WEBVTT

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(whimsical orchestral music)

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Hey persons of age.

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So, long before the era of the wiki,

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there used to be these
things called encyclopedias,

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where for a small fee
of thousands of dollars,

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they would mail you a tiny fraction

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of the knowledge that we
have access to today.

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And you could put it on a shelf.

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And it would sit there and
make you look "learned."

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But while not reading
an encyclopedia is easy,

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not creating one is much easier.

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And yet we do it.

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Encyclopedia Britannica is
still in circulation today,

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and it's maintained by around
a hundred full-time editors

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and more than four
thousand contributors.

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So whose idea was this?

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Who was the first person
to sit down and say,

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"Hm, today I feel like writing down

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EVERYTHING."

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

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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
him to Rome to study law.

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Then as a young adult, he spent
several years as a junior officer

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in the Roman military.

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

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and when he came home,
he took to writing.

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Unfortunately, a certain apocryphal
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
like grammar and rhetoric,

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

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Fortunately, in June of 68,

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Nero finally took a
hint and killed himself,

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and following the chaos of the
Year of the Four Emperors,

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one Vespasian came out on top.

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Vespasian was a general
and a friend of Pliny's,

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so when he became emperor
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
make complete use of his own potential.

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By day he continued
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
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
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
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 
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
for a fairly long read.

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Even removing most of the
more uninteresting details

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I've only managed to fit the first
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
the narration himself,

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using my voice.

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He gets a lot of
things shockingly right

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and a lot shockingly wrong.

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Rather than constantly
chiming in with fact checks,

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

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for every claim he makes.

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

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just for reference.

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

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just to see the funny ha-ha's
I snuck into the freeze frame,

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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
overall structure to this thing,

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it also seems like Pliny just kinda wrote

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whatever was in his
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
personal tangents in between.

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

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so if it at any point seems
utterly scatterbrained,

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it's his fault. Not mine.

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Anyway, take it away.

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(dramatic music with choir)

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(music stops)

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Yo.

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(dramatic music with
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

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who think there are other
worlds beyond this one,

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give it a rest, alright?

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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
for them to do one spin,

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which is actually really fast
because the universe is HUGE.

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In fact, massive objects all
whooshing around us this fast

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should be incredibly loud at all times.

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Why isn't this the case?

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(mumbles) I don't know.

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The whole shebang is
composed of four elements, right,

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which sort themselves by weight.

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

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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
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
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
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
and he's everything,

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and he doesn't do weird human shit

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like getting jealous or
banging other gods.

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I swear, people just make up new gods

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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
tax dollars by the way,

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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
than people at this point.

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Folks in other countries worship
animals and obscene things

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like "stinking meats."

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There are gods of theft and other crimes,

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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.

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And that's the way of
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.

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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 
emphasis on their religion,

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avoiding foods,

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worrying themselves sick about
all kinds of sacred rules.

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Look, I hang around the capital.

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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.

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Have a bacon. Nobody gives a shit.

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Back to the stars, which, by the way,

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also don't give a shit
about you specifically.

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For big history-changing
stuff, yeah, they'll act up,

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but you, reader, do not need to worry.

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Anyway, most of them are fixed
in a sphere really high up there,

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we'll call this the heavens.

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Between the heavens and the earth,

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there are seven other
bodies to talk about.

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Highest up there we got Saturn,

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then there's Jupiter,

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Mars,

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The Sun,

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Venus,

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Mercury,

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Moon.

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The heavens spin to the right,

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all these guys spin to the left.

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Saturn is cold, Mars is hot, but Jupiter?

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Jupiter's just right.

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The Sun's orbit is made up of 360 degrees,

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one degree per day.

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Except not quite.

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We have to add 5 and a fourth
days or else our sundials break.

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Down to Venus and Mercury,

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

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Fun fact: Venus is actually bright enough

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to help out the Sun and Moon sometimes.

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When it's helping the
Sun, we call it Lucifer,

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THE LIGHT-BRINGER.

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And when it's helping the
Moon we call it Vesper,

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the sleepy-time guy.

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Mercury tries to do the same thing,

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but he's much more lame and cringe,

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so he can't.

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The Moon's got phases, as you know,

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and she gets closer and
farther away at different times.

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Endymion figured out lots of
cool info about the Moon's orbit,

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and you assholes bullied him for it.

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Yeah.

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This man unraveled the
secrets of the universe,

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and in return, everyone goes,

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"Ho ho ho, he's in love with the moon."

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That's because humans
are sick in the head.

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They'd rather read stories
about bloodshed and massacres

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and think that matters more
than the fabric of reality.

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Get a clue.

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Anyway, the Moon has phases
because of the way

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it borrows light from the Sun.

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Which might be what
these other guys do, too,

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we don't know yet.

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All those spots on it
are actually puddles,

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because it likes to draw up
moisture from the Earth,

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which is where we get the tides.

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And every now and then
it casts its shadow on Earth.

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We call these "eclipses"

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and they are FREAKIN' WICKED.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Eclipses can happen
the other way around, too.

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And the way these happen prove

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that the Moon is bigger than the Earth

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and the Sun's way bigger
than both of them.

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Oh, and just so we're clear,

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eclipses are a natural thing,

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it's not the apocalypse or God's wrath.

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They follow rules, even the
Greeks could predict them.

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Settle down.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Back to the planets,