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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

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Speaker 3: My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 3: And Today and Stuff to Blow Your Mind. I wanted

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Speaker 3: to begin a series investigating the origins and meaning of

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Speaker 3: a phrase, a phrase that I have heard all my life,

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Speaker 3: mostly without understanding, and that phrase is the dog days

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Speaker 3: of summer. Definitely an expression that's been on my mind

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Speaker 3: the past few weeks. We've had some brutally hot days

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Speaker 3: here in my neighborhood, I assume in yours to Rob, yeah,

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Speaker 3: and in a lot of the rest of the Northern Hemisphere.

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Speaker 3: It's just been hot times all around. And it's like

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Speaker 3: the other day I was, I was grilling for a

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Speaker 3: get together, and so it's like the sun is just vicious,

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Speaker 3: and then you've got heat coming up from below too

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Speaker 3: on the grill, and it's just like wolf. Now. I

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Speaker 3: don't know when I first heard this phrase, the dog

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Speaker 3: days of summer, but I believe I can recall some

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Speaker 3: of the assumptions I had about this phrase when I

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Speaker 3: was young. So I thought it applied to a sort

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Speaker 3: of a sub section of summer, like the days later

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Speaker 3: in the summer season. I thought of it as like

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Speaker 3: late August. I don't know why the dog days had

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Speaker 3: the connotation of heat, but not necessarily like happy, fun

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Speaker 3: time playing outdoors heat, more like kind of sickening, oppressive heat,

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Speaker 3: threatening heat.

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Speaker 2: You better be at a swimming pool or the beach heat. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, And I also I think took the name dog

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Speaker 3: days of summer quite literally in interpreting where it came from.

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Speaker 3: I thought the dog days must have something to do

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Speaker 3: with the health or behavior of dogs, Like they're called

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Speaker 3: that because this is the time of year when dogs

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Speaker 3: are so overheated, so exhausted, they can't even run around

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Speaker 3: and be frisky. They're just gonna lay down in the

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Speaker 3: grass and pant all day.

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Speaker 2: Well, you know, I did look up the temperature preferred

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Speaker 2: temperature ranges for most dogs because of that possible connection.

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Speaker 2: And yeah, I mean it is one of the interesting

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Speaker 2: things about that dogs, like cats, generally like it warmer

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Speaker 2: than we like it, but not that warm. There is

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Speaker 2: a cutoff point where they're like, that's that's too hot.

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Speaker 2: That's a little too hot for me.

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Speaker 3: Oh that's interesting, I guess apart from any ancestral you know,

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Speaker 3: climate preference. That probably also has to do with just

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Speaker 3: like dogs having smaller body mass than humans on average,

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Speaker 3: like when you're smaller, you do better in warmer conditions.

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Speaker 3: But you know, also I was thinking another thing, like

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Speaker 3: I think of the dog days as days that are

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Speaker 3: so hot that people become sick. And so I think

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Speaker 3: that was the other link in my brain. When I

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Speaker 3: was younger, I was thinking like, oh, okay, you're sick

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Speaker 3: as a dog. And in part, I think I associated

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Speaker 3: this with a late summer tradition if you were on

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Speaker 3: sports teams as like a kid in the nineties or

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Speaker 3: the two thousands of puke week in soccer training. Do

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Speaker 3: you ever have puke week?

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Speaker 2: I don't think it was called as such, but I

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Speaker 2: remember similar situations, the similar feelings when it came to

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Speaker 2: like summertime soccer practice.

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Speaker 3: And I don't know if coaches are supposed to, you know,

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Speaker 3: put that kind of emphasis on it these days, but

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Speaker 3: but yeah, there is this idea that like you're gonna

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Speaker 3: you're gonna physically exhaust yourself in this like preseason fitness

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Speaker 3: conditioning thing, and there's going to be a lot of vomiting.

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Speaker 3: People get sick as dogs out there, practicing in the

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Speaker 3: hot weather.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I had to really think back to and yeah,

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Speaker 2: I don't remember when I started hearing the phrase the

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Speaker 2: dog days of summer and uh and I only like

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Speaker 2: loosely have different connections to make there with it. Like,

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Speaker 2: on one hand, it does always remind me of the

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Speaker 2: old saying about like the noonday heat on a hot day,

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Speaker 2: about how only mad dogs and Englishmen are going to

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Speaker 2: go out in it. Everyone else who knows better is

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Speaker 2: going to stay out of the heat, stay out of

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Speaker 2: the sun, and you know, not exert themselves. And I

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Speaker 2: haven't looked deeply into that. There may be more of

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Speaker 2: a connection there that I'm giving credit. The other is

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Speaker 2: is a much looser connection, But I think it always

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Speaker 2: makes me think of Don Henley creeping on ex lovers,

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Speaker 2: specifically the Boys of Summer, and to be hyper specific,

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Speaker 2: the excellent music video that was directed by Jean Baptiste Mordino,

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Speaker 2: who went on to direct a number of major music

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Speaker 2: videos after that, including several for Madonna. But great song,

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Speaker 2: great music video, kind of creepy lyrics, but as just

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Speaker 2: a general vibe without getting into the lyrical content, that

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Speaker 2: song always makes me think of sort of the same

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Speaker 2: timeframe we're talking about, there's some sort of not only

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Speaker 2: is there like the oppressive heat typically of this kind

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Speaker 2: of like late summer dog days of summer era, but

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Speaker 2: there's this there's this kind of feeling of sadness to

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Speaker 2: it as well, you know, maybe getting into that summertime

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Speaker 2: sadness that that other musicians sing off.

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Speaker 3: Yeah you got to go back to school, leave your

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Speaker 3: summer friends behind, or the summer fling is over, that

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Speaker 3: kind of yeah, where.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, summer is coming to a close, and maybe you're

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Speaker 2: excited about fall. But also it's like things are moving

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Speaker 2: a bit fast. It's you know, the passage of time

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Speaker 2: brings with it a certain weight.

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Speaker 3: I went and watched this music video because you referenced

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Speaker 3: it in the notes, and I guess I'm not intending

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Speaker 3: to insult it. It definitely has an eighties MTV charm,

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Speaker 3: but I was thinking, nobody's sweaty in this video. Did

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Speaker 3: you notice it's like very cool, dry looking summer. I

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Speaker 3: mean it's shot in black and white, as I think

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Speaker 3: you said, so, the cinematography of it is very very

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Speaker 3: cool in a way. It looks like film noir. It's

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Speaker 3: kind of crisp and a little well, it's like Film

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Speaker 3: Noir meets Leave It to Beaver, you know's they're both qualities.

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Speaker 3: There's that like little kid playing the drums in it,

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Speaker 3: but nobody looks like sweaty and wet and gross and greasy.

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Speaker 3: It just looks like everybody's freshly powdered out of the

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Speaker 3: makeup room.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, anytime I go back and watch it, I do

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Speaker 2: sometimes think this is not as summary as I remember

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Speaker 2: it being. But the song itself, you know, especially the

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Speaker 2: little synth part to it, like really sticks in my

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Speaker 2: mind as the as tied to the dog Days of Summer.

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Speaker 3: Oh totally, no, I see what you mean. Yeah, it

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Speaker 3: has that late summer feeling, and there is something something

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Speaker 3: kind of dark and negative associated with the heat that

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Speaker 3: seems to be coming along in the phrase. So it

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Speaker 3: turns out that my childhood intuitions about the meaning of

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Speaker 3: the meaning and origin of the Dog Days of Summer

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Speaker 3: were partially right and partially wrong. So the Dog days

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Speaker 3: of Summer probably do not originally get their name from

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Speaker 3: anything having to do with the behavior of dogs, like

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Speaker 3: panting in hot weather or I don't know, whatever else

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Speaker 3: dogs do when it gets really hot, lying down flat

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Speaker 3: on the floor that.

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Speaker 2: Sort of thing. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Rather, they are named for their association with a star. Actually,

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Speaker 3: they get their name from ancient astrology. The star is

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Speaker 3: called Serious or the dog star, and it's the brightest

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Speaker 3: star in the constellation Canis Major, and in fact the

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Speaker 3: brightest star in the Earth's night sky. However, despite the

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Speaker 3: fact that the expression dog days is not based on

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Speaker 3: the behavior of dogs in August, there is actually a

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Speaker 3: whole subsequent folklore and belief system about how the dog

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Speaker 3: star is supposed to have strange effects on canines, like

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Speaker 3: it interacts with dog health and friskiness and rabidity. It

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Speaker 3: seems the dog days of summer are historically associated with

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Speaker 3: extreme heat going way back. They are not consistently attached

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Speaker 3: to any particular days or any particular part of summer,

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Speaker 3: but within each different time and place in history, they

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Speaker 3: kind of get their own calendar range. So, you know,

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Speaker 3: the ancient Greeks in one era thought of the dog

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Speaker 3: days as a certain range of weeks in the summertime

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Speaker 3: stretching into autumn maybe, and you know, the ancient Egyptians

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Speaker 3: might have thought of them as a slightly different range,

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Speaker 3: and people think of them as maybe a different range

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Speaker 3: yet still today in different parts of the world. So

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Speaker 3: there's not like a start and end date of the

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Speaker 3: dog days on the calendar for all of history. But

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Speaker 3: if you're going to be strictly astronomical in your definition

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Speaker 3: of when they begin, we can identify what that date

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Speaker 3: is today, at least for different latitudes. Yeah, and so

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Speaker 3: it turns out that this common saying that makes people

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Speaker 3: think of dogs panting and the heat actually traces back

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Speaker 3: to obscure and in some cases bizarre, fascinating astrological beliefs

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Speaker 3: of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, with all these

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Speaker 3: connections to ancient literature and mythology and astronomy and the

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Speaker 3: history of medicine. So that's what we're going to be

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Speaker 3: talking about for the next couple of episodes. As one

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Speaker 3: of the first things we get into here, I thought

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Speaker 3: it might be good to look at an invocation of

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Speaker 3: the dog star and its attendance season in ancient literature.

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Speaker 3: One of the early references to the dog star and

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Speaker 3: the implied seasonal effects of the dog Star is actually

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Speaker 3: in the Iliad of Homer, where the dog Star is

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Speaker 3: said to carry a host of malignant characteristics. So I'm

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Speaker 3: about to read a passage from the Iliad, and I'll

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Speaker 3: need to establish some context so you can understand the meaning.

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Speaker 3: The passage I'm going to read is from booked twenty two,

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Speaker 3: and this happens in the story after Patroclus, the companion

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Speaker 3: of the Greek warrior Achilles, has been killed in battle

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Speaker 3: by the Trojan prince Hector. This drives Achilles into a

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Speaker 3: rage and he storms back into battle. He had been

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Speaker 3: refusing to fight for a long time after a conflict

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Speaker 3: that he had with the Greek king Agamemnon, but now

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Speaker 3: after his friend has been killed, his passions have brought

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Speaker 3: him back to the war. So at this point in

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Speaker 3: the poem, the deadly Achilles is charging the walls of Troy,

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Speaker 3: and he's coming for revenge against the Trojan Prince Hector.

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Speaker 3: And this passage is going to mention the king of Troy,

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Speaker 3: King Priam of Troy, who is Hector's father. This is

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Speaker 3: significant because Priam looks out and sees Achilles coming, sees

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Speaker 3: him coming across the plaine, and he knows in his

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Speaker 3: heart that the approach of Achilles could spell doom for

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Speaker 3: his son. He knows that his son will likely be

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Speaker 3: killed by Achilles. So he's about to urge he not

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Speaker 3: to face Achilles alone. So first I'm going to take

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Speaker 3: a look at the Richmond Latimore translation. This begins talking

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Speaker 3: about Achilles. Oh, and I should say in this translation

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Speaker 3: he calls Achilles Achilleus. Just to avoid confusion here, so

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Speaker 3: Latimer translates Achilleus. He spoke and stalked away against the city,

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Speaker 3: with high thoughts in mind, and in tearing speed, like

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Speaker 3: a racehorse with his chariot, who runs lightly as he

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Speaker 3: pulls the chariot over the flat land. Such was the

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Speaker 3: action of Achilleus, in feet and quick knees. The aged

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Speaker 3: Priam was the first of all whose eyes saw him

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Speaker 3: as he swept across the flat land in full shining,

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Speaker 3: like that star which comes on in autumn, and whose

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Speaker 3: conspicuous brightness far outshines the stars that are numbered in

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Speaker 3: the night's darkening. The star they give the name of

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Speaker 3: Orion's Dog, which is bright as among the stars, and

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Speaker 3: yet is wrought as a sign of evil and brings

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Speaker 3: on the great fever for unfortunate mortals. Such was the

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Speaker 3: flare of the bronze that girt his chest in his running.

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Speaker 3: And then after this Priam calls out to his son

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Speaker 3: Hector begs him not to not to go face Achilles alone.

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Speaker 3: Just to get another flavor of how this can be translated,

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Speaker 3: I want to read those lines about the star from

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Speaker 3: another translation. This is the more recent Emily Wilson translation.

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Speaker 3: So she describes what Priam saw and says, quote, he

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Speaker 3: saw the gleam, just like the star that rises in

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Speaker 3: late summer, whose beams shine bright amid the constellations at

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Speaker 3: dead of night. The people call it dog Star, Ryan's dog,

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Speaker 3: which flashes dazzling light, an evil omen bringing many fevers

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Speaker 3: to poor, unhappy Mortals. So the bronze shone on Achilles'

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Speaker 3: breastplate as he sprinted. So I love these passages. They're

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Speaker 3: really evocative. And this is actually a recurring theme in

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Speaker 3: the Iliad of light coming off of Achilles. So we

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Speaker 3: actually talked about a different section of the poem that

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Speaker 3: has Achilles gleaming in a different sense in our I

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Speaker 3: think it was a series we did a couple of

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Speaker 3: years ago on the tradition of Halos, because there's a

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Speaker 3: passage in book eighteen of the Iliad, this weird, fascinating

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Speaker 3: moment where Achilles appears before the Trojans ready again for battle,

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Speaker 3: and a crown of light is said to emanate from

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Speaker 3: his head. It's described sort of like you might think

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Speaker 3: of a halo, but maybe more majestic. It's like a

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Speaker 3: cloud of golden fire projecting up into the heavens, like

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Speaker 3: a beacon.

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Speaker 2: Kind of crazy that we have to say more majestic

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Speaker 2: than a halo, because the halo is just kind of

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Speaker 2: overrepresented in Western art, and it is sometimes presented in

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Speaker 2: a very simplified manner, but in its basic idea is

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Speaker 2: always majestic, always ce last youal.

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Speaker 3: Well, I guess I'm thinking of the halo as at

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Speaker 3: least as we see it in like Renaissance art. It's

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Speaker 3: something that looks like only people nearby would see it.

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Speaker 3: The way it's described in the Iliad, it looks like

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Speaker 3: you can see this light coming off of achilles head

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Speaker 3: for miles. Yeah, so this light in book eighteen, this

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Speaker 3: different passage, you know, this light could be in one

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Speaker 3: sense interpreted as a show of achilles intrinsic fury, like

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Speaker 3: he's burning with hate and with passion after the death

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Speaker 3: of his friend so powerfully that this light is coming out,

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Speaker 3: but more explicitly in the poem, it is said to

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Speaker 3: be a sign of the blessing of the goddess Athena,

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Speaker 3: who favors Achilles and helps him kill his enemies. In fact,

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Speaker 3: even after this passage we read from book twenty two,

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Speaker 3: Athena is going to help Achilles kill Hector, because you're

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Speaker 3: going to trick Hector while they're chasing around into thinking

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Speaker 3: that help is coming for him, and then Achilles will

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Speaker 3: use that to his advantage and kill him. Coming back

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Speaker 3: to this passage from book twenty two, Achilles has this

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Speaker 3: different kind of radiance, so he's running across the plane

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Speaker 3: to kill Hector. His bronze armor gleams in the sun,

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Speaker 3: and the poet says that the glint from his breastplate

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Speaker 3: is like the light from the star of Orion's Dog,

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Speaker 3: which in a sense contains kind of contradictions. On one hand,

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Speaker 3: it is the brightest star in the night sky, which

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Speaker 3: seems good, you know, much like Achilles is the Achaean's

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Speaker 3: greatest warrior. He's like, you know, the brightest star in

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Speaker 3: the sky of the Greek forces. But also the dog

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Speaker 3: star is an evil omen which brings fever and calamity,

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Speaker 3: much like Achilles is bringing death. And destruction to Hector,

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Speaker 3: and in fact, at this point in the story, to

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Speaker 3: everyone in his path. So, in Homer's telling, the brilliance

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Speaker 3: of the dog Star comes with a curse. You've got

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Speaker 3: poor unfortunate mortals everywhere who must suffer under the wickedness

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Speaker 3: of O'Brien's dog and burn with fevers in their bodies

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Speaker 3: at the same time knowing that it's the most brilliant

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Speaker 3: and in a way, the most beautiful star in the heavens.

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Speaker 2: As a side note here, just for later everyone, is

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Speaker 2: you're listening to this, make a note of what color

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Speaker 2: you imagine the dog star in this telling and this

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Speaker 2: gleam coming off of Achilles. It may prove useful later

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Speaker 2: on in our discussion.

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Speaker 3: Very good point.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, okay.

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Speaker 3: So to explore the role of the dog Star in

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Speaker 3: the Iliad a little bit more, I wanted to turn

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Speaker 3: now to a book that Rob and I have both

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Speaker 3: been reading for this episode. So this is a book

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Speaker 3: called Serious Brightest Diamond in the Night Sky by Jay Holberg,

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Speaker 3: published by Springer, New York tow and seven. The author,

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Speaker 3: j Holberg is an astrophysicist and an astronomy historian who

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Speaker 3: was affiliated with the University of Arizona. I think he's

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Speaker 3: retired now, Rob. I know you've looked up some stuff

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Speaker 3: about his career.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I was reading that. Yeah, he worked at

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Speaker 2: the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, which of

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Speaker 2: course came up earlier this year on the show in

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Speaker 2: our episode about Kartchner Caverns, because one of the co

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Speaker 2: discoverers of the caverns, Randy Tufts, went on to attend

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Speaker 2: and work there. And I dug a little deeper, and

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Speaker 2: I did confirm that they did it, at least to

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Speaker 2: some extent, work together, as Tufts actually thanked Holberg in

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Speaker 2: his nineteen ninety eight thesis paper, And for all I know,

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Speaker 2: they might have worked closer later on, but they at

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Speaker 2: least knew of each other.

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Speaker 3: That is a very sweet and unexpected connection. But I'm

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Speaker 3: going to say also that I've been liking this book

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Speaker 3: by Holberg, like he has a good way of writing

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Speaker 3: about the history and the cultural history of this the

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Speaker 3: astronomy and the astrology interpretations.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, a rare gift to be able to really

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Speaker 2: handle both so so well and at the same time

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Speaker 2: produce such a readable text. Yeah, as we get into

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Speaker 2: discussing serious in depth, We're just going to continually refer

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Speaker 2: out to this book. It ultimately becomes a challenge not

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Speaker 2: to put like everything that Holberg is telling you into

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Speaker 2: the notes because we can't discuss all of it, but

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Speaker 2: like he really digs into the Greek and Roman aspects,

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Speaker 2: the Egyptian aspects, and so much more.

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Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I have to credit Holberg because I initially

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Speaker 3: only dug up this one passage in the Iliad about

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Speaker 3: the dog star, but it was in reading him that

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Speaker 3: I realized there are actually other references to it in

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Speaker 3: the Iliad, like it comes back again, and these other

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Speaker 3: references really reinforce what it means to Homer and to

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Speaker 3: Homer's original audience. So earlier in the Iliad, in book five,

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Speaker 3: the Greek hero Diomedes, another one of the Achaeans. He's

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Speaker 3: the master of the war. Cry is often say he's

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Speaker 3: preparing for battle, and Holberg uses the Robert Fitzgerald translation,

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Speaker 3: So I'm just going to stick with that for this reading.

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Speaker 3: And the section goes like this quote, Now, Diomede's hour

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Speaker 3: for great action came Athena, made him bold and gave

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Speaker 3: him ease to tower amid argives to win glory, and

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Speaker 3: on his shield and helm she kindled fire most like

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Speaker 3: Midsommer's purest flaming Star in heaven, rising bathed by the

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Speaker 3: ocean stream, so fiery she made his head and shoulders

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Speaker 3: as she impelled him to the center where the greatest

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Speaker 3: number fought. So here I'd say the emphasis really does

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Speaker 3: seem to be on the brilliance of the dog star

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Speaker 3: of the Summer's purest flaming or Midsommer's purest flaming Star,

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Speaker 3: as Fitzgerald translates. So Athena is preparing her hero for

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Speaker 3: combat by making his shield and helmet gleam like the

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Speaker 3: brightest star which rises in the summer. Now, I would

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Speaker 3: note that we also get something similar here to that

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Speaker 3: later moment when Achilles is crowned with a glowing halo.

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Speaker 3: This is a little more understated, but here Athena makes

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Speaker 3: the head and shoulders of Diomedes fiery. So it's like

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Speaker 3: the goddess's blessing gives him a glow that he carries

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Speaker 3: with him into battle, and I guess makes him more

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Speaker 3: terrifying to his enemies as well, maybe in one sense,

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Speaker 3: like directly, like oh, that's unusual to see. That's scary,

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Speaker 3: but also it communicates the Goddess's favor, which you don't

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Speaker 3: want to see in your enemies. And I think also

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Speaker 3: there seems to be an idea that the sign of

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Speaker 3: excellence and the sign of the God's favor can be

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Speaker 3: seen visually in the magnitude of light reflected off of

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Speaker 3: a person or even being emitted from them. That like

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Speaker 3: something about the greatness of a person, their level of

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Speaker 3: blessedness by the gods is reflected in how bright they are.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this kind of good digs into something

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Speaker 2: you see and pretty much universally, as we we try

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Speaker 2: and figure out what our roles are in the course

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Speaker 2: of life and in human events, we look up to

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Speaker 2: the heavens and we see these little pinpoints of light

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Speaker 2: and we think about their distances between each other, their

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Speaker 2: differences in luminosity, and we kind of we cannot help

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Speaker 2: but draw comparisons between the two, even if we're not

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Speaker 2: getting into like some real hardcore astrology and saying, well,

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Speaker 2: this determines this, and this determines that just on a

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Speaker 2: basic metaphorical level, we can't help but compare the two.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, totally just noticing the multitudes of them and

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Speaker 3: the differences in brightness. I think naturally invites comparisons to humanity.

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Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, because which guitar am I yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, which because as we'll get into in more detail,

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Speaker 2: I mean, if if you're not aware, the stars do

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Speaker 2: change determined depending on like you know, where you are

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Speaker 2: in the world, and and and where we are in

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Speaker 2: in the orbit of things. You know, stars are going

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Speaker 2: to seem to enter and exit this grand show above us.

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Speaker 2: They're gonna grow dimmer, they're gonna grow brighter, and so forth.

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Speaker 2: There'll be other events that take place. So in many

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Speaker 2: ways it does become this interesting little model for human interactions.

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Speaker 3: One more passage that Holberg highlights from the Iliad is

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Speaker 3: from book eleven. This is also the Fitzgerald translation he uses,

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Speaker 3: and it reads like this, talking about now the Trojan

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Speaker 3: Prince Hector, it says Hector moved forward with his round

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Speaker 3: faced shield as from night clouds, a baleful summer star

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Speaker 3: will blaze into the clear then fade in cloud. So

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Speaker 3: Hector shown in front or became hidden when he harangued

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Speaker 3: the rear ranks, his whole form in a bronze of

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Speaker 3: flash like lightning. Of Father Zeus. Now in this passage,

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Speaker 3: you could still associate the brilliance with like virtue in battle,

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Speaker 3: or with the fame favor of a god. But Holberg notes,

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Speaker 3: and I think I agree that this passage has an

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Speaker 3: overall darker tone and really emphasizes the Summer Star as

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Speaker 3: something that emerges frighteningly from a place of hiddenness and

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Speaker 3: brings death and doom with it. And just a note

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Speaker 3: here briefly, because we're going to be referring to the

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Speaker 3: star a lot as serious, that is its common name today.

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Speaker 3: The Iliad never refers to the star by the Greek

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Speaker 3: name serious, other later Greek sources do, but Homer only

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Speaker 3: names it by its brightness, or by its association with Midsummer,

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Speaker 3: or by its association with Orion's dog. So that's how

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Speaker 3: we know what star he's talking about here. He doesn't

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Speaker 3: say serious. He says the star of Rion's dog, which

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Speaker 3: is serious, or the brightest star in the sky, which

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Speaker 3: is serious, or the star of Midsummer, which is serious.

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Speaker 3: So these passages from the Iliad highlight kind of a

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Speaker 3: tension of opposite connotations within the Dog star. On one hand,

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Speaker 3: you've got brilliance warmth and glory, and on the other hand,

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Speaker 3: you've got death and doom. And I thought it was

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Speaker 3: kind of interesting that this exact tension continues in a

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Speaker 3: lot of references to the Star and its time of year,

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Speaker 3: the dog days of summer, the time of the Star

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Speaker 3: in much more recent literature. And just one example. You know, Rob,

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Speaker 3: you brought up the Boys of Summer by Don Henley earlier,

417
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Speaker 3: but I started thinking about the other boys of Summer,

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Speaker 3: the poem I See the Boys of Summer by Dylan Thomas.

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Speaker 3: Do you know this one?

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Speaker 2: You know, I actually don't know this poem, but I

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Speaker 2: am assuming now this had to be the reference point

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Speaker 2: for the Don Henley song.

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Speaker 3: I have no idea. I don't know Boys of Summer.

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Speaker 3: It seems like he could. You could arrive at that

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Speaker 3: phrase independently. I don't know. We'll see. Maybe you can

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Speaker 3: judge at the end whether this is what Don Henley

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Speaker 3: had in mind or not. So if you've read it before,

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Speaker 3: you might remember the opening line that says, I see

429
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Speaker 3: the boy of Summer in their ruin lay the gold

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Speaker 3: Tithings Barren. So the boys of Summer in this poem

431
00:25:07,040 --> 00:25:11,439
Speaker 3: are described as very lively, carefree, active. They're kind of

432
00:25:12,440 --> 00:25:17,280
Speaker 3: almost literally glowing with vitality, like Achilles and diamites. But

433
00:25:18,280 --> 00:25:21,320
Speaker 3: as with a lot of Dylan Thomas poems, the poet

434
00:25:21,400 --> 00:25:26,919
Speaker 3: describes seeing an inevitable force of destruction and decay within

435
00:25:27,200 --> 00:25:30,600
Speaker 3: the lively activities of the boys of Summer. There's like

436
00:25:31,000 --> 00:25:34,800
Speaker 3: a death principle that must come round within even the

437
00:25:34,840 --> 00:25:39,040
Speaker 3: most vital activities of life. So the second stands of

438
00:25:39,080 --> 00:25:41,200
Speaker 3: this poem reads, this will kind of give you a flavor.

439
00:25:42,520 --> 00:25:46,600
Speaker 3: These boys of light are curdlers in their folly, sour,

440
00:25:46,720 --> 00:25:50,320
Speaker 3: the boiling honey, the jacks of frost they finger in

441
00:25:50,400 --> 00:25:53,960
Speaker 3: the hives. There in the sun, the frigid threads of

442
00:25:54,080 --> 00:25:57,600
Speaker 3: doubt and dark they feed their nerves. The signal moon

443
00:25:57,920 --> 00:25:59,639
Speaker 3: is zero in their voids.

444
00:26:00,600 --> 00:26:00,719
Speaker 2: MM.

445
00:26:01,960 --> 00:26:04,320
Speaker 3: So that gives you some idea. The poem is a

446
00:26:04,359 --> 00:26:07,800
Speaker 3: lot about the the interdependency of life and death, of

447
00:26:07,920 --> 00:26:11,359
Speaker 3: summer and winter, of these opposites, that things that are

448
00:26:11,480 --> 00:26:14,560
Speaker 3: very much alive carry death within them, and vice versa.

449
00:26:15,119 --> 00:26:18,240
Speaker 3: But there is eventually in this poem a reference to

450
00:26:18,560 --> 00:26:21,600
Speaker 3: the days of the summer star. The dog days are

451
00:26:21,680 --> 00:26:25,960
Speaker 3: referenced by name in lines that say quote, they're from

452
00:26:26,080 --> 00:26:29,440
Speaker 3: their hearts. The dog dayed pulse of love and light

453
00:26:29,680 --> 00:26:33,159
Speaker 3: bursts in their throats. Oh see the pulse of summer

454
00:26:33,520 --> 00:26:34,200
Speaker 3: in the ice.

455
00:26:35,200 --> 00:26:37,399
Speaker 2: Oh wow. Well, you know, all this makes me think

456
00:26:37,800 --> 00:26:39,920
Speaker 2: that there has to be a clear connection between this

457
00:26:40,160 --> 00:26:42,520
Speaker 2: poem and the Boys of Summer, And it makes me

458
00:26:42,600 --> 00:26:46,480
Speaker 2: rethink the way I've loosely interpreted Boys of Summer all

459
00:26:46,520 --> 00:26:50,800
Speaker 2: these years, because I again, when I actually take the

460
00:26:50,840 --> 00:26:54,000
Speaker 2: time to listen to the lyrics, I'm assuming that it

461
00:26:54,080 --> 00:26:56,520
Speaker 2: is Don Henley or Don Henley's character in the song

462
00:26:56,600 --> 00:27:01,280
Speaker 2: obviously kind of creeping on an ex lever girlfriend and

463
00:27:01,520 --> 00:27:04,840
Speaker 2: basically saying, when you're done running around with you know

464
00:27:04,960 --> 00:27:09,000
Speaker 2: these the these these hot guys, when that is cooled over,

465
00:27:09,160 --> 00:27:10,840
Speaker 2: I'm gonna still be here and I'm gonna get my

466
00:27:10,880 --> 00:27:11,520
Speaker 2: second chance.

467
00:27:11,600 --> 00:27:13,160
Speaker 4: Your dry guy will be right here.

468
00:27:13,240 --> 00:27:17,000
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah. But but maybe it's it's something I

469
00:27:17,040 --> 00:27:20,560
Speaker 2: don't know, maybe warmer than that, Like it's I mean,

470
00:27:20,600 --> 00:27:23,400
Speaker 2: maybe he is directly, you know, saying like, look, you're

471
00:27:23,400 --> 00:27:25,560
Speaker 2: in a different place in your life right now, and

472
00:27:25,720 --> 00:27:29,800
Speaker 2: you're happy, great, but eventually, you know you're gonna enter

473
00:27:29,800 --> 00:27:32,200
Speaker 2: a new phase and that's where I'm going to still

474
00:27:32,200 --> 00:27:35,119
Speaker 2: be here for you. Or maybe he is not. The

475
00:27:35,200 --> 00:27:39,440
Speaker 2: Don Henley character in this song is not immortal. Maybe

476
00:27:39,520 --> 00:27:41,600
Speaker 2: it is. Maybe he is God or something, and he

477
00:27:41,680 --> 00:27:44,520
Speaker 2: is saying, look, look right now, you're having you know,

478
00:27:44,600 --> 00:27:46,520
Speaker 2: the wild times of your life. You're having this this

479
00:27:46,600 --> 00:27:50,480
Speaker 2: hot young period. You're what is it, your hot girl

480
00:27:50,560 --> 00:27:54,280
Speaker 2: summer if you will. But eventually you're gonna get into

481
00:27:55,560 --> 00:27:57,800
Speaker 2: a different era and you're gonna need me, and I'm

482
00:27:57,840 --> 00:27:59,840
Speaker 2: gonna be here for you, and I'm gonna, you know,

483
00:28:00,040 --> 00:28:01,359
Speaker 2: welcome you in with open arms.

484
00:28:01,800 --> 00:28:04,320
Speaker 3: It's time to think about death. Yeah, let's talk about

485
00:28:04,320 --> 00:28:06,040
Speaker 3: death during summer break.

486
00:28:06,600 --> 00:28:09,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's where the summertime sadness comes in. I can

487
00:28:09,400 --> 00:28:10,840
Speaker 2: see channel Lanondel.

488
00:28:10,520 --> 00:28:13,679
Speaker 3: Ray there you go. I'm you know, I think you

489
00:28:13,800 --> 00:28:16,080
Speaker 3: might not be far off. This could really be in there.

490
00:28:16,560 --> 00:28:19,800
Speaker 3: I mean, certainly the sound of the song is dark,

491
00:28:19,960 --> 00:28:23,640
Speaker 3: you know, it doesn't it brings in a melancholy There

492
00:28:23,760 --> 00:28:25,719
Speaker 3: is some death consciousness in it.

493
00:28:26,359 --> 00:28:28,600
Speaker 2: I think. Well, at the same time, I don't think

494
00:28:28,640 --> 00:28:31,280
Speaker 2: you would necessarily call it yacht rock, but there is

495
00:28:31,320 --> 00:28:33,879
Speaker 2: some crossover with some of those vibes, I think, but

496
00:28:34,000 --> 00:28:35,719
Speaker 2: in a more of a synth pop direction.

497
00:28:36,160 --> 00:28:39,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, there's a little bit also. If I'm all right,

498
00:28:39,400 --> 00:28:40,520
Speaker 3: don't nobody worry about me?

499
00:28:40,640 --> 00:28:42,080
Speaker 2: Yeah.

500
00:28:42,320 --> 00:28:45,400
Speaker 3: So, Holberg explains that these lines in the Iliad, talking

501
00:28:45,440 --> 00:28:49,200
Speaker 3: about these different connotations of the dog Star, they bring

502
00:28:49,360 --> 00:28:52,000
Speaker 3: up themes that will appear over and over for the

503
00:28:52,040 --> 00:28:57,320
Speaker 3: next thousand years in Greek and Roman literature, and the themes

504
00:28:57,280 --> 00:29:03,120
Speaker 3: associated with the dog star are fire, heat and brightness

505
00:29:03,160 --> 00:29:06,040
Speaker 3: seasonal heat, so not just like fiery heat, but also

506
00:29:06,240 --> 00:29:10,920
Speaker 3: the hottest part of the summer doom I mean. Holberg

507
00:29:11,000 --> 00:29:14,960
Speaker 3: explicitly says that in the Iliad, it is portrayed as

508
00:29:15,080 --> 00:29:18,760
Speaker 3: a death star. It is explicitly said to be a

509
00:29:18,760 --> 00:29:22,280
Speaker 3: star that brings sickness and fever with it, it brings

510
00:29:22,360 --> 00:29:27,080
Speaker 3: the plague. But also within the story, by association, it

511
00:29:27,160 --> 00:29:30,000
Speaker 3: is associated with these figures who are going into battle

512
00:29:30,080 --> 00:29:33,120
Speaker 3: to kill. It is something that is bringing death and destruction.

513
00:29:34,200 --> 00:29:36,840
Speaker 3: And then also there is some kind of link to

514
00:29:37,120 --> 00:29:39,480
Speaker 3: dogs in the more literal sense, even though it's not

515
00:29:39,600 --> 00:29:42,880
Speaker 3: named after what dogs do in hot weather, and so

516
00:29:43,400 --> 00:29:46,520
Speaker 3: for all these reasons, the dog days in English this

517
00:29:46,560 --> 00:29:49,560
Speaker 3: phrase in English, which has existed at least since the

518
00:29:49,720 --> 00:29:53,640
Speaker 3: fifteen hundreds in English, has come to refer to the

519
00:29:53,680 --> 00:29:59,560
Speaker 3: hottest days of summer in the northern hemisphere. Traditionally, the

520
00:29:59,600 --> 00:30:03,040
Speaker 3: beginning of the Dog Days were marked by what's known

521
00:30:03,120 --> 00:30:07,800
Speaker 3: as the hiliacal rising of the star Sirius, the dog star,

522
00:30:08,600 --> 00:30:12,680
Speaker 3: which means that this is when Sirius would rise over

523
00:30:12,920 --> 00:30:18,200
Speaker 3: the eastern horizon just before dawn. For the ancient Greeks,

524
00:30:18,280 --> 00:30:21,280
Speaker 3: the Dog Days were generally said to begin sometime in

525
00:30:21,400 --> 00:30:24,440
Speaker 3: July and they would extend through August and into part

526
00:30:24,440 --> 00:30:28,760
Speaker 3: of September. But this, of course, as I said earlier,

527
00:30:28,840 --> 00:30:31,840
Speaker 3: it varies by time and place in history where exactly

528
00:30:31,880 --> 00:30:36,000
Speaker 3: people place the Dog Days, and also for real physical

529
00:30:36,040 --> 00:30:40,760
Speaker 3: astronomical reasons, the timing of the rising of the hallikal

530
00:30:40,840 --> 00:30:44,080
Speaker 3: rising of Sirius actually does change depending on where you

531
00:30:44,120 --> 00:30:49,160
Speaker 3: are on the Earth and in history. So because the

532
00:30:49,200 --> 00:30:52,720
Speaker 3: star serious is the brightest star in the night sky,

533
00:30:52,880 --> 00:30:55,959
Speaker 3: and because around this time of year, when it started

534
00:30:56,080 --> 00:31:00,560
Speaker 3: rising just before the sun, before dawn, you could think

535
00:31:00,600 --> 00:31:03,200
Speaker 3: of it as like, wow, the brightest star is like

536
00:31:03,360 --> 00:31:07,320
Speaker 3: aligned with the Sun almost you know, they're coming up together.

537
00:31:08,360 --> 00:31:12,640
Speaker 3: And so because of this, many ancient peoples in ancient Greece, Egypt,

538
00:31:12,680 --> 00:31:18,040
Speaker 3: and Rome thought that the star was actually scorching the

539
00:31:18,160 --> 00:31:22,120
Speaker 3: earth along with the Sun, that this was the hottest

540
00:31:22,120 --> 00:31:25,880
Speaker 3: part of the summer. Because Sirius was essentially adding its

541
00:31:25,920 --> 00:31:29,280
Speaker 3: heat to the Sun's heat. It's like turning a second

542
00:31:29,320 --> 00:31:32,080
Speaker 3: burner on under the same pan. You know, you're like

543
00:31:32,200 --> 00:31:35,560
Speaker 3: doubling the heat output, or not necessarily doubling, but literally

544
00:31:35,640 --> 00:31:40,080
Speaker 3: just increasing that the heat being thrust into the earth system.

545
00:31:40,360 --> 00:31:44,600
Speaker 2: Like you when it's you know, five pm, mid August

546
00:31:44,920 --> 00:31:47,680
Speaker 2: and you realize that the recipe you're cooking to night

547
00:31:47,800 --> 00:31:51,440
Speaker 2: calls for you to use the broilers, just adding it

548
00:31:51,480 --> 00:31:54,920
Speaker 2: doesn't really rival the Sun's heat, but it is contributing

549
00:31:55,000 --> 00:31:57,320
Speaker 2: to the heat of your kitchen and living room.

550
00:31:57,520 --> 00:32:00,400
Speaker 3: Well except yeah, in your house the broiler actually, you know,

551
00:32:00,480 --> 00:32:02,680
Speaker 3: turning on the oven actually does warm your house up.

552
00:32:02,840 --> 00:32:06,680
Speaker 3: As we will discuss, the heat put out by serious

553
00:32:06,880 --> 00:32:08,560
Speaker 3: would be a lot of heat if you were close

554
00:32:08,600 --> 00:32:10,480
Speaker 3: to it. It is not close enough to us to

555
00:32:10,560 --> 00:32:13,320
Speaker 3: make any difference whatsoever to the around of heat on Earth.

556
00:32:13,360 --> 00:32:17,200
Speaker 2: So it's not actually doing that. And I do want

557
00:32:17,200 --> 00:32:20,040
Speaker 2: to go ahead and say, you know, obviously, you know

558
00:32:20,080 --> 00:32:23,720
Speaker 2: we're discussing a lot of supernatural content here at the

559
00:32:23,760 --> 00:32:28,040
Speaker 2: top of this episode. Obviously this is not an actual

560
00:32:28,080 --> 00:32:31,000
Speaker 2: evil star. It's light does not actually do anything evil.

561
00:32:31,040 --> 00:32:34,600
Speaker 2: I mean, ultimately we're talking like, you know what three

562
00:32:34,840 --> 00:32:36,640
Speaker 2: of as many as like three months out of the year,

563
00:32:36,920 --> 00:32:39,000
Speaker 2: and a lot of good things happen in those months too,

564
00:32:39,080 --> 00:32:41,040
Speaker 2: So I don't know, Just in case anyone has any

565
00:32:41,120 --> 00:32:43,800
Speaker 2: subliminal superstition that's kind of welling up, you know how

566
00:32:43,800 --> 00:32:46,480
Speaker 2: you do, We're like, maybe there's something to this. Bad

567
00:32:46,520 --> 00:32:50,400
Speaker 2: stuff does happen in August sometimes, but yes, also good stuff.

568
00:32:50,440 --> 00:32:52,560
Speaker 2: So just to go ahead and throw that out.

569
00:32:52,600 --> 00:32:55,600
Speaker 3: Yes, let this be the disclaimer for this whole series.

570
00:32:55,640 --> 00:32:59,680
Speaker 3: We are not advocating the supernatural claims of astrology or

571
00:32:59,800 --> 00:33:02,680
Speaker 3: saying that a star has it out for you. The

572
00:33:02,720 --> 00:33:03,760
Speaker 3: star is not going to get you.

573
00:33:04,040 --> 00:33:06,360
Speaker 2: But those ideas can be sticky, as they have always

574
00:33:06,400 --> 00:33:09,520
Speaker 2: been sticky in human culture, you know, certainly before we

575
00:33:09,600 --> 00:33:12,600
Speaker 2: had our modern understanding of the movement of the spheres,

576
00:33:12,640 --> 00:33:16,400
Speaker 2: but even today so.

577
00:33:16,440 --> 00:33:20,440
Speaker 3: The ancient Romans called the days following the rising of

578
00:33:20,480 --> 00:33:24,080
Speaker 3: the Dog star the DS caniculais or the days of

579
00:33:24,120 --> 00:33:29,320
Speaker 3: the Dog Star. They actually placed Siirious within the constellation

580
00:33:29,600 --> 00:33:33,760
Speaker 3: Canus major, or the Greater Dog. There are two dog constellations,

581
00:33:33,800 --> 00:33:36,640
Speaker 3: Canus major and Canus minor, the Greater Dog and the

582
00:33:36,720 --> 00:33:40,640
Speaker 3: lesser dog, which are both associated with the mythic huntsman Orion,

583
00:33:40,760 --> 00:33:45,120
Speaker 3: who was kind of giant figure. And as I mentioned earlier,

584
00:33:45,600 --> 00:33:49,040
Speaker 3: the term dog days in referring to the hottest period

585
00:33:49,080 --> 00:33:51,680
Speaker 3: of summer does seem to show up in English at

586
00:33:51,760 --> 00:33:54,120
Speaker 3: least as far back as the fifteen hundred, So this

587
00:33:54,240 --> 00:33:56,560
Speaker 3: phrase has been kicking around in English for a while,

588
00:33:57,000 --> 00:33:59,560
Speaker 3: based on these traditions that are much much older, going

589
00:33:59,600 --> 00:34:02,080
Speaker 3: back in to the ancient world, to the Greeks, to

590
00:34:02,120 --> 00:34:05,560
Speaker 3: the Romans, and to the Egyptians, who pegged the rising

591
00:34:05,600 --> 00:34:09,000
Speaker 3: of Sirius to the onset of the season for the

592
00:34:09,040 --> 00:34:10,240
Speaker 3: annual flooding of the Nile.

593
00:34:10,880 --> 00:34:12,160
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, the inundation.

594
00:34:12,360 --> 00:34:26,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, So there's a foundation for the history of

595
00:34:26,160 --> 00:34:30,760
Speaker 3: how the rising of serious, the halliical rising of Sirius

596
00:34:31,080 --> 00:34:33,800
Speaker 3: has been processed culturally and what it has meant to

597
00:34:33,880 --> 00:34:37,399
Speaker 3: people in these sources of literature and things like that.

598
00:34:37,440 --> 00:34:39,880
Speaker 3: Will come back and talk more about the cultural meaning

599
00:34:40,360 --> 00:34:42,799
Speaker 3: of Sirius and the dog days of Summer later on,

600
00:34:42,920 --> 00:34:45,239
Speaker 3: but first I think we should just focus for a

601
00:34:45,239 --> 00:34:47,840
Speaker 3: bit on the star itself. What is going on with

602
00:34:48,280 --> 00:34:49,080
Speaker 3: this dog star?

603
00:34:49,239 --> 00:34:50,359
Speaker 4: What is it?

604
00:34:50,800 --> 00:34:54,279
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, it is essential to strip away all the

605
00:34:54,640 --> 00:34:56,920
Speaker 2: supernatural stuff for a minute and just talk about what

606
00:34:57,000 --> 00:35:02,040
Speaker 2: it is. It is the brightest star in the night sky,

607
00:35:02,200 --> 00:35:05,680
Speaker 2: and when conditions are right, it is so bright that

608
00:35:05,760 --> 00:35:09,080
Speaker 2: it can be seen during the day as well. As such,

609
00:35:09,160 --> 00:35:12,320
Speaker 2: the star, given many different names by different stargazs and

610
00:35:12,360 --> 00:35:17,320
Speaker 2: cultures throughout human history, has played a role in various

611
00:35:17,360 --> 00:35:21,319
Speaker 2: different surviving astronomies and astrologies. You know, it's just if

612
00:35:21,360 --> 00:35:23,719
Speaker 2: you're if you're if you're just day one and you're

613
00:35:23,719 --> 00:35:26,680
Speaker 2: going to create a brand new astrology, you know you're

614
00:35:26,680 --> 00:35:28,880
Speaker 2: gonna you're gonna you're gonna notice the things that really

615
00:35:28,920 --> 00:35:31,520
Speaker 2: stand out. And that's what Sirius does. If if it

616
00:35:31,560 --> 00:35:34,279
Speaker 2: is visible in the sky for you, it stands out.

617
00:35:35,440 --> 00:35:38,839
Speaker 2: So what is it? Well, the light of Sirius is

618
00:35:38,880 --> 00:35:43,040
Speaker 2: that of a luminous am star or metallic line star,

619
00:35:43,719 --> 00:35:48,280
Speaker 2: uh known as serious A. It's roughly twice as large

620
00:35:48,320 --> 00:35:52,120
Speaker 2: as our own star, the Sun, and twenty five times brighter.

621
00:35:52,920 --> 00:35:56,520
Speaker 2: Now I've said Serious A because it also has a companion,

622
00:35:56,920 --> 00:36:00,560
Speaker 2: and this is Serious B. Serious B is a massive

623
00:36:00,760 --> 00:36:05,239
Speaker 2: white dwarf roughly the size of Earth, much smaller than

624
00:36:05,320 --> 00:36:10,080
Speaker 2: Serious A, much fainter. It was not discovered by astronomers

625
00:36:10,160 --> 00:36:15,120
Speaker 2: till eighteen sixty two CE. Meanwhile, again, knowledge of Serious A,

626
00:36:15,719 --> 00:36:18,400
Speaker 2: which is visible to the naked eye, goes all the

627
00:36:18,440 --> 00:36:22,960
Speaker 2: way back through human stargays and cultures, you know, back

628
00:36:23,000 --> 00:36:27,399
Speaker 2: into prehistory. These two stars, Serious A and Serious B,

629
00:36:27,800 --> 00:36:30,040
Speaker 2: we know now that they orbit each other in a

630
00:36:30,040 --> 00:36:33,600
Speaker 2: binary system, and at present these are the only two

631
00:36:33,760 --> 00:36:38,160
Speaker 2: confirmed astral bodies in the system. As I'll touch on later,

632
00:36:38,239 --> 00:36:41,000
Speaker 2: there is a hypothesis that there could be a Serious C,

633
00:36:41,880 --> 00:36:44,840
Speaker 2: but that is a pure hypothesis at this point and

634
00:36:44,920 --> 00:36:48,600
Speaker 2: nothing has been proven. And likewise, it has no known planet.

635
00:36:48,680 --> 00:36:51,000
Speaker 2: So as far as we know, it's just Serious A

636
00:36:51,280 --> 00:36:55,120
Speaker 2: and Serious B out there, you know, orbiting each other.

637
00:36:55,600 --> 00:36:59,640
Speaker 3: Am I correct in assuming that Serious B is basically

638
00:36:59,719 --> 00:37:02,680
Speaker 3: not observable before the advent of telescopes, because it would

639
00:37:02,680 --> 00:37:06,000
Speaker 3: be it would be hidden by the glare of Serious A.

640
00:37:06,320 --> 00:37:08,319
Speaker 2: Right, It's just way too faint. It is just a

641
00:37:08,440 --> 00:37:12,240
Speaker 2: much fainter light. Yeah, it would not have been viewable

642
00:37:12,320 --> 00:37:15,200
Speaker 2: to any humans before the advent of telescopes.

643
00:37:15,680 --> 00:37:19,600
Speaker 3: And am I also correct that Serious A is is

644
00:37:19,640 --> 00:37:23,239
Speaker 3: the brightest star in our night sky for two different reasons,

645
00:37:23,440 --> 00:37:27,960
Speaker 3: both because it has very high inherent luminosity and because

646
00:37:28,000 --> 00:37:31,920
Speaker 3: it's very close, so it has two different things both

647
00:37:32,000 --> 00:37:34,960
Speaker 3: contributing to it being pretty bright from our point of view.

648
00:37:35,520 --> 00:37:37,680
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right, And I believe I have the

649
00:37:37,719 --> 00:37:40,120
Speaker 2: stat on how far away it is that I'll come

650
00:37:40,160 --> 00:37:43,319
Speaker 2: back to in just a second. Okay, but first I

651
00:37:43,320 --> 00:37:45,600
Speaker 2: want to touch on something that I thought was really

652
00:37:46,040 --> 00:37:50,239
Speaker 2: really interesting. Again, we've already touched on the reality that

653
00:37:50,280 --> 00:37:52,919
Speaker 2: the stars everything is in motion. You know, you've seen

654
00:37:53,440 --> 00:37:56,680
Speaker 2: charts of our Solar system, You've probably seen charts of

655
00:37:56,719 --> 00:38:00,000
Speaker 2: our Milky Way galaxy, and you know that everything's moving around,

656
00:38:00,040 --> 00:38:03,400
Speaker 2: everything's orbiting around other things. You know, everything is in

657
00:38:03,440 --> 00:38:08,400
Speaker 2: motion and things change, and so it's just fascinating to

658
00:38:08,480 --> 00:38:12,040
Speaker 2: point out that while Sirius is currently the most luminous

659
00:38:12,040 --> 00:38:15,600
Speaker 2: star in the night sky, it won't always be and

660
00:38:15,640 --> 00:38:20,799
Speaker 2: it wasn't always the brightest. So I found a really

661
00:38:20,920 --> 00:38:24,239
Speaker 2: nice explainer article that's easily accessed to everyone out there

662
00:38:24,239 --> 00:38:27,439
Speaker 2: by one Steve Hurley over at explaining science dot org.

663
00:38:28,320 --> 00:38:30,120
Speaker 2: I thought he did a nice job of walking through

664
00:38:30,160 --> 00:38:33,440
Speaker 2: a lot of this, so I'm sourcing some of his

665
00:38:33,560 --> 00:38:37,560
Speaker 2: material here. In addition to the book that we referenced, earlier.

666
00:38:38,040 --> 00:38:42,480
Speaker 2: But yeah, Sirius has shown the brightest through virtually all

667
00:38:42,560 --> 00:38:46,040
Speaker 2: of recorded human history, so you know everything. We're talking

668
00:38:46,120 --> 00:38:50,320
Speaker 2: about the ancient ancient Romans, ancient Greeks, the ancient Chinese,

669
00:38:51,320 --> 00:38:55,359
Speaker 2: and certainly the ancient Egyptians. It was the brightest for them.

670
00:38:55,520 --> 00:38:58,239
Speaker 2: But if you were to travel back in time some

671
00:38:58,560 --> 00:39:02,319
Speaker 2: ninety thousand years, it would not be the case. So

672
00:39:02,360 --> 00:39:07,440
Speaker 2: we're talking about a time before the earliest surviving examples

673
00:39:07,560 --> 00:39:12,239
Speaker 2: of abstract art or symbolism, an age of nomadic hunter gatherers,

674
00:39:12,480 --> 00:39:15,400
Speaker 2: a time when Homo sapiens still shared the world with

675
00:39:15,440 --> 00:39:20,479
Speaker 2: the Neanderthals that long ago. Now, at this point, another star,

676
00:39:20,719 --> 00:39:24,280
Speaker 2: Cannapis was the brightest. Cannabis is still there, of course.

677
00:39:24,320 --> 00:39:27,360
Speaker 2: It is the second brightest star in the night sky.

678
00:39:28,680 --> 00:39:32,680
Speaker 2: It is a bright giant, an enormous star that has

679
00:39:32,760 --> 00:39:36,480
Speaker 2: already passed through its main sequence in red giant branch stages.

680
00:39:37,120 --> 00:39:39,600
Speaker 2: It would have been the brightest star in Earth's sky

681
00:39:40,080 --> 00:39:43,400
Speaker 2: for much of the last four million years, but today

682
00:39:43,640 --> 00:39:46,200
Speaker 2: it shines only half as bright as serious.

683
00:39:46,640 --> 00:39:50,720
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, So what changed in the past few tens

684
00:39:50,719 --> 00:39:53,480
Speaker 3: of thousands of years. Is it something that changed about

685
00:39:53,520 --> 00:39:57,319
Speaker 3: the luminosity of Cannapis, or is it something that changed

686
00:39:57,320 --> 00:40:00,239
Speaker 3: about like our relative position to these two stars.

687
00:40:00,280 --> 00:40:03,080
Speaker 2: Or what it's the position. Yeah, so you know, the

688
00:40:03,120 --> 00:40:08,160
Speaker 2: stars themselves have not really changed during this very cosmologically

689
00:40:08,200 --> 00:40:10,600
Speaker 2: brief period of time. Again, this is one of those

690
00:40:10,640 --> 00:40:14,400
Speaker 2: where there's some great visual depictions to this, but the

691
00:40:14,480 --> 00:40:18,319
Speaker 2: time we're talking about the time of human awareness of

692
00:40:18,360 --> 00:40:23,320
Speaker 2: the stars is just so ridiculously minuscule. It's it's almost

693
00:40:23,400 --> 00:40:28,320
Speaker 2: a joke, you know. So in this very brief period

694
00:40:28,320 --> 00:40:32,080
Speaker 2: of time, Yeah, the stars themselves have not material These

695
00:40:32,120 --> 00:40:34,920
Speaker 2: stars anyway have not materially changed, but their position in

696
00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:39,880
Speaker 2: relation to our planet has serious is approaching our Solar

697
00:40:39,920 --> 00:40:42,520
Speaker 2: system at a speed of something like five point five

698
00:40:42,680 --> 00:40:47,200
Speaker 2: kilometers per second. It's currently eight point six light years away,

699
00:40:47,719 --> 00:40:51,960
Speaker 2: the fifth closest star to our solar system, and it

700
00:40:52,040 --> 00:40:56,520
Speaker 2: will reach its absolute closest point seven point eight light

701
00:40:56,600 --> 00:41:00,440
Speaker 2: years away sixty thousand years from now, and at this

702
00:41:00,520 --> 00:41:03,520
Speaker 2: point it will shine twenty percent brighter in the sky

703
00:41:03,640 --> 00:41:07,960
Speaker 2: than it does now. So if you've planned to be

704
00:41:08,000 --> 00:41:12,080
Speaker 2: around sixty thousand years from now, you know, look out

705
00:41:12,120 --> 00:41:14,400
Speaker 2: for it. It's going to be even brighter. And if

706
00:41:14,400 --> 00:41:17,520
Speaker 2: these supernatural ideas have anything do them. It's going to

707
00:41:17,520 --> 00:41:20,000
Speaker 2: be a really rough time. There's going to be a

708
00:41:19,160 --> 00:41:23,880
Speaker 2: lot of hot blooded action concerning the boys and the

709
00:41:23,880 --> 00:41:24,840
Speaker 2: warriors of Summer.

710
00:41:25,239 --> 00:41:27,839
Speaker 3: Well, funny thing to note. As it gets closer and

711
00:41:27,880 --> 00:41:31,960
Speaker 3: thus brighter over the next sixty thousand years, it will

712
00:41:32,000 --> 00:41:38,680
Speaker 3: also lose its natural calindrical association with summer. So I

713
00:41:38,719 --> 00:41:40,919
Speaker 3: was reading and I think I saw this, Oh, I saw.

714
00:41:40,920 --> 00:41:43,040
Speaker 3: I read this in an article on history dot com

715
00:41:43,040 --> 00:41:45,840
Speaker 3: by Christopher Klein about the Dog Days of Summer, where

716
00:41:46,239 --> 00:41:50,240
Speaker 3: Klein mentions an estimate that in about ten thousand years,

717
00:41:50,680 --> 00:41:53,920
Speaker 3: the Hallikal Rising of Sirius is going to be so

718
00:41:54,120 --> 00:41:56,880
Speaker 3: far pushed back in the calendar that it's no longer

719
00:41:56,920 --> 00:41:59,319
Speaker 3: going to be associated with summer. It will be in

720
00:41:59,360 --> 00:42:01,759
Speaker 3: the northern hend hemisphere. It will be in the winter,

721
00:42:02,200 --> 00:42:04,480
Speaker 3: So we will have the dog days of winter by then.

722
00:42:04,840 --> 00:42:07,080
Speaker 3: Oh wow, but that's just ten thousand years. I don't

723
00:42:07,080 --> 00:42:08,799
Speaker 3: know how many cycles we're going to go through by

724
00:42:08,800 --> 00:42:11,239
Speaker 3: the time we get to sixty thousand. Yeah, maybe it'll

725
00:42:11,280 --> 00:42:12,560
Speaker 3: be back in summer at that point.

726
00:42:12,800 --> 00:42:17,480
Speaker 2: Yeah. We're dealing with lengths of time that dwarf human

727
00:42:17,520 --> 00:42:21,759
Speaker 2: life span, obviously, and even these are minuscule again, just

728
00:42:21,920 --> 00:42:25,080
Speaker 2: faintly menuscule periods of time in the grand scheme of

729
00:42:25,120 --> 00:42:27,920
Speaker 2: the movements of the milky White galaxy.

730
00:42:28,200 --> 00:42:30,359
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it is it is funny to think about

731
00:42:30,400 --> 00:42:35,799
Speaker 3: how we use these, you know, astral associations with the

732
00:42:35,880 --> 00:42:39,000
Speaker 3: calendar as these fixed things that recur a year after

733
00:42:39,120 --> 00:42:42,120
Speaker 3: year and give meaning and structure to human life. And

734
00:42:42,280 --> 00:42:45,320
Speaker 3: on the timescale of human life, that can be useful.

735
00:42:45,320 --> 00:42:47,160
Speaker 3: But you know, over the age even just of human

736
00:42:47,200 --> 00:42:51,680
Speaker 3: civilizations and human history, like our relative position to these

737
00:42:51,719 --> 00:42:55,200
Speaker 3: stars does change, and so like the star risings happen

738
00:42:55,280 --> 00:42:57,720
Speaker 3: at different times of year than they did the thousands

739
00:42:57,760 --> 00:42:58,319
Speaker 3: of years ago.

740
00:42:58,640 --> 00:43:01,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of like when I was a certain age,

741
00:43:01,520 --> 00:43:03,680
Speaker 2: I knew it was nine PM because that's when Star

742
00:43:03,719 --> 00:43:06,239
Speaker 2: Trek the next generation came on. At the time. That

743
00:43:06,280 --> 00:43:08,759
Speaker 2: was a perfect way to measure time. It did not

744
00:43:08,880 --> 00:43:15,359
Speaker 2: hold up outside of my junior high years anyway. But yeah,

745
00:43:15,400 --> 00:43:17,840
Speaker 2: so is the heavens move and as serious begins to

746
00:43:17,920 --> 00:43:22,400
Speaker 2: move away from us, it's going to become fainter, and

747
00:43:22,840 --> 00:43:24,799
Speaker 2: over the course of a million years or so, and

748
00:43:24,920 --> 00:43:28,600
Speaker 2: his serious dims in our sky, the star Vega will

749
00:43:28,600 --> 00:43:31,319
Speaker 2: glow brighter, becoming the brightest by the year I believe

750
00:43:31,320 --> 00:43:35,720
Speaker 2: two hundred thousand CE and dominate for three hundred thousand

751
00:43:35,800 --> 00:43:39,920
Speaker 2: years before Cannabis comes around again, close enough to outshine

752
00:43:39,960 --> 00:43:43,560
Speaker 2: the other stars in our sky once more. Other stars

753
00:43:43,600 --> 00:43:46,160
Speaker 2: too are going to dim and glow brighter over time

754
00:43:46,239 --> 00:43:48,360
Speaker 2: as well, but you know, these are going to be

755
00:43:48,360 --> 00:43:52,600
Speaker 2: the main superstars in our in our cosmic lifespan.

756
00:43:54,320 --> 00:43:57,000
Speaker 3: What's going on with Vega and not where the signal

757
00:43:57,080 --> 00:43:59,120
Speaker 3: came from in contact?

758
00:43:59,320 --> 00:44:02,759
Speaker 2: I think, so oh yeah, yeah, yeah, the fascinating thing.

759
00:44:02,840 --> 00:44:05,640
Speaker 2: And I tried not to get too dragged into it,

760
00:44:05,719 --> 00:44:09,640
Speaker 2: and certainly for this episode. But all of these closest

761
00:44:09,680 --> 00:44:13,839
Speaker 2: stars and brightest stars, they don't not at this point,

762
00:44:13,960 --> 00:44:17,920
Speaker 2: and they don't only only have their scientific knowledge behind

763
00:44:17,920 --> 00:44:20,799
Speaker 2: them and whatever kind of astrological weight they have, but

764
00:44:20,840 --> 00:44:23,640
Speaker 2: they also have various sci fi things attached to them

765
00:44:23,640 --> 00:44:24,520
Speaker 2: as well, like.

766
00:44:24,400 --> 00:44:25,759
Speaker 3: What aliens come from there?

767
00:44:26,000 --> 00:44:29,319
Speaker 2: Yeah? What aliens come from there? How do they fit

768
00:44:29,360 --> 00:44:31,719
Speaker 2: into the Dune universe? You know, some of them are

769
00:44:31,719 --> 00:44:34,080
Speaker 2: tied in with certain planets in the Dune universe and

770
00:44:34,120 --> 00:44:36,919
Speaker 2: so forth. So I tried not to go down any

771
00:44:36,920 --> 00:44:38,839
Speaker 2: of those rabbit holes too much, but hey, maybe we'll

772
00:44:38,880 --> 00:44:43,800
Speaker 2: do those rabbit holes later, at least concerning Serious. So again,

773
00:44:43,840 --> 00:44:45,920
Speaker 2: all this is due to the orbits of these various

774
00:44:45,960 --> 00:44:48,520
Speaker 2: stars and their systems around the center of the Milky

775
00:44:48,520 --> 00:44:51,919
Speaker 2: Way galaxy altering the distance between them over the course

776
00:44:51,960 --> 00:44:54,920
Speaker 2: of cosmic time, meaning that with growing and shrieking distances,

777
00:44:55,080 --> 00:44:58,319
Speaker 2: stars appear to dim and then swell in luminosity as

778
00:44:58,360 --> 00:45:02,080
Speaker 2: the great wheel of the galaxy turn. And again, just

779
00:45:02,160 --> 00:45:04,600
Speaker 2: interesting to think about the idea that again, pretty much

780
00:45:04,640 --> 00:45:08,080
Speaker 2: all of human civilization as we know it and reflect

781
00:45:08,120 --> 00:45:11,440
Speaker 2: on it thus far has existed and could wind up

782
00:45:11,520 --> 00:45:14,480
Speaker 2: existing entirely if it were to come to a sudden

783
00:45:14,600 --> 00:45:18,640
Speaker 2: end when within the cosmologically brief reign of Serious, and

784
00:45:18,680 --> 00:45:21,239
Speaker 2: it wouldn't even have to end soon. The end could

785
00:45:21,239 --> 00:45:24,640
Speaker 2: come a good ways off, you know, and it would

786
00:45:24,640 --> 00:45:27,640
Speaker 2: still you could, it could still have all virtually taken

787
00:45:27,680 --> 00:45:29,200
Speaker 2: place within the reign of Serious.

788
00:45:29,520 --> 00:45:32,560
Speaker 3: Okay, So to bring in some of the connotations of

789
00:45:32,680 --> 00:45:36,040
Speaker 3: say Homer, the death Star could reign over us all

790
00:45:36,040 --> 00:45:36,879
Speaker 3: the way to the end.

791
00:45:37,200 --> 00:45:39,239
Speaker 2: But then it also saw all the good stuff too,

792
00:45:39,400 --> 00:45:42,080
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's true. It saw all the even numbered

793
00:45:42,080 --> 00:45:44,480
Speaker 2: star treks and all the odd numbered star treks. If

794
00:45:44,520 --> 00:45:48,160
Speaker 2: you align with that particular reasoning, which is also kind

795
00:45:48,160 --> 00:45:49,440
Speaker 2: of its own form of a struggle.

796
00:45:49,440 --> 00:45:52,440
Speaker 3: Well, that's right, Yeah, Homer has both connotations the radiance,

797
00:45:52,719 --> 00:45:54,920
Speaker 3: it's the most brilliant in the sky. It's also the

798
00:45:55,239 --> 00:45:56,920
Speaker 3: doom and the fevers. We get both.

799
00:45:57,200 --> 00:46:01,840
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, to be very clear, serious is not visible

800
00:46:01,840 --> 00:46:04,960
Speaker 2: in the night sky all year round. Due to the

801
00:46:05,000 --> 00:46:07,520
Speaker 2: Earth's orbit. Its visibility is going to be limited for

802
00:46:07,560 --> 00:46:09,719
Speaker 2: parts of the year or not going to be seen.

803
00:46:09,719 --> 00:46:12,719
Speaker 2: It's going to vary depending on your location and of

804
00:46:12,760 --> 00:46:17,319
Speaker 2: course which hemisphere you're in. In this serious is when

805
00:46:17,320 --> 00:46:19,880
Speaker 2: we've used this word already. It is a haliacal star,

806
00:46:20,840 --> 00:46:24,400
Speaker 2: a type of rise and set star. There are also

807
00:46:24,600 --> 00:46:28,319
Speaker 2: circumpolar stars that are always in the sky. Again, this

808
00:46:28,440 --> 00:46:31,319
Speaker 2: is all dealing with our own viewpoint, the window of

809
00:46:31,360 --> 00:46:33,400
Speaker 2: our sky, depending on where you are in the world.

810
00:46:33,840 --> 00:46:36,839
Speaker 2: And then there are the never rise stars that are

811
00:46:36,920 --> 00:46:40,400
Speaker 2: never above the horizon. Again for a particular viewer in

812
00:46:40,400 --> 00:46:43,400
Speaker 2: a particular place. It all depends on where you are

813
00:46:43,440 --> 00:46:45,640
Speaker 2: in the world. And this is all a matter of

814
00:46:45,840 --> 00:46:50,759
Speaker 2: terrestrial perspective and I guess object permanence. The stars are

815
00:46:50,760 --> 00:46:52,839
Speaker 2: still there whether you see them or not.

816
00:46:53,239 --> 00:46:56,520
Speaker 3: Right, But so, for example, if you're in the northern hemisphere,

817
00:46:56,680 --> 00:46:59,919
Speaker 3: the north star is always going to it's a circumpolar star.

818
00:47:00,080 --> 00:47:02,600
Speaker 3: It's always going to be visible all times of year,

819
00:47:03,120 --> 00:47:07,080
Speaker 3: always up there. But Serious is a star with a

820
00:47:07,200 --> 00:47:10,320
Speaker 3: haliacal rising and setting pattern. For some parts of the

821
00:47:10,400 --> 00:47:12,759
Speaker 3: year it will be visible above the horizon. For other

822
00:47:12,800 --> 00:47:15,080
Speaker 3: parts of the year of the year it won't. And

823
00:47:15,120 --> 00:47:16,919
Speaker 3: to be clear, there are parts of the year where

824
00:47:16,960 --> 00:47:21,320
Speaker 3: Serious is above the horizon and we would be able

825
00:47:21,360 --> 00:47:24,120
Speaker 3: to see it if not for the sun. But it's

826
00:47:24,160 --> 00:47:26,879
Speaker 3: above the horizon during the daytime, and the sun makes

827
00:47:26,920 --> 00:47:29,200
Speaker 3: it either invisible or difficult to see.

828
00:47:29,600 --> 00:47:32,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, So in general, and again you know, it depends

829
00:47:32,960 --> 00:47:36,200
Speaker 2: where you are. But the basic way that it goes

830
00:47:36,239 --> 00:47:39,440
Speaker 2: down in the Northern Hemisphere for Serious is you have

831
00:47:39,520 --> 00:47:43,240
Speaker 2: peak visibility in winter when it's dominating the night sky,

832
00:47:43,719 --> 00:47:46,319
Speaker 2: and then during the spring it's going to fade away,

833
00:47:46,800 --> 00:47:49,360
Speaker 2: and then in the summer, like the earlier part of

834
00:47:49,360 --> 00:47:54,640
Speaker 2: the summer, it's invisible, it's completely washed out by the

835
00:47:54,680 --> 00:47:57,680
Speaker 2: sun's glare. And in the late summer and into autumn,

836
00:47:57,760 --> 00:48:01,680
Speaker 2: that is the reappearance, that is the aliacal rising, that

837
00:48:01,840 --> 00:48:05,000
Speaker 2: is the re emergence of Serious that you know, all

838
00:48:05,040 --> 00:48:09,200
Speaker 2: these different ideas end up becoming tied to right.

839
00:48:09,280 --> 00:48:12,200
Speaker 3: So to clarify, when people talk about the dog days,

840
00:48:12,239 --> 00:48:15,400
Speaker 3: there are different ways of reckoning what those are. Most

841
00:48:15,440 --> 00:48:18,640
Speaker 3: of the time when people use the term informally, they're

842
00:48:18,719 --> 00:48:20,880
Speaker 3: just talking about the hottest part of summer, which in

843
00:48:20,920 --> 00:48:23,800
Speaker 3: the northern hemisphereal it's usually going to be July and August.

844
00:48:24,280 --> 00:48:28,520
Speaker 3: But if we're strictly following the astronomical definition where it

845
00:48:28,640 --> 00:48:32,280
Speaker 3: comes in the days following the Haliacal rising of Serious,

846
00:48:32,680 --> 00:48:36,000
Speaker 3: it's going to be after whenever that happens. But yeah,

847
00:48:36,040 --> 00:48:40,160
Speaker 3: it's not necessarily tied anymore directly to the hottest part

848
00:48:40,200 --> 00:48:43,680
Speaker 3: of the year. That is a historical coincidence that cemented

849
00:48:44,120 --> 00:48:55,320
Speaker 3: this connection with serious and heat.

850
00:48:57,480 --> 00:49:00,839
Speaker 2: Now, as we've been discussing, Serious has long been associated

851
00:49:00,920 --> 00:49:05,239
Speaker 2: with dogs, but also wolves, as i'll touch back on

852
00:49:05,280 --> 00:49:09,960
Speaker 2: a little bit later. In Chinese astronomy and astrology, it

853
00:49:10,040 --> 00:49:13,840
Speaker 2: is often called the wolf star, but it doesn't always

854
00:49:13,920 --> 00:49:17,680
Speaker 2: have connections to k Nines, particularly when we look at

855
00:49:17,719 --> 00:49:20,719
Speaker 2: the way the ancient Egyptians considered it. And we've touched

856
00:49:20,719 --> 00:49:25,520
Speaker 2: a little bit on this already, but for the ancient Egyptians,

857
00:49:25,640 --> 00:49:30,000
Speaker 2: Sirius was soft Debt. It was an aspect of the

858
00:49:30,000 --> 00:49:34,320
Speaker 2: goddess Isis, the daughter of Ray and the sister wife

859
00:49:34,320 --> 00:49:39,560
Speaker 2: of Asiris, and in this incarnation as Sopdebt, she served

860
00:49:39,680 --> 00:49:43,840
Speaker 2: as the harbinger of that coming crucial inundation of the Nile,

861
00:49:44,440 --> 00:49:46,879
Speaker 2: the Great flooding of the Nile, which we did whole

862
00:49:46,920 --> 00:49:48,680
Speaker 2: episodes on this in the past, so look those up

863
00:49:48,680 --> 00:49:51,640
Speaker 2: in the archives if you want to learn more. But basically,

864
00:49:51,880 --> 00:49:54,839
Speaker 2: the Nile floods and it overflows, and in doing so,

865
00:49:55,280 --> 00:50:00,920
Speaker 2: it waters these vital areas. They're going to row the

866
00:50:00,920 --> 00:50:04,000
Speaker 2: crops that will feed everyone. It is an essential time.

867
00:50:04,280 --> 00:50:07,680
Speaker 2: It is, you know, so much of the Egyptian view

868
00:50:07,719 --> 00:50:10,760
Speaker 2: of not only their lives but the universe is based

869
00:50:10,840 --> 00:50:11,960
Speaker 2: on this cycle.

870
00:50:12,239 --> 00:50:16,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, connected to the fertility of Egyptian soil, the ability

871
00:50:16,480 --> 00:50:19,640
Speaker 3: of the Egyptian civilization to produce food crops and all. Yeah,

872
00:50:19,719 --> 00:50:21,040
Speaker 3: so incredibly important.

873
00:50:21,200 --> 00:50:23,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're just tied to to just even it leaches

874
00:50:24,000 --> 00:50:27,840
Speaker 2: over into these more you know, magical mythological ideas of

875
00:50:27,880 --> 00:50:32,120
Speaker 2: how life works and life flows, and this would occur

876
00:50:32,239 --> 00:50:35,760
Speaker 2: in summer, so you know, it ties in with serious

877
00:50:35,920 --> 00:50:39,160
Speaker 2: pretty perfectly. And she was envisioned as a woman with

878
00:50:39,239 --> 00:50:43,840
Speaker 2: a crown surmounted by a five pointed star, which you know,

879
00:50:43,880 --> 00:50:46,960
Speaker 2: I don't know that there's any connection here between this

880
00:50:47,120 --> 00:50:51,680
Speaker 2: and some of these descriptions we were discussing from Homer,

881
00:50:51,760 --> 00:50:54,080
Speaker 2: but I can't help but draw those comparisons here.

882
00:50:54,280 --> 00:50:55,760
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, Yeah, the crown.

883
00:50:56,719 --> 00:50:58,440
Speaker 2: Now, I was reading a little bit more in Geraldine

884
00:50:58,440 --> 00:51:03,320
Speaker 2: Pinches excellent Egyptian mythology book that we've referred to on

885
00:51:03,360 --> 00:51:06,640
Speaker 2: the show before, and then that points out that subdet

886
00:51:06,760 --> 00:51:10,839
Speaker 2: was later associated with the Eye of Ray, that Sirius

887
00:51:11,000 --> 00:51:15,080
Speaker 2: is also sometimes associated Sirius the star is sometimes associated

888
00:51:15,120 --> 00:51:20,120
Speaker 2: with Hathor as well. And you touched on this already,

889
00:51:20,160 --> 00:51:27,000
Speaker 2: but the appearance of Sirius slash subtet becomes very crucial

890
00:51:27,040 --> 00:51:30,400
Speaker 2: to the structure of the ancient Egyptian calendar because in

891
00:51:30,520 --> 00:51:33,719
Speaker 2: its earliest forms it was entirely lunar, and this would

892
00:51:33,760 --> 00:51:36,840
Speaker 2: require the addition of extra months when needed to balance

893
00:51:36,920 --> 00:51:39,960
Speaker 2: things out. And Holberg writes about this, and he writes

894
00:51:40,000 --> 00:51:43,400
Speaker 2: that quote the haliacal rising of Sirius serve the purpose

895
00:51:43,440 --> 00:51:47,680
Speaker 2: of synchronizing their lunar calendar with the solar year. If

896
00:51:47,680 --> 00:51:51,040
Speaker 2: the haliacal rising of Sirius occurred in the last eleven

897
00:51:51,120 --> 00:51:55,120
Speaker 2: days of the lunar calendar, the priests added an extra.

898
00:51:54,880 --> 00:52:01,879
Speaker 3: Month, interesting like a calendar reckoning value in a way. Yeah.

899
00:52:02,000 --> 00:52:04,520
Speaker 2: Now, we mentioned already that for the Greeks, of course,

900
00:52:04,560 --> 00:52:06,880
Speaker 2: the star was simply the dog or the dog star

901
00:52:07,440 --> 00:52:11,960
Speaker 2: key to the constellation Canus major, the hunting dog of

902
00:52:12,000 --> 00:52:17,239
Speaker 2: the constellation Orion, representing the mighty hunter and son of Poseidon.

903
00:52:17,680 --> 00:52:22,040
Speaker 2: Though of note, in some cases Orion is said to

904
00:52:22,040 --> 00:52:24,320
Speaker 2: be the son of Poseidon. But there is another tradition

905
00:52:24,719 --> 00:52:28,960
Speaker 2: that holds that Orion is birth from a bull's hide

906
00:52:29,480 --> 00:52:32,480
Speaker 2: that had been buried in the earth after Zeus, Hermes,

907
00:52:32,520 --> 00:52:36,319
Speaker 2: and Poseidon all urinated in it, who making him a

908
00:52:36,400 --> 00:52:40,160
Speaker 2: son of three divine fathers and no mother other than

909
00:52:40,200 --> 00:52:45,040
Speaker 2: I guess you know, the flesh of the sacrifice bull. Wow. Yeah,

910
00:52:45,160 --> 00:52:47,480
Speaker 2: And there they're depictions of this, or depictions of like

911
00:52:48,160 --> 00:52:50,640
Speaker 2: the child emerging from the hide.

912
00:52:51,360 --> 00:52:54,520
Speaker 3: I've read. I think this is true, that there's not

913
00:52:54,760 --> 00:53:00,239
Speaker 3: really anything close to a canonical version of the myth

914
00:53:00,280 --> 00:53:04,400
Speaker 3: of Oriyan like that. And in fact, we've interrogated the

915
00:53:04,400 --> 00:53:07,640
Speaker 3: idea that there can be anything like a canonical version

916
00:53:07,640 --> 00:53:10,680
Speaker 3: of Greek myths anyway, because you know, a lot of

917
00:53:10,719 --> 00:53:13,560
Speaker 3: this is just dependent on what sort of tradition enters

918
00:53:13,600 --> 00:53:17,440
Speaker 3: the text text stream at a certain time and becomes popular.

919
00:53:18,440 --> 00:53:21,480
Speaker 3: But you know, even given those caveats, it seems that

920
00:53:21,560 --> 00:53:26,120
Speaker 3: the story of Orion is lacking in a fixed, widely

921
00:53:26,160 --> 00:53:27,040
Speaker 3: accepted form.

922
00:53:27,320 --> 00:53:27,839
Speaker 4: Is that right.

923
00:53:28,160 --> 00:53:30,120
Speaker 2: That's kind of that's the vibe I got from from

924
00:53:30,360 --> 00:53:32,000
Speaker 2: looking into it. It's kind of like if you were

925
00:53:32,040 --> 00:53:35,040
Speaker 2: to ask, hey, who's Oryan, they would someone would just

926
00:53:35,080 --> 00:53:37,640
Speaker 2: point up and say, he's that guy. I mean, in

927
00:53:37,719 --> 00:53:41,480
Speaker 2: the next guy, he's the hunter. Like it. It it's

928
00:53:41,520 --> 00:53:44,880
Speaker 2: like one of the classics, right, It kind of predates

929
00:53:44,880 --> 00:53:47,640
Speaker 2: a lot of these other ideas. But yeah, he's handsome,

930
00:53:48,200 --> 00:53:51,080
Speaker 2: he has he has a club, he hunts, and he

931
00:53:51,160 --> 00:53:56,719
Speaker 2: has a dogs. Right oh yeah, yeah, major minor. So

932
00:53:57,040 --> 00:54:02,200
Speaker 2: we mentioned already you were talking about the references in

933
00:54:02,520 --> 00:54:07,520
Speaker 2: Homer's work where we have these definite, definite mentions of

934
00:54:07,800 --> 00:54:11,080
Speaker 2: the dog Star, and already you know, all the key

935
00:54:11,719 --> 00:54:15,000
Speaker 2: Greek connections are there in the way that Homer is

936
00:54:15,440 --> 00:54:18,600
Speaker 2: is invoking the dog Star, but he doesn't use the

937
00:54:18,719 --> 00:54:22,800
Speaker 2: term serious. Holberg gets into this and according to Holberg,

938
00:54:24,040 --> 00:54:27,280
Speaker 2: the earliest that we know of it, you know, surviving accounts,

939
00:54:27,280 --> 00:54:29,400
Speaker 2: and so for the forth that we know of the

940
00:54:29,440 --> 00:54:32,600
Speaker 2: word serious being used, it goes back to the seventh

941
00:54:32,600 --> 00:54:36,360
Speaker 2: century BCE when it shows up in the poem works

942
00:54:36,400 --> 00:54:41,960
Speaker 2: and Days by Hesiod. But it appears that the Greeks too,

943
00:54:42,080 --> 00:54:46,720
Speaker 2: were uncertain about the words origin. Possibly, it's been discussed

944
00:54:46,760 --> 00:54:50,320
Speaker 2: there are possible connections to the Greek sirios, meaning searing

945
00:54:50,520 --> 00:54:54,640
Speaker 2: or burning, but it may go much further back.

946
00:54:55,160 --> 00:54:57,520
Speaker 3: It's not certain, but there are some pieces of evidence

947
00:54:57,520 --> 00:54:59,800
Speaker 3: that it might be a much older word, maybe something

948
00:54:59,840 --> 00:55:03,080
Speaker 3: that goes back even to like proto Indo European or something.

949
00:55:03,280 --> 00:55:06,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's what Holberg discusses, Yeah, that it might

950
00:55:06,680 --> 00:55:10,360
Speaker 2: ultimately be pre Greek Indo European in origin. He points

951
00:55:10,400 --> 00:55:14,839
Speaker 2: to the fifteen hundred BCE Hindu texts the Vedas, which

952
00:55:14,880 --> 00:55:18,319
Speaker 2: refer to sirius as and I may be mispronounced, likely

953
00:55:18,320 --> 00:55:24,000
Speaker 2: mispronouncing this, but tiaya and by and then quote and

954
00:55:24,040 --> 00:55:27,400
Speaker 2: by other variations that are also echoed in the ancient

955
00:55:27,440 --> 00:55:33,200
Speaker 2: Iranian Tistra. So if there is indeed linguistic relation here,

956
00:55:33,520 --> 00:55:37,040
Speaker 2: then the word sirius has a very old origin, you know,

957
00:55:37,200 --> 00:55:40,359
Speaker 2: ultimately lost to the prehistory of the Near East and

958
00:55:40,440 --> 00:55:44,719
Speaker 2: the Eastern Mediterranean, which is a very you know, I

959
00:55:44,800 --> 00:55:49,359
Speaker 2: think evocative idea. You know that knowledge of sirious and

960
00:55:49,400 --> 00:55:51,759
Speaker 2: even the words that we use to describe it, and

961
00:55:51,840 --> 00:55:53,960
Speaker 2: maybe some of the attitudes around it, like they're just

962
00:55:54,000 --> 00:55:56,239
Speaker 2: so deeply a part of what it is to be

963
00:55:56,360 --> 00:56:00,759
Speaker 2: human that we can point to no clear origin. Now,

964
00:56:01,040 --> 00:56:03,800
Speaker 2: he also discusses how there might be connections in Greek

965
00:56:03,920 --> 00:56:08,840
Speaker 2: thought to the phoenix, and this may be tied I

966
00:56:08,960 --> 00:56:10,680
Speaker 2: want to come back to the idea of the color

967
00:56:11,120 --> 00:56:15,080
Speaker 2: of serious. This may be tied to the mysterious way

968
00:56:15,600 --> 00:56:21,279
Speaker 2: that certain ancient authors, several multiple ancient authors, but notably Ptolemy,

969
00:56:21,760 --> 00:56:29,320
Speaker 2: Seneca and others, described it very specifically as a red star. Today,

970
00:56:30,239 --> 00:56:33,000
Speaker 2: if you look, if you're able to see Sirious in

971
00:56:33,040 --> 00:56:35,840
Speaker 2: the sky, where you look up images of it online,

972
00:56:35,920 --> 00:56:39,160
Speaker 2: you will note it is not red. It is white

973
00:56:39,320 --> 00:56:42,959
Speaker 2: or blue white, if anything. And so this has led

974
00:56:43,000 --> 00:56:47,120
Speaker 2: to a long standing question is there anything to this?

975
00:56:48,640 --> 00:56:52,800
Speaker 2: Were they actually observing a red star or is merely

976
00:56:53,040 --> 00:56:56,719
Speaker 2: is something lost in translation or in transcription? Is this

977
00:56:56,800 --> 00:56:59,840
Speaker 2: more of Is this more of a matter of literature

978
00:57:00,040 --> 00:57:04,319
Speaker 2: and linguistics than actual astronomy? Oh?

979
00:57:04,480 --> 00:57:07,440
Speaker 3: Maybe, like, oh, what's a hot star that comes in

980
00:57:07,480 --> 00:57:11,120
Speaker 3: the summer. Maybe red things are hot like fire. I

981
00:57:11,200 --> 00:57:14,000
Speaker 3: don't yes, I don't know something like that exactly.

982
00:57:14,040 --> 00:57:17,000
Speaker 2: And that is one of the I think the prime

983
00:57:17,200 --> 00:57:21,520
Speaker 2: ways of interpreting it is that ultimately it is called

984
00:57:21,640 --> 00:57:25,440
Speaker 2: red because they're already these very strong ideas of what

985
00:57:25,480 --> 00:57:28,880
Speaker 2: it means. So if you talk about the glow, the

986
00:57:29,200 --> 00:57:36,920
Speaker 2: red glow of serious, you're not really describing the color red.

987
00:57:37,280 --> 00:57:40,080
Speaker 2: You're talking about these red attitudes that are tied up

988
00:57:40,120 --> 00:57:41,680
Speaker 2: with it. In the same way if you were to

989
00:57:41,720 --> 00:57:45,360
Speaker 2: say the dark light of sirious, you know, as one

990
00:57:45,440 --> 00:57:48,200
Speaker 2: might be tempted to, and you know, today, if you're

991
00:57:48,200 --> 00:57:50,720
Speaker 2: writing about it, like you're doing horror story and you

992
00:57:50,760 --> 00:57:53,680
Speaker 2: wanted to invoke serious, you might talk about the dark

993
00:57:53,800 --> 00:57:56,680
Speaker 2: light of serious or the gray light of serious. Those

994
00:57:56,720 --> 00:57:59,000
Speaker 2: are not literal descriptions, but it maybe captures the vibe

995
00:57:59,040 --> 00:57:59,760
Speaker 2: you're going.

996
00:57:59,560 --> 00:58:02,600
Speaker 3: For, emphasizes its qualities as a death star.

997
00:58:03,120 --> 00:58:06,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I don't know. You get back into some

998
00:58:06,600 --> 00:58:09,440
Speaker 2: of the specific cases, and it does begin to sound

999
00:58:09,440 --> 00:58:12,680
Speaker 2: a little more confusing because the whole org outlines. In

1000
00:58:12,720 --> 00:58:16,720
Speaker 2: the second century ce Ptolemy describes the color of six

1001
00:58:16,760 --> 00:58:21,600
Speaker 2: different stars, and in these and He describes these six

1002
00:58:21,600 --> 00:58:25,080
Speaker 2: different stars as being red in color, and they include

1003
00:58:25,200 --> 00:58:30,360
Speaker 2: serious and of these five, he says, certainly are considered red,

1004
00:58:30,480 --> 00:58:34,120
Speaker 2: but not serious, not today at any rate. So this

1005
00:58:34,360 --> 00:58:36,520
Speaker 2: and some of these other references have led to the

1006
00:58:36,560 --> 00:58:39,600
Speaker 2: long standing question of well, maybe what if it did

1007
00:58:39,640 --> 00:58:42,840
Speaker 2: appear at red two thousand years ago? You know what,

1008
00:58:43,120 --> 00:58:46,160
Speaker 2: what can change? What could actually be responsible for that

1009
00:58:46,480 --> 00:58:47,560
Speaker 2: if it were the case?

1010
00:58:48,160 --> 00:58:51,600
Speaker 3: That is fascinating. Yeah, I mean this ptolemy thing would

1011
00:58:51,640 --> 00:58:53,720
Speaker 3: make me. That shifts me to the other side, that

1012
00:58:53,760 --> 00:58:55,600
Speaker 3: makes me think, well, maybe it probably was red.

1013
00:58:56,320 --> 00:58:59,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, And that's been the whole back

1014
00:58:59,080 --> 00:59:02,400
Speaker 2: and forth here, And Hobard does a great job of

1015
00:59:02,440 --> 00:59:06,000
Speaker 2: outlining some of the major names that were involved in

1016
00:59:06,040 --> 00:59:10,800
Speaker 2: the conversation. For instance, he points to seventeen sixty as

1017
00:59:10,840 --> 00:59:14,560
Speaker 2: being a time when you saw an initial uptick and

1018
00:59:14,720 --> 00:59:17,000
Speaker 2: interest in this sort of thing. And to be clear,

1019
00:59:17,160 --> 00:59:20,440
Speaker 2: for a long time prior to this this was maybe

1020
00:59:20,720 --> 00:59:24,320
Speaker 2: less of a topic because there was this idea that

1021
00:59:24,360 --> 00:59:27,439
Speaker 2: the stars are fixed, like nothing is changing. And then

1022
00:59:27,480 --> 00:59:30,640
Speaker 2: as we learn more and more about our universe we

1023
00:59:30,720 --> 00:59:32,880
Speaker 2: begin to understand you actually things do change and things

1024
00:59:32,920 --> 00:59:36,080
Speaker 2: move around and all these other revelations about our place

1025
00:59:36,080 --> 00:59:38,920
Speaker 2: and the cosmos and its nature. But certainly by seventeen

1026
00:59:39,000 --> 00:59:41,160
Speaker 2: sixty you had an amateur astronomer by the name of

1027
00:59:41,240 --> 00:59:44,920
Speaker 2: Thomas Baker who wrote a paper discussing the different changes

1028
00:59:44,960 --> 00:59:48,320
Speaker 2: that have taken place in the night sky since ancient descriptions,

1029
00:59:48,640 --> 00:59:52,440
Speaker 2: with some stars fading or growing more luminous, others seeming

1030
00:59:52,440 --> 00:59:55,320
Speaker 2: to vanish. And he asked the question, well, has anything

1031
00:59:55,320 --> 00:59:57,960
Speaker 2: ever changed color? And he said, no, not really, with

1032
00:59:58,080 --> 01:00:03,160
Speaker 2: the possible exception of serious And this paper didn't you know,

1033
01:00:03,240 --> 01:00:06,160
Speaker 2: take off immediately, but you know, people would come in,

1034
01:00:06,200 --> 01:00:08,920
Speaker 2: like suddenly, someone of the bigger name and more sway

1035
01:00:09,040 --> 01:00:12,000
Speaker 2: in the world of astronomy would pick up on it

1036
01:00:12,040 --> 01:00:14,000
Speaker 2: and say, you know, they might be onto something. And

1037
01:00:14,040 --> 01:00:17,120
Speaker 2: then there's this guy named Thomas Jefferson Jackson who becomes

1038
01:00:17,160 --> 01:00:20,240
Speaker 2: particularly interested in it. I don't have time here to

1039
01:00:20,280 --> 01:00:22,400
Speaker 2: go into him, but he's a very interesting figure that

1040
01:00:22,640 --> 01:00:26,400
Speaker 2: Hopberg outlines pretty much his whole career in brief because

1041
01:00:26,400 --> 01:00:28,000
Speaker 2: he was a bit of like a rabble rouser in

1042
01:00:28,040 --> 01:00:31,439
Speaker 2: the astronomy world, and you know, was big on sort

1043
01:00:31,480 --> 01:00:34,440
Speaker 2: of you know, bringing up sort of provocative ideas and

1044
01:00:34,520 --> 01:00:38,560
Speaker 2: tearing into them. You know, but he became particularly interested

1045
01:00:38,560 --> 01:00:43,200
Speaker 2: in the idea, and then later on it also becomes

1046
01:00:43,280 --> 01:00:46,920
Speaker 2: wrapped up in a similar question coming back to Homer

1047
01:00:47,320 --> 01:00:49,920
Speaker 2: that I believe we've discussed at least in passing on

1048
01:00:49,960 --> 01:00:51,800
Speaker 2: the show before. Maybe we've we've gone into it in

1049
01:00:51,800 --> 01:00:56,280
Speaker 2: a bit more depth. But the passage concerning the wine

1050
01:00:56,400 --> 01:00:57,160
Speaker 2: dark sea.

1051
01:00:57,280 --> 01:01:01,360
Speaker 3: A description that can provoke confus usion in modern readers

1052
01:01:01,400 --> 01:01:03,640
Speaker 3: because most people today don't look at the sea, and

1053
01:01:04,240 --> 01:01:06,600
Speaker 3: we wouldn't think to compare it to like the color

1054
01:01:06,680 --> 01:01:10,000
Speaker 3: of wine. But there for some reason, this made sense

1055
01:01:10,040 --> 01:01:12,960
Speaker 3: to Homer, this made sense to the original author, and

1056
01:01:13,240 --> 01:01:16,320
Speaker 3: there are different ways of interpreting why it made sense

1057
01:01:16,440 --> 01:01:17,840
Speaker 3: in its original context.

1058
01:01:18,320 --> 01:01:21,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, everything from it being a metaphor based on wine

1059
01:01:21,400 --> 01:01:24,960
Speaker 2: customs of the day to observations of the sunset on

1060
01:01:25,040 --> 01:01:28,200
Speaker 2: the ocean, and even it has been it has been

1061
01:01:28,640 --> 01:01:31,120
Speaker 2: hypothesized that it could even be color blindness on the

1062
01:01:31,160 --> 01:01:32,800
Speaker 2: part of the author and say like maybe he just

1063
01:01:32,800 --> 01:01:36,120
Speaker 2: didn't know it's just picking color. I don't know how

1064
01:01:36,200 --> 01:01:38,880
Speaker 2: much I really cling to that idea, but I don't know.

1065
01:01:38,920 --> 01:01:42,160
Speaker 2: You know, you have to consider all possibilities, I guess

1066
01:01:42,160 --> 01:01:46,080
Speaker 2: when you're asking a question like this, But anyway, So

1067
01:01:46,160 --> 01:01:48,120
Speaker 2: these two questions end up being brought like like, well,

1068
01:01:48,120 --> 01:01:49,880
Speaker 2: if they're talking about a red sea and then you're

1069
01:01:49,920 --> 01:01:52,600
Speaker 2: talking about a red star, like what are we missing here?

1070
01:01:52,800 --> 01:01:57,080
Speaker 2: Like we're both things actually red or we just you know,

1071
01:01:57,200 --> 01:02:00,200
Speaker 2: something changed in the due to the translation and the

1072
01:02:00,200 --> 01:02:03,960
Speaker 2: transcriptions over time, because you know, nobody's dealing with like

1073
01:02:04,040 --> 01:02:07,560
Speaker 2: the original copy of whatever. You know, an individual road

1074
01:02:07,640 --> 01:02:12,080
Speaker 2: in most cases. But as Holberg discusses, when you dig deeper,

1075
01:02:13,040 --> 01:02:16,320
Speaker 2: there are a lot of ancient descriptions of Sirius, particularly

1076
01:02:16,360 --> 01:02:19,680
Speaker 2: in Greek and Roman, thought as either red or in

1077
01:02:19,760 --> 01:02:23,200
Speaker 2: some way described with red imagery. So they may not

1078
01:02:23,360 --> 01:02:26,240
Speaker 2: so they might not say, oh, it's red light, but

1079
01:02:26,320 --> 01:02:28,920
Speaker 2: they might describe it as burning. They might describe it

1080
01:02:28,960 --> 01:02:32,840
Speaker 2: as fire. There's even like a Norse example of it

1081
01:02:33,280 --> 01:02:38,040
Speaker 2: being referred to as Loki's brand and so forth. And

1082
01:02:39,000 --> 01:02:43,200
Speaker 2: then when you get into the Chinese accounts, Tang dynasty

1083
01:02:43,280 --> 01:02:47,600
Speaker 2: writings provided descriptions of the Wolf Star either as being white,

1084
01:02:47,760 --> 01:02:51,480
Speaker 2: which would seem to you know, completely set aside these

1085
01:02:51,520 --> 01:02:54,600
Speaker 2: ideas that it's a different color. But also there are

1086
01:02:54,600 --> 01:02:59,480
Speaker 2: some writings in Tang dynasty astronomy and astrology discussing how

1087
01:02:59,520 --> 01:03:02,840
Speaker 2: it can shane color, and that it's change in color

1088
01:03:02,920 --> 01:03:05,560
Speaker 2: means robbers might be expected. You know, there's some sort

1089
01:03:05,600 --> 01:03:09,160
Speaker 2: of yeah, the boys of Summer are coming and they're

1090
01:03:09,160 --> 01:03:12,760
Speaker 2: coming for your home. That's sort of But Holburg says

1091
01:03:12,760 --> 01:03:15,000
Speaker 2: that on the whole, Chinese sources from the last two

1092
01:03:15,040 --> 01:03:17,280
Speaker 2: thousand years seem to stick to the white color, so

1093
01:03:17,320 --> 01:03:22,400
Speaker 2: there's actually less overall reference to any kind of red

1094
01:03:22,680 --> 01:03:23,840
Speaker 2: serious situation.

1095
01:03:24,440 --> 01:03:28,920
Speaker 3: Okay, so it's not like all ancient sources or depending

1096
01:03:28,920 --> 01:03:31,560
Speaker 3: on how you classify Tang dynasty, it's not like all

1097
01:03:31,640 --> 01:03:35,800
Speaker 3: pre modern sources call it red. That's like one strain

1098
01:03:36,160 --> 01:03:39,520
Speaker 3: of descriptions, but other ancient sources or older sources call

1099
01:03:39,560 --> 01:03:40,040
Speaker 3: it white.

1100
01:03:40,480 --> 01:03:43,840
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, okay, yeah. So Holburg says that, okay, if

1101
01:03:43,840 --> 01:03:47,960
Speaker 2: the star did in fact change color, the main modern

1102
01:03:48,040 --> 01:03:51,480
Speaker 2: explanations that we can really look to include the following.

1103
01:03:52,440 --> 01:03:54,360
Speaker 2: A big one that has been explored in the past

1104
01:03:54,440 --> 01:03:56,960
Speaker 2: is the idea that it could have been interstellar dust.

1105
01:03:57,480 --> 01:03:59,880
Speaker 2: So you could have had a cloud of interstellar dust

1106
01:04:00,040 --> 01:04:02,520
Speaker 2: stirred up from the outer layers of a red giant,

1107
01:04:03,040 --> 01:04:05,120
Speaker 2: and that if this were to pass between us and

1108
01:04:05,160 --> 01:04:09,040
Speaker 2: the star in question, it could have dimmed its luminosity

1109
01:04:09,360 --> 01:04:13,520
Speaker 2: and redened it. So the transit of a small cloud

1110
01:04:13,720 --> 01:04:17,680
Speaker 2: like this seems possible. But on the other hand, he

1111
01:04:17,760 --> 01:04:22,920
Speaker 2: points out that going totally, totally, going against this is

1112
01:04:22,960 --> 01:04:25,919
Speaker 2: that we've never found evidence of this cloud because again,

1113
01:04:25,920 --> 01:04:29,200
Speaker 2: everything's out there moving. We have just increasing ability to

1114
01:04:30,160 --> 01:04:32,080
Speaker 2: see what is moving and where it has been and

1115
01:04:32,080 --> 01:04:34,680
Speaker 2: where it's going, and thus far nobody's been able to

1116
01:04:34,760 --> 01:04:38,120
Speaker 2: see evidence of a cloud like this that would have

1117
01:04:38,120 --> 01:04:41,400
Speaker 2: been in the right place at the right time. And

1118
01:04:41,440 --> 01:04:44,320
Speaker 2: then there's another counter argument, and that is that, Okay,

1119
01:04:44,320 --> 01:04:47,120
Speaker 2: if a cloud like this were to pass between us

1120
01:04:47,240 --> 01:04:50,960
Speaker 2: and our view of serious it wouldn't have just changed

1121
01:04:50,960 --> 01:04:52,840
Speaker 2: its color. It would have dimmed it, and it would

1122
01:04:52,880 --> 01:04:55,320
Speaker 2: have dimmed it so much that Sirius would not have

1123
01:04:55,360 --> 01:04:58,200
Speaker 2: been the brightest star in the sky at this point.

1124
01:04:58,400 --> 01:05:01,160
Speaker 2: It would have been a mundane star. And the color

1125
01:05:01,480 --> 01:05:03,520
Speaker 2: they also has been, it has also been pointed out,

1126
01:05:03,680 --> 01:05:06,520
Speaker 2: would not really have been discernible to the naked eye.

1127
01:05:06,640 --> 01:05:10,480
Speaker 2: So you know, you're dealing again with pre telescopic observation

1128
01:05:10,640 --> 01:05:14,000
Speaker 2: of the heavens. And would people really be saying that

1129
01:05:14,080 --> 01:05:17,120
Speaker 2: much about it if it is technically a red star

1130
01:05:17,200 --> 01:05:19,360
Speaker 2: but it is faint and nobody can really make out

1131
01:05:19,400 --> 01:05:20,440
Speaker 2: the red color anyway.

1132
01:05:21,200 --> 01:05:21,720
Speaker 3: Interesting.

1133
01:05:23,840 --> 01:05:27,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, he seems to cling more to the idea that

1134
01:05:27,120 --> 01:05:31,479
Speaker 2: again it's descriptions based on red connotation. Again, we're talking

1135
01:05:31,520 --> 01:05:33,640
Speaker 2: about a dog star, the dog star here and the

1136
01:05:33,640 --> 01:05:36,840
Speaker 2: dog star. It brings to mind passion, heat, fire, and

1137
01:05:36,880 --> 01:05:39,280
Speaker 2: so forth, and those are the words we end up

1138
01:05:39,320 --> 01:05:43,480
Speaker 2: using to describe it. And maybe that gets that gets

1139
01:05:43,600 --> 01:05:47,320
Speaker 2: translated and transcribed in ways that make it sound more

1140
01:05:47,360 --> 01:05:48,800
Speaker 2: definite than it actually was.

1141
01:05:49,920 --> 01:05:53,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's blood too as a possible red connotation. I mean,

1142
01:05:53,760 --> 01:05:55,600
Speaker 3: this is a couple of steps away, but I am

1143
01:05:55,640 --> 01:05:59,439
Speaker 3: thinking about passages in literature that talk about the dog

1144
01:05:59,560 --> 01:06:02,880
Speaker 3: days of summer leading to a stirring of blood, or

1145
01:06:02,960 --> 01:06:07,960
Speaker 3: like in Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet, you know, Shakespeare

1146
01:06:08,040 --> 01:06:10,640
Speaker 3: talks about I think it's been Volio who says that

1147
01:06:10,680 --> 01:06:13,760
Speaker 3: in the hottest days of summer, the mad blood is stirring.

1148
01:06:14,400 --> 01:06:16,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean all this made me think of

1149
01:06:16,720 --> 01:06:20,480
Speaker 2: Cornt McCarthy's Blood Meridian or the evening Redness in the West,

1150
01:06:20,600 --> 01:06:23,280
Speaker 2: which I didn't remember this, but there is a reference

1151
01:06:23,320 --> 01:06:27,040
Speaker 2: at one point in the book. Too serious. Oh really, Yeah,

1152
01:06:27,080 --> 01:06:30,360
Speaker 2: They're just there's this scene where some of the characters

1153
01:06:30,400 --> 01:06:32,800
Speaker 2: are like trucking along, and there's reference to what the

1154
01:06:32,840 --> 01:06:36,160
Speaker 2: stars are doing around them, and serious is pointed out.

1155
01:06:36,840 --> 01:06:40,600
Speaker 2: But there is one more possible way of understanding these

1156
01:06:40,680 --> 01:06:44,280
Speaker 2: ancient descriptions of the red star, according to Holberg, and

1157
01:06:44,520 --> 01:06:47,320
Speaker 2: that is that it's just tied to the emergence of

1158
01:06:47,400 --> 01:06:51,320
Speaker 2: Sirius on the horizon at dawn, which would have been

1159
01:06:51,600 --> 01:06:54,680
Speaker 2: by many and many estimates, a fiery red place.

1160
01:06:55,200 --> 01:06:56,920
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, Okay, so.

1161
01:06:56,960 --> 01:06:59,280
Speaker 2: I'm going to read one more bit here from Holberg.

1162
01:06:59,360 --> 01:07:03,160
Speaker 2: Here where he he mentions this, He says, quote, it

1163
01:07:03,200 --> 01:07:05,040
Speaker 2: is well known that when the Sun is on the

1164
01:07:05,080 --> 01:07:09,080
Speaker 2: horizon its sunset or sunrise, it appears both dimmer and redder.

1165
01:07:09,640 --> 01:07:12,720
Speaker 2: This also applies to bright stars such as Sirius near

1166
01:07:12,800 --> 01:07:15,960
Speaker 2: the horizon. The effect of the scattering of light by

1167
01:07:15,960 --> 01:07:19,160
Speaker 2: the molecules in the Earth's atmosphere acts to both shift

1168
01:07:19,200 --> 01:07:21,680
Speaker 2: the color balance of the light from a star and

1169
01:07:21,760 --> 01:07:27,400
Speaker 2: to extinguish the light. Unlike interstellar dust, however, atmospheric reddening

1170
01:07:27,880 --> 01:07:32,480
Speaker 2: is relatively much stronger, so that the amount of atmosphere

1171
01:07:32,520 --> 01:07:39,240
Speaker 2: required to make serious appear as red as Arcterus or beetlejuice.

1172
01:07:39,840 --> 01:07:42,400
Speaker 2: Let me say it one more time. Beetle Juice three

1173
01:07:42,600 --> 01:07:45,520
Speaker 2: will only dim the brightness of Sirius by about an

1174
01:07:45,680 --> 01:07:50,000
Speaker 2: entire magnitude or a factor of two point five. This

1175
01:07:50,040 --> 01:07:53,040
Speaker 2: occurs within five degrees of the horizon, at which point

1176
01:07:53,120 --> 01:07:55,600
Speaker 2: Sirius is still one of the brightest stars in the

1177
01:07:55,600 --> 01:07:59,200
Speaker 2: sky and its reddish color can still be perceived by

1178
01:07:59,240 --> 01:08:00,000
Speaker 2: the human eye.

1179
01:08:00,320 --> 01:08:02,920
Speaker 3: Oh okay, so that makes a lot of sense, this

1180
01:08:03,040 --> 01:08:06,880
Speaker 3: reddening effect of appearing, you know, very low just above

1181
01:08:06,880 --> 01:08:11,200
Speaker 3: the eastern horizon with the sun at dawn. That that

1182
01:08:11,320 --> 01:08:14,200
Speaker 3: makes a lot of sense as to why that could,

1183
01:08:14,360 --> 01:08:17,800
Speaker 3: uh yeah, could cause it to appear redder. I think

1184
01:08:17,800 --> 01:08:19,360
Speaker 3: that that makes that makes sense to me.

1185
01:08:19,720 --> 01:08:25,040
Speaker 2: Yeah. That combined with the red ideas surrounding the dog Star,

1186
01:08:25,479 --> 01:08:27,880
Speaker 2: I think those two to me feel like they maybe

1187
01:08:27,920 --> 01:08:30,479
Speaker 2: work together to really explain a lot of this.

1188
01:08:30,800 --> 01:08:34,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, a little bit of topical synesthesia contributing to the

1189
01:08:35,320 --> 01:08:37,320
Speaker 3: redness from the from the horizon.

1190
01:08:37,400 --> 01:08:40,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, the atmospheric reddening so uh so, yeah,

1191
01:08:40,880 --> 01:08:43,200
Speaker 2: I tend to lean that way after reading this material,

1192
01:08:43,280 --> 01:08:45,639
Speaker 2: although I will mention the whole brog mentions that some

1193
01:08:45,760 --> 01:08:48,680
Speaker 2: also say, hey what about serious Sea? Could could the

1194
01:08:48,760 --> 01:08:52,479
Speaker 2: hypothetical serious Sea have played a role in this well,

1195
01:08:52,760 --> 01:08:56,320
Speaker 2: I mean maybe, but again again there's no there's no

1196
01:08:56,360 --> 01:08:58,160
Speaker 2: evidence for this, and I don't know there are any

1197
01:08:58,320 --> 01:09:00,120
Speaker 2: like real strong ideas as to how this was have

1198
01:09:00,200 --> 01:09:04,120
Speaker 2: been the case. Kind of a hypothesis resting on the

1199
01:09:04,120 --> 01:09:07,200
Speaker 2: shoulders of another hypothesis here, love those.

1200
01:09:08,400 --> 01:09:10,439
Speaker 3: All right? Is that going to do it for part one?

1201
01:09:10,840 --> 01:09:13,719
Speaker 3: We've definitely got more to say about Serious, The Dog

1202
01:09:13,800 --> 01:09:16,599
Speaker 3: Star and the Dog Days of Summer. So if that's

1203
01:09:16,640 --> 01:09:19,080
Speaker 3: it for the first time, please join us again next.

1204
01:09:18,840 --> 01:09:22,400
Speaker 2: Time, absolutely yes, And in the meantime, go ahead and

1205
01:09:22,439 --> 01:09:25,160
Speaker 2: write in if you have thoughts about anything here. Do

1206
01:09:25,240 --> 01:09:28,759
Speaker 2: we have any amateur astronomers or well, of course professional

1207
01:09:28,800 --> 01:09:32,559
Speaker 2: astronomers out there. If you have any thoughts about Serious,

1208
01:09:33,040 --> 01:09:35,240
Speaker 2: if you have images you would like to share with us,

1209
01:09:35,880 --> 01:09:37,719
Speaker 2: write in. We would love to hear from you. Also

1210
01:09:37,800 --> 01:09:43,200
Speaker 2: references to The Dog Star and other works of literature ancient, old, recent,

1211
01:09:43,240 --> 01:09:47,559
Speaker 2: and current. We're up for anything. Just a reminder that

1212
01:09:47,640 --> 01:09:49,600
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and

1213
01:09:49,600 --> 01:09:52,960
Speaker 2: culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On

1214
01:09:53,000 --> 01:09:55,799
Speaker 2: Wednesdays we do a short form episode, and on Fridays

1215
01:09:55,800 --> 01:09:57,960
Speaker 2: we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about

1216
01:09:57,960 --> 01:10:00,200
Speaker 2: a weird film on Weird House Mom.

1217
01:10:00,920 --> 01:10:04,439
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

1218
01:10:04,720 --> 01:10:06,200
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

1219
01:10:06,200 --> 01:10:08,599
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1220
01:10:08,760 --> 01:10:10,800
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you

1221
01:10:10,840 --> 01:10:13,360
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your

1222
01:10:13,360 --> 01:10:21,240
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.

1223
01:10:21,360 --> 01:10:24,320
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1224
01:10:24,400 --> 01:10:27,160
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1225
01:10:27,320 --> 01:10:44,720
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