Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show.

I shouldn't tell you this, but Eric hired someone who sounds just like him to host today's show.

But since I'm the announcer, they told me.

So I am telling you, don't be fooled.

The real Eric's in jail.

And welcome.

Hey there, folks.

Today is Monday the 21st of December, the darkest day of the year.

The shortest day in the year.

It's true.

I thought yesterday might be, and I looked at my phone to see when the sunset was,

and it turned out that the sunset in New York yesterday was like, I don't know, 431.

Today it says also 431.

But that's amazingly, like that's just so early uh it's the it's the darkest day of the year now in a way you could say that it is hope in a nutshell there's

nothing more hopeful than that beginning today, the days will get

longer and longer and longer and it will be more and more light starting today. So it's an

extraordinary thing, this December equinox today, the darkest day of the year. Also happening today, something that hasn't

happened in low these 800 years. I was just a child, so I have no memory of it. But in the year

1226, remember? Oh, sure you do. In 1226, there was a conjunction in the sky of Jupiter and Saturn. The only

conjunction possible, of course, between Jupiter and Saturn would have to be in the sky. I think you knew

that. They're planets. But they're part of what C.S. Lewis gets into when he talks about the medieval planets. The medieval planets were different than our planets. They were the planets that you could see without telescopes. So they considered the sun and the moon to be planets, right, things that move in the sky. And then the planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

And that was it, because we couldn't see, you know, past Saturn with the naked eye.

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