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Pliny Explains it All: The Historia Naturalis Abridged (Books I-II) -- Sam O'Nella

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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.
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    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.
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    Back to the planets,
Title:
Pliny Explains it All: The Historia Naturalis Abridged (Books I-II) -- Sam O'Nella
Description:

Happy Halloween everybody

Original text:https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D1

Orchestral music from book titles:
"Bright Blue Blow" by Makai Symphony
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g3-XS5QroY

____

Check out my other channel, Sam O'Nella Vlog!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvayZDkq6wTj5EQtulrpgZA

Follow me on twitter!
https://twitter.com/Sam_ONella

Intro and outro song:
"Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G, Movement I (Allegro), BWV 1049" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

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Video Language:
English
Duration:
24:28

English subtitles

Incomplete

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