Eclipse Astronomer Dr. Benjamin Boe has spent the last decade studying eclipses all over the world. He says the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, will be incredibly special. We talk the rarity of solar eclipses, what science has learned because of eclipses and why one day, we won’t have them anymore. Then, we unveil a new Candle of the Month and countdown the Top 5 Scariest Things About Space.
Dr. Benjamin Boe: 01:30
Pointless: 31:19
Candle of the Month: 53:39
Top 5 Scary Space Things: 57:13
Discount Code: pointless50
Interview with Eclipse Astronomer Dr. Benjamin Boe
Nick VinZant 0:00
Hi welcome to Profoundly Pointless, my name is Nick VinZant. Coming up in this episode, Eclipse, astronomy, and scary space things,
Dr. Benjamin Boe 0:22
this is going to be a good one to see for all of those reasons. But then also, you'll be able to see Mercury and Venus and potentially even Mars and Saturn as well. But this line that they found in the corona had never been seen anywhere else. So they, they named it Chronium, because they thought, Oh, it's a new element, there was an eclipse, where it actually ended a war. So there was like a battle going on. And
Nick VinZant 0:45
I want to thank you so much for joining us, if you get a chance, subscribe, leave us a rating or review, we really appreciate it really helps us out. If you're a new listener, welcome to the show. If you're a longtime listener, thank you so much for all of your support. So I want to get right to our first guest. Because whether you're listening to this before the APR Eclipse, right after it, or whenever he has some fascinating insight into just how rare eclipses are, what they mean for science, and why in the future, we won't have them. This is Eclipse astronomer, Dr. Benjamin bow. Like from a scientific standpoint, why is an eclipse special. So
Dr. Benjamin Boe 1:34
normally the solar disk is it is always very, very bright. But during an eclipse, the Moon comes exactly between the Earth and the Sun. And so no, you'll no longer see that really bright surface. And instead you see the corona, which is this outer atmosphere of the sun, that actually expands out into space and you know, create space weather and all kinds of things like this. But the corona the the thing is with the corona is it's about a million to a billion times fainter than the solar disk. So that it's that really high contrast ratio of if you have something that's a factor of a million fainter right next to something else, that's that really bright source, it's very, very difficult to observe it normally. And so total solar eclipses are this really unique sort of just cosmic coincidence that are Moon happens to be in the right place at the right time, such that we can perfectly block it out, and then we're able to see the corona super easily. But
Nick VinZant 2:32
okay, so the corona, so you can study the corona, but why is the why is the corona special,
Dr. Benjamin Boe 2:37
it's really just one step along the way of how the sun is influencing basically the entire solar system. So you know, inside the sun, you've got nuclear fusion powering it, and then you've got these different layers in the sun, eventually, you get to the surface. And that's what we can see normally, so there's tons of telescopes that observe the surface of the sun all the time. But then right above the surface, you have the corona, and it's much lower density than the surface, which is why it's so much fainter. And then that material actually is unbounded. So unlike the surface of the sun, where it kind of just stays there, the corona actually expands out into space and fills the entire solar system. So if you know from a sort of a selfish motivation, we're interested in understanding the corona because any dynamics that happened in the corona will propagate outward, and potentially can impact the Earth. Other planets, you know, if we have spacecraft, or even if you know, in the future, we want to go to Mars or something, this is the sort of thing we have to think about it, like how is the sun impacting the solar system, and the corona is really this sort of nexus point where a lot of that stuff gets started. And so if you really want to understand how to predict what the sun is going to be doing on the, to the rest of the solar system, you really need to understand the corona. But because we have that, that trick where it's difficult to observe the corona normally, we don't know that much about it, because it's so hard to observe. And so it's sort of simultaneously this really important region for understanding how the solar wind is going to be formed and how the sun is impacting the solar system. But also, it's one of the most difficult places to observe. So it's this combination of like, it's very important, and it's very difficult to do that make it so such an important thing to study.
Nick VinZant 4:28
How does this translate to me sitting in my house in Seattle? With
Dr. Benjamin Boe 4:32
this sort of data, we can figure out things like temperature and density and other physical properties of the corona. And so basically, with these different sorts of data, we can infer a lot of the physical properties of the corona, right? And then the thing is, okay, that is then an observation of what the Corona was actually doing at some particular time. So, in the long term, we figure out how we can improve our models, which then ultimately will improve our prediction ability so that we can tell you, you know, is there going to be a solar event that is going to be a problem for us here on the earth. But even more fundamentally, from just a pure science perspective, you know, this sort of thing gives us a better understanding of the complex physics that's going on in the in the corona. And that could have other applications. You know, often in science, we work on things that don't necessarily have an obvious, you know, immediate return to the economy or something. But then maybe a century later, someone realizes, oh, all this work that they did, does have a huge impact. And you can think back to the people working on the early electricity experiments in the 19th century and stuff, you know, they weren't thinking necessarily about how this is going to be powering all of our society, but ultimately, specifically in blip the corona it's can we predict, not only when these sort of, especially the eruptive events, like coronal mass ejections, when they're forming, how they're being initiated? But then also, once they've started being initiated? How are they going to evolve and propagate through the corona? And that will have an impact, you know, on where it ends up going? How strong it ends up being things like this, if
Nick VinZant 6:14
you were to put things on a scale of like one to 10? How much do we know about the sun one being like, we don't even know what that big, yellowish looking thing is? Yeah. 10 being we got everything figured out. Like, where do you think that we are right now?
Dr. Benjamin Boe 6:30
Gosh, that's such a hard question. Maybe halfway, five, or six, maybe seven, if we're being a little optimistic, but we still have a long way to go. I mean, we know a lot of the physics for sure. And we know a lot of the fundamental physics because, you know, people in the lab, you know, especially with quantum mechanics, and, and, you know, with really complicated Magneto hydrodynamic modeling and things like this, you know, we know quite a bit, but that said, you know, the sun is absolutely massive. So even if we have sort of the first order, like, you know, we could write some equations and say, Oh, roughly, this is what's going on. But if you start zooming in deeper and deeper, you're gonna, I'm sure we're gonna find more things that surprise us. Just to give you some context on that, you know, the sun is roughly 100 times the diameter of the Earth, which means it's about a million times the volume. So if you just think of how ridiculously massive the sun actually is, you start to realize that like, Yeah, our models are not even close to coming to being able to predict every little thing. But even with these rather simple models, you know, compared to the complexity of the sun, we're still able to get pretty dang close to predicting some reasonable thing,
Nick VinZant 7:50
is there something that like people right now, by studying eclipses, like we are trying to find this specific thing out? Or is it more just like set this up, and let's see what we get. It's
Dr. Benjamin Boe 8:01
definitely more of the latter, which is a little bit different in most of science, you know, the, the method is, okay, we have this hypothesis, we want to make a very particular observation to get a very particular result. And we do that to some extent, but in a lot of ways, we're at the mercy of whatever the sun decides to give us on a given day. So you know, so the Eclipse, they only they only happen about once every year to year and a half or so. And so that means we're really just getting one snapshot, you know, and they only last a few minutes. So you're really just getting one little snapshot at one point in time, you know, every year or two. But because of that, we end up finding things that we don't expect, you know, like this, maybe there's a really cool coronal mass ejection, and it behaves in a way that we've never seen before. And so we can study that, fundamentally, though, we know what the corona is going to be doing in the sense of, we know what metrics we can use to study it. And the main thing are these things we call emission lines. And so this comes out of something out of atomic physics, where different atoms, different ions and elements have very particular colors of light that they'll interact with. And so we know what are the primary atoms that are in the corona that we're interested in? And we know what that can tell us, like, you know, we know how we can measure temperature and density and magnetic field and something called the freezing distance and various other physical properties. We know that these lines will give us different information about this. And we know exactly what color they're going to be, it's always going to be the same because the atomic physics never changes. And so we go with these cameras with these particular filters. Knowing full well we'll record this line that we're interested in. And then really, it's then when you see how bright was the line, how does this line compared to a different line? That's how we then can get get deeper down at the different physics that we're that we're studying. So
Nick VinZant 9:58
you can tell by the color's essentially how much of an element is in the sun. Exactly,
Dr. Benjamin Boe 10:03
yeah. And this is what we do in all of astronomy. So literally any area of astronomy, from galaxies, nebulae, comets and asteroids, the sun, all of it, fundamentally, the main tool that we have is to study the light of something. And so we can understand the different compositions, temperatures, densities, magnetic field, etc, we learn that from these from studying light, and that's observationally, how we do things.
Nick VinZant 10:32
So when you look at this eclipse, is this eclipse special, or is this kind of like it's another Eclipse. It's great. It's rare, but it's another Eclipse.
Dr. Benjamin Boe 10:39
I think from an observers point of view, it's a great eclipse, in part because of how long it is, it's going to be at maximum around about four and a half minutes, especially where I'm going to be down in Texas, as well as we have a group in Arkansas and in Mexico. And at those three sites, each one, that's the time of totality is about four and a half minutes, which will be by far my longest eclipse, the average eclipses are more like two, two and a half minutes. So it'll be kind of weird to like, go through that two and a half minutes and then realize there's two more minutes to go. For me anyway, that'll be a new experience. Another thing because it's longer, it basically means the moon is closer at that time, so it's a little bit bigger, which is why it takes longer to cross the sun. And so because of that, the sky should also be quite a bit darker. So it means you're going to see things a lot more clearly. And then on top of that, there's a really nice planetary alignment. So for the average person, this is going to be a good one to see for all of those reasons. But then also, you'll be able to see Mercury and Venus and potentially even Mars and Saturn as well. So you're really going to see the whole solar system kind of laid out in front of you. And that's something that happened for me in 2017, which was the first eclipse that I saw, where it was totally clear. So I had been in Indonesia and 2016. But it was partly cloudy. So I kind of saw it, but it was you know, it was through clouds and whatnot. But in 2017, it was totally clear. I saw Venus and Mercury and Jupiter. And I saw the corona just stretching out really far across the sky. And I had this profound moment of feeling like that I was just in the solar system. And really, it wasn't this abstract idea anymore. Like there it was right in front of me. It's the closest thing I can describe to it is what the astronauts talk about when they go to space, and they look down at the Earth. And they get that thing they call the observer effect, where they felt that just profound, you know, philosophical moment of just seeing our place in the universe really viscerally it's like, I think I experienced something very similar during a total solar eclipse. So I encourage people definitely go, because you know, that's the kind of experience you can only get either during an eclipse, or if you want to spend a heck of a lot of money and actually go into space. Another reason for people specifically in the United States is that this is gonna be the last eclipse in the continental US until 2045. So we have more than two decades before this is going to happen again, in such an easy location for us to get to. So from a convenience perspective, it also is a very good one to observe when
Nick VinZant 13:17
I don't remember exactly, but I remember experiencing two of them, maybe one on one when I was really young, that was like a total one because I remember that being reddish and being dark. And then I remember another and 2017 and just thinking like, Oh, crap, all this is like real? Yeah. Like, oh, did
Dr. Benjamin Boe 13:36
you see totality in 2017?
Nick VinZant 13:38
No, I would have been in Arizona. I don't think so. Yeah, that wouldn't have been totality, then. Yeah. Um, okay. But if you're gonna go see this, right, and you've pretty much convinced me like me, and maybe I should get in the car and go see, it's like, it's gonna be cool. Yeah. Where is there like a spot or two that like, Okay, this is the spot. This is where you should be. It varies
Dr. Benjamin Boe 13:59
a lot. So the path of totality goes through Mexico, the US and then up into Canada. The reason our low our sights are going to be in Texas, Mexico, and Arkansas. And the reason we made that choice was in part because the eclipse is longer there than it is in the northeast, for example. But on top of that, the weather prospects are statistically better in the south than they are in the Northeast. So like in Texas and Arkansas, I think the statistics are roughly 50% probability that it'll be totally clear skies. In Mexico, it's even better probability of clear skies. But up in you know, up here in New York, Vermont, Maine, these regions, it's more like 80% chance of clouds. So it's really much more of a gamble. That said, I mean, I still think it's I've been telling people you know, around here in Boston, I'm telling people go up to Burlington, Vermont. It's not that far, you know, in If you if you do see it, even if you see it through clouds, it's still a spectacular experience. If you have flexibility, one thing you could do is get yourself close to the path totality, and then check the weather forecast, like a couple of days before and be like, Okay, we should drive up there down there, whatever.
Nick VinZant 15:18
Are you ready for some harder slash listener submitted questions? Sure. What are some things that we have learned from eclipses? I don't know how your history is necessarily. But are there things that we'd say, Oh, we've, because of an eclipse, we figured that out.
Dr. Benjamin Boe 15:30
You know, historically, going back into the 19th century, there were a lot of astronomers who had traveled to eclipses, and they would very diligently make drawings of the eclipse. And I think usually, they would have a team of a few people who would take notes and draw as much as they could. And then they would compile all of their notes to make one master drawing to be like, This is our best guess, what it looked like. And if you go back to those data, it's actually seems pretty accurate based on I mean, it's not perfect, of course, but it's relatively representative of probably what it really looked like. And then the the famous one was in 1869, where they observed with a prism for the first time. So you basically took an image of the corona through a prism, which breaks it into the different wavelengths, the different colors of light. And that was when they discovered this new line that had never been seen before this new emission line that was in the green at about 530 nanometers. And this had never been seen before. And you know, in around the same time in the, in the laboratory, you know, chemists had been burning things, and looking through prisms, and they had identified many of these different lines, like, Oh, this one corresponds to calcium, and this one is magnesium, and this one is lithium and so on. But this line that they found in the corona had never been seen anywhere else. So they named it Chronium. Because they thought, Oh, it's a new element. And actually this just before that, I don't remember the exact year. But that's actually why helium has the name that it has is that helium was first seen during an eclipse with the same kind of observation. And they saw these these lines, they'd never seen this. Well, let's name it after the sun Helios. So that's helium. And so that was actually coming from a part of the corona, we called prominences. Whereas this caronian line was coming from the corona, hence why they called it Chronium. And then it wasn't until many decades later in the 1930s, that quantum mechanics kind of came to maturity. And they realize that no, this isn't some new element, it's actually just iron, a very, very well known element that's all around us, you know, and but it's been ionized 13 times, some of my favorite papers are going back and reading the ones from the 1950s and 60s, when they really started getting better and better instrumentation. And they measured all kinds of things about the polarization of the corona, about the fact that there's also a lot of dust throughout the solar system that makes a good amount of light. There's the electrons in the corona that re emit solar light, and there's these ions. And so there's some really great papers like, you know, more than half a century ago, where they were discovering all these things, will there always be eclipses? Ah, that's a very good question. So basically, the moon is actually getting farther away from us over time. And this is because as the moon orbits the Earth, it actually creates the tides, right. That's why we have the high and the low tide every day, or twice a day. And the tides actually kind of rub on the earth and there's some friction there, that actually applies a torque to the earth Moon system. And so it actually slowly flings the moon away from us. I won't go into all the physics of it. But basically, the moon is because of the tides is slowly drifting away. And so if you wait a long period of time, eventually, the moon will be too far away where all of the eclipses, it won't, it won't be able to fully block the sun anymore. Now, if you run the clock backwards, and say what was happening when the dinosaurs were around hundreds of millions of years ago, the moon was quite a bit closer. And so actually, you would have had total solar eclipses, that would last much longer and would have occurred much more often. So the dinosaurs were probably treated to, you know, a few times a year that they would see a total solar eclipse, and it might last, you know, many, many minutes as opposed to now where we're, you know, getting just a couple of minutes. And sometimes like what happened last year, across the US there was an eclipse, but the moon was a little bit too far away. And so you had what we call an annular eclipse, where you get the ring of fire effect. Part of the problem is that the moon's orbit is tipped about five degrees relative to the Earth's orbit around the sun. So there's certain times of year where the Moon and the Sun and the Earth line up perfectly. There's other times of year where the moon passes above or below the sun, but certainly we are super lucky that we have a moon That is as big as it is, which is much, much bigger than any moon of any other planet that we know of relative, so that the relative size of the Earth and the Moon is there far closer in size than any other planet Moon system that we've discovered. So it's probably a cosmic fluke, that we have this coincidental alignment. And I've actually heard you know, jokes where people say, you know, in the far future, if humans really do colonize the galaxy and spread out to different solar systems, then eventually they'll be tourism to come back to the earth to see an eclipse, because it will be something that they won't have on any of the other solar systems.
Nick VinZant 20:40
Is this is this a rare type of Eclipse? Like in just in terms of the overall type? Or is there an even rarer one that like, this one only happens every whatever. So
Dr. Benjamin Boe 20:51
this one is long and four and a half minutes? It's a bit long. The theoretical maximum, though, is over seven minutes. And actually, that's a side note I wanted to make, which is that a lot of people tell me, it really frustrates me when they say, oh, you know, like here in Boston, for example, we're going to have a 93% Eclipse, like, isn't that good enough? It's 93% is good, right? And I just don't like no, absolutely not is completely different. Because you don't see the corona, you will see a really cool thing, which is the crust and sun. And it's still a great experience. And I'm still, you know, handing out these classes and telling people, you know, safely observe the partial eclipse to great experience. But that said, if you can go see a total eclipse, that's a whole nother ballgame that's seeing the corona that's really fully experiencing it. A metaphor I like to use for this is, if you if you went through a connection in the Denver Airport, and then you told all your friends about the time you visited Denver, they would say no, you didn't. You went through the airport. Like that's a partial eclipse, compared to a total eclipse, like the total eclipse is going out in the city and seeing everything there is to see, whereas the partial eclipse is like Well, yeah, I had a connection. Right?
Nick VinZant 22:03
That's a great metaphor. That's a great way to look at it. Like I was in Denver. Where are you? Um, what's your favorite Eclipse conspiracy theory?
Dr. Benjamin Boe 22:14
Oh. I mean, if you let me pontificate for a bit, go for it, man, go for it. So one thing I rather like about both a solar and lunar eclipses is it really is a way to prove to yourself that the Earth is actually round, and that everything is actually orbiting each other. This was something you know, the ancient Greeks knew when they saw lunar eclipses, they saw the shadow of the earth, and they saw it was always curved, and they went Okay, so the Earth is round. So we very much knew that the Earth was a sphere very long time ago. So that's definitely not, not true, the whole flat Earth conspiracy. But in terms of eclipses and conspiracies there, gosh, I don't know about conspiracy so much. But it is interesting. If you read some of the ancient history of people's reacting to eclipses, a lot of people saw it as like a big omen of this horrible thing that maybe you know, whatever their given deity was angry at them and things like this, there are different cultures who have stories of you know, monsters eating up the sun, and they would do various things to try to appease their their gods, and then the sun would come back. And I can't imagine what that would be like to experience an eclipse without knowing what's happening. Because it's really even knowing fully what's happening. It is a very powerful experience. Some people get, you know, incredible fear. I've heard some people like you almost get paralyzed by fear. Like deep in your brain, something just activates and you get like, terrified. And for me, I just get like immense, like adrenaline and anxiety part of that's probably because of the data we're trying to get. And I'm nervous, like, oh my gosh, here we go. But a lot of people get brought to tears. I mean, almost everyone the first time is crying afterward. I mean, it's it's an incredibly powerful thing. Even if you know what's happening and know exactly when it's gonna happen. I can't imagine if you're just, you know, some ancient farmer somewhere like, you know, plowing your field, and all of a sudden, the sun goes away like that would be
Nick VinZant 24:20
like what the man, that would be a really terrifying experience being like, what is happened, if I recall
Dr. Benjamin Boe 24:31
correctly, I should have looked up the details beforehand. So I don't know if you want to use this or not, but we'll give you some leeway we'll give you there was an eclipse where it actually ended a war so there was like a battle going on. And during the battle, a total solar eclipse happened and both sides thought that this was a sign from their god that they should stop fighting. And so they came they both they stopped fighting and leaders came together and they made a true And the war ended.
Nick VinZant 25:01
I mean, that sounds like yeah, like, that's exactly what I would do do like, Hey, man, we better knock this off. So how did you get into this? So
Dr. Benjamin Boe 25:10
I went to graduate school at the University of Hawaii, specifically at the Institute for Astronomy. And when I started grad school, you know, I knew I wanted to do something space related. So I was really excited to learn everything about astronomy. But I wasn't sure you know what field I thought I wanted to do exoplanets or asteroids. So I kind of dabbled in a number of different things. And then one day, in my first year there, I saw a talk by Dr. Shadi a ball. And she showed some of these just spectacular images of a total solar eclipse, and started explaining the science that she was doing with it, and the and the ambition that she had for the coming eclipses, and that she was looking for students to join the group to help out with the instrumentation and do the data analysis and all of that. And after seeing those images and hearing her talk really passionately about it, I was sold, I was like, Okay, I'm doing it. And so I went on that first eclipse in 2016. And at that time, like, I wasn't even really committed to being part of the group, it was just sort of a one off like, yeah, come along on the Eclipse, see if you like it, whatever. And it was just an incredible experience. And also I the more I learned about eclipses, and also about coronal science, the more excited I got about like that this is a really both important for society and really scientifically interesting area to pursue. And so I've been working with Shadi really ever since I did my PhD with her and then I ended up actually doing a postdoc fellowship as well continuing on our work. And then now I'm at the, just just this last year, I got a professor position at the Wentworth Institute of Technology. And so now I'm trying to get my own students to keep building the group and hopefully carry on the torch of of doing eclipses long into the future.
Nick VinZant 26:58
Um, that's pretty much all we got, man, is there anything that we think we missed or anything like that, one thing
Dr. Benjamin Boe 27:03
I find really cool about eclipses is that every time you see something different, and this is partly because the sun goes through a cycle where every about roughly 11 years, there's a period of maximum activity and a period of minimum activity. And this is really because of the way that the sun's magnetic field is changing and evolving, and it and it goes through periods where it's very dormant, and then periods are very active. And so as you see along the period of different amounts of activity, the corona looks very different. So the magnetic field totally changes, the density changes whether or not you have coronal mass ejections, or what they look like, and the different sorts of structures you see, like, do you see these open field lines that kind of radiate outward? Or do you see more of the stream or kind of things that come to like a tip, and they're a little more dense. And so because of this, every single Eclipse is different. Every Corona that you see is different, or really, it's the same Corona. But every time you see the corona, it's so different. So I'm really excited to see this one, because it'll be the closest to solar maximum that I've seen. Like in 2016, I saw it kind of through clouds, and it was in the descending phase, so it wasn't so active, 2017 and 2019, we're closer solar minimum. So it was a little bit more organized and not so active than 2023 is the last one I saw that one was very active in Australia. And so that was really cool clips to see. But it was very short, it was only 52 seconds. So I was really disappointed when it ended. I was like, Oh, it's so short. I wanted to you know, so anyway, but this eclipse, it's going to also be a really unique one because the sun has been crazy active recently. Like I've just been seeing things you know, articles and stuff saying that the sun is popping off coronal mass ejections like crazy right now. So I'm really hoping that we see a beautiful eruption during the eclipse. And, you know, and because it's going to be a longer Eclipse, it's going to be a bit darker. So combined the fact that the sun is active with a really dark Eclipse, and it's also very high in the sky. So I think like from an observing perspective, I don't think I've had a better Eclipse. So I'm really looking forward to this one. I
Nick VinZant 29:12
want to thank Dr. Bose so much for joining us. If you want to connect with him, we have a link to him on our social media sites. We're Profoundly Pointless on tik, Tok, Instagram and YouTube. And we've also included his information in the episode description. If you want to see some of the eclipses that we're talking about. The YouTube version of this episode will be live on April 4 at 12:30pm Pacific. So real quick, I want to take a moment and thank one of the sponsors of our show factor. And right now they have a special discount just for our listeners. If you're not familiar with factor factor is number one. Really good. Number two are really easy. And number three, they are the most cost effective meal delivery service that you can get. What I really like about them is that it's always fresh, it's never frozen. These are meals that have been prepared by a chef and they've been gone over by a dietitian to make sure that you are getting healthy, high quality meals. They also have tons of different choices, 35 options, including calorie, smart, keto protein, plus vegan veggie, they really have something for everybody. I like them. My kids have have them, they liked them. So there are just tons of options. And they are super easy. If you're stressed out, and you want to just have something that's right there and you don't have to think about it. These are meals that can be ready in two minutes or less. And right now, if you head over to factor meals.com/pointless 50, and use code pointless 50, you can get 50% off your first box, and 20% off your next box. That's code pointless 50 for 50% off your first box, and 20% off your next box. So checkout factor, we've put the link and the code in the episode description. Okay, now let's bring in John Shaw, and get to the pointless part of the show. What's the rarest thing you've ever seen or been to?
John Shull 31:28
This is gonna sound really lame. But the one that I that I've always been really, really proud of was i What year was it? I forget what year it was, I had to be 11 or 12. But I ran with the person who was carrying the Olympic torch through my city.
Nick VinZant 31:49
Oh, like you by yourself or like you in a giant crowd of a whole bunch of people. There
John Shull 31:54
was probably 20 of us. But basically, basically you signed up or whatever. And they picked names out of a hat, essentially. And there was like 1000 names I remember. and my Number got selected. So I got to run slash walk a mile with the person who was carrying the Olympic torch. And the worst part of this whole story is I don't even remember who it was at the moment.
Nick VinZant 32:20
Oh, did they like leave you behind? Or did they like wait for the group?
John Shull 32:24
Oh, no. Yeah, they I remember that they were not waiting. It was like you either ran with them. Or you were left behind.
Nick VinZant 32:30
I guess the rarest thing that I ever technically did was I was there for the last launch of the space shuttle. But even that I was kind of like, okay, like, there it goes. could have seen that on TV. I was there for work. I didn't go for personal reasons. That said, I probably would like to see a total eclipse before I die. And
John Shull 32:53
there will be another total lunar eclipse in 50 years will I will I be around? Probably not Well, probably not. But like, doesn't mean it's never gonna happen again. Like how rare is it? You know what I mean? Well, I
Nick VinZant 33:08
mean, in your lifetime, it's never gonna happen again.
John Shull 33:10
They say they said that in 2017. And here we are again. Yeah,
Nick VinZant 33:15
dude, I think that's just because you weren't paying attention. Like you didn't properly qualify exactly how it was supposed to be. They figured these things out. It's not like they suddenly just change their mind. Like, Oh, no. Turns out it's gonna happen again. Next year, we got the math wrong. Like you just weren't, you just weren't. I was I was operator error. Not there. Nah,
John Shull 33:33
nah, I'm not. Well, I'm almost in the path of totality. So I'll have a front view for it. I have my glasses and everything. What do you mean, almost in the path. Detroit is like 96% involved. If you go 45 minutes down, I 75 to Toledo. You're 100% involved are in the path of totality. You
Nick VinZant 33:56
should probably do that. Apparently. It's very, very different. We had a conversation with the guest who said that 96. But the difference between 96 to 90 to 100% 96% is like flying into the Denver Airport and saying you visited Denver 100% is actually going to Denver, it's huge difference. You should go check it out. It's right there. You should probably do it. Well,
John Shull 34:16
it's it's middle of the day on a Monday. Yeah,
Nick VinZant 34:19
you know if a once in a lifetime event was 45 minutes away from me, I wouldn't go either.
John Shull 34:23
You sound a little butter. You sound a little jealous.
Nick VinZant 34:26
I would go if it was 45 minutes away from me, I would go for that. That's you should go. That's to me is like okay, if you're within an hour if even if you're within three hours of it, I think that you should do it.
John Shull 34:40
I mean, the one that came in 2017 I'll say this was I'm gonna say the Detroit area was maybe in an I'm wrong, but we maybe weren't in the 30 to 40% totality region. And it was it was pretty weird having a go dark at like three o'clock in the afternoon so I can imagine it going pitch black At three o'clock in the afternoon, that will be pretty surreal.
Nick VinZant 35:03
Could you imagine if you were like living 1000s of years ago, or probably not even 1000s of years ago, but like 10s of 1000s of years ago, you'd be like, what
John Shull 35:14
is avidly? It would be mass hysteria, you would think, well, but if somebody actually brought up you would, you would it would go into mass hysteria, and then the sun would come back. minutes later, and people would be like, well, that's, that's weird. I guess everything's okay. Now. Oh,
Nick VinZant 35:29
that's a good question. How long do you think? Okay, imagine that we had no idea what an eclipse was. How many minutes? Do you think that it would take Earth to go into total chaos? I WHOLE EARTH experiences a total eclipse at the same time. We've never experienced it before. How many minutes? Does it take for the whole earth to be in chaos?
John Shull 35:57
I mean, I think within 30 seconds, because Oh, yeah, I mean, it would be like that. I just envision that scene out of Independence Day, where you know, those, the alien ships block out everything, and it's just dark, and everyone just starts freaking out?
Nick VinZant 36:13
I could, honestly, okay, this may be a little bit dramatic, but I could also see it happening. If we had no idea when an eclipse was and it lasted for five minutes, I could actually see the entire human race destroying itself in that amount of time. Like somebody being like, what's happening? Somebody shot the nukes. Okay, fire the nukes back like the whole civilization destroyed itself? Because of any clubs. That's why science is important.
John Shull 36:42
That's, that's quite dramatic. That's all it's I don't I don't think
Nick VinZant 36:45
you don't really, I think it could happen. I wouldn't be that surprised if you're over there. And you're mad at Zimbabwe. And you're like, This must be the Zimbabweans launch the news? Wow.
John Shull 36:59
That was just a random country. By the way. I'm sure he picked no disrespect to our Zimbabwe. I actually think every war would stop for those few minutes, because everybody would be looking up at the sky. Just an astonishment wondering, is this it? Like? Did the aliens launch a nuke? At Earth? And this is the final 30 seconds of my life.
Nick VinZant 37:22
What would be the first thing that you did if the sun disappeared in the middle of the day, and you didn't notice? Like the sun disappears?
John Shull 37:29
I mean, I would probably my cat, it's not so bad. My first initial reaction would probably be to go on social media, and see if someone has an answer that I may believe.
Nick VinZant 37:43
Oh, that's boring. I'm like running inside and grabbing every weapon I can find. And you're like, I'm gonna go do some research?
John Shull 37:52
Well, I mean, you know if you heard, I'm just saying I don't I don't think I would overreact. I mean, obviously, my first day, son, my first thing would be to try to figure out what's happening. And then when nobody else would have an answer, it would either be back or I would be on the phone trying to find out where my wife and kids are.
Nick VinZant 38:12
This is my this is my whole plan of attack. Actually, I have this all planned out. Now, the first thing I'm doing is getting whatever weapons that I have, which right now consists of a child's baseball bat and a golf club, then I'm going to the gas station to get gas then I'm going to the grocery store. See,
John Shull 38:29
though I think you're going to be too late on on the last two, you'll wait line at the at the gas station, and the grocery store will be will be insane. It would be looting everywhere. You're better off just hunkering down in your house for a couple of days, seeing if it's real or not. And then trying to start scavenging, I would think. Okay,
Nick VinZant 38:51
so then what would your strategy be of all mass chaos ensues? Are you going to try to wait out the initial violence in your house? Or are you going to go outside because I can see both ways that you like, you might just want to wait this out. And like, I'll let everybody take each other out and then all emerged in the shadows a week later. Well,
John Shull 39:08
Nick, let me tell you about my basement. No, seriously, though, I would probably I would see I'd have to see how much food we had. And if we could maintain. And then I would just hunker down that's this is what I would do in any, any form of any kind of apocalyptic event. Because I would just hunker down in my basement and see what happens. I mean, I don't want to put myself or family at risk, not knowing what it is. I don't hear it. Let me put it this way. I don't want to be one of the first to die, because I don't know what it is. Hmm.
Nick VinZant 39:48
I think that if I was going to live or die, right, like I wouldn't want to last a couple of weeks. I'd rather you to get wiped out like in the first part of it or survive. The whole thing is I don't want to make it like a month. on and then die.
John Shull 40:02
I at least want a shot. I don't want to be like, Oh no, the sun is gone, and get my car and get attacked by aliens or something because I'm on the road.
Nick VinZant 40:11
That's why I really think that if the sun disappeared for a couple of minutes and we didn't know anything about it, we would, we would be mass chaos. But anyway, let's move on. All right, let's
John Shull 40:22
give some shout outs to hopefully some lunar eclipse observers. will eclipse
Nick VinZant 40:27
it's a total eclipse and a lunar eclipse. You need to get this facts straight
John Shull 40:32
of my heart. I'm not even sure if that's correct.
Nick VinZant 40:34
That's why it's a total eclipse because it's even more important of saying about a lunar eclipse. people be like, Oh, it's not that big of a deal. All
John Shull 40:43
right. Let's see here. I don't know how we come back from that. But we'll try. Ryan Hermiston. Joe Moscow, Anthony Bach, Armand Mac, Allah, Alexis Thomas, Steve Ogryn, Andres Perez, Jr, Matteo Idris, Sean Hastings, Jacopo Hernandez and we're gonna end on just a good old good old name here but Paul Murdoch. Appreciate all of you for checking us out last week. Nick always throws out the social media cue so I won't bore you with him but you know we're at check us out.
Nick VinZant 41:20
I could use a few more Paul's in the world. Paul seems to be a solid name not a lot of Paul's could use a few more Paul's. I don't know if I know a single Paul who's a real jerk. I don't actually know if I'd seen I don't think I actually even know a single Paul. I don't know a single Paul. I have an aunt Paula. Shout out to him. Paula. Yeah. And
John Shull 41:43
Paula get it? Do you know Thomas
Nick VinZant 41:49
it's not time for that. I know that. How? Because we do other stuff before you always do this. You forget everything besides candle of the month like it's the most important thing in the entire world. People need it Nick people well, then they can we can beat out the algorithm by making them wait.
John Shull 42:07
I also have 10 topics, which okay, I that
Nick VinZant 42:11
first and then we do candle to the month. I'm sorry. I can organize show. I
John Shull 42:15
get excited. And I apologize. Sorry, if you haven't listened before, this is pretty simple. Just gonna bring up some topics next supposed to give a one word answer, but he talks a lot. So he'll,
Nick VinZant 42:25
how am I gonna give Okay, I'm gonna give you a one word answer. I'm going to give you a one word answer. And let's see where that goes.
John Shull 42:30
All right, you ready? Yeah. cock rings
Nick VinZant 42:39
I can't think of one single word. Know, myself personally. But like, I've actually never understood how that piercings in general areas. Like what that does. I've never really understood like doesn't, to me that just seems like that would be uncomfortable. Wherever you're getting. Like if it's a man, a woman everything in between. I've never understood how any of that seems to be like, what's that doing? Exactly?
John Shull 43:06
I think it's supposed to be enhanced the pleasure. I don't know. I don't have any piercings of that sort. So I can't I
Nick VinZant 43:17
all I'm gonna say about this is that I was in a situation recently that had nothing to do with sexual illness that I had to put a bandaid on
Dr. Benjamin Boe 43:25
my area. And it
Nick VinZant 43:29
was awful to take that off. So I couldn't imagine what was like. What were you doing? Like, I couldn't imagine. I could not imagine getting a piercing there. I think that would hurt so bad. All
John Shull 43:42
right. We'll just move on here. What about Beyonce becoming a country music superstar?
Nick VinZant 43:48
Confusion. I don't know what's going on there. Like what's the what's happening? Fake? Why is she suddenly all about country music? Has she always loved country music like I just there's something else happening? I don't know what it is. But I'm just waiting for whatever that thing is. I
John Shull 44:06
love all of the theoretical folks out there who are well, she's just trying to make all the money before you know as if she needs any more before the deadly stuff gets to her and Jay Z like
Nick VinZant 44:17
not enough money. I think she's all right. Yeah, I
John Shull 44:21
think she's just fine. Like, literally probably better than fine. Like I don't even know what the word after fine is. But she's more than that. Ah, alright, earthworms.
Nick VinZant 44:37
FM. I know that they're certainly very good. I know that we need them but I just don't like seeing worms. I don't like seeing worms or snakes or anything that kind of slid there's it seems like it's going to be slimy. I'd not my thing.
John Shull 44:50
loop. So when you go fishing, do you do you bait the hook with a worm? What do you do? I
Nick VinZant 44:58
go fly fishing. So Oh, I don't do that.
John Shull 45:00
Of course you do. I you know to story, I've never been fly fishing. Oh,
Nick VinZant 45:05
I think it's the superior form of fishing fishing to be honest with you. Well, that sounds I like I like fly fishing better and I like like fishing out of a boat or something like that. Let's see more my style inaccurate.
John Shull 45:15
Ah, all right, a couple of sports things here. So the three point line in one of the women's NCAA Tournament basketball games was the wrong length. They measured it wrong, and continue to play the game with it.
Nick VinZant 45:38
So amazing, just amazing. And amazing. Then they play like four games. And it wasn't like one was 23 feet six inches and the other was 23 feet four inches. It was like nine or 10 inches off, wasn't it? Yeah, it
John Shull 45:53
was almost a full foot. If I'm not mistaken.
Nick VinZant 45:56
That's amazing. And I think I saw like an overhead picture. And like you can really tell. That's just that is just proof that no one knows what they're doing. And no one is really paying attention that you can get like one of the fundamental aspects of the biggest tournament for that sport wrong, and nobody even notices for for games. That's like hundreds of 1000s of people didn't notice this.
John Shull 46:18
And I mean, the refs didn't notice. I mean, I yeah, I agree with you, wholeheartedly.
Nick VinZant 46:26
No, but like, whenever you if you ever feel dumb in life, don't because nobody else knows what's going on either. It's,
John Shull 46:33
it's definitely one of those things to where it's like, I mean, you had one job.
Nick VinZant 46:42
I can, but Okay, but what part of that is more surprising to you that somebody messed it up? Or that people took that long to notice?
John Shull 46:51
Definitely, that people took that long to notice. Because everybody, as we know, everyone is everyone else's biggest critic. And it's like, how did you? How did that go unnoticed by? I mean, firstly, should be the players, right? I mean, they've done that a million times they know where the line is.
Nick VinZant 47:08
Just go with the flow. Somebody's going with the flow. Yeah, I guess it's not that big of a deal. If you I mean, one half, you go one way, one half, you go the other way.
John Shull 47:18
Yeah, I guess. But like you said, I think you're right on that. It just goes to show that no one's really paying attention. No
Nick VinZant 47:25
one is really paying attention. Not even the people who are doing things professionally are really paying attention. What's amazing to me is that like, I wonder if one person did it, and like, when did they realize did they find out at the same time? Like did they find out when the news came on? Or did they know? And been like, shut up, Steve? Shut up, man.
John Shull 47:46
Well, watch would be a bunch of like, interns that did it. You know, it wasn't even like full on employees. It's
Nick VinZant 47:51
gotta be like somebody I wouldn't say a damn word.
John Shull 47:56
Oh, no, I would throw you under the bus in a heartbeat. I would not want to be that guy. No, that's his fault. And if you notice they haven't identified they have any I don't even think they've said like, oh, yeah, we've identified the floor crew that did it. I don't even think the
Nick VinZant 48:09
person to come forward and be like, it was me.
John Shull 48:14
My bad, y'all. Yeah, just Oh, okay. All right. Kim Kardashian.
Nick VinZant 48:22
Oh, I think that she has single handedly been one of the contributing factors to the downfall of society. Because I honestly think that she has been one of the contributing factors to the downfall of society. Because now you might write like the idea of being famous for nothing. And it's almost better, to be famous for nothing than it is to be famous for something. Because if you're famous for nothing, then you can also as you can get other people who want to be famous for really having no desire discernible talents to aspire to be you. And you can create confusion and controversy as to like, Why is this person important? And that fuels the entire algorithm, I think that she was one of the people who started the downfall of our society.
John Shull 49:07
I'm just gonna move on because that sounds fantastic. There was a new study that came out that said that in 22 states, you need at least a six figure income to afford a home just a regular house. And it's nothing new inflation is nothing new house prices are nothing new. But do you think we'll see a break in the market, the housing market soon?
Nick VinZant 49:33
I mean, I don't think that this kid like it can't like this math doesn't math at some point. Exactly. Like the math doesn't math. That's the thing that I don't understand about AI and all these companies are like, we're gonna replace jobs with AI. Well, then who's gonna buy your product like all this math doesn't math and I think that we are reaching some sort of crescendo in which the math has to start to equal out and big changes have to be made. That's a big political argument. I don't know why you're bringing politics into this show, quite frankly.
John Shull 49:59
Well, we're not we're gonna move on to this. Arctic Foxes.
Nick VinZant 50:03
All their pocket sweet. They are pretty good in the Arctic, you're completely white. That's awesome. I know that came out a certain way, right? Like, wait, what do you just say? Right but do you know what I mean? Like them have lived to fit their environment is the point that I was trying to make? Not that I love them because they're white man. All white animals are the best animal. I mean, I think if anyone out there sweet man, they're cool.
John Shull 50:30
And everyone's been listening this podcast for the six years we've been on. I think they know what you meant. Alright, last thing here if I asked you to tell me the difference between a beaver in Otter and a woodchuck? Could you do it?
Nick VinZant 50:45
Beaver has a flat tail. An otter doesn't have those kinds of teeth. And a woodchuck has two pointy teeth at the front. So
John Shull 50:56
I guess I'm not gonna put this person on blast, but I called an otter a river rat. And this person got really offended and I feel kind of cool feel kind of bad because his favorite animals an otter and I I always thought otters were river rats, but I guess not.
Nick VinZant 51:13
No, dude. Just an otter. Or who gets that offended about it? I would they go there again to fight you about it. Like how dare you insult an auditor?
John Shull 51:23
You know, I've I've been in some some things before but never over. I don't think I'd ever get into a fight over and otter.
Nick VinZant 51:30
What's the dumbest thing that you would say not with a real inner relationship because you fight over some things that are like on the face of it is pretty stupid, but there's usually underlying issues there. So the dumbest thing you've ever almost gotten in a fight? Okay.
John Shull 51:45
Um this is pretty this is actually pretty sad. I used to get really territorial on the dance floor. And it go on and if you know if me and I'll call them my boys, but whatever my crew if someone tried to intervene, or like dance they're drunk ass into the into it. I would. I wouldn't get offended. It like start getting all just weird and an angry. I mean, it's stupid.
Nick VinZant 52:16
You've been fighting over territory on the dance floor.
John Shull 52:19
I mean, well,
Nick VinZant 52:21
you know, first of all good.
John Shull 52:22
Sometimes there were ladies involved too. You know, you don't.
Nick VinZant 52:26
You were worried about somebody cutting you know, young girl. Most
John Shull 52:29
times It wasn't even my girl. I was just the guy that was dancing alone while the other guys and girls I was laughing.
Nick VinZant 52:35
Oh, dance floor police. Yeah, like I think you should bring back that John. I gotta stick out your claim on the dance floor man.
John Shull 52:43
I know these young kids they don't know what that's about and know what they don't know. You
Nick VinZant 52:47
got to set a tone. They have no idea how to set a tone. Okay, I don't really I mean that's dumb, but like not dumb at the same time. Like if you're going to have a dumb reason that's a good dumb reason.
John Shull 52:59
I mean, it's definitely it's definitely dumb to get into a fight over I would say for sure. It
Nick VinZant 53:05
is you imagine two people yelling at each other he got too close to me on the dance floor. I'm willing you know he's just in my territory. Right okay do
John Shull 53:16
I want I one time tried to spear one of my best friends on the other side of the dance floor because I thought he was dancing with someone I wanted to dance with it's a it's a dangerous place the dance floor so wow
Nick VinZant 53:27
man way to take something that's supposed to be happy and make it awful for everybody.
John Shull 53:31
Good job that known to do that I guess from time to time all right. All
Nick VinZant 53:36
right. Are you ready? No,
John Shull 53:38
I don't really want to go from five deaths for police each
Nick VinZant 53:41
time because the outlaw candle God has sewer Rides Again candle of the month.
John Shull 53:56
I just feel okay, well I do love this segment. So let's see. We're gonna head to joy Lane farm.com I believe they're a company I have not featured on the show before. It's springtime. As we all know most places at least in the northern hemisphere starting to the flower are starting to come out. The snow is melting away in the senses and smells are in abundance. So in saying that, check out Joy Lane farm. Make sure you grab yourself a soy candle of the lavender fragrance. Woohoo. Okay, go on. You know it's it's a one wick candle. I don't necessarily like this, but it literally tells you the burn time or the expected burn time on the outside. I was actually turned on to this company by once again somebody in my personal life that listens to this that had no idea that I like candles. or that I had a title. So anyways, they have all other kinds of products that seem cool. I'll check them out probably in the near future but check out the lavender soy candle. It's, it's, it is lavender II obviously very strong and it's the kind of it's the kind of scent that you'll when you walk into your house. It stays. It's gonna stay until the candles burned. And it's good because lavender is a fantastic smell. So yeah, Joy Lane farm. Lavender soy candle, the 10 ouncer it's gonna run you about 22 bucks plus shipping. But yeah, it's I enjoyed it. I enjoy it. But I burned I burned it in about it said Now this only thing said about 45 hours. I burned it in about a day and a half, but it was continually burning. So like I didn't blow it out or anything and fantastic. And you just leave
Nick VinZant 55:57
it burning overnight.
John Shull 55:59
I do I do I actually save you. Well, I agree with you. But until my house burns down oh boy. Knock on wood. There. There's something to me. That is fantastic about waking up to a great scent. Well, for me, it's waking up to the scent. The fragrance that just really can set me off in a good mood. Okay,
Nick VinZant 56:24
well just make sure you don't wake up to the scent of fire in your house. Right? That's probably going to be like, Oh, I really like to wake up to this set. Do you like to wake up alive?
John Shull 56:35
There is no I do better excuse I would love to give the fire department when they asked me what happened. I was testing out a new candle for my podcast. And it burned my house down
Nick VinZant 56:47
if god Are you the same man who used to fight people on the dance floor.
John Shull 56:52
I remember you Oh God, Jesus, God.
Nick VinZant 56:55
Remember, this is the kid who passed out trying to run after the Olympic torch 20 steps and then fell down.
John Shull 57:03
Fire Department had to transport him to the hospital. So you ready for our time? I am I am actually fairly excited about this one. Okay, so
Nick VinZant 57:12
our top five is top five scariest things in space. We're not talking about individual objects or an in depth analysis of certain planets. We're just talking about the top five space related things that scare us to number five.
John Shull 57:25
So my number five, I feel like I had to get the boring one out of the way. But I'm gonna put the fact that there is like no gravity. You go into space, you're fucked. If you're not in a spacesuit. Like you're, you know, you are just screwed. Oh,
Nick VinZant 57:40
yeah. Yeah. Like, I,
John Shull 57:44
I've wondered that sometimes like that, like flying in an airplane. And I'm thinking like, Oh, God, I'm gonna go on the I'm just gonna turn to an ice cube. Well, in space, not only do you turn into an ice cube, but you become like the size of a quarter.
Nick VinZant 57:58
So, you know, it's always really creeped me out is the idea that there's not like a roof on the earth, right? Like, there's not like anything above us. If gravity just turned off, we would just go floating out into space. Like there's nothing that stops you, you go outside of your house, there is nothing between you and just going up into space. Like if gravity went off, there you go. And there's nothing you can do about it. Not like you're not going to bump into the ceiling or anything. There's nothing to grind. Like there. You're off into space. Think about that. Next time you walk outside and look up. There is nothing between you and endless darkness.
John Shull 58:36
Wow, that is actually kind of that that is terrifying. That's
Nick VinZant 58:40
terrifying, right? If you think about that, like by that there is nothing that I'm just going to make that my number five. There is nothing between you and just going off into space. There's not like a ceiling up there. Or like a place that you would just bump into before you went into space. Like you're just going.
John Shull 59:03
Yeah, just That's crazy to me. Just yeah, like years gone. Like you're just just gone until you freeze to death and then get decompressed into a fucking pretzel.
Nick VinZant 59:15
I think you would actually suffocate first. You think about Yeah,
John Shull 59:19
I mean, I mean, probably but freezing to death sound better, if there isn't such a thing. Alright, my number four. I'm not necessarily afraid of these. But the thought of them scares me because I have no idea what the hell they are. And they are black holes.
Nick VinZant 59:37
Oh, you have black holes in number four.
John Shull 59:40
I do why? My number one I think you're gonna give me shit for but when I do when I describe it, it's gonna make sense. But yeah, my number four is black holes.
Nick VinZant 59:51
My number four is solar storms. Because if one of those things not knocks out our technology, we're going right Like back to like the Stone Age, right? Like, if a solar storm knocks out all of our technology somehow, it's it's global chaos, and it's not gonna end well at all. Or like we're not going to handle this peacefully or, like, gentlemen
John Shull 1:00:14
are like these random satellites Russia sends into space that we don't know what's in them. Unless I'm not saying anything about Russia. So don't take that that way. But like, when people are aspiring shit in the space, who knows what's in there?
Nick VinZant 1:00:26
Oh, I would put set I'm satellites is on my honorable mention, because like, who knows what's up? There? I am. Who knows what watching you right now? Yeah,
John Shull 1:00:35
I have space junk. Like, if if you base jokes, good. My wife has a app that shows you like what's in the sky. And at any given time, there's 10 to 20. You know, like booster, things floating around or satellites? It's like if those decide to crash down those are big ass things. Like,
Nick VinZant 1:00:56
why did she have an app? Is she worried about this? Or was it just had an app?
John Shull 1:01:00
Don't you remember during the pandemic or pandemic dates? We go into our backyard and stargaze and then look into each other's eyes and drink lavender tea.
Nick VinZant 1:01:11
What was your name for each other again? What are your pet names?
John Shull 1:01:16
Haba and Wahba. Anyways, Hellboy and Walmart.
Nick VinZant 1:01:22
stars together. Yeah, born wobble out there.
John Shull 1:01:25
Yeah, man. Anyways, that let's just move on from that. Is it? What's
Nick VinZant 1:01:30
your what's your number? What number are we?
John Shull 1:01:32
I think we're on my number three now. Okay. All right. And so this isn't. This is I guess, fictional space. But space horror movies are my number through. Yeah,
Nick VinZant 1:01:48
I can't watch horror movies. But I remember like the sphere, sphere or something like that event horizon. Oh, those are terrifying in space horror movies are scary. I mean,
John Shull 1:02:01
what's it? I think they're scary, because yes, they're fictional. But they could not they could be real. Like, we have no idea these things can actually exist somewhere.
Nick VinZant 1:02:09
Oh, yeah. That's the problem, right? Like, we don't know that aliens is not. True story fucking real. I mean, we do. But like, we don't know that there's not something worse than aliens out there. For sure. You might be. My number three is black holes. I would I've always been scared like the idea of being sucked into a black hole.
John Shull 1:02:28
Well, in the fact that I swear, every other week. It's like, oh, scientists find a black hole, or a black hole is opened. I always wondered, like, what happens when a black hole opens? Like, what does it eat? Or what happens to it?
Nick VinZant 1:02:42
Everything? I don't know me. That's what I like the mysteries of the universe. I don't think we're going to find out. What are you and I aren't going to figure it out? What have you accidentally, like discovered it? Like you were just walking past MIT or Harvard? And you were like, Oh, well, if you just put a one there. And they're like, oh, that's all you had to do. All we needed was that is my philosophy about science as well that they don't have enough dumb guys. There needs to be a dumb guy there to just be like, alright, if you just did that? Well,
John Shull 1:03:14
I do think smart people sometimes are smart themselves. And yeah, you just need an idiot to be like, No, actually, a plus b plus c is D, but it's
Nick VinZant 1:03:25
just some crazy ass in there with like ridiculous ideas. Alright, so you need my number. Are you on? My
John Shull 1:03:32
number two? Is that and this is the boring one, I guess is aliens. Just aliens in general? Because I'm sure I'm sure there's life somewhere. There has to be right. I mean, we are like a point. 00 1% They say of whatever's out there. So there's by far aliens. I just don't know anything. I don't know anything about
Nick VinZant 1:03:57
right. Aliens is also my number two, but I'm not sure if I'm more scared of aliens or more scared of the idea that there might not be aliens.
John Shull 1:04:07
Well, I I think there are aliens, but I think that term is loosely like I would loosely define it. Like I don't think they're green people. But I do think like, you know, we live in a multi dimensional universe. Like I think you and I are somewhere else doing the same thing right now talking to all these people. And they're listening. And it's happening over multiple time. timeframes. Like time things I don't know, huh? Okay, I
Nick VinZant 1:04:37
don't even want to go into that. That's fine. Let's just not do like I wanted to have this whole conversation. I don't want to peel back the lead the onions of the layers of onion of John Shaw that far to like, I don't even know what I believe in that kind of stuff. Like whatever man like my life hasn't changed and I'm still going to work tomorrow. Like, there is no other life on earth or Are there is no other life in the universe and we live in a multiverse like, well, do I still have to work on Tuesday? Yeah,
John Shull 1:05:06
but what if you didn't have to work in this whole entire time? We've just been poisoned to do that. I don't know. Anyway, never. What's your number two?
Nick VinZant 1:05:15
Well, yeah, don't do it. I'm not going down that way. My number two is aliens. We just talked about it. What's your number one? Okay, question.
John Shull 1:05:21
So my number one, and like I said, it's not gonna sound scary, but it absolutely is. And that's detecting a signal from space. Like a radio signal, some kind of sound. There's been a few of them in the past, to where different observatories have have gotten in, and they've been like, oh, this sound has been traveling for like the last 70,000 years or 700 years, we have no idea where it could come from.
Nick VinZant 1:05:50
Hmm, okay. I agree with that. I feel like the only reason I have that slight response to is I kind of feel like that's aliens a little bit, but it's just me splitting hairs. My number one is the fact that all of its real. Like, all of this crazy stuff that we hear about is real. And we're just scratching the surface. And there might be even more crazy stuff out there. Like, this is just the stuff that we know now.
John Shull 1:06:15
I think I don't even think we've discovered our own planet. I think if you were to go in dig into the ocean, you would unearth things. I think if you were to dig into Antarctica, you would on Earth things. The point I'm trying to make is the earth or is so big itself and we know so little. We're never going to know what's out there. Never unless it comes to us. Which so far, it hasn't that we know of.
Nick VinZant 1:06:42
Could you just imagine if aliens like came tomorrow? Like we have no way there's no like, like, here they are, like tomorrow morning.
John Shull 1:06:52
Like what if the total lunar eclipse is like their signal?
Nick VinZant 1:06:58
And they just, they show up? Like, oh, there's an eclipse like, what's that? Yeah, that would be crazy. Man. That's the crazy thing about life. It can change so dramatically so quickly.
John Shull 1:07:12
That Hold on, it's precious. precious
Nick VinZant 1:07:14
life is precious. Watching your honor mentioned you have anything. So
John Shull 1:07:18
kinda like your number one, I just put the word the unknown. Because like, we just don't know better way to phrase it. We just don't know. Right? We think we know we have some snippets of what could be there. We know something's there, but we don't know what it is. And then I put down asteroids, solar flares. And that was it for my honorable mention.
Nick VinZant 1:07:40
I guess that would be my real number one is the size of it. Like how does this How is this possible? Like that's it's such a thing that doesn't even come I can't even comprehend that like the size of everything is what scares me the most about it. I can only look up at the stars for like five minutes before I start to just freak out. Okay, that's gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of Profoundly Pointless. I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, leave us a quick review. We really appreciate it really helps us out and let us know what you think are the scariest things in space. To me, it's just the unknown and the size. Like what's out there? It's cool, but kind of scary.