Solar Eclipses

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