9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(whimsical orchestral music)

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Hey persons of age.

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So, long before the era of the wiki,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
there used to be these[br]things called encyclopedias,

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where for a small fee[br]of thousands of dollars,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
they would mail you a tiny fraction

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
of the knowledge that we[br]have access to today.

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And you could put it on a shelf.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And it would sit there and[br]make you look "learned."

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But while not reading[br]an encyclopedia is easy,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
not creating one is much easier.

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And yet we do it.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Encyclopedia Britannica is[br]still in circulation today,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and it's maintained by around[br]a hundred full-time editors

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and more than four[br]thousand contributors.

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So whose idea was this?

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Who was the first person[br]to sit down and say,

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"Hm, today I feel like writing down

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
EVERYTHING."

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To answer that, we must look nearly[br]two thousand years in the past

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to the mid 70s AD.

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Pliny the Elder.

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Author.

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Philosopher.

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Veteran.

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Imperial administrator.

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And one curious buckaroo.

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Early in his life, Pliny's father took[br]him to Rome to study law.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Then as a young adult, he spent[br]several years as a junior officer

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in the Roman military.

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His interest in literature made[br]him a few high-ranking friends there,

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and when he came home,[br]he took to writing.

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Unfortunately, a certain apocryphal[br]fiddler was in charge at the time

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and wasn't exactly kind to intellectuals.

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So Pliny kept it on the DL,

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mostly writing about things[br]like grammar and rhetoric,

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which at the time, few people[br]found worth freaking out over.

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Fortunately, in June of 68,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Nero finally took a[br]hint and killed himself,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and following the chaos of the[br]Year of the Four Emperors,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
one Vespasian came out on top.

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Vespasian was a general[br]and a friend of Pliny's,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
so when he became emperor[br]he promoted Pliny to "Procurator,"

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which was like the governor of a province.

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Suddenly, with this guy on the throne

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and a cushy job to pay the bills,

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Pliny found himself in a position to[br]make complete use of his own potential.

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By day he continued[br]his administrative duties,

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but during nights, he wrote.

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And over the course of a few years,

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with nothing but his own wits

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and whatever authors he[br]could get his hands on,

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He created a work known as the

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"Historia Naturalis."

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This consisted of thirty-seven books,

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each broken up into[br]many dozens of chapters

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covering just about every topic there is.

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While it wasn't quite an[br]encyclopedia in the modern sense,

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it's still the earliest surviving attempt

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and an all-encompassing scholarly work,

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and it is a TRIP.

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I've been reading it.

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It is fascinating.

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Not only as a reflection of what people [br]did and did not know in the Roman Empire,

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but also as a reflection of Pliny himself,

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who is a character,

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and who made zero attempt to hide it.

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So today, I come to you with

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A Brief Summary of the First Part of a

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Brief Summary of ALL HUMAN KNOWLEDGE

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According to One Dude

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circa 77 AD.

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Now, the original thing makes[br]for a fairly long read.

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Even removing most of the[br]more uninteresting details

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I've only managed to fit the first[br]two books into today's video.

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As for the other thirty-five,

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ehhh...uhhhh...

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We'll see.

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I'm gonna let Pliny do[br]the narration himself,

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using my voice.

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He gets a lot of[br]things shockingly right

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and a lot shockingly wrong.

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Rather than constantly[br]chiming in with fact checks,

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I'm just gonna throw chess.com[br]analysis icons in the corner

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
for every claim he makes.

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I'll also provide relevant snippets of[br]the actual text I'm paraphrasing,

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just for reference.

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If you're one of the people[br]that likes to pause the video

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
just to see the funny ha-ha's[br]I snuck into the freeze frame,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
rest assured, there will be none today.

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You can just let it play.

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One last warning,

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while there is a loose[br]overall structure to this thing,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it also seems like Pliny just kinda wrote

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
whatever was in his[br]head for a given chapter.

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He has a habit of jumping back and forth

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between completely disparate topics

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and going on weird[br]personal tangents in between.

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I am presenting this thing in[br]the exact order it's written,

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so if it at any point seems[br]utterly scatterbrained,

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it's his fault. Not mine.

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Anyway, take it away.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(dramatic music with choir)

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(music stops)

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Yo.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(dramatic music with[br]choir starts up again)

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(music stops)

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(drinks water)

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Right, let me get right ahead of things.

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These books are strictly about this world

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and the things we can see around it.

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If you're one of those mad men

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
who think there are other[br]worlds beyond this one,

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give it a rest, alright?

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
That's PSYCHOTIC.

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You can't know these things

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and you can't grasp infinity.

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Stop trying, you'll hurt yourself.

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So the heavens are a perfect sphere

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and they spin around us perfectly.

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It takes twenty-four hours[br]for them to do one spin,

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which is actually really fast[br]because the universe is HUGE.

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In fact, massive objects all[br]whooshing around us this fast

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
should be incredibly loud at all times.

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Why isn't this the case?

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(mumbles) I don't know.

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The whole shebang is[br]composed of four elements, right,

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which sort themselves by weight.

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Earth is heaviest, so it falls[br]to the middle of everything

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
into a sphere,

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and it stays still.

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It's the only still thing.

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On top of that is water,

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then air,

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and fire's the lighest,

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which is why the Sun[br]and stars are made of it.

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The Sun

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kicks ass.

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Easily the best of the[br]seven things up there.

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Basically a god.

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Not literally.

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Uh, don't try to answer questions[br]about God's nature, by the way,

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you'll just confuse yourself.

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There is AT MOST one god[br]and he's everything,

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and he doesn't do weird human shit

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like getting jealous or[br]banging other gods.

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I swear, people just make up new gods

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
every time they want something specific.

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Let me tell ya,

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there was a temple on Palatine Hill

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dedicated, through my[br]tax dollars by the way,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to "Fever."

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Like, the illness.

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You understand that's batshit, right?

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Things like that are why

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we've got more gods[br]than people at this point.

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Folks in other countries worship[br]animals and obscene things

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
like "stinking meats."

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There are gods of theft and other crimes,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it's all folly.

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You wanna be godly?

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Just help others.

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That's the way of the old Roman nobles.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And that's the way of[br]the noblest noble of all,

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Emperor Vespasian Augustus,

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who may or may not be my best buddy.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But anyway, if there is a god,

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he doesn't care about what you do.

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People put crazy [br]emphasis on their religion,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
avoiding foods,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
worrying themselves sick about[br]all kinds of sacred rules.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Look, I hang around the capital.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
There's a lot of rat bastards in politics.

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Real scumbags.

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And they are THUH-RIVING.

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You don't need to torture yourself.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Have a bacon. Nobody gives a shit.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Back to the stars, which, by the way,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
also don't give a shit[br]about you specifically.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
For big history-changing[br]stuff, yeah, they'll act up,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but you, reader, do not need to worry.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Anyway, most of them are fixed[br]in a sphere really high up there,

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we'll call this the heavens.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Between the heavens and the earth,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
there are seven other[br]bodies to talk about.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Highest up there we got Saturn,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
then there's Jupiter,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Mars,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The Sun,

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Venus,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Mercury,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Moon.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The heavens spin to the right,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
all these guys spin to the left.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Saturn is cold, Mars is hot, but Jupiter?

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Jupiter's just right.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The Sun's orbit is made up of 360 degrees,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
one degree per day.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Except not quite.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We have to add 5 and a fourth[br]days or else our sundials break.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Down to Venus and Mercury,

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these guys are weird because[br]they like to hang around the Sun.

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Fun fact: Venus is actually bright enough

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to help out the Sun and Moon sometimes.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
When it's helping the[br]Sun, we call it Lucifer,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
THE LIGHT-BRINGER.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And when it's helping the[br]Moon we call it Vesper,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the sleepy-time guy.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Mercury tries to do the same thing,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but he's much more lame and cringe,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
so he can't.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The Moon's got phases, as you know,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and she gets closer and[br]farther away at different times.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Endymion figured out lots of[br]cool info about the Moon's orbit,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and you assholes bullied him for it.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Yeah.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
This man unraveled the[br]secrets of the universe,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and in return, everyone goes,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
"Ho ho ho, he's in love with the moon."

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
That's because humans[br]are sick in the head.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They'd rather read stories[br]about bloodshed and massacres

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and think that matters more[br]than the fabric of reality.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Get a clue.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Anyway, the Moon has phases[br]because of the way

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it borrows light from the Sun.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Which might be what[br]these other guys do, too,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we don't know yet.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
All those spots on it[br]are actually puddles,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
because it likes to draw up[br]moisture from the Earth,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which is where we get the tides.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And every now and then[br]it casts its shadow on Earth.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We call these "eclipses"

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and they are FREAKIN' WICKED.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Eclipses can happen[br]the other way around, too.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And the way these happen prove

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that the Moon is bigger than the Earth

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and the Sun's way bigger[br]than both of them.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Oh, and just so we're clear,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
eclipses are a natural thing,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it's not the apocalypse or God's wrath.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They follow rules, even the[br]Greeks could predict them.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Settle down.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Back to the planets,