2/4: For the Love of Mars: A Human History of the Red Planet by Matthew Shindell (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 5 September 2023
⏱️ 6 minutes
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Summary
2/4: For the Love of Mars: A Human History of the Red Planet by Matthew Shindell (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Love-Mars-Human-History-Planet/dp/0226821897/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Mars and its secrets have fascinated and mystified humans since ancient times. Due to its vivid color and visibility, its geologic kinship with Earth, and its potential as our best hope for settlement, Mars embodies everything that inspires us about space and exploration. For the Love of Mars surveys the red planet’s place in the human imagination, beginning with ancient astrologers and skywatchers and ending in our present moment of exploration and virtual engagement.
National Air and Space Museum curator Matthew Shindell describes how historical figures across eras and around the world have made sense of this mysterious planet. We meet Mayan astrologer priests who incorporated Mars into seasonal calendars and religious ceremonies; Babylonian astrologers who discerned bad omens; figures of the Scientific Revolution who struggled to comprehend it as a world; Victorian astronomers who sought signs of intelligent life; and twentieth- and twenty-first-century scientists who have established a technological presence on its surface. Along the way, we encounter writers and artists from each of these periods who take readers and viewers along on imagined journeys to Mars.
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1910 Royal Observatory Greenwich
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Matt Ford and I'm Alice Levine and we're the presenters of British Scandal. |
| 0:04.8 | People do strange things, don't they Alice? |
| 0:06.9 | I don't like the tone of your voice, what do you mean? |
| 0:10.0 | On our didn't mean you, I'm at the entire British public who in 2022 |
| 0:14.3 | followed a live stream of a lettuce with a wig on. |
| 0:17.5 | Entirely normal behaviour. |
| 0:19.2 | There's more normal than what was going on inside Downing Street. |
| 0:21.5 | For this series on British Scandal we're taking you inside number 10, |
| 0:24.6 | covering the shocking and very short premiership of Liz Truss. |
| 0:27.7 | Listen to British Scandal wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:35.2 | I'm John Bashu with Matthew Shindel. |
| 0:37.2 | His new book is for the love of Mars, a human history of the Red Planet. |
| 0:41.1 | The medieval world inherits the understanding of the ancients and then astrology. |
| 0:47.0 | But I go to one note of clarity in Baghdad and Damascus, Matt informs us |
| 0:54.7 | between the 10th and the 16th century, which is the Dark Ages in the West, |
| 0:59.5 | an age of feudal superstition. |
| 1:02.5 | They're very careful observations of the planets and the stars. |
| 1:06.9 | And Matt, this sure looks like science. |
| 1:09.8 | Is that agreed upon that what was going on in Baghdad and Damascus with scientific observation? |
| 1:16.5 | Yeah, you know, we used to pretty much solely talk about a renaissance happening in Europe later. |
| 1:24.2 | Now it's pretty common for historians of science to talk about an earlier renaissance |
| 1:28.3 | that happens in the Islamic world, where all of this ancient knowledge, in addition to knowledge that |
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