker 2: That was music festivals. That was last not last week,
Speaker 2: but the last main episode.
Speaker 3: In fact, I won't bring it up.
Speaker 2: According to that same article in the met this did
Speaker 2: work out for the substitute exactly once. This is the
Speaker 2: most Dave like part of the story. Era Emitti, king
Speaker 2: of the city state of ice In in southern Iraq
Speaker 2: from eighteen sixty eight to eighteen sixty one BC, did
Speaker 2: this whole ritual. He was the king. They brought in
Speaker 2: a substitute who was a gardener, and while the substitute
Speaker 2: was sitting on the throne waiting for the eclipse to come,
Speaker 2: Era Emiti died after a apparently what is reported as
Speaker 2: sipping a porridge that was too hot, too poisoned. Yeah, no,
Speaker 2: one knows exactly what went down there, but he died
Speaker 2: from this porridge while the substitute was alive.
Speaker 3: Do you imagine if they happened to Goldilocks and then
Speaker 3: these bears come home and they just have a dead
Speaker 3: kid in their house, and it's like a way shittier situation,
Speaker 3: weirdly than like for everyone sleeping in your bed, Like
Speaker 3: oh no, what fuck man? Like lastly, he needs a
Speaker 3: little dead girl in here. The fucking cops gonna be
Speaker 3: all over the woods soon.
Speaker 2: In this case, the cops just said, hey, man, you're
Speaker 2: the king. I mean he was sworn in, Yes he was.
Speaker 2: He was this the Gardener was sworn in as a
Speaker 2: substitute king. His name was Enlil Bonnie, and he continued
Speaker 2: to rule ice In for about another twenty years until
Speaker 2: he died from apparently natural cause.
Speaker 3: I think he's like with good kidding, or he sucked.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know if i'd be. That's just like what
Speaker 3: a bummer if that guy just sucked.
Speaker 2: It's also what's the what's the Peter Sellers movie where
Speaker 2: he plays the Gardener who becomes president Putney Swape.
Speaker 3: I have no idea what you're talking about. Pink panther.
Speaker 2: No, not not pink panther. So this idea that the
Speaker 2: eclipse means a king is about to drop dead did
Speaker 2: not stay in Mesopotamia necessarily. It over the course of history,
Speaker 2: it shows up all over the place. One of the
Speaker 2: most famous stories of an eclipse that was said to
Speaker 2: have killed a king.
Speaker 3: Was in Game of Thrones?
Speaker 2: Was it?
Speaker 3: I have no idea. No, that sounds like some shit
Speaker 3: they do in that fake world.
Speaker 2: Probably it happened in the real world too, though. In
Speaker 2: eleven thirty three in England, King Henry the first is
Speaker 2: on the throne, and there is a long total eclipse
Speaker 2: over the country, somewhere around four and a half minutes
Speaker 2: of complete darkness, and people, it seems like, basically lose
Speaker 2: their fucking minds. One writer described the eclipse with four
Speaker 2: words that kind of make a perfect little horror poem, miserabilis,
Speaker 2: horribilis nigra mirrabilus.
Speaker 3: As a poem, it's a step that's a fucking spell,
Speaker 3: and Harry Potter.
Speaker 2: It's the four words that mean wretched, horrifying, black, remarkable.
Speaker 3: Was he paining by the word No, he wasn't paid
Speaker 3: very much. No, I'm saying he was he paying by
Speaker 3: the words he used? Then why the fuck man just
Speaker 3: writ a little bit better?
Speaker 2: He's like, I gotta get this down fast. Maybe he
Speaker 2: thought they were all gonna die. I don't know. Oh,
Speaker 2: sure enough, King Henry did drop dead, and this became
Speaker 2: known as the eclipse that either predicted or killed him.
Speaker 2: But in reality, Porridge, it took two years for him
Speaker 2: to die. So this is a very slow acting king,
Speaker 2: King king curse. If it was in fact, sure, you
Speaker 2: know the legend got printed in this case.
Speaker 3: Probably more than four words.
Speaker 2: Still, Historian William of Malmsbury was quoted as saying that
Speaker 2: the eclipses quote hideous darkness agitated the hearts of men.
Speaker 2: Shortly after King Henry's death, the country was thrown into
Speaker 2: chaos and a civil war brood.
Speaker 3: What would some of these people think? I understand the
Speaker 3: idea of a sudden the son turns off off is
Speaker 3: what makes it shocking. M But what would some of
Speaker 3: these people if they were transported from medieval England, where
Speaker 3: the fuck time period this was, and like sent to
Speaker 3: Alaska or something where it's like thirty days of night
Speaker 3: or like thirty days of just the sun won't stop.
Speaker 3: Is that equally as terrifying if you're not expecting it.
Speaker 3: I think so, I would think so.
Speaker 2: I mean sailors must have I mean obviously the Vikings
Speaker 2: must have experienced some of that. Yeah, the Inuit experienced
Speaker 2: some of it. But I'm sure Yeah, if you were
Speaker 2: just coming up from I don't know, Mesopotamia or something,
Speaker 2: and you went above whatever line on the Arctic circle
Speaker 2: where that starts happening, yeah, I'm sure you think it's
Speaker 2: like an enchanted land or.
Speaker 3: Some especially if you're like the first people, there's no
Speaker 3: one around. Yeah, like some places that have been abandon
Speaker 3: what have you. And you're just like, well, this is great.
Speaker 3: Every day the sun goes down, every day the fucking
Speaker 3: moon comes out, and it's like that for the first
Speaker 3: however many months we've been living here in our little tents.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I still think it's scary, Like, I mean,
Speaker 2: we know why it happens, and I feel like if
Speaker 2: I went and experienced something like that, you.
Speaker 3: Should do it. We should do midnight uh, Like I've
Speaker 3: always want to go. I always want to go, but
Speaker 3: it's interesting to do like a midnight baseball game or something.
Speaker 3: But yeah, we can do like a midnight live show
Speaker 3: on the beach, you know what I mean, Like I
Speaker 3: do it.
Speaker 2: And then I'll wrap this section up by talking about
Speaker 2: my favorite eclipse killed the King story, because this one
Speaker 2: is both one true and kind of a tragedy of
Speaker 2: competence if you think about it. So, there was a guy.
Speaker 2: I my history of Southeast Asia is basically non existent,
Speaker 2: so I'd never heard of this guy. But there was
Speaker 2: a king King Rama of Siam.
Speaker 3: You never heard of Rama siambro there was.
Speaker 2: A king King Rama of Siam, which is modern day Thailand. Okay,
Speaker 2: And he was a genuinely fascinating guy for a whole
Speaker 2: host of reasons, not the least of which is that
Speaker 2: he was the real life inspiration for the musical The
Speaker 2: King and I Oh Ball. Gentlemen, it's basically his story. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's basically his story. I don't think he looked much
Speaker 2: like Yul Brenner, but you know, it was his story.
Speaker 2: He also spent decades studying astronomy in an effort to
Speaker 2: modernize his kingdom, and in eighteen sixty eight he correctly
Speaker 2: predicted a total eclipse down to the exact location, beating
Speaker 2: European astronomers at their own game. He was so proud
Speaker 2: of himself that he organized a whole expedition out to
Speaker 2: this remote spot to watch his prediction come true, which
Speaker 2: it did. They experienced a total eclipse with nearly seven
Speaker 2: minutes of totality, so almost as long as long as
Speaker 2: it gets, almost as long as it gets. But while
Speaker 2: King Rama was out there chasing his eclipse, he was
Speaker 2: bit by a mosquito, probably lots of mosquitos, and one
Speaker 2: or more than one of them gave King Rama malaria,
Speaker 2: and he died a few weeks later.
Speaker 3: Oh my, God.
Speaker 2: So this is the one case where an eclipse really
Speaker 2: did sort of kill a king, even though it had
Speaker 2: a little help.
Speaker 3: Do you think Alanismore said averse about this out of ironic.
Speaker 2: Alanis, if you're listening, let's re record that song. It's
Speaker 2: a great song. I really I normally wouldn't give you notes,
Speaker 2: but I think this is a really unique opportunity that
Speaker 2: you're looking at.
Speaker 3: And this guy's life, as we've learned, lends itself to songs.
Speaker 2: Yes, Yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah, rip God, blessed
Speaker 2: king Rama. You were too good at your job pretty much.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, you know, when you get focused on one thing,
Speaker 3: there are blind spots about other things, like mosquitoes and disease.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, so at this point in our society, in
Speaker 2: modern day, you'd think that we would be well passed
Speaker 2: the panic over eclipses and doomsday prophecies and sky gods.
Speaker 2: We've known what causes eclipses since fifth century BC in Greece,
Speaker 2: when the philosopher and axe Agoris sought to understand and
Speaker 2: describe eclipses through an understanding of physics and the natural world.
Speaker 2: This is the guy who proposed that rainbows were a
Speaker 2: phenomenon of sunlight bending in rain instead of being caused
Speaker 2: by the goddess Iris. So he was pretty sharp. Okay,
Speaker 2: he figured out what a rainbow was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he didn't. This is long before the Bible. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so it's not that like Noah was given after Noah's flood,
Speaker 3: God gave us a rainbow.
Speaker 2: Did God teach Noah what a rainbow is?
Speaker 3: You taught Noah? But he hits after the flood, Yeah,
Speaker 3: there was a rainbow and God was like, let this
Speaker 3: rainbow I'm paraphrasing, Yeah, let this rainbow be like a
Speaker 3: thing that this rain Let this rainbow signify that I'm
Speaker 3: no longer going to send floods. Let this rainbow be
Speaker 3: like my gift to you in a personification of like
Speaker 3: this is this represents I'm done flooding you guys.
Speaker 2: Interesting, I forgot that part of the story. But now
Speaker 2: that you mention it, that does sound very familiar.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I forget what the word would be. It's
Speaker 3: not a pact.
Speaker 2: But so and Axagoris figured it out. Yeah, long before
Speaker 2: well not technically before Noah. I guess after Noah. But
Speaker 2: he figured it out. He figured it out before we
Speaker 2: read the story of Noah in the rainbow. Anyway, Today,
Speaker 2: Anaxagoras is known as the first person to correctly explain
Speaker 2: eclipses were just the Sun casting the shadow of the
Speaker 2: moon upon the earth. But for this what would have
Speaker 2: seemed like almost divine knowledge. At this point, the Athenians
Speaker 2: took him to trial and charged him with sacrilege, and
Speaker 2: he was sent into exile for the rest of his life.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think some of those guys on the lawn
Speaker 3: of Grifveth Observatory were sent to prison for no reason too.
Speaker 2: Galileo most famously. It is interesting that they seemed to
Speaker 2: be cool with him explaining rainbows, but explaining the eclipse
Speaker 2: was like a bridge to fALS.
Speaker 3: Bridge to no Sir, a rainbow bridge too far.
Speaker 2: The world obviously eventually came around to Anaxagoras's way of thinking.
Speaker 2: But eclipses are such a powerful event that even though
Speaker 2: we're past the drums and the dragons, they can still
Speaker 2: provoke panic and fear in the arts and minds of
Speaker 2: modern humans. One tragic example can be found in the
Speaker 2: American West in eighteen seventy eight. To give us a
Speaker 2: little perspective here, CNN tells us that quote at the time,
Speaker 2: the United States was trying to reinforce its reputation for
Speaker 2: science on the global stage. During restoration after the Civil War,
Speaker 2: Pioneers were carving out a life in the Western territories.
Speaker 2: Women were looking to get the vote. We were modernizing.
Speaker 2: Scientists knew that an eclipse was going to cross over
Speaker 2: the wild West that year, and the event attracted a
Speaker 2: variety of the era's finest scientific minds.
Speaker 3: Buffalo Bill, I don't know if Calamity Jane, I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: doctor Buffalo Bill.
Speaker 2: These doctor Calamity j these are just other characters from
Speaker 2: another musical that you're remembering.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I can imagine these are also the types
Speaker 3: of people who'd be like, throw a lab coat on her.
Speaker 3: We're now going to take this show on the road
Speaker 3: in a new direction.
Speaker 2: Charge everyone five dollars to come witness in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, like we've been making money. There's no reason
Speaker 3: to stop making money. Did you drive by the circle
Speaker 3: us last night? By the way, me two days ago
Speaker 3: when we were driving back from the failed attempt to
Speaker 3: sell the car, and there was there was there was
Speaker 3: a circus on our left, a giant circus on like
Speaker 3: North Hollywood or something.
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, I did that's not normally there.
Speaker 3: No, So it's always weird to see a circus tent.
Speaker 2: I was so mad. Oh, I know, yeah, I wasn't
Speaker 2: paying much attention to what was odd, but it is.
Speaker 3: It is weird to see a circus tent, just at
Speaker 3: a place. You know, there's not normal a circus tent. Right,
Speaker 3: It's very always exciting. There is something wicked this way comes? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Has that always been there?
Speaker 3: Yeah? It's scary.
Speaker 2: Why are there are so many crows sitting on it?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: So scientists knew that this eclipse was coming, and it
Speaker 2: drew a lot of people, including astronomer and Vassar College
Speaker 2: professor Maria Mitchell, who shepherded a group of female astronomers.
Speaker 2: Yeah sick, shout out Vassar. Maria Mitchell shepherded a group
Speaker 2: of female astronomers to the frontier armed with telescopes to
Speaker 2: study the eclipse. James Craig Watson, an astronomer a discoverer
Speaker 2: of comets and minor planets, was to hermaned to verify
Speaker 2: that the quote intram, your curial planet Vulcan existed hidden
Speaker 2: by the Sun and just waiting to be discovered during
Speaker 2: an eclipse.
Speaker 3: This is maybe the dumbest question I've ever asked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it won't be the last.
Speaker 3: So if it's less, if it's difficult to see stars
Speaker 3: at night because of light pollution from the ground, can
Speaker 3: you see more stars all the lights are off dur
Speaker 3: in the day. Now, suddenly the sky turns dark, Like
Speaker 3: if you pointed a telescope during these four to seven minutes,
Speaker 3: is it gonna open up a view of stars you
Speaker 3: maybe wouldn't normally see from this location because suddenly it's
Speaker 3: like so dark.
Speaker 2: I mean, the stars do become brighter during the day
Speaker 2: when an eclipse happens because that source of light is
Speaker 2: being removed, so your eye is able to pick up
Speaker 2: those softer sources of light. I don't know what it
Speaker 2: does to a telescope. I'm sure at least by this
Speaker 2: point in the scientific journey people were trying to figure
Speaker 2: out if that would work. I kind of interpret this
Speaker 2: to me and that that's what he was doing. It
Speaker 2: was hidden by the When he says hidden by the sun,
Speaker 2: I assume he means the brightness of the sun, not
Speaker 2: hidden behind the sun.
Speaker 3: Well that's what got me there, That's what got me
Speaker 3: that question.
Speaker 2: Spoiler alert Vulcan did not exist. He was not able
Speaker 2: to find it, and even Thomas Edison made the journey,
Speaker 2: eager to prove that his new device, the tacit meter.
Speaker 3: Could measure this new device light.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, it.
Speaker 3: Was like, oh, you guys worried about the five minutes
Speaker 3: of darkness, I got something for that.
Speaker 2: This was actually before light This was actually before his
Speaker 2: work on the light bulb. He was he had invented
Speaker 2: the tasimeter or the or the tescimeter that could measure
Speaker 2: temperature changes in the heat of the corona around the
Speaker 2: Sun during the eclipse. Spoiler alert. Again, it didn't work.
Speaker 2: So a lot of the people who were headed out
Speaker 2: to the West for this eclipse were stymied in their
Speaker 2: quest for answers, but at least they were interested in
Speaker 2: the science of the eclipse. Not everyone in the West
Speaker 2: was quite so focused on that part of the sun disappearing. Quote.
Speaker 2: On July twenty eighth, eighteen seventy eight, as the bright
Speaker 2: sky above Johnson County, Texas began to dim, and then
Speaker 2: dim some more, and finally go dark, people startled and stared, cried,
Speaker 2: and prayed. One of these people, a sharecropper named Efraim Miller,
Speaker 2: already with firm beliefs about the end of the world,
Speaker 2: was heard to say that if this was the last day,
Speaker 2: he planned to be quote so sound asleep that Gabriel's
Speaker 2: trumpet wouldn't wake him.
Speaker 3: Okay, famous angel, famous musician.
Speaker 2: He then grabbed a hatchet, ran into his house, murdered
Speaker 2: his son with the hatchet to spare him the suffering
Speaker 2: of the apocalypse, then went up the stairs to the
Speaker 2: attic and cut his own throat. So there were still
Speaker 2: people being driven to religious madness by the effect of
Speaker 2: a solar eclipse, even in the mid to late eighteen hundred.
Speaker 3: The speaking of religious madness or the idea of just
Speaker 3: repeating the same stories over and over again until it
Speaker 3: becomes gospel. You're an interesting position because you've now researched eclipses,
Speaker 3: so you can now you know, you can look up
Speaker 3: when the next ones are gonna be m M. And
Speaker 3: if it's not gonna be for one hundred and fifty years.
Speaker 3: You're in a position now where you can just raise
Speaker 3: Felix with some made up thing about how like the
Speaker 3: Klaris will take the throne again on but like this
Speaker 3: procedure or thing needs to be done only under a
Speaker 3: full eclipse at this place on this day, and you
Speaker 3: have it, and then you just have him. He believes
Speaker 3: it so much that he tells his kids, and then
Speaker 3: they tell their kids, and they tell their kids, and
Speaker 3: then you're like, hundreds of years from now, it's so
Speaker 3: ingrained that the Calari family needs to do this insane
Speaker 3: thing at the eclipse and this mountain, at this thing.
Speaker 3: You won't be there, but it'd be amazing the acts
Speaker 3: that can go out from a goof. Basically, like, you
Speaker 3: can do this as a joke, and then if everyone's
Speaker 3: just committed to it, you can watch from heaven probably hell,
Speaker 3: because you've done this, you can watch them like slaughter
Speaker 3: a whole town because the Colari, you know, is the
Speaker 3: only way to save the colorI name.
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, I see where you went with that. I
Speaker 2: thought we were maybe going towards more. This would be
Speaker 2: a really funny, multi generational goof to make them jump
Speaker 2: through all these hoops and then when the eclipse happens,
Speaker 2: nothing happens and they're just disappointed. No, no, you're thinking
Speaker 2: that I should get them too.
Speaker 3: No, they have to do something and to civilization whatever
Speaker 3: whatever it is.
Speaker 2: Sure, you know what I mean, yeah, you.
Speaker 3: Could pick out, you can pick and choose what the
Speaker 3: thing they have to do is. But I do believe
Speaker 3: they'll do it if like four generations are told that
Speaker 3: they have to do it.
Speaker 2: I also feel like this is where we should say
Speaker 2: that this is a bad idea. Definitely don't do this.
Speaker 2: If you're listening to the podcast, I might do it.
Speaker 2: You can't stop me. But I don't want anyone else
Speaker 2: to do it, because we could get in trouble, So
Speaker 2: please don't.
Speaker 3: People will be in trouble on hundreds of years from now.
Speaker 2: That's true, We'll be gone.
Speaker 3: We'll be gone.
Speaker 2: You would think that today, okay, so eighteen seventy eight,
Speaker 2: you still have people butchering their families with an axe
Speaker 2: to keep them safe during the.
Speaker 3: Sli whatever the hell they're gonna call themselves in two
Speaker 3: hundred years.
Speaker 2: But you would think that now this deep into the
Speaker 2: twenty twenties, we're over eclipse panics. You would think you
Speaker 2: can google what is an eclipse and in two seconds
Speaker 2: anybody concerned about the end of the world would be
Speaker 2: feeling a lot better.
Speaker 3: But it actually can't get any results because the computing
Speaker 3: power that's so overwhelming with people googling why do my
Speaker 3: eyes hurt at the exact same.
Speaker 2: Time answer, and then they still end up butchering their
Speaker 2: whole family. Y yeah, bummer. Well, you'd think the doomsday
Speaker 2: stuff at this point would die, but it hasn't. It
Speaker 2: was just translated into the primary language of the twenty
Speaker 2: first century, the conspiracy theory. As the twenty twenty four
Speaker 2: eclipse was approaching, people notice something that is actually a
Speaker 2: pretty cool coincidence, the path. If you lay the path
Speaker 2: of the twenty seventeen eclipse over or under the path
Speaker 2: of the twenty four.
Speaker 3: Four clips so you completely ignored earlier.
Speaker 2: I did not ignore it. We just we talked about it.
Speaker 2: You were just not paying any attention.
Speaker 3: No, no, but yeah, I was talking. I mean, obviously
Speaker 3: my glasses would have been for that, but you were like, oh,
Speaker 3: I was like a lot, like it feels like it
Speaker 3: was yesterday, blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, if you laid the path of these two eclipses
Speaker 2: over each other, they make a big X over the
Speaker 2: middle of the United States. The center actually fell in
Speaker 2: southern Illinois, right near the New Madrid fault line, which
Speaker 2: is a fault responsible for three of the most powerful
Speaker 2: earthquakes in American history from eighteen eleven to eighteen twelve.
Speaker 3: This is the Sun and the Moon are trying to
Speaker 3: tell son well a lot on board.
Speaker 2: A lot of people noticed that it made an X
Speaker 2: over the New Madrid fault, and people immediately started believing that, yes,
Speaker 2: the Sun and the moon or in many cases, God
Speaker 2: is trying to tell us something and we need to
Speaker 2: decipher what it is.
Speaker 3: So, and the New Madrid fault is under the earth,
Speaker 3: it's under.
Speaker 2: Its fault line. Yes, plates meet each other.
Speaker 3: And New Madrid is the name of the fall. It's
Speaker 3: not the name of the town in Illinois.
Speaker 2: It's the name of the fall. There might be a
Speaker 2: New Madrid that it's named after.
Speaker 3: But I'm saying is do you think property values went
Speaker 3: up or down upon learning that this That X marks
Speaker 3: the spot and they're not going to find treasure there?
Speaker 2: Great question?
Speaker 3: Or is it treasure? Is it treasure? Should we go?
Speaker 2: Nobody thought of this?
Speaker 3: Hold on? Let mex usually marks the spot for treasure.
Speaker 2: Let me run you through what happened, and then we
Speaker 2: can discuss the treasure hunt. Because you might be onto
Speaker 2: something that nobody else thought of.
Speaker 3: Here I'd love it. So usually am a.
Speaker 2: Whole ecosystem of online prophecies took this X and ran
Speaker 2: straight into the sun with it. The claims piled up.
Speaker 2: The twenty seventeen path crossed over seven American towns named Salem,
Speaker 2: which means peace, and the twenty twenty four path was
Speaker 2: going to cross seven towns named Nineveh, the city the
Speaker 2: prophet Jonah was sent to warn. For some reason, this
Speaker 2: all meant that the eclipse was God literally drawing an
Speaker 2: ex to mark America for judgment and quote at least
Speaker 2: one person upon that these two solar eclipses are separated
Speaker 2: by six years, six months, six weeks, six days, and
Speaker 2: six minutes, which besides not being completely accurate, ends up
Speaker 2: being six six six six six, which is five sixes. Yes,
Speaker 2: it's not even six sixes. Yeah, some people added six
Speaker 2: seconds to it, but everybody knew that was like clearly bullshit.
Speaker 2: But yes, as somebody else pointed out, we were just
Speaker 2: talking about this in a different episode, or maybe it
Speaker 2: was a bonus episode. But when you do something like
Speaker 2: six years, six months, six weeks, six days, you're just
Speaker 2: kind of shifting around. You can make anything fit that,
Speaker 2: because you could say six and a half years instead
Speaker 2: of six years six months, like you're forcing it into
Speaker 2: a pattern.
Speaker 3: Or just go by months, or just go by minutes.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, you could go by six hundred and sixty
Speaker 2: six months if the years and the months don't line
Speaker 2: up or whatever. In an unusual twist for this kind
Speaker 2: of religious prophetic madness, one of the most thorough debunkings
Speaker 2: of the X over America means the end Times is coming.
Speaker 2: Stuff came from no less than a creationist astronomer, a
Speaker 2: guy who works for a Young Earth ministry, which if
Speaker 2: you're unfamiliar with Young Earth, it's the idea that the
Speaker 2: Earth is only six thousand years old, as claimed in
Speaker 2: the Bible.
Speaker 3: Or if the dinosaur bones like the devil.
Speaker 2: The dinosaur bones. The theory I heard growing up was
Speaker 2: that dinosaur bones were placed in the ground by God
Speaker 2: as a test to see if we would be able
Speaker 2: to discern that they were not real because they didn't
Speaker 2: fit into the timeline of the Young Earth.
Speaker 3: Creation is pretty ridiculous. It seems like God's get better
Speaker 3: things to do, you would think. I mean, also, he's
Speaker 3: constantly putting people through trials Old God, Old Testament God.
Speaker 2: It could also have been a trick of the devil
Speaker 2: putting the bones there a trick power. I mean, who knows,
Speaker 2: I don't know what His bone budget is probably hot
Speaker 2: after the fall. He's the devil. His blood budget in
Speaker 2: his bone budget is through the roof. I find I've
Speaker 2: seen a picture of hell. There's a lot of fire too.
Speaker 3: Well. A person is most synonymous read usually when your
Speaker 3: ledgers in the red, you're pretty broke. So I don't
Speaker 3: know what he can do this long walk we got there.
Speaker 2: This is a guy who very much believes in biblical
Speaker 2: prophecy in general, and even his quote, my favorite quote
Speaker 2: of his at least is there are many sources promoting
Speaker 2: the claim that this eclipse signals God's judgment on the
Speaker 2: United States. You may wonder how this could be, seeing
Speaker 2: that the United States is not clearly identified in scripture.
Speaker 2: This claim is the product of extra biblical speculation that
Speaker 2: amounts to a Rorschach test. So, in other words, anyone
Speaker 2: can see anything in anything, which I'd argue this guy
Speaker 2: probably does with regularly in other ways. But good for
Speaker 2: him for, you know, for stepping up.
Speaker 3: To being an originalist when it comes to.
Speaker 2: So I guess I want to wrap this episode up
Speaker 2: by saying that for as off base as a lot
Speaker 2: of these fears about eclipses are or were, I think
Speaker 2: the explanation as to why we have a innate fear
Speaker 2: of a total solar eclipse is buried way down in
Speaker 2: our reptile brains, because if you ever have the chance
Speaker 2: to experience standing in the totality of an.
Speaker 3: Eclipse, I don't think I'll have the money.
Speaker 2: You may not, but if anybody else out there has,
Speaker 2: or born to be, or wants to, you know that
Speaker 2: it's a much weirder feeling than just it gets dark.
Speaker 2: There's a temperature drop associated with it. It drops fast,
Speaker 2: sometimes as much as ten degrees, and right before the
Speaker 2: sun vanishes, there are these faint, rippling bands of shadows
Speaker 2: that race across the ground called shadow bands, that look
Speaker 2: kind of like if you look at the light at
Speaker 2: the bottom of a swimming pool. Scientists still to this
Speaker 2: day have no idea what causes the shadow band, sort of.
Speaker 3: Like atmospheric pressure thing or something in probably when you
Speaker 3: look to a telescope and it's a wavy.
Speaker 2: But it's still something that is weird that we don't
Speaker 2: fully understand why it happens, and animals know that something
Speaker 2: is wrong too. During the twenty seventeen eclipse, there was
Speaker 2: a study at a zoo in South Carolina in which
Speaker 2: researchers watch seventeen species during the eclipse, and the majority
Speaker 2: of them reacted to it, flipping straight into their nighttime routines.
Speaker 2: In the middle of the afternoon, the giraffes, which apparently
Speaker 2: almost never run, started galloping, so they.
Speaker 3: Do at night. I don't know nighttime routine.
Speaker 2: I don't know that all of these things are night
Speaker 2: Some of them did nighttime routines, like the gorillas started
Speaker 2: to get ready for bed. The giraffes started galloping. The tortoises,
Speaker 2: of all things, began mating. The animals went crazy. They
Speaker 2: they all kind of wigged out when the sun disappeared
Speaker 2: in the middle of the day.
Speaker 3: It also sounds like this is all shit they do
Speaker 3: as soon as we go to sleep. They're like toy
Speaker 3: story toys.
Speaker 2: All the animals at the zoo get up to no good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, those eyes.
Speaker 2: And I think for humans, you know, we're animals too,
Speaker 2: And even though we know everything that we know about
Speaker 2: eclipses now, there is a part of our brain that
Speaker 2: I think is still unable to comprehend the scale of
Speaker 2: something like an eclipse and the fact that our senses
Speaker 2: tell us, oh, something's happening here, this light's going away,
Speaker 2: it's getting cold like that is a panic sensation that
Speaker 2: throughout the ages and probably forever, will cause people to
Speaker 2: tell stories and tales and whatever about eclipses.
Speaker 3: I think there's also an inherent irrational thing that might
Speaker 3: happen where it's like the sun is kind of when
Speaker 3: you get your work done when the sun's out, doing
Speaker 3: anything by fire sucks. Having lights made that infinitely better.
Speaker 3: It's a sense of warmth like the sun is like warmth.
Speaker 3: The sun is life, Yeah, gives life to fucking plants
Speaker 3: and blah blah blah. So the idea that it can
Speaker 3: like go away and maybe this will be the time
Speaker 3: it doesn't come back, it might be like an irrational
Speaker 3: but maybe embedded fear. I think so.
Speaker 2: I think it's not something that we necessarily even of.
Speaker 2: It's just not something it's it's in a way, I
Speaker 2: think it's a little similar to what you were just
Speaker 2: saying about circus tents that show up where they shouldn't be.
Speaker 2: Your brain's just like whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa,
Speaker 2: whoa WHOA.
Speaker 3: I drive by this every day and I don't see
Speaker 3: traveling people, Yeah, traveling creeps.
Speaker 2: And even even beyond the fear of an eclipse, I think,
Speaker 2: more than anything, if you're able to observe the one
Speaker 2: coming up next week, or if you're able to observe
Speaker 2: any eclipse in the future, I think they are really
Speaker 2: a majestic event that we should embrace the opportunity to witness,
Speaker 2: because they can be stirring in a way that most
Speaker 2: other natural events aren't. Really, because they are such an
Speaker 2: epic site.
Speaker 3: In a global event. Even if it's not even if
Speaker 3: you're not catching it totally, you're happing Son's happening where
Speaker 3: you're are. I thinkthing's happening where you are.
Speaker 2: I think I think this quote from David Baron's twenty
Speaker 2: seventeen book American Eclipse, a nation's epic race to catch
Speaker 2: the shadow of the moon and win the glory of
Speaker 2: the world great title wraps it up, wraps up this
Speaker 2: episode for us well. Quote. Toting smartphones and clad in
Speaker 2: synthetic fibers, millions of Americans will travel to the path
Speaker 2: of the eclipse by air and interstate highway. They'll consider
Speaker 2: themselves knowledgeable and worldly, more sophisticated surely than their forebears,
Speaker 2: who viewed the same site with superstition and religious fervor.
Speaker 2: These modern Americans will act as if they are heading
Speaker 2: to an athletic event, eager to watch the Moon conquer
Speaker 2: the Sun. They will learn, however, that a total eclipse
Speaker 2: is no spectator sport. It is a primal experience that
Speaker 2: connects us to the universe and also bridges the span
Speaker 2: of history. Now, this next thing he wrote in the
Speaker 2: lead up to the twenty seventeen eclipse. So he wrote,
Speaker 2: the world may not end on August twenty first, but
Speaker 2: lives will change. Some who stand in the path of
Speaker 2: the Moon's shadow will look up and find God. Others
Speaker 2: will discover a passion for science, a desire to understand
Speaker 2: the workings of the Sun and the Solar system. All, meanwhile,
Speaker 2: will gain a new sense of kinship with generations of
Speaker 2: the past and future. Clips baffles the mind and pierces
Speaker 2: the soul, as it always has and always will. It
Speaker 2: reminds us of our common, fragile humanity. So with that said, ed,
Speaker 2: where are you putting solar eclipses on your fear Tier one?
Speaker 3: The fear of not being able to get to the
Speaker 3: next one to see it in person is higher.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is actually I guess the Summer of Fear.
Speaker 2: In addition to Mermaids, this will now be our second
Speaker 2: fear that we're putting it a one on the fear tier.
Speaker 2: But you know what, we're evening it out with some
Speaker 2: really high placed fears too. But I also put a
Speaker 2: solar eclipse out of one. As long as you don't
Speaker 2: look at it, it's fine. You definitely should try to
Speaker 2: experience one. It is much of a totality of one
Speaker 2: as you can, if you ever can. They are awesome
Speaker 2: and they will expand your mind just being there. So
Speaker 2: go out and catch one. And until then the show
Speaker 2: is Scared All the Time. I'm Chris Klari and I'm Edvacola,
Speaker 2: and we will see you on the other side of
Speaker 2: the eclipse.
Speaker 3: Oh shit, bye bye bye. Scared All the Time is
Speaker 3: co produced by Chris Calari and Edvacola.
Speaker 2: Written by Chris Calari.
Speaker 3: Edited by Edvacola.
Speaker 2: Additional support and Keeper of Sanity is test Fiful.
Speaker 3: Our theme song is the track Scared by Perpetual Stu
Speaker 3: and Mister Disclaimer is and just a reminder, you can
Speaker 3: now support the podcast on Patreon. You get all kinds
Speaker 3: of cool shit in return, depending on the tear you choose.
Speaker 3: We'll be offering everything from ad free episodes, producer credits,
Speaker 3: exclusive access, and exclusive merch.
Speaker 2: So go sign up for a Patreon and Scared All
Speaker 2: the Time podcast dot.
Speaker 3: Com don't want to be full steady caps welcome.
Speaker 1: No part of the show can be reproduced anywhere without
Speaker 1: permission copyright Astonishing.
Speaker 2: Legends Production Night. We are in this together together to
Speaker 2: gother