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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 1: Joe is filling in for Julie this week. You probably

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Speaker 1: know Joe from Forward Thinking, our sister podcast and show brand.

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Speaker 1: Uh and we're talking about the eclipse. The eclipse, Yes,

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Speaker 1: the power of eclipse. That nicotine gum the name of this,

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Speaker 1: No way that I think it might just be a

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Speaker 1: regular gum. Okay, maybe available on nicotings later. I don't no.

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Speaker 1: Eclipses our thing that they are both sort of mundane

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Speaker 1: in physical terms, but also quite stunning and terrifying and

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Speaker 1: significant throughout the history of humanity, significant to the observer. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because I just want to try to imagine. I know

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Speaker 1: you can't really put yourself in this headspace, but just

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Speaker 1: try to imagine what it would be like to sort

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Speaker 1: of live in a pre scientific time. Maybe you're you're

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Speaker 1: part of a you know, a hunter gatherer tribe somewhere

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Speaker 1: in the world, and for the first time in your life,

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Speaker 1: something very strange happens. One day, the sky starts to

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Speaker 1: go dark and you see a black disc pass in

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Speaker 1: front of the sun until there's just a ring of

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Speaker 1: white fire and the the it's dark in the middle

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Speaker 1: of the daytime. You don't know what's going on or

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Speaker 1: what's causing this. I have to imagine that it would

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Speaker 1: be absolutely terrifying and and completely bizarre. Yeah, I mean

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Speaker 1: the cycle of night and day, you know, the one

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Speaker 1: of the guiding uh, factors of your life. Even with

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Speaker 1: the gay, the guiding factors for any organism, and some

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Speaker 1: of the earliest organisms were still based on recognizing when

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Speaker 1: it was dark and when it was daylight. And suddenly

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Speaker 1: that seems to be thrown out the window by there's

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Speaker 1: a random chaotic event. Yeah. Well, i'd say upsetting the

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Speaker 1: clear division between night and day is like one of

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Speaker 1: the most perverse things you could do to a biological organism.

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Speaker 1: I mean, the sun, it's it's the mother of all

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Speaker 1: on Earth. When you think about it, all energy on

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Speaker 1: Earth is solar energy. Pretty much all all the energy

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Speaker 1: we consume, you know, all the food we eat is

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Speaker 1: a few steps down the chain, but it's solar energy. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And so it's just kind of amazing to imagine not

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Speaker 1: knowing what's going on, but seeing that that mother of

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Speaker 1: all life suddenly blotted out. And of course maybe not

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Speaker 1: equally astounding, but also very strange and and perhaps perverse

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Speaker 1: and upsetting is the lunar eclipse. Uh, seeing something happen

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Speaker 1: to the moon which to you might have been some

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Speaker 1: kind of god or have some other kind of magical significance,

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Speaker 1: seeing it change colors, or seeing a shadow pass in

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Speaker 1: front of it. Um. So, yeah, I think eclipses are

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Speaker 1: going to be a really interesting thing to talk about.

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Speaker 1: So you might have heard a couple of years ago

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Speaker 1: that the Mayan calendar predicted the end of the world.

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Speaker 1: You remember this, I remember hearing a little about it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: way too much. Oh, I got so sick of hearing

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Speaker 1: about that. But maybe it's just now been long enough

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Speaker 1: that we can bring it up again without making people

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Speaker 1: grown too much. But it was supposed to end in

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Speaker 1: December twelve. Well, not only did the world not end,

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Speaker 1: but the Mayan calendar, actually, this is funny, didn't predict

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Speaker 1: the end of the world. Did you know this at

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Speaker 1: the time? Um, I don't think I was that informed

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Speaker 1: about it. But and it also it was just bombarded

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Speaker 1: with that idea of you know, Mayan apocalypse. Yeah, so

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Speaker 1: around that time was basically the end of their long

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Speaker 1: calendar cycle, which would reset afterwards, so it wasn't really

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Speaker 1: a judgment day. It was more like their December thirty first.

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Speaker 1: If they had a really, really really long year, it

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Speaker 1: would be like somebody looking back at our calendar system

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Speaker 1: and thinking of the end of the year, is the

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Speaker 1: the end of the of an era, at the end

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Speaker 1: of an age and apocalypse? Right, And so they didn't

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Speaker 1: predict the end of the world there, but the Mayan

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Speaker 1: astronomical calendar actually did make some interesting astronomical predictions. For example,

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Speaker 1: there's a book called Astronomy and the Maya Codessees by

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Speaker 1: Harvey and Victoria Bricker. So they discussed the ancient Maya

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Speaker 1: Mayan astronomical calendars and and they discuss some dating back

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Speaker 1: to the eleventh or twelfth centuries CE. And they say

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Speaker 1: that these ancient calendars that the Maya had predict the

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Speaker 1: date of a solar eclipse that would have been visible

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Speaker 1: in July of ninete within about a day of accuracy.

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Speaker 1: And it kind of makes you wonder why predicting an

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Speaker 1: eclipse would be that important to them. I mean, it's

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Speaker 1: not like it had any real like physical effects of

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Speaker 1: much significance on Earth. You know, it didn't like it

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Speaker 1: wasn't that an eclipse would like destroy all their crops

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Speaker 1: or something. So what did it mean? Well, it, I

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Speaker 1: mean a lot of it really comes down to, of course,

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Speaker 1: there's cosmology, your understanding of what you are as a

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Speaker 1: people and what the what the world is, and then

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Speaker 1: what the cosmos means. Uh, as well as just basic

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Speaker 1: record keeping basic uh observation of the movement of the

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Speaker 1: spheres and using this as a as a as a

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Speaker 1: way to divide out time. UH. The ancient Maya believed

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Speaker 1: in in recurring cycles of creation and destruction, and they

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Speaker 1: believe that life was composed of eras lasting around in

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Speaker 1: modern years, it would be around a fifty two hundred

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Speaker 1: year periods. They believe in a flat, four cornered earth

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Speaker 1: that was has been described as being like that of

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Speaker 1: the back of a crocodile that's resting in the water,

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Speaker 1: you know where it's just the back is emerging. And

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Speaker 1: you know. There was additional stuff about the four corners

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Speaker 1: and the corresponding gods and UH. And of course there

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Speaker 1: are also a lot of rituals in life that are

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Speaker 1: dictated by this two hundred and sixty day sacred round calendar.

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Speaker 1: So within my culture, you have these priests, these are

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Speaker 1: these are the guys that are that are tasked with

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Speaker 1: with taking care of upkeep of the calendar as well

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Speaker 1: as astronomy. So they're calculating time. Uh, They're they're figuring

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Speaker 1: out when festivals should occur, when ceremonies are occurring, uh,

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Speaker 1: certain fateful days and seasons. They're divining the future. Uh,

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Speaker 1: they're they're trying to figure out the cures for diseases.

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Speaker 1: They're writing about it all, and they're keeping track of

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Speaker 1: the various genealogies. So in a sense, they are they're

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Speaker 1: the keepers of time. They're concerned with Mayan time and

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Speaker 1: uh and the Mayan people's place in the universe. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and obviously to the to the Maya, astronomical events had

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Speaker 1: real significance, like that they might believe that an astronomical

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Speaker 1: portent could give them real information about what would happen

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Speaker 1: to them, you know, like it could it could bring

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Speaker 1: something bad that would be dangerous, or it could bring

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Speaker 1: a good omen So you actually really wanted to be

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Speaker 1: able to predict and understand astronomical events. And of course

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Speaker 1: the Maya weren't weren't the only ones who had believes

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Speaker 1: like this. This is very common all around the world,

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Speaker 1: Like the ancient Chinese were very concerned with being able

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Speaker 1: to predict eclipses, even the you know, the Anti Kithera mechanism. Yes,

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Speaker 1: this is sometimes heard to as the world's first computer

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Speaker 1: or like the oldest astronomical calculator in existence. It's a

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Speaker 1: mechanical computer that's you know, I think more than two

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Speaker 1: thousand years old, that was discovered in a shipwreck in

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Speaker 1: the Mediterranean off the coast I believe of the island Antikithera.

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Speaker 1: And so they bring this thing up and people have

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Speaker 1: been studying it and putting together reconstructions of it. And

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Speaker 1: what the people who have studied this mechanism, uh decided

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Speaker 1: is that, oh, yeah, so this was an ancient astronomical

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Speaker 1: calculator that if you wound the gears, it would tell

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Speaker 1: you the placement of different celestial objects and it would

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Speaker 1: predict eclipses. So the ancient Greeks or whoever invented this

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Speaker 1: amazingly advanced mechanism for the time. We're also very concerned

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Speaker 1: with being able to know when was an eclipse going

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Speaker 1: to happen, So we're gonna come back and discuss the

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Speaker 1: human significance of eclipse more in a few minutes, But

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Speaker 1: first we really need to break down the basic science

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Speaker 1: of the eclipse, the basic celestial mechanics, uh, that are

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Speaker 1: in play here. Okay, Robert, tell me a word that's

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Speaker 1: hard to pronounce. Oh, well, you know I can. I

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Speaker 1: can probably stumble over any number of difficult words pronounced,

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Speaker 1: but the one in question here is ziziggi, which is ziziggi,

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Speaker 1: zizigi which is s y z y g y um,

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Speaker 1: which is uh. It's like they were playing a joke

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Speaker 1: on you. Yeah, I mean, and it only just makes

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Speaker 1: me think of Ziggy the cartoon character. But but you know,

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Speaker 1: it comes from Ziggy Stardust or Ziggy start us. That's

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Speaker 1: why am I going to Ziggi the cartoon character instead

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Speaker 1: of Bowie. I don't know, um, but it's a It

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Speaker 1: comes from from the Greek um ziogos, which means yoke together.

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Speaker 1: Because ultimately we are talking about about convergence here, right,

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Speaker 1: So every eclipse is a ziziggi, but not every ziziggi

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Speaker 1: is an eclipse. When when a ziggi he occurs with

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Speaker 1: celestial bodies, we're talking about a nearly straight line configuration

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Speaker 1: of three celestial bodies. In this case, we're talking about

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Speaker 1: uh configurations that involved the Sun, Moon, and the Earth

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Speaker 1: lining up within a gravitation gravitational system. It also refers

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Speaker 1: to when the Sun and the Moon are in conjunction,

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Speaker 1: such as a new moon or in opposition, a full moon.

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Speaker 1: So those are examples. Those those A full moon is

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Speaker 1: a ziziggi. But obviously a full moon is not necessarily

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Speaker 1: an eclipse. Okay, you need a full moon for a

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Speaker 1: linear eclipse, but more on that later, right, Yeah, okay,

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Speaker 1: so I get that. So ziziggi ziziggi, Yes, from the Greek.

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Speaker 1: Where does the word eclipse come from? Well, with eclips

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Speaker 1: we have to go back to the Greek as well,

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Speaker 1: back to eclipses from eclip in, which means to omit fail, suffer, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: Uh man see but this kind of dire I mean,

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Speaker 1: it kind of drives home the fact that throughout human

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Speaker 1: history like this is how we view eclipse. It is

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Speaker 1: a thing of of dire omen totally. Well, okay, let's

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Speaker 1: look at how lunar eclipses work first, and then we

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Speaker 1: can turn the solar eclipses Okay, so pop quiz, which

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Speaker 1: is which we you know that one you know that

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Speaker 1: one is the Earth blocking light from reflecting off the Moon,

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Speaker 1: and the other is the Moon blocking the direct light

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Speaker 1: from the Sun that we receive on Earth. But which

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Speaker 1: is which? Oh? I mean? So you're basically for a

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Speaker 1: solar eclipse, a solar eclipse to occur, the Moon has

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Speaker 1: to be in the way, right, So for a solar eclipse,

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Speaker 1: the easy way to remember is that you're naming the

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Speaker 1: object that's being obscured. So for a solar eclipse that's

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Speaker 1: blocking the light from the Sun, the lunar eclipse is

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Speaker 1: blocking the reflected light from the Moon. So the lunar

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Speaker 1: eclipse happens. It's actually, in the most basic terms, really simple.

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Speaker 1: It's when the Moon passes into the shadow of Earth. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And when we describe these it will probably really help

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Speaker 1: if you will try to do our best. But if

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Speaker 1: you look at a picture, this is inherently kind of

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Speaker 1: a geometrical or ual phenomenon. You can only say so

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Speaker 1: much with words. Um, But if you picture the Earth

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Speaker 1: orbiting the Sun and then the Moon orbiting the Earth,

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Speaker 1: every now and then the orbits line up so that

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Speaker 1: the Moon is directly behind the Earth with respect to

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Speaker 1: the Sun. And of course the light we see from

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Speaker 1: the moon doesn't come from the Moon, it's reflected from

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Speaker 1: the Sun. So if you block the light, you know

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Speaker 1: with the Earth's shadow, you're gonna not see much light

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Speaker 1: reflected from the moon, or you're gonna see maybe some

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Speaker 1: strange colors. So it's like standing in front of a

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Speaker 1: movie projection camera facing the screen and you're suddenly asking yourself,

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Speaker 1: where did the movie go? Well, the movie is on

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Speaker 1: your back now because you're standing in front of the rejector.

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Speaker 1: That's a good analogy. Yeah, okay, so the Earth, there

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Speaker 1: there are two cone shaped shadows that come off of

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Speaker 1: the Earth, and one is sort of the the outward

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Speaker 1: spreading one, and one is sort of the inward focusing one.

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Speaker 1: The outward spreading one is known as the pin numbra.

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Speaker 1: That it's the more diffuse shadow. So that's kind of

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Speaker 1: a faint shadow, and you've probably seen, you know yourself,

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Speaker 1: in various scenarios that you're actually casting sort of more

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Speaker 1: than one shadow, kind of a faint, bigger shadow, and

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Speaker 1: then a smaller, more concentrated shadow, and then of course

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Speaker 1: the the middle focused inner shadow is the umbra, and

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Speaker 1: that's going to be the very dark area that the

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Speaker 1: Earth is blocking out a big majority of the Sun's light.

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Speaker 1: The pannumbra in cases the umbra, so the pannumbra is wide,

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Speaker 1: the umbra is small. In the middle of that is

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Speaker 1: futtle bull's eye there in the umbre. Because a lunar

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Speaker 1: eclipse can only happen when the Moon is behind the Earth,

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Speaker 1: that means that a lunar eclipse also only happens during

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Speaker 1: a full moon. A full moon is when the you know,

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Speaker 1: the Moon is behind the Earth, reflecting its full face

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Speaker 1: to the Earth. It's it's not getting a partially out

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Speaker 1: of view, but the Moon orbits the Earth all the time,

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Speaker 1: like it makes a full circle roughly every month, right,

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Speaker 1: So why don't we see a lunar eclipse every full moon?

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Speaker 1: Why don't we see a lunar eclipse every time the

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Speaker 1: Moon is on the opposite side of the Earth. So

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Speaker 1: you can imagine the Earth and the Sun together on

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Speaker 1: what's called an ecliptic plane. They're sort of like sitting

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Speaker 1: on a flat surface together. You imagine that's a flat surface,

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Speaker 1: and the Moon actually does not orbit the Earth on

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Speaker 1: exactly that same plane. It's not flat with the Sun

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Speaker 1: and the Earth. It's at a five degree angle from

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Speaker 1: that orbit. So if you can imagine this, and it

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Speaker 1: probably again will help if you look at a picture, Uh,

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Speaker 1: the Earth's orbiting the Sun on a flat plane, and

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Speaker 1: then the Moon is orbiting the Earth slightly diagonally. So

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Speaker 1: every now and then it is just lined up on

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Speaker 1: the sort of up and down y axis with where

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Speaker 1: the Sun and the Earth are, and other times it's

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Speaker 1: above or below. Okay, So the rotation of the Earth

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Speaker 1: is like a brimmed hat that's just on perfectly, whereas

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Speaker 1: the Moon's rotation is a cocked hat. Yeah, that's exactly right.

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Speaker 1: So those places where the Moon crosses the ecliptic plane

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Speaker 1: of the of the Sun and the Earth, those are

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Speaker 1: called nodes, and that's where it's lined up correctly to

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Speaker 1: be caught right in the middle of of the possible

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Speaker 1: eclipse shadow that's being cast by the Earth. When those

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Speaker 1: orbits line up perfectly like that is when you're going

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Speaker 1: to see a lunar eclipse. It's when the Moon is

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Speaker 1: it just the right hy coordinate on this graph. So

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Speaker 1: remember those two different shadows I talked about. You have

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Speaker 1: the the the umbra and the pin umbra and the

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Speaker 1: pin numbre the big shadow. When the moon passes into

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Speaker 1: that shadow, sometimes you will get like a pinnumber a

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Speaker 1: lunar eclipse, and that can be difficult to see right

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Speaker 1: because that shadow isn't so so dense, it's not going

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Speaker 1: to block out as much light. And then you can

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Speaker 1: also get a partial lunar eclipse where you know, only

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Speaker 1: part of the moon is blocked out by the shadow.

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Speaker 1: That the really impressive one you want to see is

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Speaker 1: the total lunar eclipse where it's just right to pass

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Speaker 1: into the umbro, you know, that deep center shadow, and

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Speaker 1: that's where the magic happens. And so a lunar eclipses

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Speaker 1: are pretty rare. On average, they can happen about three

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Speaker 1: times a year, though you can have a year where

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Speaker 1: you don't have any eclipses, any lunar eclipses at all

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Speaker 1: um And then about a third of these are the

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Speaker 1: pin number ones that are harder to see cool, and

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Speaker 1: that brings us to solar eclipses. And again it comes

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Speaker 1: down to three bodies, you know, again sort of the

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Speaker 1: projector something in the way of the projector in the screen.

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Speaker 1: But in this case, a solar eclipse is occurring when

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Speaker 1: the Moon passes into direct line between the Earth and

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Speaker 1: the Sun. So we're the screen as opposed to the

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Speaker 1: individual standing in front of the screen in my projector

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Speaker 1: analogy here, and solar eclipses are only possible during the

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Speaker 1: new moon phase. Uh. This is when the Moon essentially

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Speaker 1: plays monkey in the middle Sun and Earth when you

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Speaker 1: normally wouldn't see it. Right. So what happens here is

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Speaker 1: the Moon's shadow travels over the Earth's surface and blocks

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Speaker 1: out the Sun's light as seen from Earth. Again, it

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Speaker 1: all comes down to the observer. Because the Moon's the

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Speaker 1: moon orbits the Earth at an angle as we already discussed,

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Speaker 1: approximately five degrees tilted. The Moon crosses the Earth's over

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Speaker 1: doll plane only twice a year, and these team times

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Speaker 1: are called eclipse seasons because they are the only times

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Speaker 1: when eclipses can occur. So for an eclipse to take place,

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Speaker 1: the Moon must be in just the correct phase during

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Speaker 1: an eclipse season. Uh, and then that's when the solar

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Speaker 1: eclipse occurs. The condition makes this extremely rare. Now, the

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Speaker 1: Moon's shadow, as we already mentioned, you have the central

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Speaker 1: umbra and then the outer pannumbra. Depending on which part

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Speaker 1: of the shadow passes over you, you'll see one of

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Speaker 1: three different types of solar eclipses. Because as you've as

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Speaker 1: you've probably noted if you've done any kind of reading,

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Speaker 1: you know, online, where you're like, when's the next eclipse occurring?

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Speaker 1: How am I going to see a solar eclipse? Solar

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Speaker 1: eclipse depends on where you are. Yeah, it depends greatly

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Speaker 1: on where you are. I mean, I'm already looking ahead

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Speaker 1: to the next one, and I think, all right, how

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Speaker 1: far do I have to drive? I think I have

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Speaker 1: to drive to Kentucky to really get a good view

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Speaker 1: of it. And I'm and I'm already thinking about my

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Speaker 1: eclipse tourism, because yeah, you could get a total uh

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Speaker 1: solar eclipse, and clearly this is the one you want

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Speaker 1: to drive for the entire central portion of the Sun

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Speaker 1: is blocked out. This is your big iconic Oh my god,

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Speaker 1: the world is ending eclipse, right, But then there's the

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Speaker 1: partial eclipse where only part of the Sun's surfaces blocked out. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And then there's an annuler and this is when only

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Speaker 1: a small ring like sliver of light is seen from

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Speaker 1: the Sun's disc. Yeah, you can you can actually observe

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Speaker 1: the Sun's corona sort of like a plasma halo of

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Speaker 1: the Sun around the outside of the black disc, which

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Speaker 1: is also pretty Oh my god, the world is gonna end.

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Speaker 1: Um And that's a solar eclipse. That's how that works. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we did our best with words. Again, look at a picture. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And also I'm gonna make sure to link out to

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Speaker 1: our how stuff works articles on the landing page for

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Speaker 1: this episode. We have an article about solar eclipses and

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Speaker 1: we have an article about lunar eclipses. Both of those

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Speaker 1: have illustrations that will really help you at a better

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Speaker 1: grash than what's happening here, as well as more in

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Speaker 1: depth explanations. Right. Uh. And we're eventually going to get

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Speaker 1: back to what eclipses mean to us in a kind

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Speaker 1: of like a dark and magical way. But eclipses also

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Speaker 1: do have scientific significance, and I think we should examine

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Speaker 1: those claims, both the real scientific significance and the ones

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Speaker 1: that have been maybe proposed but not quite validated. Yeah. Indeed,

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Speaker 1: and something you might not even think about, like I

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Speaker 1: had not really thought about the effect of a solar

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Speaker 1: eclipse on terrestrial wind wind, Yeah, which of course makes

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Speaker 1: perfect sense, right, because the Sun and its effect on

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Speaker 1: the Earth is doing a lot of the work in

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Speaker 1: UH in stirring our our atmosphere into the weather patterns

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Speaker 1: that we perceive. Yeah, I mean a lot of what

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Speaker 1: wind is is exchanging gas from one place to another

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Speaker 1: because of heat differentials. And when you block out the Sun,

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Speaker 1: obviously you're you're creating as kind of disturbance in the

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Speaker 1: normal solar radiation levels you're getting in a certain area. Indeed,

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Speaker 1: and UH. In two thousand twelve, a study from the

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Speaker 1: University of Reading looked into this UH and found that

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Speaker 1: solar eclipses due in fact UH slow the wind down

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Speaker 1: and make it change directions. This is a team of

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Speaker 1: scientists led by Dr Suzanne Gray, and they compared hourly

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Speaker 1: measurements of wind speed and direction from a hundred and

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Speaker 1: twenty one weather stations across southern England during the August

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Speaker 1: total solar eclipse. Then they compared these to a high

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Speaker 1: resolution weather forecast model UH that did not account for

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Speaker 1: a solar eclipse. So every what they found is that

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Speaker 1: everything lined up on these two different accounts. The model

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Speaker 1: that the computer model that does not have an eclipse,

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Speaker 1: and then reality which has an eclipse, everything lines up

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Speaker 1: right until you get to the eclipse point. Uh. So

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Speaker 1: they got to see what the weather would have been

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Speaker 1: like without the eclipse occurring at that diversion point, and

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Speaker 1: these were the results. They found that average wind speed

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Speaker 1: across a cloud free region over southern England dropped by

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Speaker 1: point seven meters per second, and that the winds direction

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Speaker 1: turned counterclockwise by an average of seventeen degrees. So effectively,

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Speaker 1: the eclipse was causing the winds to become more easternly,

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Speaker 1: and temperatures also fell by about one degree celsius. Oh

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Speaker 1: so did they know that the reason why it was

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Speaker 1: changing the mother Was it what I was saying earlier

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Speaker 1: about changing the temperature and solar radiation or did it

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Speaker 1: have more to do with gravity from the sun and

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Speaker 1: the moon. Well, I mean, temperatures fall and there's no

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Speaker 1: sunlight obviously, as we see in our regular play of

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Speaker 1: night and day. So so that was expected. Wind slow

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Speaker 1: went atmosphere um close to the ground cool, So that

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Speaker 1: was to be expected, But the changes in wind direction

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Speaker 1: were a bit of a surprise. I wonder what could

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Speaker 1: caused that? Well, I mean a lot of it just

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Speaker 1: comes down to just the complexity of of of weather models,

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Speaker 1: you know, and uh, and just how many different factors

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Speaker 1: are playing into windspeed in direction right, butterflight's the sun

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Speaker 1: in New York, you get rained instead of I mean exactly.

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Speaker 1: So that's when we get the butterfly effect. We get

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Speaker 1: the the idea of chaos area, and that stems out

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Speaker 1: of our attempts to forecast weather in this entirely complex system.

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Speaker 1: Here's one I've heard. I remember reading somewhere that apparently

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Speaker 1: animals go nuts during an eclipse. Now is this true

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Speaker 1: or is this a bunch of bunk? I believe this

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Speaker 1: is a bunch of buck based on the research that

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Speaker 1: I was looking at. Um basically across the board. There's

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Speaker 1: there's no there's no you know, um preternatural response by

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Speaker 1: animals to eclipse. Uh. They simply tend to react to

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Speaker 1: the darkness as if it were occurring during a typical cycle. Uh. So,

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Speaker 1: for instance, scientists have observed this in the vertical migration

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Speaker 1: of zooplankton in the ocean due to lunar eclipses, as

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Speaker 1: well as I mean countless higher animals when it comes

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Speaker 1: to solar eclipses. Because of course, that's the more drastic change. Uh,

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Speaker 1: that's weird. I mean, intuitively, I would think it would

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Speaker 1: make a big difference. Like if you know, animals have

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Speaker 1: circadian rhythms, and you know, rhythms that are based on

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Speaker 1: the cycle of night and day and that are tied

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Speaker 1: to all kinds of biological processes, not just sleep and wake,

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Speaker 1: but lots of things in your body. Um, I would

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Speaker 1: think if if the darkness comes before you're expecting it,

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Speaker 1: that would throw you all out of whack. Well basically,

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Speaker 1: I mean it comes down to you have daytime mode

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Speaker 1: and nighttime mode, right, and if it seems like suddenly

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Speaker 1: it's getting dark, well it's time to shift into nighttime mode.

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Speaker 1: And that's that's pretty much what a lot of uh.

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Speaker 1: The research out there has shown that that roughly speaking,

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Speaker 1: diurnal animals react as though night we're approaching, UH, as

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Speaker 1: demonstrated in you know, expedited roosting and betting behavior. And

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Speaker 1: in contrast, animals that are normally active at night, nocturnal

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Speaker 1: you know, animals like bats and whatnot, they may show

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Speaker 1: the reverse pattern. So they're emerging into the open as

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Speaker 1: if the as the sky darkens during an eclipse. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's not there's not animals going crazy in the streets.

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Speaker 1: They're not you know, wolves, They're not howling out of madness.

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Speaker 1: It's just a gentle shift into sort of early nighttime,

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Speaker 1: and then oaps, it's not nighttime after are all go

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Speaker 1: back to your regularly scheduled program. Here's something I don't

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Speaker 1: know if I've ever seen addressed in the werewolf literature.

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Speaker 1: What happens during a lunar eclipse. So let's say you're

427
00:23:11,480 --> 00:23:14,280
Speaker 1: a werewolf. Your transformation is triggered by the appearance of

428
00:23:14,320 --> 00:23:17,480
Speaker 1: the full moon. So full moon's out, but suddenly it

429
00:23:17,560 --> 00:23:21,200
Speaker 1: passes into the umbra, and you've not got a full

430
00:23:21,200 --> 00:23:23,320
Speaker 1: moon anymore, at least not got a normal full moon.

431
00:23:23,359 --> 00:23:26,840
Speaker 1: You've got an eclipsed full moon. What happens to your body?

432
00:23:27,160 --> 00:23:30,560
Speaker 1: I would think that wolf mode is canceled at that point, Yeah,

433
00:23:30,640 --> 00:23:32,679
Speaker 1: I would think you just revert back to a naked

434
00:23:32,720 --> 00:23:35,320
Speaker 1: human in the woods. Yeah, I would think so. I mean,

435
00:23:35,680 --> 00:23:39,159
Speaker 1: maybe even more naked than normal, like nobody hair. You

436
00:23:39,160 --> 00:23:41,840
Speaker 1: would be whatever whatever is on the other side of

437
00:23:41,920 --> 00:23:45,760
Speaker 1: human from the werewolf, like a almost like a ware human,

438
00:23:46,720 --> 00:23:50,080
Speaker 1: a wear human plus that would be my guest. You

439
00:23:50,119 --> 00:23:54,120
Speaker 1: turn into a into a one of those dog robots,

440
00:23:54,200 --> 00:23:56,479
Speaker 1: you know, with the puppy bots. But you know you've hit,

441
00:23:56,520 --> 00:23:59,480
Speaker 1: of course on an important question because we're talking about

442
00:23:59,760 --> 00:24:03,359
Speaker 1: how out eclipses affect animals and of course the human

443
00:24:03,400 --> 00:24:06,680
Speaker 1: animal like that's that's where we see most of the

444
00:24:06,800 --> 00:24:09,960
Speaker 1: more impressive effects. Now we don't turn into wear wolves obviously,

445
00:24:10,280 --> 00:24:12,919
Speaker 1: because of course eclipse has a huge impact on the

446
00:24:12,920 --> 00:24:17,320
Speaker 1: way we perceive the universe. Have we perceive life on

447
00:24:17,359 --> 00:24:19,760
Speaker 1: Earth and what it means? Yeah, it's it's importents we

448
00:24:19,760 --> 00:24:22,480
Speaker 1: were talking about earlier. I mean, we are the animals

449
00:24:22,480 --> 00:24:24,600
Speaker 1: that go crazy when a solar eclipse happens, are a

450
00:24:24,680 --> 00:24:27,760
Speaker 1: lunar eclipse sometimes indeed, we we we are the animals

451
00:24:27,760 --> 00:24:29,640
Speaker 1: that go crazy. I don't know if you've ever seen

452
00:24:29,680 --> 00:24:32,040
Speaker 1: like a video of a large crowd gathered to view

453
00:24:32,040 --> 00:24:36,600
Speaker 1: a solar eclipse. Sometimes there's just like sudden screaming and people.

454
00:24:37,200 --> 00:24:40,359
Speaker 1: It's it's bizarre. I mean, I would be very impressed

455
00:24:40,400 --> 00:24:42,040
Speaker 1: to see a lunar eclipse. I don't think I've ever

456
00:24:42,119 --> 00:24:44,320
Speaker 1: actually watched one. Maybe when I was a little kid

457
00:24:44,400 --> 00:24:48,760
Speaker 1: or something. I don't know, Um, but I wouldn't scream.

458
00:24:48,800 --> 00:24:51,560
Speaker 1: I don't think. You don't think, but you know how

459
00:24:51,560 --> 00:24:53,240
Speaker 1: can you be for certain? I mean, I've never seen

460
00:24:53,320 --> 00:24:55,640
Speaker 1: I don't think i've I've never seen a solar lunar

461
00:24:55,720 --> 00:24:58,320
Speaker 1: eclipse myself, not the full you know, lunar eclipse and

462
00:24:58,400 --> 00:25:01,439
Speaker 1: fort of them full solar eclipse. So you know, I

463
00:25:01,440 --> 00:25:03,520
Speaker 1: think I would behave calmly, but maybe I would just

464
00:25:03,640 --> 00:25:06,399
Speaker 1: really mark out for it. Now. We'll talk more about

465
00:25:06,480 --> 00:25:08,320
Speaker 1: the religion and myth here and a bit after the

466
00:25:08,400 --> 00:25:11,840
Speaker 1: after an upcoming break. But um, according to at least

467
00:25:11,840 --> 00:25:15,800
Speaker 1: one historical account to greet According to a Greek historian, Herodotus,

468
00:25:15,840 --> 00:25:18,720
Speaker 1: and only according to him, keep that in mind. Baileys

469
00:25:18,760 --> 00:25:22,400
Speaker 1: of Melita's predicted an eclipse that occurred during the six

470
00:25:22,560 --> 00:25:26,359
Speaker 1: year of war between the Medians and the Lydians, and

471
00:25:27,680 --> 00:25:33,320
Speaker 1: allegedly this eclipse resulted in a complete ceasefire. Um. So

472
00:25:33,359 --> 00:25:35,840
Speaker 1: that the eclipse occurs, war has been raging for years

473
00:25:35,840 --> 00:25:37,879
Speaker 1: and years and years, and then the eclipse occurs and

474
00:25:37,920 --> 00:25:40,360
Speaker 1: everyone puts down their weapons and they get serious about

475
00:25:40,400 --> 00:25:44,399
Speaker 1: talking peace. Um. Did it happen? I don't know. This

476
00:25:44,480 --> 00:25:47,679
Speaker 1: is the only Herodotus gives us this account. Uh, And

477
00:25:47,760 --> 00:25:51,439
Speaker 1: if it occurred, we're probably talking about an eclipse on

478
00:25:51,520 --> 00:25:55,840
Speaker 1: May five, eighty five as as. This is when a

479
00:25:55,880 --> 00:25:59,720
Speaker 1: total solar eclipse was visible in the Aegean and Asian

480
00:25:59,760 --> 00:26:02,000
Speaker 1: mind or region, but there were no There was no

481
00:26:02,040 --> 00:26:05,639
Speaker 1: mention of where wolves in his account either. But in

482
00:26:05,800 --> 00:26:09,480
Speaker 1: sometimes the the the effects and the ramifications of eclipse

483
00:26:09,480 --> 00:26:12,520
Speaker 1: go beyond life here on Earth. They go into our

484
00:26:12,640 --> 00:26:16,239
Speaker 1: our understanding of how the universe itself works. Yeah, this

485
00:26:16,359 --> 00:26:19,720
Speaker 1: is great. There have actually been examples of people using

486
00:26:19,840 --> 00:26:23,479
Speaker 1: eclipses as a way to devise an experiment that you

487
00:26:23,520 --> 00:26:27,000
Speaker 1: couldn't otherwise perform. So like on Earth, we don't have

488
00:26:27,040 --> 00:26:30,720
Speaker 1: a lot of options for performing experiments that involve incredible

489
00:26:30,760 --> 00:26:33,080
Speaker 1: amounts of mass or energy like now we you know,

490
00:26:33,440 --> 00:26:35,800
Speaker 1: these days we can build like had drawn colliders and

491
00:26:35,800 --> 00:26:38,720
Speaker 1: stuff to generate a huge amount of energy and a

492
00:26:38,800 --> 00:26:41,360
Speaker 1: controlled area. But we didn't always have stuff like that,

493
00:26:41,560 --> 00:26:44,439
Speaker 1: and we still can't generate, you know, enough mass to

494
00:26:44,520 --> 00:26:46,680
Speaker 1: simulate like the mass of a star or the mass

495
00:26:46,760 --> 00:26:48,560
Speaker 1: of a planet or something like that. We can only

496
00:26:48,640 --> 00:26:53,119
Speaker 1: harness so much. But there are very clever ways to

497
00:26:53,240 --> 00:26:56,280
Speaker 1: use quantities like, for example, the mass of the Sun

498
00:26:56,840 --> 00:27:01,199
Speaker 1: to experimentally verify predictions based on new theories. So I

499
00:27:01,240 --> 00:27:05,160
Speaker 1: want to take us to nineteen nineteen when we had

500
00:27:05,200 --> 00:27:09,919
Speaker 1: this wonderful new theory from my old friend Alfred Einstein

501
00:27:12,359 --> 00:27:15,199
Speaker 1: Albert Einstein I believe he was called, but his his

502
00:27:15,280 --> 00:27:19,120
Speaker 1: theory was theory of general relativity. So the idea here

503
00:27:19,359 --> 00:27:24,280
Speaker 1: is that gravity is actually the curvature of what Einstein

504
00:27:24,359 --> 00:27:27,360
Speaker 1: called space time, that that space and time are sort

505
00:27:27,400 --> 00:27:30,480
Speaker 1: of part of the same general four dimensional fabric of

506
00:27:30,520 --> 00:27:35,200
Speaker 1: the universe, and that gravity was actually the effect of

507
00:27:35,400 --> 00:27:40,440
Speaker 1: seeing that fabric warped or distorted or bent by a

508
00:27:40,560 --> 00:27:44,920
Speaker 1: large piece of mass. But how could you test that? Yeah,

509
00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:50,240
Speaker 1: because you're basically saying Einstein's basically saying a sufficiently massive

510
00:27:50,280 --> 00:27:54,159
Speaker 1: object he is going to bend light. Yeah, like you

511
00:27:54,160 --> 00:27:56,959
Speaker 1: could observe it. You could observe the bend in space

512
00:27:56,960 --> 00:28:00,280
Speaker 1: time by seeing how the trajectory of a eam of

513
00:28:00,400 --> 00:28:03,280
Speaker 1: light changes as it goes around a really massive object.

514
00:28:03,320 --> 00:28:06,400
Speaker 1: But you can't put the Sun in a lab. Yeah.

515
00:28:06,400 --> 00:28:09,080
Speaker 1: It's like, if you need to get you need to say, okay, Einstein,

516
00:28:09,119 --> 00:28:11,280
Speaker 1: go get a sun sized object to get a bowling

517
00:28:11,280 --> 00:28:13,320
Speaker 1: ball about that sis, get a flash flight, and let's

518
00:28:13,320 --> 00:28:15,800
Speaker 1: watch the light curve. Right. But you know one thing

519
00:28:15,880 --> 00:28:19,240
Speaker 1: you could do is try to watch what happens when

520
00:28:19,520 --> 00:28:24,520
Speaker 1: a star passes behind the Sun. You could look out

521
00:28:24,680 --> 00:28:27,919
Speaker 1: towards the Sun and see, hey, as the light passing

522
00:28:28,160 --> 00:28:31,199
Speaker 1: the Sun comes towards us, does it get bent an

523
00:28:31,200 --> 00:28:34,160
Speaker 1: amountain by the gravity of the Sun. That would be uh,

524
00:28:34,200 --> 00:28:39,200
Speaker 1: there would be a number corresponding to Einstein's theory of relativity,

525
00:28:39,280 --> 00:28:41,200
Speaker 1: and that would be great if you could check it out.

526
00:28:41,200 --> 00:28:44,840
Speaker 1: But there's a problem. The Sun's too bright, like you

527
00:28:44,920 --> 00:28:47,920
Speaker 1: can't see the light from the stars behind it. At

528
00:28:47,960 --> 00:28:49,840
Speaker 1: least you certainly couldn't at the time. I'm not sure

529
00:28:49,880 --> 00:28:52,480
Speaker 1: if we could now, but there might be a way

530
00:28:52,480 --> 00:28:56,240
Speaker 1: around that. You could look for how the Sun bends

531
00:28:56,480 --> 00:28:59,960
Speaker 1: light coming from stars behind it during a solar eclipse,

532
00:29:01,080 --> 00:29:04,680
Speaker 1: and that's the solution. So Sir Frank Watson Dyson and

533
00:29:04,760 --> 00:29:07,880
Speaker 1: Astronomer Royal of Britain conceived this experiment and then it

534
00:29:07,920 --> 00:29:11,160
Speaker 1: was carried out by a Sir Arthur Eddington. But what

535
00:29:11,200 --> 00:29:14,240
Speaker 1: they did was they they plotted out the course of

536
00:29:14,240 --> 00:29:17,120
Speaker 1: an upcoming solar eclipse, and then they sent teams to

537
00:29:17,160 --> 00:29:19,480
Speaker 1: a couple of locations. One of them was an island

538
00:29:19,480 --> 00:29:22,200
Speaker 1: off the west coast of Africa called Prince cheep A

539
00:29:22,280 --> 00:29:24,680
Speaker 1: I believe and then the other team I think, was

540
00:29:24,720 --> 00:29:28,760
Speaker 1: sent to Brazil and they were supposed to measure what

541
00:29:28,960 --> 00:29:31,680
Speaker 1: happened when the solar eclipse happened, to look for that

542
00:29:31,800 --> 00:29:34,280
Speaker 1: light coming from the star that was passing behind the

543
00:29:34,320 --> 00:29:37,280
Speaker 1: Sun to see if it bent at just the right

544
00:29:37,320 --> 00:29:41,840
Speaker 1: amount to experimentally verify Einstein's theory relativity. And it did,

545
00:29:42,280 --> 00:29:45,840
Speaker 1: which of course made einstein overnight sensation. So we see

546
00:29:45,840 --> 00:29:48,200
Speaker 1: a case of the eclipse being the perfect scenario in

547
00:29:48,240 --> 00:29:53,000
Speaker 1: which to test out a theory regarding uh nass and

548
00:29:53,040 --> 00:29:55,680
Speaker 1: the bending of light. Right, and and at the time

549
00:29:55,720 --> 00:29:57,760
Speaker 1: there was just like no other way we could have

550
00:29:57,880 --> 00:30:01,000
Speaker 1: tested this. Yeah, you can't build a model in which

551
00:30:01,000 --> 00:30:03,160
Speaker 1: to construct it. You have to depend on the model

552
00:30:03,240 --> 00:30:06,560
Speaker 1: that is reality. Of course, the experimenters were very lucky

553
00:30:06,600 --> 00:30:09,600
Speaker 1: that they had like clear weather and stuff when that happens. Yeah,

554
00:30:09,600 --> 00:30:11,440
Speaker 1: I mean that's why they sent out two experiments, like

555
00:30:11,520 --> 00:30:14,200
Speaker 1: one to two teams to two different locations, because what

556
00:30:14,240 --> 00:30:16,560
Speaker 1: if one was cloudy, right, you needed to fail safe. Yeah,

557
00:30:16,560 --> 00:30:18,760
Speaker 1: what if they've both been cloudy? I want a mess.

558
00:30:18,960 --> 00:30:20,960
Speaker 1: Imagine picking up the check for that experiment. None of

559
00:30:21,040 --> 00:30:25,719
Speaker 1: us would know who Einstein was. Alright, we're gonna take

560
00:30:25,720 --> 00:30:27,520
Speaker 1: a quick breaking When we come back, we're gonna talk

561
00:30:27,520 --> 00:30:29,480
Speaker 1: a little bit about eclipse mythology. We're not going to

562
00:30:29,680 --> 00:30:32,880
Speaker 1: do an exhaustive mention of everything, because every culture has

563
00:30:32,920 --> 00:30:35,120
Speaker 1: some sort of cool eclipse and my but we'll do

564
00:30:35,160 --> 00:30:38,560
Speaker 1: some highlights and then talk a little more ce. Let's

565
00:30:38,600 --> 00:30:49,560
Speaker 1: feel mechanics before we close it out. All right, we're back.

566
00:30:50,360 --> 00:30:55,040
Speaker 1: So when you're talking about eclipse and mythology and folklore,

567
00:30:55,800 --> 00:31:01,360
Speaker 1: you do see the re emerging trend of disorder and chaos. Right.

568
00:31:01,360 --> 00:31:03,800
Speaker 1: It's like we were talking about earlier, where the sort

569
00:31:03,800 --> 00:31:06,360
Speaker 1: of rhythm of night and day is about as basic

570
00:31:06,480 --> 00:31:09,760
Speaker 1: as it gets for a biological organism, Like Disturbing that

571
00:31:09,920 --> 00:31:13,120
Speaker 1: cycle is a I think I called it perverse, and

572
00:31:13,160 --> 00:31:15,560
Speaker 1: I'm going to stick with that. It is a perversion

573
00:31:16,240 --> 00:31:20,360
Speaker 1: of what seems to be biologically necessary. Yeah, I mean,

574
00:31:21,000 --> 00:31:24,040
Speaker 1: you can you can basically root most of the major

575
00:31:24,120 --> 00:31:27,640
Speaker 1: themes in mythology and folklore down to the basic rhythms

576
00:31:27,640 --> 00:31:29,760
Speaker 1: of life. There's night and day, there's life and death,

577
00:31:30,080 --> 00:31:33,800
Speaker 1: there's birth, there's disease, and the cycles of the seasons,

578
00:31:33,840 --> 00:31:36,480
Speaker 1: maybe the cycles of the seasons. Uh, And so you

579
00:31:36,520 --> 00:31:39,800
Speaker 1: end up personifying these movements and defining features of life.

580
00:31:40,080 --> 00:31:41,960
Speaker 1: And then of course those all those gods end up

581
00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:45,400
Speaker 1: having their own little personal dramas, their own their own offspring,

582
00:31:45,480 --> 00:31:48,480
Speaker 1: their own parental issues, and you end up just filling

583
00:31:48,560 --> 00:31:52,160
Speaker 1: up the entire pantheon and then uh and then driving

584
00:31:52,200 --> 00:31:54,600
Speaker 1: stories out of each one. So yeah, we know that

585
00:31:54,640 --> 00:31:58,040
Speaker 1: the ancient Chinese astronomers were very concerned with being able

586
00:31:58,080 --> 00:32:02,040
Speaker 1: to predict eclipses. Like were some ancient Chinese beliefs about

587
00:32:02,080 --> 00:32:05,520
Speaker 1: the eclipse. Well, one that certainly rises through the surface

588
00:32:05,600 --> 00:32:08,520
Speaker 1: is just the the the basic belief that the eclipse

589
00:32:08,760 --> 00:32:12,920
Speaker 1: occurred when a legendary celestial dragon devoured the sun or

590
00:32:12,960 --> 00:32:15,720
Speaker 1: the moon. Uh. And it was actually tradition in ancient

591
00:32:15,800 --> 00:32:18,680
Speaker 1: China to bang drums and pots and make loud noises

592
00:32:18,760 --> 00:32:22,000
Speaker 1: during the eclipse to frighten away the dragon. And this

593
00:32:22,120 --> 00:32:25,400
Speaker 1: the tradition of this actually carried out into the nineteenth

594
00:32:25,400 --> 00:32:28,480
Speaker 1: century when the Chinese navy would fire cannons during a

595
00:32:28,600 --> 00:32:32,719
Speaker 1: lunar eclipse. That's cool, Yeah, you know, it comes back

596
00:32:32,760 --> 00:32:34,880
Speaker 1: to what you're talking about, like people you know, making

597
00:32:34,920 --> 00:32:36,600
Speaker 1: a lot of noise, sort of freaking out and getting

598
00:32:36,640 --> 00:32:41,880
Speaker 1: excited during one of these uh, these these eclipse events. Uh,

599
00:32:41,960 --> 00:32:44,640
Speaker 1: so you can sort of see see this tradition as

600
00:32:44,680 --> 00:32:47,240
Speaker 1: an example of that where it's just it's a time

601
00:32:47,280 --> 00:32:50,200
Speaker 1: to make a lot of noise and get excited about

602
00:32:50,200 --> 00:32:56,360
Speaker 1: what's happening and into varying degrees. Apply this mythical context

603
00:32:56,880 --> 00:32:59,640
Speaker 1: and uh you know, as far as records of eclipses

604
00:32:59,680 --> 00:33:03,000
Speaker 1: go in China, uh, they date back at least to

605
00:33:03,520 --> 00:33:09,000
Speaker 1: uh C. We see that by looking at oracle bones

606
00:33:09,120 --> 00:33:13,160
Speaker 1: from the Shang dynasty. Wow. Another really interesting one is

607
00:33:13,200 --> 00:33:16,240
Speaker 1: the role eclipse has played in sort of the royal

608
00:33:16,360 --> 00:33:20,720
Speaker 1: mythology of ancient Assyria. So if you look to Assyria

609
00:33:20,880 --> 00:33:24,760
Speaker 1: in the first millennium b C. There was a type

610
00:33:24,760 --> 00:33:28,000
Speaker 1: of lunar eclipse that was actually considered a bad omen

611
00:33:28,200 --> 00:33:31,440
Speaker 1: for the reigning king at the time. So it's like, oh,

612
00:33:31,560 --> 00:33:34,160
Speaker 1: you see this particular type of lunar eclipse, and you

613
00:33:34,200 --> 00:33:36,560
Speaker 1: know the gods have it in for the king. The

614
00:33:36,640 --> 00:33:39,600
Speaker 1: king's going to die. That's bad for your political standing,

615
00:33:39,640 --> 00:33:43,120
Speaker 1: that's bad for the certainly bad for the king. So

616
00:33:43,120 --> 00:33:45,520
Speaker 1: so what do you do? I mean, well, so you

617
00:33:45,560 --> 00:33:48,520
Speaker 1: could come up with some kind of like just standard

618
00:33:48,560 --> 00:33:51,400
Speaker 1: magical rituals to board off the bad omens. But what

619
00:33:51,440 --> 00:33:56,400
Speaker 1: if you're afraid that's not gonna work. Well, So basically,

620
00:33:56,400 --> 00:33:59,200
Speaker 1: how do you get out of cosmic trouble here? How

621
00:33:59,240 --> 00:34:01,840
Speaker 1: do you get us keep your fate? Yeah, as dictated

622
00:34:01,880 --> 00:34:04,360
Speaker 1: by the you know, the celestial objects. They know more

623
00:34:04,360 --> 00:34:07,760
Speaker 1: than we do. I mean, so the way they figured

624
00:34:07,800 --> 00:34:11,520
Speaker 1: out to get around this was a ritual substitute king

625
00:34:12,040 --> 00:34:15,400
Speaker 1: or I believe it's pronounced sharp poi. And so what

626
00:34:15,480 --> 00:34:18,680
Speaker 1: you what you do is you would basically create a

627
00:34:18,880 --> 00:34:24,920
Speaker 1: scapegoat king to absorb the you know, the evil fate

628
00:34:25,239 --> 00:34:29,040
Speaker 1: of the reigning king. And so you dethrone the real king,

629
00:34:29,080 --> 00:34:31,440
Speaker 1: the reigning king, for like a hundred days, and you

630
00:34:31,440 --> 00:34:36,480
Speaker 1: would substitute this fake king to eventually be killed in

631
00:34:36,560 --> 00:34:39,319
Speaker 1: the king's place. And then once the the you know,

632
00:34:39,360 --> 00:34:42,200
Speaker 1: the bad omen is fulfilled, then the king, the actual

633
00:34:42,280 --> 00:34:45,400
Speaker 1: king can safely return to the throne without having to

634
00:34:45,440 --> 00:34:49,080
Speaker 1: worry about his fate. And I understand it like the

635
00:34:49,400 --> 00:34:51,560
Speaker 1: when I first started looking into it, I thought they

636
00:34:51,600 --> 00:34:54,920
Speaker 1: meant that it was more like a rituals like sacrifice

637
00:34:54,960 --> 00:34:57,480
Speaker 1: of the substitute king, But it sounds more and more

638
00:34:57,520 --> 00:35:01,440
Speaker 1: like the substitute king quote unquote dies. So you can

639
00:35:01,480 --> 00:35:04,320
Speaker 1: imagine some form of royal crier appearing before the people

640
00:35:04,320 --> 00:35:07,760
Speaker 1: and saying, oh, the substitute King has died in his sleep,

641
00:35:07,840 --> 00:35:13,239
Speaker 1: thus fulfilling the prophecy and any death related obligations of

642
00:35:13,280 --> 00:35:17,560
Speaker 1: our returning king. Let's hear it for king what's his name?

643
00:35:19,320 --> 00:35:23,359
Speaker 1: Asher banafol back in a come back? Yeah, the bad

644
00:35:23,400 --> 00:35:26,680
Speaker 1: omen is behind us because the substitute king absorbed it all. Yeah,

645
00:35:26,680 --> 00:35:29,640
Speaker 1: that substitute king was such a bad king anyway. It's

646
00:35:29,800 --> 00:35:32,239
Speaker 1: it's I wonder what it would be like to be

647
00:35:32,320 --> 00:35:35,080
Speaker 1: that substitute king. Would you? Would you feel the pressure

648
00:35:35,120 --> 00:35:38,280
Speaker 1: to really get stuff done? Like maybe if I really

649
00:35:38,280 --> 00:35:41,000
Speaker 1: proved myself in my hundred days in office, I can

650
00:35:41,320 --> 00:35:43,919
Speaker 1: that they'll actually keep me. Or is it just sort

651
00:35:43,920 --> 00:35:45,239
Speaker 1: of like, well, heck, they're gonna kill me in a

652
00:35:45,280 --> 00:35:48,279
Speaker 1: hundred days. I'm just gonna ride this out in the

653
00:35:48,320 --> 00:35:53,200
Speaker 1: most hedonistic did that's impossible? Did the substitute king know, like,

654
00:35:53,320 --> 00:35:55,959
Speaker 1: did he think he was having the best day ever?

655
00:35:56,400 --> 00:35:58,200
Speaker 1: That's true? Yeah? Is it? Or is it just the

656
00:35:58,239 --> 00:36:01,640
Speaker 1: priests and the king himself that are aware of this scenario? Yeah?

657
00:36:01,680 --> 00:36:03,880
Speaker 1: I don't know it would I would? I wonder if

658
00:36:03,920 --> 00:36:06,880
Speaker 1: there's any fiction out there that explores this trope? If so,

659
00:36:06,920 --> 00:36:08,480
Speaker 1: I would love to hear about it because it seems

660
00:36:08,560 --> 00:36:13,680
Speaker 1: just perfect for exploitas. Send us that short story. Yeah. Um.

661
00:36:13,920 --> 00:36:16,880
Speaker 1: Another example that came to our eyes was that of

662
00:36:17,360 --> 00:36:22,400
Speaker 1: Apopus in Egyptian religion, ancient Egyptian religion and mythology. And

663
00:36:22,400 --> 00:36:25,440
Speaker 1: this is a moon serpent, the moon serpent that emerged

664
00:36:25,480 --> 00:36:28,040
Speaker 1: from the Great Void at the dawn of time and

665
00:36:28,080 --> 00:36:31,400
Speaker 1: now lives deep within the nile Um the Nile not

666
00:36:31,480 --> 00:36:33,279
Speaker 1: only in the physical sense but also in sort of

667
00:36:33,320 --> 00:36:37,319
Speaker 1: the cosmic sense of ancient Egyptian religion and embodies all

668
00:36:37,360 --> 00:36:39,680
Speaker 1: the dark aspects of the universe. He's night and death,

669
00:36:39,760 --> 00:36:42,919
Speaker 1: he storms and chaos. He conspires was set the god

670
00:36:42,960 --> 00:36:46,560
Speaker 1: of evil and sometimes the ensnare souls in their journey

671
00:36:46,560 --> 00:36:49,239
Speaker 1: between this life and the next, engulfing them and not

672
00:36:49,239 --> 00:36:51,480
Speaker 1: not only just like eating them and just crushing them

673
00:36:51,480 --> 00:36:54,520
Speaker 1: into the non into non existence, reminding me a bit

674
00:36:54,560 --> 00:36:58,000
Speaker 1: of the long Boy in Stephen King's Lissies story. I

675
00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:02,160
Speaker 1: haven't read that. He's is basically a cosmic world serpent

676
00:37:02,239 --> 00:37:05,880
Speaker 1: that lives outside of our reality and he eats you.

677
00:37:06,000 --> 00:37:09,760
Speaker 1: It's like love crafty and levels of bad. This crushes

678
00:37:09,760 --> 00:37:13,560
Speaker 1: you into non existence. Stephen King likes those cosmic world

679
00:37:13,640 --> 00:37:15,600
Speaker 1: eating serpent. He's he's great when it comes to the

680
00:37:15,600 --> 00:37:20,279
Speaker 1: extra dimensional entities, no doubt. Um. So, of course this

681
00:37:20,360 --> 00:37:23,640
Speaker 1: cosmic world serpent from Egyptian mythology. Of course, he wants

682
00:37:23,640 --> 00:37:26,000
Speaker 1: to devour the great sun disk that lights our world,

683
00:37:26,080 --> 00:37:28,680
Speaker 1: which is pulled across the sky by the god Raw

684
00:37:28,960 --> 00:37:32,520
Speaker 1: in his sun boat. Rob's protected, however, by another serpent,

685
00:37:33,239 --> 00:37:37,480
Speaker 1: a good one, and almost always escapes um the ravenous

686
00:37:37,480 --> 00:37:40,920
Speaker 1: of office. Sometimes he almost succeeds, and that's when we

687
00:37:40,920 --> 00:37:43,880
Speaker 1: get into eclipse, but he's always made to vomit everything

688
00:37:43,920 --> 00:37:47,320
Speaker 1: back up again. So in this we see the the

689
00:37:47,600 --> 00:37:50,920
Speaker 1: traditional trope of eclipse as an example of the forces

690
00:37:50,920 --> 00:37:54,160
Speaker 1: of chaos and darkness and evil almost winning but then

691
00:37:55,120 --> 00:37:57,759
Speaker 1: being beaten away by the forces of order. You know,

692
00:37:57,880 --> 00:38:01,480
Speaker 1: I feel like we still have not actually shucked this

693
00:38:01,640 --> 00:38:04,320
Speaker 1: myth of like the monster that eats the sun, because

694
00:38:04,440 --> 00:38:06,800
Speaker 1: we've got it within the past few decades with the Unicron,

695
00:38:07,280 --> 00:38:11,000
Speaker 1: you know, eating planets. Yes, Unicron, And we'll come back

696
00:38:11,040 --> 00:38:13,400
Speaker 1: to Unicron in a minute, because he does line up

697
00:38:13,480 --> 00:38:19,160
Speaker 1: rather nicely with with a particular eclipse, the entity from

698
00:38:19,360 --> 00:38:21,320
Speaker 1: Hindu religion. Let's see, I'm going to see if I

699
00:38:21,360 --> 00:38:24,120
Speaker 1: can find a good YouTube clip of Unicron eating a planet,

700
00:38:24,480 --> 00:38:27,960
Speaker 1: but no Unicron Galactus. Those those guys are very much

701
00:38:27,960 --> 00:38:31,960
Speaker 1: in keeping with these these ancient ideas of cosmic world eaters,

702
00:38:32,000 --> 00:38:35,960
Speaker 1: cosmic moon and sun eaters. It is a truly captivating idea.

703
00:38:36,000 --> 00:38:38,960
Speaker 1: I mean, like, um, it is the sun and entity

704
00:38:39,040 --> 00:38:41,320
Speaker 1: that can be consumed. I mean, if it could, you

705
00:38:41,480 --> 00:38:43,040
Speaker 1: you could sort of see that. It's like it's like

706
00:38:43,080 --> 00:38:46,440
Speaker 1: the ultimate empowering agent. It's you know, it's the pill

707
00:38:47,040 --> 00:38:50,640
Speaker 1: that you take that gives you ultimate power. Yeah. But

708
00:38:50,680 --> 00:38:53,080
Speaker 1: it's also it's almost kind of this idea too that

709
00:38:53,400 --> 00:38:56,120
Speaker 1: like this like nothing can actually eat the Sun. So

710
00:38:56,360 --> 00:38:59,799
Speaker 1: if you have an evil being or creature in your cosmology,

711
00:39:00,200 --> 00:39:01,839
Speaker 1: of course it's going to try to eat the Sun,

712
00:39:01,880 --> 00:39:03,799
Speaker 1: but it can't carry it out and then it just

713
00:39:03,840 --> 00:39:05,840
Speaker 1: falls back to Earth, It falls back to Hell or

714
00:39:05,840 --> 00:39:07,719
Speaker 1: what have you. Now we're kind of jumping around in

715
00:39:07,760 --> 00:39:10,319
Speaker 1: time a little bit, but just to just to make

716
00:39:10,360 --> 00:39:13,279
Speaker 1: sure we hit at least one werewolf. Example, there is

717
00:39:13,320 --> 00:39:17,400
Speaker 1: a werewolf from the folklore traditions of Russia and Belarussia Uh.

718
00:39:17,480 --> 00:39:20,680
Speaker 1: And this is an individual named vessus Lav Uh. The

719
00:39:20,719 --> 00:39:23,440
Speaker 1: Belarussian werewolf. So now, are we actually going to find

720
00:39:23,440 --> 00:39:26,560
Speaker 1: out what happens to a warwolf during the eclipse? Uh? No,

721
00:39:27,040 --> 00:39:29,800
Speaker 1: haply not. But we'll see how an eclipse factors into

722
00:39:29,880 --> 00:39:32,560
Speaker 1: the creation of a werewolf. The idea here is that

723
00:39:32,600 --> 00:39:35,880
Speaker 1: his mother was violated by a serpent, and as a result,

724
00:39:36,320 --> 00:39:40,080
Speaker 1: Vessuslav was born during a solar eclipse, and so he

725
00:39:40,120 --> 00:39:43,880
Speaker 1: became a mighty warrior in life, kind of a warrior magician,

726
00:39:43,880 --> 00:39:47,960
Speaker 1: a warrior, sorcerer, battle wizard if you will. Uh. But

727
00:39:48,040 --> 00:39:50,800
Speaker 1: he also could turn into a wolf. He he was

728
00:39:50,880 --> 00:39:53,040
Speaker 1: essentially a werewolf and could and could take on this

729
00:39:53,120 --> 00:39:57,000
Speaker 1: nocturnal lupine form. Now he's based on a real guy,

730
00:39:57,239 --> 00:40:00,760
Speaker 1: based on the real live vasus Lav of Polot, also

731
00:40:00,800 --> 00:40:04,520
Speaker 1: known as Vasaslav, the source for Vassaslav the Seer really

732
00:40:04,560 --> 00:40:07,160
Speaker 1: lived from ten thirty nine to eleven oh one, and

733
00:40:07,200 --> 00:40:10,920
Speaker 1: he's the most famous ruler of the Polots and briefly

734
00:40:11,040 --> 00:40:14,040
Speaker 1: Grand Prince of Kiev from ten sixty eight to ten

735
00:40:14,120 --> 00:40:19,880
Speaker 1: sixty nine. UM. This more mythic uh likeanthropic version of

736
00:40:19,960 --> 00:40:22,960
Speaker 1: him stems from the twelfth century Slavic epic the Tale

737
00:40:23,160 --> 00:40:26,480
Speaker 1: of Egor's Campaign, and as far as I know, nothing

738
00:40:26,480 --> 00:40:30,600
Speaker 1: in there tells us what happens to Vasuslav during a

739
00:40:30,680 --> 00:40:33,239
Speaker 1: lunar ecliffs man, that would be really cool to be

740
00:40:33,280 --> 00:40:37,160
Speaker 1: immortalized and like epic poetry and turned into a were wolf. Yeah.

741
00:40:37,160 --> 00:40:39,640
Speaker 1: He we were talking about this earlier. Kind of he

742
00:40:39,719 --> 00:40:42,439
Speaker 1: kind of reminds us of the Starks, right right, He's

743
00:40:42,480 --> 00:40:44,800
Speaker 1: like Rob Stark, you know, like they're a legend. He's

744
00:40:44,800 --> 00:40:48,080
Speaker 1: actually just a sort of warrior king, but their legends

745
00:40:48,120 --> 00:40:50,279
Speaker 1: surrounding him. All. He can turn into a wolf in

746
00:40:50,360 --> 00:40:55,480
Speaker 1: the full moon, and then of course there's throat ripping. Yeah,

747
00:40:55,920 --> 00:40:59,040
Speaker 1: the bloody time delicious viscera. And this brings us to

748
00:40:59,239 --> 00:41:01,680
Speaker 1: one of my favorite and again, you know, we're continuingly

749
00:41:01,719 --> 00:41:05,360
Speaker 1: to see this trope of the moon or sun consuming entity.

750
00:41:05,800 --> 00:41:08,320
Speaker 1: This brings us to the Hindu god ra who or

751
00:41:08,440 --> 00:41:11,560
Speaker 1: a Frau ra who is. He's known in Thailand and

752
00:41:11,600 --> 00:41:13,880
Speaker 1: he has just a fabulous stories. But he's easily my

753
00:41:13,920 --> 00:41:16,239
Speaker 1: favorite of all these different eclipse entities because he was

754
00:41:16,280 --> 00:41:20,160
Speaker 1: once a proud osherra Demi, god of immense power and hunger.

755
00:41:20,280 --> 00:41:22,399
Speaker 1: But you know, he's a bit flight he's a little

756
00:41:22,400 --> 00:41:26,840
Speaker 1: too ambitious. He wants immortality because you know, within this

757
00:41:26,920 --> 00:41:29,920
Speaker 1: particular cosmology, demi gods are just another realm and the

758
00:41:29,960 --> 00:41:33,560
Speaker 1: wheel of sam Sara. So demi gods may be super powerful,

759
00:41:33,560 --> 00:41:35,960
Speaker 1: and they may live a long long time compared to

760
00:41:36,040 --> 00:41:39,239
Speaker 1: human lives, but they're ultimately going to die. So Ra

761
00:41:39,360 --> 00:41:42,760
Speaker 1: who drinks the divine nectar that's going to give him immortality.

762
00:41:43,320 --> 00:41:47,160
Speaker 1: But before the this gulpful of this magical liquid could

763
00:41:47,160 --> 00:41:51,560
Speaker 1: pass his throat, all powerful Vishnu jumps in and decapitates

764
00:41:51,600 --> 00:41:54,200
Speaker 1: him for the transgression. Okay, so he cuts his head off,

765
00:41:54,320 --> 00:41:58,000
Speaker 1: severing the esophagus before it trickles down the esophagus, right

766
00:41:58,040 --> 00:41:59,719
Speaker 1: before it can actually go all the way down, So

767
00:41:59,800 --> 00:42:02,760
Speaker 1: just cuts it off there. Oh man, that's such a bummer,

768
00:42:02,800 --> 00:42:04,480
Speaker 1: Like how low would it have to get to have

769
00:42:04,520 --> 00:42:07,920
Speaker 1: an effect? You have to fully digest it? Um. I

770
00:42:07,960 --> 00:42:10,360
Speaker 1: think it's the idea. It's kind of like an Achilles

771
00:42:10,440 --> 00:42:12,799
Speaker 1: kind of a situation. You know, Achilles is only as

772
00:42:12,800 --> 00:42:14,800
Speaker 1: powerful as how far he's dipped in the water, and

773
00:42:14,880 --> 00:42:16,640
Speaker 1: so you know he'll didn't make it end, so the

774
00:42:16,680 --> 00:42:20,240
Speaker 1: heel is vulnerable, So cut him off before the liquid

775
00:42:20,320 --> 00:42:23,279
Speaker 1: could pass into the body. So the body's gone, but

776
00:42:23,400 --> 00:42:26,080
Speaker 1: the head, the head has the power So the idea

777
00:42:26,160 --> 00:42:28,120
Speaker 1: here is that the power of the nectar makes the

778
00:42:28,200 --> 00:42:33,000
Speaker 1: disembodied head of ra who immortal man. And and so

779
00:42:33,239 --> 00:42:36,760
Speaker 1: this pleased and fallen god continues to seek his revenge

780
00:42:37,080 --> 00:42:40,680
Speaker 1: on the two planetary deities who ratted him out to Vishnu.

781
00:42:40,920 --> 00:42:43,479
Speaker 1: And that's the sun in the moon. So as such

782
00:42:43,600 --> 00:42:46,800
Speaker 1: ravenous rah who regularly ascends into the sky and attempts

783
00:42:46,800 --> 00:42:50,000
Speaker 1: to swallow the sun or the moon. But since he's disembodied,

784
00:42:50,480 --> 00:42:52,960
Speaker 1: his meal falls back out again, so he succeeds. He

785
00:42:53,000 --> 00:42:54,960
Speaker 1: eats that moon, he eats the sun, but he has

786
00:42:54,960 --> 00:42:58,160
Speaker 1: nobody's just ahead with some neck flesh, so he swallows

787
00:42:58,200 --> 00:43:00,120
Speaker 1: it and comes right back out the next step. That

788
00:43:00,239 --> 00:43:03,200
Speaker 1: is a genius like that is an awesome myth. Now

789
00:43:03,239 --> 00:43:07,680
Speaker 1: in Thailand, he's he's seen as more cut off at

790
00:43:07,680 --> 00:43:11,000
Speaker 1: the stomach, however, as opposed to just ahead, so he's

791
00:43:11,040 --> 00:43:13,080
Speaker 1: more of just a half god instead of astead of

792
00:43:13,120 --> 00:43:16,640
Speaker 1: just ahead of a god in those motifs. Now, where

793
00:43:16,680 --> 00:43:19,480
Speaker 1: this gets interesting. Uh, an area of this myth that

794
00:43:19,560 --> 00:43:23,560
Speaker 1: I really find fascinating is that you see this, uh,

795
00:43:23,680 --> 00:43:27,840
Speaker 1: this exchange between science and myth regarding Rahu and and

796
00:43:28,000 --> 00:43:31,400
Speaker 1: his status. So there's always been less conflict between science

797
00:43:31,440 --> 00:43:34,719
Speaker 1: and Hinduism due to a variety of reasons. But you

798
00:43:34,760 --> 00:43:38,840
Speaker 1: could you can hone in on distinct linguistic differences between

799
00:43:39,160 --> 00:43:43,479
Speaker 1: teleological and causative wise, so just the language of talking

800
00:43:43,520 --> 00:43:47,160
Speaker 1: about why something happens, there's the why is in like

801
00:43:47,239 --> 00:43:49,759
Speaker 1: what was the actual cause of this event? And then

802
00:43:49,760 --> 00:43:52,279
Speaker 1: there's the why in the sense of what is its

803
00:43:52,320 --> 00:43:55,400
Speaker 1: reason from a cosmological standp Oh, it sounds almost like

804
00:43:55,440 --> 00:43:59,360
Speaker 1: a parallel between causality and synchronicity. Yeah, yeah, in a sense,

805
00:43:59,440 --> 00:44:01,439
Speaker 1: because it's it's kind of like if I say why

806
00:44:01,440 --> 00:44:04,320
Speaker 1: did I get sick? You could say, well, the reason

807
00:44:04,360 --> 00:44:06,880
Speaker 1: you were sick is because you ate that food at

808
00:44:06,880 --> 00:44:10,880
Speaker 1: that restaurant last night that was a little off. Yeah,

809
00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:12,920
Speaker 1: And then then there's the why that you would ask, like,

810
00:44:13,040 --> 00:44:15,719
Speaker 1: why God am I allowed to get sick on this

811
00:44:15,800 --> 00:44:17,799
Speaker 1: most important day of my life when I have this

812
00:44:17,880 --> 00:44:20,920
Speaker 1: job interview and my marriage on the same afternoon to

813
00:44:21,120 --> 00:44:25,319
Speaker 1: humble you, yeah exactly. So the idea here is that

814
00:44:25,680 --> 00:44:29,600
Speaker 1: in in the in English especially, there's there's more room

815
00:44:29,680 --> 00:44:32,319
Speaker 1: for confusion here between your wins, whereas in Hinduism they're

816
00:44:32,320 --> 00:44:36,680
Speaker 1: depending on linguistic models that have a clear distinction between those. Wise,

817
00:44:36,840 --> 00:44:40,680
Speaker 1: I think that's really interesting. Yeah, um, anyway you shake it, though,

818
00:44:40,680 --> 00:44:45,239
Speaker 1: we do see this interesting interplay between raho and astronomy

819
00:44:45,280 --> 00:44:48,080
Speaker 1: of the time, because the Indian astronomy was pretty advanced

820
00:44:48,400 --> 00:44:53,240
Speaker 1: UM and its scientist Rajesh Kosher discusses in his paper

821
00:44:53,320 --> 00:44:59,319
Speaker 1: Rahu and Ketu in mythological and astromological context UM treatments

822
00:44:59,400 --> 00:45:01,759
Speaker 1: of the disemb adi ra who actually evolved with the

823
00:45:01,760 --> 00:45:05,279
Speaker 1: scientific knowledge of the time. Uh. Yeah, So go back

824
00:45:05,320 --> 00:45:09,279
Speaker 1: two thousand years and Indian astronomers divided the cosmos into

825
00:45:09,360 --> 00:45:13,759
Speaker 1: seven geocentric planets or graha, and then they set aside, uh,

826
00:45:13,920 --> 00:45:18,680
Speaker 1: you know, particularly disastrous phenomena like meteor's comments and eclipses,

827
00:45:18,960 --> 00:45:21,920
Speaker 1: and they called those outpata. So on one hand, you

828
00:45:21,960 --> 00:45:25,080
Speaker 1: had us a cyclical order, the graja the planets, and

829
00:45:25,080 --> 00:45:28,560
Speaker 1: then you had uh news, chaos and die are omen

830
00:45:28,600 --> 00:45:31,400
Speaker 1: in the forms of outpata. But of course, as we

831
00:45:31,480 --> 00:45:33,920
Speaker 1: know now, eclipses follow a pattern. We can predict them,

832
00:45:33,920 --> 00:45:36,600
Speaker 1: we can prove it out. They're actually more in line

833
00:45:36,640 --> 00:45:39,680
Speaker 1: with order than in chaos. But it's not necessarily easy

834
00:45:39,719 --> 00:45:41,759
Speaker 1: to see that pattern, It's right, and that you might

835
00:45:41,800 --> 00:45:46,200
Speaker 1: only notice after you've collected multiple generations worth of data. Yeah, yeah,

836
00:45:46,200 --> 00:45:48,200
Speaker 1: it took it took a while before someone realized that.

837
00:45:48,400 --> 00:45:54,800
Speaker 1: And in four the great Indian mathematician astronomer Ari Bahada

838
00:45:55,080 --> 00:45:58,680
Speaker 1: introduced a mathematical theory of eclipses that that really pretty

839
00:45:58,719 --> 00:46:02,920
Speaker 1: much nailed it. Uh, just our two lunar nodes, earth

840
00:46:02,960 --> 00:46:06,920
Speaker 1: shadows and moon shadows, so there's no demons required. But

841
00:46:07,000 --> 00:46:09,759
Speaker 1: of course that means that there ra who needs a

842
00:46:09,840 --> 00:46:13,480
Speaker 1: promotion along with his headless body that ends up being

843
00:46:13,480 --> 00:46:17,600
Speaker 1: known as Kettu. So instead of them being chaotic pata,

844
00:46:18,040 --> 00:46:22,280
Speaker 1: they're upgraded to order Draha. So while they're not actually

845
00:46:22,280 --> 00:46:25,080
Speaker 1: considered planets, they don't get like full planetary status. Was

846
00:46:25,160 --> 00:46:28,080
Speaker 1: of course they're not planets, it's just you know, the

847
00:46:28,080 --> 00:46:30,360
Speaker 1: way things are lining up. They took on the distinction

848
00:46:30,400 --> 00:46:35,480
Speaker 1: of being shadow planets, so that they graduated from becoming

849
00:46:35,520 --> 00:46:39,320
Speaker 1: sort of like intruders on the cosmic plane to uh

850
00:46:39,480 --> 00:46:43,439
Speaker 1: more like shadowy residents. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, they were really

851
00:46:43,480 --> 00:46:46,840
Speaker 1: seen as more. They said, hey, we can't really classify

852
00:46:46,960 --> 00:46:51,120
Speaker 1: the eclipse is just pure pure chaos, because clearly there's

853
00:46:51,120 --> 00:46:53,239
Speaker 1: a pattern. Clearly it's part of the ordered system of

854
00:46:53,280 --> 00:46:56,399
Speaker 1: our planets. And they realized that this. Even in four,

855
00:46:57,080 --> 00:46:59,920
Speaker 1: I'm sensing more parallels with the Unicron. I mean, indeed

856
00:47:00,040 --> 00:47:03,160
Speaker 1: you get when you look at Unicron, especially Unicron and Ra,

857
00:47:03,280 --> 00:47:06,080
Speaker 1: who are basically the same entity, right down to just

858
00:47:06,120 --> 00:47:10,040
Speaker 1: being disembodied heads, right, Because what did Unicron do in

859
00:47:10,040 --> 00:47:13,120
Speaker 1: the eighties six Transformers movie tried to eat the Earth right,

860
00:47:13,160 --> 00:47:18,240
Speaker 1: Transformers stopped him and he's just reduced to a head. Wow. Yeah,

861
00:47:18,360 --> 00:47:21,280
Speaker 1: so I've I've looked into it. I found no clear

862
00:47:21,760 --> 00:47:25,120
Speaker 1: example where someone says, yeah, we based a Unicron on

863
00:47:25,320 --> 00:47:29,680
Speaker 1: Hindu God, indu entity. But it seems there's just too

864
00:47:29,760 --> 00:47:33,960
Speaker 1: much coincidence there to ignore. But of course it's not

865
00:47:34,120 --> 00:47:39,560
Speaker 1: just the ancient religious cosmology that assigns true like magical

866
00:47:39,680 --> 00:47:45,120
Speaker 1: significance to eclipses. There are still religious movements today that

867
00:47:45,160 --> 00:47:49,480
Speaker 1: are looking for the religious significance of eclipses. One example

868
00:47:49,560 --> 00:47:52,200
Speaker 1: that I remember hearing about is the so called blood

869
00:47:52,280 --> 00:47:56,719
Speaker 1: moon prophecy that's popular in some circles of evangelical Christianity

870
00:47:56,760 --> 00:47:59,240
Speaker 1: these days. Yeah. The idea here is that it revolves

871
00:47:59,239 --> 00:48:02,919
Speaker 1: around a hatred series of lunar eclipse that's four lunar

872
00:48:03,000 --> 00:48:06,680
Speaker 1: eclipses within within a cycle. Uh. You know, three is

873
00:48:06,760 --> 00:48:08,719
Speaker 1: rare enough, but here you would have you would have

874
00:48:08,800 --> 00:48:11,120
Speaker 1: four showing up in a in a row. And it

875
00:48:11,200 --> 00:48:14,840
Speaker 1: only occurs a few times within a century. For example, Um,

876
00:48:14,880 --> 00:48:17,520
Speaker 1: in this century, it occurred in two thousand three, two

877
00:48:17,520 --> 00:48:21,279
Speaker 1: thousand four, two thousand fourteen, and uh a few more

878
00:48:21,320 --> 00:48:23,680
Speaker 1: times before the turn of the next century. So it's

879
00:48:23,800 --> 00:48:26,080
Speaker 1: a rare enough account that you'll end up, you know,

880
00:48:26,160 --> 00:48:29,040
Speaker 1: hitting the jackpot with four. Okay, But like, why is

881
00:48:29,080 --> 00:48:32,520
Speaker 1: this popular right now? Well? Uh, it all comes down

882
00:48:32,560 --> 00:48:35,720
Speaker 1: to a two thousand thirteen book, Four Blood Moons Something

883
00:48:35,800 --> 00:48:38,360
Speaker 1: is about to chain, or let me say, four Blood

884
00:48:38,360 --> 00:48:41,239
Speaker 1: Moons colon Something is about to change. That sounds like

885
00:48:41,280 --> 00:48:44,200
Speaker 1: a like a great like rock album title. Yeah, yeah,

886
00:48:44,200 --> 00:48:46,000
Speaker 1: what It did not come from rock and roll, though,

887
00:48:46,040 --> 00:48:49,160
Speaker 1: it came from the pastor of the Cornerstone Mega Church

888
00:48:49,200 --> 00:48:52,600
Speaker 1: in San Antonio, Texas, John Hagey. Uh I know John

889
00:48:52,640 --> 00:48:55,399
Speaker 1: Hagy you do, Okay, not personally, but yeah, you see

890
00:48:55,400 --> 00:48:56,880
Speaker 1: his picture. You look at my people go oh that

891
00:48:56,920 --> 00:48:59,960
Speaker 1: guy from I've seen him preaching on television. You don't

892
00:49:00,040 --> 00:49:04,360
Speaker 1: know him personally, no, okay. Um. So Hagey suggests that

893
00:49:04,360 --> 00:49:08,240
Speaker 1: there's a link between a new Total Lunar eclipse a tetrid,

894
00:49:08,640 --> 00:49:12,240
Speaker 1: and the biblical process of prophecy about the end times. Okay,

895
00:49:12,360 --> 00:49:15,960
Speaker 1: so it's certainly a case, yes, that we're still looking

896
00:49:16,000 --> 00:49:18,520
Speaker 1: to the movements of the sun and moon. We're still

897
00:49:18,520 --> 00:49:20,640
Speaker 1: looking at at the eclipse, and even with all of

898
00:49:20,680 --> 00:49:25,640
Speaker 1: our modern scientific understanding of what's actually happening, if we're

899
00:49:25,640 --> 00:49:30,759
Speaker 1: trying to understand like this wider sense of not only

900
00:49:30,920 --> 00:49:33,400
Speaker 1: why is that our things occurring in the universe in

901
00:49:33,440 --> 00:49:37,600
Speaker 1: that positive sense, but also in the grander magical sense

902
00:49:37,880 --> 00:49:40,600
Speaker 1: and the meaningful sense, you know, we can't help but

903
00:49:40,800 --> 00:49:43,319
Speaker 1: look to the movement of the sun and the moon

904
00:49:43,360 --> 00:49:46,040
Speaker 1: and look to these to these anomalies that occur. Yeah,

905
00:49:46,080 --> 00:49:50,080
Speaker 1: I think there's something very interesting about this historical progression

906
00:49:50,160 --> 00:49:54,680
Speaker 1: of us seeing eclipses originally as sort of like a strange,

907
00:49:54,800 --> 00:49:58,960
Speaker 1: unpredictable events that that violated our our sense of patterns,

908
00:49:59,200 --> 00:50:01,799
Speaker 1: and then finally coming to understand them as part of

909
00:50:02,040 --> 00:50:06,719
Speaker 1: larger and longer patterns. It's sort of a microcosm of

910
00:50:06,760 --> 00:50:11,320
Speaker 1: the whole progression of science in a way, like taking

911
00:50:11,560 --> 00:50:15,520
Speaker 1: events that seem to represent chaos and disorder and then

912
00:50:15,719 --> 00:50:18,880
Speaker 1: fitting them into the system of order that you finally

913
00:50:18,920 --> 00:50:21,640
Speaker 1: come to understand, and of course it's an analysis of

914
00:50:21,640 --> 00:50:24,120
Speaker 1: eclips and obsession of the clips continues on into a

915
00:50:24,800 --> 00:50:27,960
Speaker 1: present day fiction and fiction of the modern era. Uh.

916
00:50:28,040 --> 00:50:32,319
Speaker 1: For instance, Asimov's Nightfall, which exists, of course, is both

917
00:50:32,360 --> 00:50:34,560
Speaker 1: a short story and there's a full novel version that

918
00:50:34,600 --> 00:50:38,160
Speaker 1: he did with Robert Silverberg. Yeah, but it concerns the

919
00:50:38,200 --> 00:50:41,600
Speaker 1: fictional planet. Uh. It's called lag Ash in the short

920
00:50:41,640 --> 00:50:44,920
Speaker 1: story and Kyle Gash in the novel. And this a

921
00:50:45,000 --> 00:50:47,960
Speaker 1: fictional planet very much like Earth for the most part,

922
00:50:48,040 --> 00:50:49,920
Speaker 1: you know, like a sci fi Earth. You can think

923
00:50:49,960 --> 00:50:51,640
Speaker 1: of it just kind of almost like a star trek Earth,

924
00:50:51,680 --> 00:50:54,080
Speaker 1: where it's basically Earth at things that there are a

925
00:50:54,120 --> 00:50:56,279
Speaker 1: few factors at play that make it interesting. Right, You've

926
00:50:56,320 --> 00:50:58,560
Speaker 1: got some wrinkles on your head or something. Yeah, so

927
00:50:58,560 --> 00:51:00,279
Speaker 1: it's kind of like that. It's at the ring. Goals

928
00:51:00,320 --> 00:51:04,239
Speaker 1: here are that the the planet has six sons, which

929
00:51:04,320 --> 00:51:07,799
Speaker 1: keep the planet illuminated in varying levels of daylight all

930
00:51:07,880 --> 00:51:10,279
Speaker 1: the time. It sounds like too many suns. It does

931
00:51:10,280 --> 00:51:13,160
Speaker 1: sound like too many suns, but the result is that

932
00:51:13,200 --> 00:51:16,600
Speaker 1: there's no total darkness on the planet. And so on

933
00:51:16,600 --> 00:51:20,600
Speaker 1: one hand, the idea of their being total darkness just

934
00:51:20,640 --> 00:51:23,319
Speaker 1: seems like no one can buy For the most part,

935
00:51:23,360 --> 00:51:24,880
Speaker 1: no one can buy that. They're like, how would that

936
00:51:24,920 --> 00:51:28,040
Speaker 1: even work? Like the creatures depend on light. If there

937
00:51:28,080 --> 00:51:31,040
Speaker 1: were periods of darkness that it would just be devastating,

938
00:51:31,160 --> 00:51:33,080
Speaker 1: But it also means that no one has ever seen

939
00:51:33,120 --> 00:51:36,440
Speaker 1: the stars and so. But but then there when they

940
00:51:36,440 --> 00:51:40,799
Speaker 1: start looking back through through historical accounts and uh, and

941
00:51:40,920 --> 00:51:43,200
Speaker 1: some individuals are you know, trying to figure out how

942
00:51:43,200 --> 00:51:46,160
Speaker 1: celestial mechanics work. There's a belief that every two thousand

943
00:51:46,280 --> 00:51:50,640
Speaker 1: years or so, darkness comes to the planet of of

944
00:51:50,719 --> 00:51:54,840
Speaker 1: Lagash or cow Gash, and with it falls whole civilizations.

945
00:51:54,880 --> 00:51:57,000
Speaker 1: You know, I can almost see that kind of thing

946
00:51:57,080 --> 00:52:00,400
Speaker 1: in that scenario being a self fulfilling prophecy. Yeah, yeah,

947
00:52:00,960 --> 00:52:04,960
Speaker 1: uh it does. It is it's almost kind of like

948
00:52:05,040 --> 00:52:07,920
Speaker 1: the idea of the eclipse blown up or or and

949
00:52:07,920 --> 00:52:11,400
Speaker 1: and also kind of reversed that the world has always

950
00:52:11,840 --> 00:52:14,279
Speaker 1: uh bathed in in varying levels of light, and but

951
00:52:14,320 --> 00:52:16,879
Speaker 1: then every two thousand years there is a night into

952
00:52:16,880 --> 00:52:19,839
Speaker 1: a world that has never known night. Would it just

953
00:52:19,880 --> 00:52:22,160
Speaker 1: be madness? Would it be the would it be the

954
00:52:22,200 --> 00:52:25,799
Speaker 1: banging in the streets times a thousand? Like, how would

955
00:52:25,840 --> 00:52:28,360
Speaker 1: we deal with that and that's what what's what Asimov's

956
00:52:28,400 --> 00:52:31,359
Speaker 1: novel explores, or in a much simpler level, you can

957
00:52:31,360 --> 00:52:34,279
Speaker 1: look at Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court,

958
00:52:34,600 --> 00:52:37,080
Speaker 1: in which a time traveling Yankee saves his life in

959
00:52:37,120 --> 00:52:39,840
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages by remembering the occurrence of an eclipse

960
00:52:40,000 --> 00:52:42,520
Speaker 1: and claiming to have caused it. Oh well, I mean

961
00:52:42,960 --> 00:52:46,240
Speaker 1: you could tie that into events in in real history actually,

962
00:52:46,239 --> 00:52:49,239
Speaker 1: where you know, people have obviously been able to use

963
00:52:49,320 --> 00:52:53,120
Speaker 1: their knowledge of the ordered uh sequence of eclipse cycles

964
00:52:53,719 --> 00:52:57,040
Speaker 1: to impress people. Right, if you know that an eclipse

965
00:52:57,120 --> 00:52:59,880
Speaker 1: is coming and other people have no idea that a

966
00:53:00,000 --> 00:53:03,319
Speaker 1: elipses are on a schedule, basically you can appear to

967
00:53:03,360 --> 00:53:07,279
Speaker 1: have tremendous magical power. Yeah, it's and even today, if

968
00:53:07,280 --> 00:53:09,600
Speaker 1: you work in a you know, kind of uninformed workplace,

969
00:53:09,920 --> 00:53:14,040
Speaker 1: like nobody's really reading Scientific American or anything or the newspaper,

970
00:53:14,239 --> 00:53:15,800
Speaker 1: you might be able to pull this one off. Still,

971
00:53:16,120 --> 00:53:19,080
Speaker 1: wait for the next cellar eclipse, go to work, and

972
00:53:19,120 --> 00:53:22,200
Speaker 1: then claim to be a wizard. You'll surely get that

973
00:53:22,200 --> 00:53:26,319
Speaker 1: promotion you've always wanted. Yeah, I mean that's a rule,

974
00:53:26,400 --> 00:53:29,040
Speaker 1: and that's a business one on one always promoted was

975
00:53:29,200 --> 00:53:32,319
Speaker 1: that's your solid advice right there, all right. So there

976
00:53:32,360 --> 00:53:35,920
Speaker 1: you have it, the science of eclipse, you know, a

977
00:53:35,960 --> 00:53:39,440
Speaker 1: brief study of some of the mythology surrounding the eclipse

978
00:53:39,760 --> 00:53:42,399
Speaker 1: and just what it what it means to humanity as

979
00:53:42,400 --> 00:53:45,319
Speaker 1: a whole. You would like to explore more on this

980
00:53:45,360 --> 00:53:48,120
Speaker 1: topic again, check out that landing page for this episode

981
00:53:48,320 --> 00:53:50,319
Speaker 1: and you'll find it at stuff to blow your mind

982
00:53:50,360 --> 00:53:53,920
Speaker 1: dot com, along with all the other episodes we've ever reported,

983
00:53:54,120 --> 00:53:58,120
Speaker 1: along with videos, blog posts, links out the social media accounts.

984
00:53:58,160 --> 00:54:00,480
Speaker 1: You name it. And if you've got a story you'd

985
00:54:00,520 --> 00:54:02,480
Speaker 1: like to share about an eclipse you've ever seen or

986
00:54:03,040 --> 00:54:06,600
Speaker 1: fascinating eclipse mythology you've read about, please email it to

987
00:54:06,680 --> 00:54:09,040
Speaker 1: us and blow the mind at how staff works dot

988
00:54:09,040 --> 00:54:13,760
Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics,

989
00:54:13,800 --> 00:54:21,279
Speaker 1: because it has stuff works dot com