Yuri’s Night and Wonder of the Cosmos

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S3E13 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

Yucca: Welcome back to the wonder science-based paganism. I'm your host Yucca. And this week we are talking about probably I'd say my favorite topic. It is almost Yuri's night. So we're going to be doing an episode on. Space exploration, nature, all of that

Mark: Yeah, very exciting. There's a lot going on right now. And of course, space is a fascinating place that tells us a lot about the nature of the universe and about. The nature of our planet,

Yucca: and ourselves. Yeah. So, so I think a good place to start would actually be talking about. You are his night is, and, and why it could be a really special thing for pagans.

Mark: And this is something that we would probably know a lot more about if it wasn't for the cold war between the Soviet union and the United States that lasted from the end of world war two through 1990 because the first human ever to enter space was. he was actually he wasn't rushing. I think he was Georgian.

He was a cosmic, not who went up in the Soviet program and succeed successfully orbited the earth on on the first attempt, which is amazing. The American program tried several times to get someone into orbit and did not succeed for a while. But in 1957, Yuri Gagarin went up into space And orbited the earth and

Yucca: And safely returned. 

Mark: Safely returned to earth and you know, setting setting a reasonably high bar for that kind of enterprise from the very beginning.

And so Yuri's east night is the 12th of April, which is the anniversary of that orbiting of the earth. 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: if you're Russian, you know, that. Because you learn this in school. It's a, it's a really big deal.

If you're a scientist, you also probably know it because science, museums and technology, museums, and observatories all very commonly have.

Open houses or parties or other kinds of celebrations on Yuri's night as kind of a celebration of space exploration And all things. Space science.

Yucca: And it's something that is now is international, right? So it did, you know, did start in Russia. But it's something that people of every nation all over the world who just are appreciative of. Of the exploration and the knowledge and achievements and all things nerdy to find a lot of overlap with you know, with some of the fandoms and that celebration.

Mark: Right.

And we should be clear that while the, the exploration of space in the late fifties and early 1960s was pretty much the purview of white men. And that was true of both the Soviet program and the American program. But now you have scientists from all over the world, working on space exploration.

You've got the European space agency sending rockets into space and sending probes, packages of instruments out into space. China has developed its own space program. So, and they're assigned. That have been trained from everywhere in the world that have gone to university become astrophysicists or other pertinent scientists, and then have gotten involved with space programs.

So this really is a humanity scale effort. 

Yucca: Right. And I think that, that even when it was. Several of the large superpowers. There has often been a sense of space exploration as being an achievement of humankind. Right? So w when Apollo 11 happened, people all over the world were saying, we did it. Right. There was, of course there was a lot of, you know, American pride around that, but you know, the folks in Spain and in South Africa and all over there's, this is something that is about humans and humans reaching out and exploring.

Yeah. And I really appreciate you pointing out that it's not just about white dudes now, right? Even being able to explore space as astronauts, but the people on the ground working in the space fields were incredibly diverse. 

And so, yeah.

Mark: And even back in the 1960s, when the only people who were allowed to be astronauts were white men in the United States. It's important for us to point out that at that time, because computers were so primitive calculations for those moonshots were done by hand and they were done by hand mostly by black. And it's, you know, they they're, they're unsung heroes. They don't get the credit that they should for their role in the, the attainment of humans reaching the moon. There's a very famous picture of one of these women that I wish I could remember her name, but I don't standing next to. A printout of the calculations that she had done for the Apollo missions. and it was taller than she was 

Yucca: yeah.

Mark: it's this gigantic stack of paper. And of course, all of those calculations had to be correct. And they had to work properly with the computer equipment that the. That the astronauts took with them. So I mean that, it's, it's, it's a mind-boggling achievement when you think about it.

And I just want to make sure that we you know, we provide a shout out to those folks as well. 

Yucca: Yeah. And, and even before we got to the era of actually sending people and things into space actually the original term computer did not refer to a machine. It referred to two people doing the competent computations and those usually were women. So the computers and so. You know, we've had a long history of Benning being involved and there's all kinds of wonderful science heroes that you can look at that, you know, had to fight their way to get to be at universities and get their names recognized and, and all of that.

So we're, we're, we're not all the way there yet, but it's a lot, it's a lot better than it was, you know? So, 

Mark: right. 

Yucca: But. This is this holiday that we're talking about is a celebration of all of those achievements that have been made by, by everybody. And also just delighting in the incredible things that we're learning.

It's really a celebration of, of knowledge and science.

Mark: And, and of that. Inquisitive imaginative spirit, that humanity, hats we are, we're curious, little monkeys. We, you know, we wanna, we wanna know how it works and we want to figure it out and take it apart and, you know, understand things. And that impulse in us has led us. Far beyond the solar system with the Voyager missions.

And 

Yucca: to the edge of the heliosphere 

Mark: yes, to the heliosphere. Right. And. Has taught us many, many amazing things about our solar system, just in my lifetime. I mean, the impression that we got about the solar system when I was a kid and I was really into space when I was a kid, because the Apollo missions were going on. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: so I was getting up early in the morning with my family to watch the Apollo missions launch. 

Yucca: Oh, how 

Mark: And I, and I remember, you know, the Apollo 11 walking on the moon. It's, it was very, very cool.

stuff going on then, but still our impression of the solar system at that time was mostly Moonlight lifeless rocks revolving around these planets that we didn't know very much about. And now of course, you know, we've got Enceladus and Titan and EO and you know, all these, all these amazing, really strange and interesting moons of of the planets that we've, we've discovered much more about and taking pictures of and You know, in some cases have actually, you know, done atmospheric dives to get some samples of atmosphere.

It's, it's just, 

Yucca: We have. 

Mark: incredible. What's happened. 

Yucca: Class of planets that turns out as are the dominant class in our, in our solar system. And we didn't even, I mean, we had some hints that, you know, series and Pluto's existed, but we didn't know about all those other ones. You know how Mia and Maki Maki and all of those just amazing other objects.

Yeah. Or the solar wind or well now leaving even our solar system, talking about things like exoplanets and other, which by the way, a big achievement, we just crossed over 5,000 confirmed exoplanets that we know of. Yeah. So, I mean, we suspect that within our galaxy alone, there are literally trillions of planets, but we can't confirm that yet.

Right. We, it actually takes quite a bit of time to look at a star and determine whether that star has planets and it's only, we can only see a certain there's a threshold that we can't see. Underneath. So we can, we're really good at finding really big, massive close planets, but not so good at finding little low mass and faraway planets.

So we've been only working on this for a few decades and we went from, from scientists thinking it would probably never, we'd never be able to see a planet around another star to knowing a thousands of.

Mark: Yes. And that brings us to the big news of the past year or so when it comes to space exploration, which is the James Webb infrared telescope which. Successfully launched successfully unfolded itself in 350 discrete steps successfully calibrated and is now ready to start doing science. 

Yucca: Yeah, we're getting 

Mark: of, and one of its primary objectives is the identification of exoplanets. 

Yucca: Yeah. Well not, it's not for finding the exoplanets primarily it's for studying those that exist that we can't, that we can find them through other techniques. Right. So transit photometry or radio philosophy. I was basically looking for when the planet passes in front of the star, does it dip in brightness?

And the other one is looking for the red shift when the planet is pulling on its star. So we know that there are stars there, but usually seeing them with the other telescopes that we have are very difficult because they get lost in the glare of their star. We're trying to look at it in visible light, but in infrared light, it's much easier to see that.

And. Get a lot more details. We can also do some spectroscopy with infrared that can give us clues to what kinds of materials are in those atmospheres. And that allows us to look for certain certain types of chemicals that we would only associate with life. So those would be our, our biosignatures basically that we can look for.

And of course we're interested in other planets, not just for the possibility of finding life, but that's one that a lot of people are interested in. Are there other people out there, 

Mark: right? right. 

Yucca: is there other life, but we're also interested. Are there other civilizations?

Mark: Yeah. And there are some compounds that are actually pretty rare in, in as far as we can tell. They're, they're pretty rare in the universe except when they're assembled by life. So we can look for those. I mean, you know, we look for methane. We look for ammonia 

Yucca: Well, those ones are ones that have a lot of, of a biotic, but first for instance, foster things. So that was what the whole excitement with Venus I guess a year or two ago at this point it turned out that that was probably measurement error, but we were really excited that look, there are these phosphenes and yes, there may be some ways to make them a biotically so not life, but here on earth.

The vast majority of it is made as actually by microbial processes. So when we were finding or thought we were finding it in the Venetian atmosphere, How, how is this possible? We don't know of any way that this could geologically be produced in these amounts. Again, unfortunately it turned out that that probably wasn't the case, and that happens a lot in science though.

That's part of the process, right? One team put this forward, said, look what we found. And then the other teams looked at it and went, Hmm, well, actually we see some problems in your methodology here. No dark. That doesn't mean that there isn't life there, but that particular clue. It might not be a valid clue, 

Mark: Yeah, it's it's there it's questionable data, so it doesn't necessarily tell us anything. But this is the value of peer review, right?

You know, when you have peer review by experts, then you get data. That's more likely to be true. And. You know, this is something that we go back to in naturalistic or science-based paganism and atheopagan ism all the time.

Using the scientific method gives us a better sense of whether or not something is likely to be true. And that's a very, it's a, a markedly different approach to knowledge than the experiential approach to knowledge that much of the pagan community tends to rely on. But. It's also one that we can have higher confidence in our, our perceptual systems are so subject to error and glitch.

And this is very well-documented. So, just putting in a quick plug for critical thinking and the scientific method you know, these are, these are important concepts for us as science-based pagans. 

Yucca: Right. And, and even if we aren't doing science, isn't not being professional scientists in our little. I think for everybody it's really important. So

Mark: because we are bombarded with information now and a lot of. It's nonsense a lot. A lot of it is logically fallacious advertising. That's supposed to make you feel bad until you buy a product or associate something really wonderful with, with buying a product or a service. 

Yucca: Or just to get your views so that it gets advertising money, 

Mark: right. 

Yucca: right. 

Just make it sensational enough that you engage with it.

Mark: Yeah. And if it.

confirms your biases or angers you, then you're more likely to be riled up by it and therefore to pay more attention to it. And these techniques are well understood and they are used by Google and Facebook and all those various 

Yucca: now. It's not. Yeah, those are the big guys, but, but it's happening all over the 

Mark: It's everybody. Exactly. And so our capacity for parsing, what's likely to be true from what's likely what's less likely to be true, becomes a survival skill in this time.

If we want to be people whose relationship with reality is grounded in credible data. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So that's, that's one reason why all of this is very much of interest to science-based pagans, but I was going to ask the other question, which is why is all this space stuff? Pagan. 

Yucca: Yeah. Well, I do, I do want to circle back around and just to the James Webb before we go there. Cause 

Mark: Oh, good 

Yucca: question, but we, we mentioned one tiny thing about the James Webb. I mean, it's huge, but it's only one tiny part of, of the mission. And if I could just run for a second with this, 

Mark: Sure. 

Yucca: there's a lot of excitement about the James Webb.

But it's not always explained like why it's such a big deal and one, it is yes. The largest telescope that we've ever actually launched and put into space. And with telescopes, the bigger the mirror, basically the more resolution you get, the better you can see. So it's kind of a joke, but bigger really is better.

Right. But it's also infinitely. And light. When we think about light, we're thinking about visible light most of the time, which is the type of light that our eyes are sensitive to, but humans actually only see a tiny part of the spectrum of light and there's way more colors. So. Different wavelengths correspond with different colors.

And we can go all the way to gamma rays down to radio. Radio is actually a form of light, but infrared is a form of light that is a little bit redder than red, right? Infrared below red. And it sees. I think it can see through certain materials, right? Certain kinds of light, light, visible light goes through the glass and your window just fine.

But doesn't go through say the wall x-rays, which is light goes through your skin, but not through your bones. Well, infrared's really good at seeing through things like dust, but it's also going to be very useful to us because the farther. Way that you look with a telescope the further back in time, you're looking because light isn't instantaneous, it actually travels at a finite.

To us on earth. It feels instantaneous because these distances are so short, but something like the sun is eight light minutes away. It takes light eight minutes to get to us. So if we look at something that's a thousand light years away that took a thousand years for that light to get to. But what we think is happening with the universe is that as time goes on, we believe that the universe is actually expanding.

So as light travels through the expanding universe, it's getting stretched out. And so this is stretching those wavelengths, redder and redder and redder, and some of the early. From the only a few hundred million years after the, the big bang has been stretched so far into red, that it's passed out of visible light.

So we can't see it with a telescope like the Hubble, because the Hubble doesn't see an infrared it Susan visible and a little into ultraviolet. So this telescope will let us see. With light. See these earliest time periods that we've never been able to see before. So we should be able to see galaxies at the earliest stages of formation.

We should be able to look and see, you know, are quasi stars real? How do they form? Can we see the first population of stars? So it's opening up a whole. It's not even like a new chapter, but it's a whole new book. In our understanding of the universe. And it's probably going to throw a wrench into so many of our different accepted theories.

They were like, oh, that doesn't make sense. The data doesn't support that and all kinds of new things. So in addition to studying the nearby things like exoplanets, we're going to be able to see the distant past in a way that we have only ever dreamed of being able to. So that's why I just want to put that plug into like how amazing of a, of an edge of a frontier that we're standing on right now with, with science, with space lines.

Mark: Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you for that. And it should, it also bears saying that. Younger phenomena emit ultraviolet light as well. So we'll be able to see phenomena in the, in the, the, in the infrared. spectrum as well. 

Yucca: That's right?

Mark: you know, we'll be able to look at stuff that's newer and capture images, which can then be false colored and differentiated into different wavelengths.

So there will, there will be some very dramatic images from the James Webb. I'm sure. 

Yucca: Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

Mark: so, you know, we've all been so wowed by the Hubble. I think we can expect, you know, literal order of magnitude 10 times. 

Yucca: More, so, yeah.

Mark: More so, with these images from the James Webb. So it's, it's a very exciting time and the calibration just happened in the last couple of months.

So we're only we're, we're just starting to crack the book. 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: a little. 

Yucca: Hopefully early summer is when we should start getting some science returned for, from it that's if everything seems to be going on track. So, you know, it's we're right there.

Mark: And there. were so many things that could have gone wrong. 

Yucca: yeah.

Mark: I mean, there were so many things that could've gone wrong. This, this project was first envisioned what? 19 86, 89. Okay. And 

Yucca: So the year, the wall came down 

Mark: yeah. 

Yucca: back to what we were starting with, 

right? Yeah. 

Mark: you know, when the, when the Soviet union collapsed and the cold war was over 

Yucca: was several years before Hubble launched. 

Mark: right, 

Yucca: Yeah. And it, and it went through a lot of different changes over the years. The initial launch dates, I mean, what were those supposed to be back in the early teens? 2012 or something 

Mark: Yeah. 

Yucca: yeah, but unlike the huddle, it's not in low earth orbit.

The Hubble is in Leo so that we actually were able to go and make repairs when those needed to happen. The James Webb is in a, in a special orbital kind of island where it's actually orbiting the sun, but matching the matching Earth's orbit called L two. And that's, we're talking roughly four times the distance from the earth and the moon.

So 

Mark: It's about a million. It's about a million miles away, a little short of that. 

Yucca: Yeah. So something goes wrong with that. We're not going out to fix it. Humans have never actually been beyond the moon. Right. I don't think we really. The capability of launching people there at this point. So everything had to be absolutely perfect. And it was this huge international effort, right? It was, I guess, primarily a NASA project, but there was ISA involved in the Canadian space agency.

I think it was Jackson involved as well, but there were a lot of agencies that were in this. 

Mark: Honestly, I don't remember. 

Yucca: Yeah. I think the UK space agency was as well. 

Mark: yes. 

Yucca: So yeah.

Mark: So it's very exciting and it's going to continue to be exciting. And now I'm going to loop back around to why is this exciting for pagans? 

Yucca: Right.

Mark: And my answer to that, my really short answer is that as we have alluded to so many times and. Specified articulated on this podcast, paying attention is so important to our paganism, you know, understanding the world of nature around us.

And even though we can't see it except at night because our atmosphere scatters the blue light and puts this sort of shell over the top of us, we're in space. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: We're we're, we're interacting with space stuff is raining down on the earth from space all the time. Radiation is coming into to the earth from space and, 

Yucca: Well, the things that were made from wood stellar processes, right? Stars had to form the heavier elements and supernovae, a neutron star collision and all of those things just to make the literal earth and in our bodies, which are just extensions of the earth.

Mark: So there's, there's the wow factor of that. The sheer wonder of it, the all at the fact that all of this is connected, it's all interacting and it's all expanding and evolving as it has from the moment of the big bang. But beyond that, I think there's something about the human project. That makes this an interest to pagans.

And this may be tough for some folks because you know that the romantic conceptualization of nature in Western culture, wasn't really a very good framing of, of reality. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: Because there was this idea that there was nature and then there was humanity and you sort of had to vote with your feet if you were

So, or you were Henry Walden, the I'm sorry, Henry Thoreau. Then you, you voted for nature and rejected humanity. And if you were, you know, someone who is. You know, involved with governance and culture and those kinds of things, then you, you voted with humanity. 

Yucca: False dichotomy set up there.

Mark: Yeah.

it really is because we're.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: What we're doing is natural.

Everything that we do, everything we've made, even the artificial chemicals that we've created that do not exist. Otherwise in nature, they're still natural because they follow the laws of physics. 

Yucca: Right. You wouldn't call formic acid, not natural because ants made it. 

Mark: Right. 

Yucca: So the things that humans make, those are natural to.

Mark: Yeah. Now that's not to say that humans aren't well out of balance with the biotic systems of the earth we are. But framing this as a war or a battle or a competition, and then picking a side is both grossly oversimplified and. Not a very helpful way of framing 

Yucca: It's not useful. Yeah. 

Mark: it It's it's it's no, it doesn't really. 

Yucca: us up for failure, right? Because you're never going to like natural processes will never quote unquote win against that. Right. So if you set up your wind condition as having defeated natural processes, you can't, you will never win.

Mark: Right. Right. So while Yucca and I are. Big environmentalists and have both worked professionally in the conservation fields, you know, both at a public policy level and in the Restoration.

context, the implementation on the ground I think I can speak for both of us. When I say we feel very strongly that the human project is of interest to pagans and you know, the success of humans who are these remarkable beings, each of which carries around one of the most complex, interesting and mysterious phenomena we are aware of in the universe, which is a human brain. Is is something that's relevant to pagans. Not only because we want to grow ourselves and live the fullest lives, we can and build the deepest relationships we can with those that we love. But also because humanity itself has a value and we, we can hope for some level of success. For humanity. And one aspect of that success is in scratching that curious, itch, you know, learning the things that we are so curious about.

And we've, we, we stumbled over time on to a really fantastic method for, for learning those things. It's not a perfect. Nothing humans create is perfect. 

Yucca: Right.

Mark: But it's a very good method. And the peer reviewed scientific process is a very good method for learning even very complex things. 

Yucca: Yeah. Let me think about all the things that. The very complex and complicated things that we know about those have been learned through science, right? Being able to do things like send people to the moon or B have a little remote control Rover, not actually very level, it's pretty big on another planet.

Right. And all of these things or going to the bottom of our ocean. Right. Exploring the hydrothermal vents or flying or any of these things. It's because we did science to do it. And that's a self-correcting process. 

Mark: Yes. Yes 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: and no. When we first did it, we didn't do it very well. You know, the Wright brothers were up for what 120 seconds I think was, was the figure.

Yucca: I don't remember what it was, but it was, it was short, 

Mark: It was 

Yucca: it was something about right.

Mark: Yeah.

It was powered flight heavier than air. And it was a start, it was something. And within 50 years, 

Yucca: We were on another planet.

Mark: or, or ordinary people were buying tickets on commercial aircraft to fly from continent to continent.

That's how fast it all happened. It is. It is extraordinary to live in this time. Yes, we have incredible challenges. And most of those challenges are of our own making, 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: That we didn't intend to make them. But intent and impact are not the same thing. And that's what we always need to be aware of. When we think about when we hurt someone inadvertently, if our impact is different than our intent, we still need to apologize and make amends, 

Yucca: Yeah 

Mark: because good intentions are not enough to excuse behavior.

That's harmful. 

Yucca: right.

Mark: But as pagans, thinking about these big issues, thinking about the sacredness of it, all understanding it is a part of admiring it, 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: understanding it as a part of embracing it for the wonder that it shows us. 

Yucca: And helping us to be able to make more informed and responsible choices. 

Mark: Hmm. 

Yucca: Right. There's often something that I hear echoed over and over again is, you know, why should we be spending money, exploring the universe and exploring space when we have so many problems here on earth and I'm sympathetic to that, right?

We have so many things that we need to work on. But I think that the exploration and the, the, everything that we learn from that. Can put us in a better position to make better choices, like thinking about studying, why go to Mars or go to Venus? Well, comparative planetology lets us understand our own world on a level that simply would not be possible otherwise.

Mark: Right. 

Yucca: Because B as we can. Do a controlled study on earth, the way you could do a controlled study and in the lab and you put the, this, this condition and that you can't do that with the planet. So their next best thing is to learn as much as we can about the things that are similar to earth. Right.

And just try and make decisions based on what we learn. And, and so many things we it's really hard to see how it's all connected, but yeah. That there is always a connection back to picking something that we learned for one from one field and be able to apply that to another. This is a really simple one, but photovoltaics.

Right? So although that wasn't developed specifically for the space program, the space program really did do a lot of development on it. And what that contributed to the, the field back here on earth allows us now to have. Solar power, right? This, this is being recorded right now. You are listening to this podcast because that's the power that's powering my house.

There is no electricity in the part of the state where I live. It's not there. It's not available unless you use photovoltaics. And so it's, you never know how it comes back around.

Mark: Right. And all of that is true and important and valid. And I also go back to the piece that I wrote in my book, which I think is so important to acknowledge because the, the, the proselytizing atheists like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris. They tend to miss this piece, which is that humans are not just rational thinking creatures. We are also emotional aspirational creatures. We have hopes and dreams and and optimism and pessimism and you know, and, and romantic aspirations. And. The voyage to the frontier is something that has been inherent in humanity. At least since somebody decided to leave Africa, 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: We've been, we've been going, we've been, we've been going from, you know, we've been making boats and going to Australia.

We've been. You know, we've been moving around and interested in seeing what's over the horizon. And the horizon now is space. And I feel that there would be without space exploration and the learning that it provides us. I just feel. To some degree, the wind would go out of the sales of humanity. We, you know, if we turned back in on ourselves and I'm the first to say, I want to see everybody fed housed healthcare closed. I do not consider these to be competing priorities, 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: but where we should be mining, the resources for that are not from these not very well-funded space programs. It's from the gigantic piles of resources that billionaires have accumulated that they don't need, that they just don't need. Nobody needs that much. And so that's, that's where I am with it. And there's room for debate over all of those things. Of course, they're complicated issues and there are a lot of factors that go into them. But I don't think you excuse a poor set of social values and social priorities by pulling the plug on your feeding of human curiosity. 

Yucca: Yeah.

It's it gets people. I mean, ask, not every single seven-year-old, but most seven year olds you ask them, what, what are they really like? What are they curious about? And how many of them are going to tell you? I want to know more about space. 

Mark: It's space or dinosaur is one or the other, 

Yucca: Right. Both. Awesome. Could we combine the two? 

Mark: Awesome. 

Yucca: actually my littlest is really well.

He's not into dinosaurs. He's actually into pterosaurs and he's really, really like particular about the distinction between them, which is 

Mark: okay. 

Yucca: but yeah. But right. So pterosaurs and space. So I liked that idea. 

Mark: Huh. 

Yucca: But yeah, but, and then that's one. So let's just say. It's all connected, right. And the exploration of our own past and our own future and the context that we're in.

I think it's a beautiful thing for us too, to be able to explore that. So.

Mark: Absolutely. And I mean, you can hear. In our voices, how animated we become when we talk about these things. And, you know, I think about the public scientists that are out there. And I mean, it was, it was a considerable effort for Stephen Hawking to be able to communicate excitement. You know, that, that was, that was very challenging for him.

And yet he still could because his excitement at what was being discovered in his. Burning curiosity about the nature of the universe came through even his terrible affliction and disability. You could just, you could feel it coming from him and you know, one of the. One of the atheopagan principles, one of the 13 principles that we, we work to live our lives by in, you know, amongst those who are atheopagan is curiosity. And the answer, they, the, the feeding of curiosity feeds are all and reverence, which is the second principle. 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: The awe and the reverence are what give us a sense of meaning and purpose and beauty and joy in living. And the curiosity is a means to the end of that as well as a means to the end of bridging that huge gap between ourselves and another person, and really trying to understand what it's like in their world and what their needs are And how we can best work with those. So it's cool. It's really cool.

Yucca: And I want to put, it's always hard for me to do self promotion, but I'm going to make myself do it for anyone who does want to hear me talk about space a lot. And if you're on Tik TOK, I do have a tech talk channel. That's all about space and, and all of that. So that's space underscore stem, S T E M like science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

So I'll put a link. So if you're interested in that and you just want to. You know, talk about what's a quasar, what's it? This ask questions. All of that. You can find me there if you're 

Mark: followed that 

Yucca: the dude speak. 

Mark: yeah, I, I set up a Tik TOK account for the atheopagan society and it's, it's just a placeholder now I'm following a lot of people, but I haven't put any videos up there, but I, I wanted to capture. The atheopagan label before somebody else took it. And although there are quite a number of 

Yucca: Oh, there's some 

Mark: Videos on that are tagged atheopagan or atheopagan aneurysm on Tik TOK.

I, you know, It's.

really an interesting thing because my first. Impression of tick talk was not positive. It was like The stuff you're feeding me is really vapid. And I don't know why anybody is sticking with this, but as the algorithm starts to get to know you, there is some amazing feminist content anticapitalist content, environmental content, political content. 

Yucca: talk is really is awesome. There's some really awesome creators. I mean, I actually would, even though I'm on Tik TOK, I would suggest to anyone, if you are not there, you don't need it. It's it it's really, really good at what it does. And you will look up three hours later from your phone and go, where did my day go?

Right. So if you ha, if you're already struggling with street with screen addiction, it's not a great, it doesn't help you. Right. I kind of think of it like, you know, I don't want to be giving like advices on great new beers to somebody who's struggling with alcoholism. 

Mark: That's a good point. Yeah. 

Yucca: But if it's something that you already are being able to manage and are already there on Tik TOK, like I'd love to have come check it out.

And for people who want right. What you're saying, mark, about developing the atheopagan channel. Like if people have ideas about that we would love to hear 

Mark: We'd love to hear it, especially now that, the permissible length of the videos has increased somewhat. I mean, it's, you can do a short little overview in, in three minutes, but now that it's expanded to 10, it's really possible to do some things. I, I think. 

Yucca: most people still don't have 10. They just kind of randomly give it to some people and not 

Mark: Oh, really? 

Yucca: But everybody can, everybody can do three. But they we'll see, we'll see if the 10 sticks, a lot of people are upset about. 

Mark: Ah, interesting. 

Yucca: yeah, it's, I think it started at 15 seconds though. And they like slowly went up.

I use every second of my three minutes, I have to edit out to go in and edit out what I say. I'm like, oh, do I really need that? That's in there because three minutes is so hard to say anything. And, 

Mark: It is, it is. Yeah. I mean, especially when you're talking about stem content, I mean, that's because there are a lot of moving pieces to, you know, to, to that kind of education and winnowing it down to a single point is. 

Yucca: Yeah. I ended up doing a lot of multiple series where I'm like, okay, we talked about protoplanetary discs this time. So now we're talking about this, watch my video on that. And then, you know, 20 people in the comments linking them, say, watch, watch the first video, like I said, but they're, they're working on it.

So, it's a, it's a great platform for connecting with people, but it is, it's a bit of a black hole.

Mark: Yeah. And, but my feeling is, you know, if, if this is where younger people are going I want to be there with them. I, I, you know, I, I want our community to be there with them because otherwise we're, you know, we're, we're just in this sort of hide bound capsule of people who are getting steadily more gray.

And that's. That's not really community building it's it's unproductive. 

Yucca: Yeah,

Mark: And I mean, as I said, there is some, there's some really sharp thinking out there on Tik TOK. 

Yucca: Stuff.

Mark: there really is extremely sharp thinking. Lot of incredible anti-racists stuff, the indigenous stuff.

is very good as well. Yeah. 

Yucca: There's a yeah. And, and, and pretty much any of the scientific fields are interested in like, there's somebody from that field doing it. There's a ton of astrophysicist on there. And like, there's this lady who does like CRISPR that I follow and like all kinds of. And people who do history. And like, if you get to that side, you've got to purposely go and search out that content.

And then the algorithm starts learning that that's what you want rather than wanting like the. Whatever there's, there's all kinds of stuff. Right. But it doesn't, you don't have to see any dances if you don't want, I mean, there's some pretty cool dances too, but if you'd like to not be watching dances on picked on, you can, you can get to the side of tick-tock that doesn't have that.

So, but yeah, so that that's the plug. So space under store, underscore stem. If people are interested in. 

Mark: Cool. Very cool. 

Yucca: why don't we, we talk a little bit before we finish up today about the coming month or so in the night sky. 

Mark: Good idea. 

Yucca: Yeah. Because we are for, for those of us in the Northern hemisphere, we're moving into the time of year where it's comfortable to be outside.

After dark. I know that at least in my area, in the middle of the winter, and it's, you know, nine degrees Fahrenheit out. You don't want to be out there, but now that you know, you're not freezing, there's some. There's a lot of really fun things coming up. The first thing is not right now, but next month there is going to be a total lunar eclipse for north America.

Yeah. So for north America at a fairly reasonable time, the one that happened in November, Was in the middle of the night for most people was like two or three in the morning, but this one should be depending on where you live between like seven and nine. So I think a lot of people can stay up for that.

Mark: And that's on the night of Sunday, the 15th. 

Yucca: I think so. Oh, let me see here. Yes. So yeah, for, in that, for, in the states, it's going to be the 15th. So universal time you might see on calendars, it's saying the 16th, but on calendars, that's always going to tell you in universal time. So you just have to know what your time is relevant to that. 

Mark: Yeah. 

Yucca: So, so that'll be.

That. And that'll be the weekend that we're at century retreat for anyone who'll be there with us. And, and we will be bringing some telescopes and stuff to that event for anyone who wants, 

Mark: well, you,

Yucca: well, I will, yes, I, I, in my little one, who's coming with me. So, and. We're going to be moving into times where there's more meteor showers.

The last few months, there wasn't a lot going on meteor shower wise, but we have the lyrics coming up. They'll still be a bit of moon for that, which makes it hard to see. But that kind of sets off the whole media shower season. So most nights of the year, even if there's not a specific shower going on, you can usually see several meteors.

That's pretty typical. If you've got dark skies, if you're on right in the middle of the city, it's going to be a little bit trickier to be able to see it. Right. 

Mark: Yeah. 

Yucca: Oh, and the other one is that if you are a morning person, all the visible planets and for the rest of the month, they're actually lining up in the morning.

It's like a diagonal line across the sky in the pre-dawn hours to get up like half an hour to an hour before Dawn. And you can look out and just see this beautiful little line of like piercing, bright planets in the sky. And then maybe stay up and listen to the birds, start to sing and the Dawn come over the sky.

So, 

Mark: Well worth it. A good thing to do once in awhile, even if you're not a morning person, 

Yucca: yeah.

Mark: which I am not. But for some reason, a couple of years ago, I started waking up very early in the morning and I've been doing that ever since. So, I don't know, things change. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: I wanted to put out a brief shout out we, or I'm sorry, not our podcast, but atheopagan ism gut name-checked.

On the podcast, go home Bible you're drunk which is a well well-known skeptic atheist podcast. 

Yucca: I haven't heard of this one before.

Mark: Yes. So, and they're, they're great. For the, for the X van Angelicals who are among our listenership for the folks that are recovering from from particularly from Christian religion, that.

Don't feel good about, they go into some detail about particular sections of the Bible and how they contradict one another, or you know, why they don't make any sense in a modern context, any of that kind of thing. So go home Bible you're drunk podcast very nice people and they gave us a nice shout out.

So that was cool. 

Yucca: That's awesome. 

Mark: Yeah.

Yucca: Great.

Mark: Well, this has been a Great.

conversation. I know We could talk about space for the next three hours. But we have to stop it somewhere.

Yucca: We do. So just encourage any of you to, if you've got any planetariums or museums in your area and you're comfortable going out check out, see, maybe if they're doing something or there'll be a lot of online events too, you'd be able to find some, some cooler areas night celebrations, or maybe you could do a little bit of your own, you know, maybe put on some old episodes of cosmos.

So yeah.

Mark: And that could be as quickly as this, this podcast is going to drop on the 11th, which is the day before your is night. And It may be on the following weekend. It just depends on when. 

Yucca: It's often on the weekends, right. Because people that, that works better for people's schedules usually. So that's good. Really good point. So. Well, thanks, mark. This is great. 

Mark: yeah. It 

Yucca: Thanks for nerding out a little bit. And we didn't talk about ice volcanoes, but maybe we'll be able to talk about 

Mark: Oh, the ice volcanoes. That's right. Oh, 

Yucca: Yeah. So search that Pluto ice volcanoes. So, all right. 

Mark: Cool. All right. Take care, everyone.