Do Go On - 558 - The Transit of Venus

Episode Date: July 1, 2026

How far away is the sun? English astronomer Edmond Halley suggested that tracking the transit of Venus across the sun would be the key to finding the answer. This set in motion a huge international collaborative scientific endeavour and one of the most comically cursed voyages, by the magnificently named Frenchman, Guillaume Joseph Hyacinthe Jean-Baptiste Le Gentil de la Galaisière!This is a comedy/history podcast, the report begins at approximately 05:25 (though as always, we go off on tangents throughout the report).For all our important links: https://linktr.ee/dogoonpod Check out our other podcasts:Book Cheat: https://play.acast.com/s/book-cheatPrime Mates: https://play.acast.com/s/prime-mates/Listen Now: https://play.acast.com/s/listen-now/Who Knew It with Matt Stewart: https://play.acast.com/s/who-knew-it-with-matt-stewart/Jess Writes A Rom-Com: https://shows.acast.com/jess-writes-a-rom-comOur awesome theme song by Evan Munro-Smith and logo by Peader ThomasDo Go On acknowledges the traditional owners of the land we record on, the Wurundjeri people, in the Kulin nation. We pay our respects to elders, past and present. REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING:http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast161/Unit4/venussun.htmlChasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens by Andrea Wulfhttps://theconversation.com/transit-of-venus-a-tale-of-two-expeditions-7246https://www.iflscience.com/in-1761-and-1769-intrepid-voyagers-had-a-once-in-a-century-chance-to-measure-the-solar-system-83712A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Brysonhttps://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/why-should-you-care-about-transit-venushttp://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/observing-news/transits-of-venus-in-history-1761/   https://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/13/books/the-war-to-begin-all-wars.html#:~:text=Winston%20S.,Africa%2C%20India%20and%20the%20Philippines. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's 2026. It's June and I'm excited because who knew it with Matt Stewart is celebrating 200 episodes with a big live show here in Melbourne, Matt. Yeah, at the basement comedy club here in Melbourne and it's a full 75 minute show. Oh, wow. Wow. We're the longest we've done with guest Dave Warnackie. That's me. Jess Perkins. That's me.

Mish. Big Wet Whitrip and one more to be announced. Who could it be? Whoa. And we are also coming with Dugo on to Canada. Oh, Canada, etc. I still don't fully believe this is real. I'm so excited.

You'll believe it when we touch down. David is like, if this is like one of your fucking pranks. No, I'm not going to punk you. I swear we are going to Canada in September, 26. We're going to be hitting up Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal and Toronto. And if you want tickets to the Who Knewet or the Canada tour, visit our website, do go onpod.com. And if you sign up at patreon.com slash dogo on pod, you can get discount codes for all. all those shows. I mean,

you know what I mean? And welcome to another episode of Doogh One. My name is Dave Warnocky and, as always, I'm here with Jess Perkins and Matt Stewart. Whoa! So good to be here, Dave, with you and Jess with you. And I just noticed that Dave did the Melbourne accent thing where we changed A's and E's. You said, as instead of as.

I love it. I love culture. So it's good to be here and I will be critiquing every pronunciation you say today, but you're not allowed it all back. Bali When did I say What's the context? As always?

As always. And as always. Was that right? Yeah. No, I'm not saying it's wrong. Having a different accent's not wrong. Well, there are right ones and there are wrong ones. And you like to do a lot of wrong ones.

And I have a feeling today's episode might include a lot of wrong ones. Yeah, I just did see me trying to look up pronunciations before. But I panicked and I shut down the window, so I don't know. We're winging it. I'm winging it. Yep. That's okay. But we're very excited to be here.

You've told us that you've got an epic tale for us today. It's so epic that it potentially needs to be splitting two, but we'll see how we go. Now, Dave, do you want to quickly explain how the show works for new listeners? Yes, that's right. If you've never heard the show before, or it's been a while, what we do here is we take it in terms of a report on a topic, which is often suggested to us by one of our beautiful listeners, sometimes multiple. And sometimes our plain looking listeners.

Yeah. There's none of those. That was a joke. That was a joke. If you're listening to this, you're a hottie. Yeah. Well done. No matter what you look like.

But also you were like objectively. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, yeah, it's one of those weird things. It just always works out that way. Yeah. And we go away to a bit of research, bring the report back to the group,

and basically tell them, little story. Jess and I are going to listen politely. We never interact with dog shit riffs. That is our gold star guarantee. Little joke there as well. And yeah, we always get on to the topic with a question. I'm doing the topic this week. So I'm going to ask a question. By the way, this was voted on by the Patreon list. If you want to be one of those, you can sign up at patreon.com slash digore pod. Of the five topics, you could vote for as many as you like, but over 45% wanted this one. Oh. All right. Here is. my question. Fill in the blank.

A goddess on a mountaintop was burning like a silver flame. The summit of beauty and love. And blank was her name. She's got it. Yeah, baby, she's got it. Well, I'm your blank. Venus. I'm your fire.

I'm at your desire. Yes, Venus. And both of those are Venus? Both of those are Venus. God, that's doubled up on the lyrics. It was a number one hit song in 1969 by Shocking Blue and again topped the charts around the world when it was covered in the 80s by Banana Rama. Which version of the song was used for the Gillette Venus razor ads?

Great question. And which version were you quoting then? I was quoting Shocking Blue initially. Okay. Okay. But then half a three switched? And then I went, I'm going to give this a bit more banana. Sure.

Rama. Well done. Yes, Venus. This week we're talking about the transit of Venus, which is when Venus, the planet to our eyes on Earth, crosses against the sun. Oh. It was suggested by, I mean, how's this name? Victor Gimino de Manuel from Madrid in Spain.

That was beautiful. That was really nice. That's a great name. Yeah, there's a few French names in this, which I think maybe is in part why. And in his pitch, which went into the vote, I did mention one of those names. And I think that that, as well as the fact that he did a typo, instead of writing scientist, he wrote Scientist. Those two things combined really got the votes up. Because we got two times.

We've got Francophiles and we've got pervs. And they are all exclusively the same. That's right. Oh, man, we're going to talk about one of those guys in this story, a French perv. Really? This story has everything. Okay, so I found this a lecture from an Ohio State University professor named Richard Podgy, which I'm glad I looked up the pronunciation, because to me it looks like Richard Pog.

Dick Pog. I don't know what's better. Professor Pogg or Professor Podgy. Yeah, both pretty good. It's really good. P-O-G-G-E. Hmm. Mm.

Beautiful either way. Wow, remember the professor, he's back in Podge for. A bit of fun. A little bit of fun. Okay, if we can't have fun. We also do other people's jokes as well, okay? Yeah. Well, yeah, Simpsons was.

Yeah. Yeah, it's mainly just a collection of references now, this should. Yeah. If it hasn't always been. Anyway, Podgy in his lecture said, How far away is the sun? saying an essential problem of astronomy from the very beginning has been how to measure astronomical distances. The Copernican system provides a straightforward geometric means to measure planetary distances in terms of the size of the Earth's orbit,

or in units of astronomical units, AU. Nothing could be simpler, says Podji, except for one minor detail. Just how big is an astronomical unit anyway. Sure. Like we know that that's the unit, but we don't know what that unit... It's eight pieces of strings. Yeah. You know?

Yeah. How big of the strings? Oh, here we go. Oh, bloody. Question after question. Can you... And you never have you? I made it simple for a reason.

Yeah. A piece of string. Okay? So, yeah, Podji says, that, as they say, is the rub. The quest to measure the AU became one of the central pursuits of astronomical research in the late 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. From antiquity, wow. So the late part of eight century?

Yeah, and that's how it's, I mean, I love Podgy's lecture style, but some of it, you know, is left up to interpretation. Yeah, for the first eight decades of eight century, they couldn't give a shit. Oh, well, sorry, sorry, forgot to look into this. I forgot we said we're going to get it done by the end of the century. And they're cramming. We've got three years left, guys. Yeah. We've all been there.

From antiquity up until the 70s, estimates of the distance of the sun differ widely from each other. This was due to the fact that they were estimating based on what they could see with the naked eye. Telescope hadn't been invented. How far do you reckon that flaming ball is away? Pretty far. Yeah. Should we write that down?

Yeah, write that. Pretty far. Yeah. Tongue out. Yeah. Thumb up. I reckon. Oh, yeah.

What do you reckon, Greg? I'd say three Olympic swimming pools at worst. Frized. Four. Got me joking. That was a joke answer. If I could. flock and swim there easy.

You know what I mean? I agree. So yeah, well, I mean, do either of you know how far away the sun is? Is the problem that it constantly changes? No. Is it always the same distance? Probably not. No, right?

It rotates. It's not in a perfect circle. Yeah, yeah, it's an ellipsis. Yeah. The earth isn't perfectly round. That's true. Brutal. Yeah.

It's almost more, it's almost like a footy. Yeah, slightly. Like a flat gas. Because of gravity and whatnot. We're not the right people. Where is Professor Ponchi? He was unavailable. We're three comedians.

Yeah. I don't even like using that title for myself. Let's take a guess. How far do you reckon? Do you want it in kilometres? Kilometers, please. I think the moon's about 300,000, 350. Some of that.

Oh, are you pretty happy Dave went first year? Because I would have not have known where to begin. Same. I would be like, a trillion. That's a fucking ages. I don't know. I would have got like, oh,000? Yeah.

No? It's not like a hundred. Oh, hello. Close is that going over, right? I'm like that. Four million or a thousand? It's one of the two. I reckon it's something like four million.

That's not a bad. Wow, that feels too big. Four million kilometres away. Yeah, but like the... I've actually put in a little spot here to record your guesses. Okay. Oh, great. So I didn't even have to prompt Dave.

Let me have a guess. I see. He knows you. What do you say? 400,000 to the moon and it's a lot further, though. We are the third rock from the sun, I guess. I learned that from John Lithgow as well. And of Jason Conn-Levett and French Stewart in the game.

Of course. I learned it from a song on an encyclopedia game. Oh, great. All right. Is that where you learnt the periodic table song as well? Probably. Yeah. I also had a spell Mississippi.

For new listeners, Jess, as the scientists of the gag. Yeah. I think of this is a gag, by the way, as well. It's got to be over a million. Okay. So you're going to say a million plus? No, I don't have to be a lot. Okay.

Spoon out for two. Two million kilometers. You've carved your guess of 4 million. Yeah. This is how I work. Oh, we're back. He's revising. That's science.

I'm going to say 3 million. Three million. Just because then if he's right at 4 million, I win. Just a 4 million. Fuck, I'm going to look like an idiot. But it's so big out there. Yeah, that's true, actually. It's so big out there.

Oh, hang on. It takes, doesn't it take eight minutes for the sun's a raise to get here? And that's traveling at the speed of light. Is that right? Hang on. He's doing some math here. Is that right, Matt? I'm not saying anything because I have no fucking idea.

But that's travelling at like... Don't, Dave, the more questions you ask, the more credibility I lose as I'm about to tell the scientific story. 10 million. 10 million. Okay, Jess, what are you doing? I'm sticking at three. All right.

Close as that going over? One K. One kilometre. No, put me down for 10. All right. So, in the... I'll tell you the measurement in a second, but let's go back to the third century BCE when this guy, Arastarchus, Arastarchus of Samos, haven't looked up many pronunciations, I'll tell you that, I'll warn you that. Wing it.

Suggested the sun was about 20 times further from the Earth than the moon was. Those distances he didn't really know, but he's having a crack. Yeah, he's like, you know, here's the ratio, I think. Yeah. If we use that ratio in today's terms, that would, his guess was a bit. about 8 million kilometers. Tell me that Arastarchus is close. Copernicus and others came to a similar number.

So, you know, you're pretty close to some of the grades there, Dave. That's right. Standing on the shoulders of giants. His head is big enough. But it's not round. It's definitely not round. Gravitational forces are pulling it in in the midsection. It's changing every day.

Never getting better. Then we had Johannes Kepler. Kepler, a big name. He went bigger saying at least 24 million kilometres. That's big. And I was saying you're an idiot at four. But they were all well short of the mark. No way!

Fuck space is big, isn't that? Aristarchus and Copernicus by around 140 million Kepler by approximately 125 million. The number is something like 150 million kilometers. Wow, that's really big. It's really big. It is, because it takes minutes for the light to get here, right? Yeah. And that's travelling at the speed of the light, so that makes sense.

Yeah. How fucking hot is it? How hot is it? If it, like, we get a 40 degree day here, we're all like, Jesus Christ! Oh, that'd kill for a 40 degree day on the sun. Yeah. That'd be beautiful. Oh, man, people living on the sun, they must be so jealous of us.

So I guess it's like an old oil heater, you know? Warm's the room, but if you touch it, it's fucking will burn. You. My sister, when we were kids, stood next to it out of the shower and ended up with red lines down her legs. Yeah, because you just want to get that heat. She's like, well, something smells nice. Dad, what are you cooking? Me?

Bacon, but I've already had breakfast. So, yeah, about 150 million, which is about 93 million miles. But like Dave says, it does change a little bit. Does it ever get down to between? four and ten million? If you round down to four or ten million. You know that time of the year when you're really close to the sun? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I do know that time of year, yeah. Yeah, and so when English people start to die. They get too close. So, yeah, Jess and Dave, I'm sorry to say you were a way off. But also, you didn't have telescopes. No. You're not scientists, technically. I don't care.

You don't care. So that's a factor as well. But as I did say, as soon as I said you're an idiot at $4 million, I was like, I'll look the fool here. Like of the two of us, who's going to look like an idiot? Well, I'd like to refer to my quote when I said, it's got to be at least a million. And that is correct.

So I was going to say, if you locked that in, I would have had to have given you the point. There would have been some scientist types, probably Andy Matthews listening to this right now, who were laughing their heads off when we were saying, four million, 10 million. Okay. A little higher.

And to those scientists, I say, shout-up. Jess will give you a wenshing. How about you, shut up, you nerd? So they were the early measurements. Then with the invention of the telescope in the 17th century, the estimates got bigger, got more accurate. By 1716, a man named Edmund Halley, namesake of the comet, suggested the distance could be up to 111 million kilometers.

So he's like, he's having a closer look. I only got to 110 and thought, this sounds like I've just guessed. I'll add a million and it sounds like that's specific. Yeah, it's real specific. 1-1-1. Yeah. That doesn't sound like a panic answer. Ponchi says, taken together by the time of Halley's influential paper in 1716,

the various estimates of the distance of the sun had an experimental precision of only about one part in five. This is like saying you were six feet tall, give or take a foot or so. It was an unacceptable state of affairs, and it had to be improved. Hall, he achieved a lot in his lifetime, and I'm not going to go into it much here, as I figure maybe we'll do an episode on him one day. But if it wasn't for him, today's story wouldn't have happened. So that's why you've got to bring him up.

So you've got to blame someone. Podgy, it is a shame he is so little known by most except for his famous comet, as he was one of the most important figures in 17th century astronomy. me. He may have come up in Andy Matthews episode about Sir Isaac Newton. He was a key force. Like, Newton's big book with all that famous stuff in it. Yeah, yeah. Would not have got published if it wasn't for... Right, because he had an even bigger book and he just summarized it. If it wasn't for Hallie. I think Hallie basically back, like, you know, funded the book, I think, in some way. But anyway, I'm sure Andy told us all about that at the time.

The main thing I remember him talking about is Newton experimenting at different times, including at one point just sticking a needle in his eye socket and wringing around to see what would have happened. Yeah. One of history's greatest things. What happens if I do this? Yeah, I'm like, I just remember every time I think of it, I... Do you think I'm just a scientist?

Yeah. You are. Yeah, I just say, what would you do? What would you do? What are going to happen if? You're saying to your eyes, like, what would you do of what stuck a needle in you? Yeah, I'm just a little scientist. You're always hypothesizing about what would happen if you punched me in the balls.

Yeah, it's just a hypothesis. Yeah. So only two planets orbit between Earth and the Sun, Venus and. Mars. Mercury. Mercury, correct? Well done. Venus and then comes Mars, says the song.

But these occurrences are quite rare. Venus, even more than Mercury. even more rare than Mercury. These transits, I guess, are kind of like solar eclipses, but due to the distances and perspectives, Venus and Mercury get nowhere near eclipsing the sun like the moon does, obviously. So it just ends up being like a little dot. You see a little dot crossing over the sun.

In researching the story, I did read a book by Andrea Wolfe titled, Chasing Venus, the Race to Manage the Heavens. That's not what it's called at all. Oh, that's going to say, it's a good title. That's a great title. Why have I written it? I just... Now you're going to tell us the real title and it'll sound shit in comparison.

Yeah. Chasing Venus, the race to measure the heavens. What did you say before? Manage the heavens. Measures better. Yeah. It makes sense. Well... I like manage.

I like managed too, but it makes more sense in this context. Andrea, if you're listening, you know, next edition. Yeah, could be. You know? Just... So I know, you can have that. That's yours. Yeah.

Wow. Hey, look, you've given me so much, Andrea. I mean, I bought the book. So, you know, I think it's fair's fair. But I do recommend it if anyone, obviously, I'm going to talk about all this stuff a lot, but she talks about it even more. She can't be stopped. And I did really enjoy her work.

Anyway, Wolf writes, highly propounded the revolutionary idea that Venus's transit could be used as a natural astronomical instrument, almost like a celestial yardstick. If several people around the world was simultaneously to watch the entire transit from different places as far apart as possible, explained, they would each see Venus traversing the sun along a slightly different track, dependent upon the observer's locations in the northern or the southern hemispheres. Venus's path would be shorter or longer across the sun, according to each viewing station. It's like a parallax. It's like a triangle.

They'll know the distances on Earth between the two locations. and they're observing this thing at the same time. So they have that measurement down, and then the angles, they can figure out distances based on that, trichonometry and whatnot. And in a few different things I read, they talked about as a simple way to explain it,

I guess, to children, which is basically what the three of us are. We need that, please. They're like sort of hold your finger out in front of you and look at it with one eye and then the other, and it moves positions slightly. That's kind of, your two eyes are basically two different locations on it. Yeah.

They're camera one, camera two. Yeah, exactly. As the great man, Wayne Campbell once, posited, the scientist. Professor Wayne. Camera one, camera two. And so this is all about, it's not measuring Venus, it's about measuring the distance between Earth and Mars. Sorry, Earth and the Sun.

Yes. But that's the aim of the whole experiment. So once in front work out how far. They're trying to, yeah, that's right. And then basically where, how far away everything is, they'll start, Like once they have this unit, they know how much the eight pieces of string, what their length is. Okay. They'll be out.

Like, they already know some ratios and stuff, but they don't, you know, they don't know exact distances. Yeah, right. But this would be, like she says, the yardstick for everything else. And really unlock a whole thing. It's like they've got the somewhat of a map of the universe, but they don't have the little key in the corner of the map that tells you, or the scale. Yeah, gotcha. Anyway, back to Wolf. With the help of trigonometry, these different tracks and the different tracks and the different.

differences in the duration of Venus's transit could be used to calculate the distance between the sun and the earth. It was an ingenious method because the passage did not have to be measured but only timed by noting the exact moment of Venus's entry and exit of the disk of the sun. The only equipment the observers would need was a decent telescope and a reliable clock, which now you're like, great. Finally, when I was reading about that, I'm like, oh, easy. But it turns out that clocks back then weren't that reliable. And they had these huge pendulum clocks and they're shipping them around the world. And just getting them to be working precisely became a big issue.

Wow. Apart from travelling with them and them getting damaged on the ships. Why don't just use your iPhone? Yeah, I know. This is what I'm like, guys. Like sometimes they're overcomplicating? Yeah. Yeah.

Just use your iPhone. All right. Everyone clap at the same time. Oh, truth. And then you can stick it up. Oh, that's it. Yeah, why don't they get a Zoom going? Yes.

Make sure you got pretty good Wi-Fi. Yeah. God, it's so annoying when you're on Zoom and it's lagging all the time. Yeah. I think Hallie felt that big time. Yeah. Yeah, so anyway, I think this is all a bit science-heavy early, perhaps, or it felt like it to me. I'm in.

I'm following. You're following enough? Yeah, honestly, okay, I was being a smart as then, but I am honestly following enough, and that feels like a pretty good litmus test. That if I'm following... Yeah. We're okay. Because I've also, I've just noted here that it's, you don't really need to understand all that stuff.

You just know that they're trying to, they need to measure when Venus is crossing the sun and that's going to open up all these answers for them. Then they're going to go back and do a lot of calculations, collate all the numbers and whatnot. The main thing, yeah, is just to know that. But they're also in completely different parts of the world. So time zones are different also, is what I'm now thinking. Oh, yeah. So what something they're doing, like they're sort of basically trying to, the idea is to pair up northern and southern places with the lines of longitude. So that's another thing.

When they get to their location, they have to figure out the exact location in longitude, which is also very hard to do back then. That did do it based on, if they had the exact time on their clocks, which was very hard to do. so instead they had to work back off celestial events that they knew like were scheduled. Yeah, all right. Well, I know coming up that this planet or this star is going to be doing this thing. So now I can figure out exactly based on that. So I was all like, it was complicated. Wow.

So then they couldn't just rock up on the day go, yep. There it is. 922. That's in there now. Boom, done. It took about seven seconds. Yeah. But it's like, it's got to be the exact spot.

So they rock up. It's a public toilet. Someone's in there. Please, please, I need to get it. The window. It's the only way for me to see it. Hurry up. Clive it up under the roof.

It's a public toilet. Oh, what are the oldest? Oh, normally looking for these. They're nowhere. Sorry, I had a big night. I've got a tiny platter, as you know. He's going on to his assistant. As you know.

As you're aware. I mean, I don't have to tell you twice. There's quite an irony here that now there is a public tour where I don't want there to be. I'm sure I'll want there to be one in about 15 minutes, but right now I'm furious. So the problem for Halley, he figured all this out. He's like, I know that, and he figured out as well. He'd seen Mercury. He tracked it from St. Helena, the one that Napoleon.

years later was exiled to Little Island in the middle of nowhere. He went there and observed the Mercury transit, but he realized that it needed to be Venus, because Venus wasn't quite as close to the sun, a bit better on perspective and stuff. That's a hard day for Mercury to hear that. Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow.

Oh, actually, no. Sorry, little guy. Yeah. Let us know when your big sister's coming through. But yeah, the problem for Hallie, was that Venus transited the sun very rarely. When it did come, it came in lots of two, eight years apart, but after that the weight was longer than a century.

Oh, wow. You'd be spewing. Yeah, so I think one gap was 105 or so years and then eight years, and then 120 so years, then eight years, then 105 or so years. So like big chunks of time. And unfortunately for Halle, he knew he'd have to live to 105 to see the next one. and he only ended up making the 85. And so his life, he didn't even live through one before he knew about it either.

His whole life fell in the gap between two. Born 17 years after one and died 20 years before the next. But he didn't let this unfortunate timing stop him from formulating a detailed plan for how the next pair of transits in 1761 and 1769 should be observed and recorded to best figure out the distance from Earth to the Sun. He put together this big paper basically has a gift to the next generation saying this is how I'd go about it. Wow. Which is, yeah, kind of sweet.

It's like, I don't know if it's still like that in science, but it feels like a real, hey, this is for the greater good. Maybe I'm looking at rose-colored glasses to back in the 18th century, you know, back when. Good old days. Yeah, back when science was great. When science was science. Yeah. You know, it wasn't all, I'm patenting that and you can't have it. I know you might need this to save your life, but give me a million dollars.

How about that? Don't my talk. Yeah. Okay. What's your life worth? Well, not that much. Fucking out, man. I think my life's worth a million dollars.

Thanks for overestimating me, but... All right. What do you got? God, I was thinking more like... Eight bucks? Yeah. Well, you better move to a country with socialized health care, my friend. and hope that the government bail you out.

Okay? You're happy to spend everyone's money on your life? Yes? Well, I'm so confused right now. So, according to Podji, it would require considerable planning as far apart the observers were on Earth, the better. And that really does mean that the observers must literally travel to the ends of the earth. Further, since the transit lasts only seven hours or so,

you have to be in the right place at the right time. If the opportunity presented by the 1761, 1769 transits was missed, the next chance would not be till the transits of December 1874 and 1882. So it's like you got one, we've got two shots, two opportunities. Oh, man. And doing the maths on that, does that mean that we've missed the one in our lifetime? Yeah, it's so brutal to be learning about this now. It was in the early 2000s, 2004.

and 12, I think. I just, I don't remember hearing about it. Yeah, but we were alive for it. Yeah, that's something. Stop that, Hallie. Yeah. Yeah, he didn't even have an opportunity. Exactly.

I'm reading articles that were written just coming up to it and everyone's so excited. I'm like, oh, man. Yeah, but what would you have done? I would have looked at it. Maybe you did. Oh, my God, I do often stare at the sun. We can tell. Whoa.

Maybe you did look at it. With my pale blue eyes, I think it's really clever. to do that as well. Very comfy. Very comfy. Yeah, so, Dave, you're exactly right. June 2004 and 2012. Damn it. 20th century didn't have one at all.

You know, that's how rare it was. Okay, that's good. Sucked in. Sucked in. Sucked in. Hope you enjoyed your transitless century. Oh, the American century, was it? Yeah.

Well, it sucked. Shout out to Americans out there. I actually think that we're going to rise again, the Americans. I see myself as one of you. Oh, okay. I think we're going to, I don't, some people are saying it's the end of the American century. And I read an article this week that said, and the American century only generously went for about half a century.

Oh, when you say an article, was it a headline or was it a list of all? Well, yeah, I read the article article headline. Oh, that's generous. I thought it's definitely going to be a TikTok. Yeah, an Instagram post. But it was multiple. What, are you clicking on such scandalous sort of scuttle button rumor? I'm not.

I'm not giving them any clicks. Hey, Matt. Yep. Do go on. Yep. You'll tidy all that up, AJ. You know, I tie myself in knots being like, it's pretty sort of fun to play with America.

And I'm like, oh, Americans are that can be sensitive. So I hope they don't know I'm joking. But the good ones, though. That's because they're people, and people could be sensitive. Yes. You know what I mean? Oh my God, that is so true. Anyway, I'm going to go on.

Halley mapped out a plan for the next generation, even though he knew he would never see the fruits of his labour. He was just doing it for science. That's nice. I think I might write a scientific plan for after I die. I've got knowledge of what could happen. Now, I think we need to send it. one guy to Ohio, another guy to Vanuatu.

She's just picking place names you like the sound of. Ohio, obviously. I'm just sending a guy on a really good holiday there. We've got to Vanuatu, have a great time, five stars, or nothing. Yeah, for science. Are you leaving any money for this or it's self-funded? No, no, no, no. Again, I'm spending the government's money.

It's for science. Who's the guy? It can be anyone. Oh, but a letter should arrive. for a one random person. Oh, yeah. Harry Potter style. And he'd be like...

He wasn't random. He was. His parents were wizards. It seemed random. It was all a mystery. It was all made up. It was a big prank. It's a good one.

That's a great original story anyway. A chosen guy going on to... I know, like, in the end those stories like, this is what it was foretold. And then it happens that way. You're like, yeah, I guess they told us all along that he was going to... It's a bit dull. Oh, yeah. I guess we...

We knew from the beginning what was going to happen. What, seven movies? They told me how, I guess you're wondering how I got here. Killing the bad guy. Oh, I don't know why I was wondering that. You told me. Anyway, so Hallie dies in 1742, meaning someone else had to take charge of the project. And that person was a Frenchman named Joseph Nicholas Delal.

And like I said before, fair warning, plenty of French names coming up and signed tits. So what are we going to call this guy? Delal. Delal. Delal. Perfect. Delisle. Delisle.

I'm going to go for de Lizley. Delicious? I'm going to go for delicious. Wait, is he delicious, though? Oh, I don't know. He's a, well, at this point he's like, at the point. of the transit he's like in his 70s and I know you love a silver fox. I sure do.

I mean, I really think they should have handed the baton onto a younger person. Well, he did a lot of prep. That's ages. It did a lot of prep in the buildup. Okay. He was more like, you know, he was Charlie of Charlie's Angels. He wasn't going out on the things. He was sending people out.

He was sitting on the yacht. That was a fantastic analogy. Thank you. He was Charlie of Charlie's Angels. I thought he was going to go chocolate factory and I was like, I don't think that. Carl's angels, yeah, that makes sense. He's delegating. Yeah, yeah, he's managing.

Exactly. Yeah. So the person to coordinate this huge task needed to have a very particular set of skills. Skills acquired over a long career and Delisle, delicious, had those skills. Well done. Wolf describes him as so tenacious, persistent and determined that he would be persistent. Oh my God, he's got such persistence. This guy is so persistent.

And determination that he would be able to unite competitive astronomers and even warring nations. And as an obsessive man with little time for anything other than the pursuit of science, he dedicated his life to the stars. This is the guy. Wolf Wright's France at the time was ruled by Louis the 15th, the king who had succeeded to the throne in 1715 at the age of 5. adored astronomy and regularly attended scientific demonstrations in Versailles, even allowing himself to become electrically charged. That's a man who loves science.

Plug me. I don't know about that king. I said to plug me. Oh, yes. I'm the electric king. The king's going electric. Way before Bob Dylan. So his great-grandfather,

father Louis the 14th. The sun king. The sun king. So, yeah, obviously. He loves the sun too. He loves the son. He had founded the Academy de Sciences in Paris in the previous century. I feel like that didn't have to be in French.

Even the word in? The Academy of Science. Look at how it's spelled. Come on. Yeah. There's a little accent thing over the E. No, you're right. Academy's spelt with an eye then.

You did the right thing. You did the right thing. It was beautiful. In the Paris. In the, we, Paris. I never want to go to France with you. Oh, no, as if I would do this to the French. I fear you would.

I would know, I would not. You wouldn't make it a day. I would not. I've been before and I'm upset like they. Oh, yeah, not with the French. You did it with the Germans, though. Did I? I've tried to order an oat latte.

Oh, yeah. I'm using Google. Okay. Well, I wouldn't do this. Why are you using Google? We're in Berlin, one of like the most international cities on Earth. I was, you know, I was trying to show respect. Which I know you, there's a new thing for you too.

And he did not reciprocate. I jumped to say. I said, gai, mate. What he's trying to say? Gidei, Moodyga. Come and put him there, chair. Oh, yeah, go. Yeah, what he wants here, sir.

Yeah, sir. Yeah, sir. Yes, sir. So, yeah, so, so the sun. Sun King, Louis the 14th. I didn't know he's a Sun King, but Dave has said that confidently, so I'm going with it. How excitedly? He founded the Academy Dissons.

I'm pretty sure he's the Sun King. Yeah, no, I think you're right. Because you reacted so well, I was like, I'm right. I think you're right. 14th sounds right. There are so many Louies. And he lives so long that, like, yeah, like his great grandson takes over. He styled himself as the Sun King.

Yeah, so he was a. a science lover as well, the Sun King, and set up this academy, which is at the heart of this whole story as well. The academy was the most important scientific institution in France, and its members were the best scientists. To be elected... Such great scientists. Fantastic. Always working in pairs. To be elected as a member of the academy was the greatest scientific honor, and as members wore their title proudly, like a badge of nobility. Like that badge. By the way, the academy's rooms were in De Lov, if you don't mind, la de da.

Oh, my goodness. We, we, monsieur. Every Wednesday, members who studied in the fields of mathematics and astronomy assembled there to discuss experiments, projects, and current research. And on the 30th of April, 1760, the 72-year-old Delisle, delicious Deliolile, the official astronomer of the French Navy, attended a meeting at L'Aqademie. There he presented a paper that kicked off

what Wolf calls the greatest scientific project that had ever been planned. At the meeting, he asked his colleagues to take up the gauntlet thrown down by Halley 44 years previously. Setting in motion the international collaboration to observe the transit of Venus due to occur one year later on the 6th of June,

1761. It is Hallie, not Haley, right? I always thought it was Haley's comment. I've heard both. Okay, great. People do say both. I'm bringing it up really just so people who are going, why does he keep saying it? We'd know that I don't know. And if they've already commented, they can go back and delete that now. Yeah, growing up, I don't delete it.

Delayed it. Don't delete it. I say delete it. You stand by us. Yeah. But apologize. Yeah. Okay. You don't have to delete it if you apologize. Yeah, growing up, I think people in Australia did say Haley. But then if you watch scientific programs, a lot of them say Hallie's. I think that's what's happened to me. I don't watch scientific programs.

I think I grew up saying Haley, but I think probably in reading about this and hearing, you know, like learned people talk. Yeah. Or as Jess says, learned people talk. I trust the learned people. How's it spelled? H-A-L-E-Y, Hallie. And where's he from? He's from Merry Old England.

I don't know. Because it could be like, you're watching American science programs. Like, I'm sure Neil DeGrasse Tyson on that, that show called him Hallie. Right. But he was, you know, that show. He was born on the 8th of November 1656 in Hagerston, Shoulditch. Agistin. Huggistin.

Nice to meet you, Gona. Oh, I reckon we look at it. Up there at the sun, we see a little dog called Venus. You measure that, we got the keys to the answers to the universe. Okay. Right, okay. Yeah. I'm just going to, thank you.

I'm just going to keep walking down. You just stopped to watch the street. Amalgander, at the sun with me. Love to. Thank you so much. I've actually just meeting a friend up there. I've got a great spy. I've got to go, yeah. To climb up with me on the roof and his public tour.

That would be lovely. Look at me, children. Look away. Got a great view up there. Yeah, I bet you do. Careful up there. I just, oh, I've left something up the road. I just have to go get it.

I'll be right back. I only take seven hours. I only take me seven hours. Come up, you have a little gander. Is it possible that one of the most, clever people who's ever lived was born in Hagerston. Is that possible? Huggaston.

Huggaston. Huggaston. That's really funny. Oh, God. Very glad. I double-checked. Your whole face just completely changed. Hellified.

Yeah, we lose your eyes. It is like someone who's been staring at the sun to them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why I'm always around a hat. My grade two teacher, Mrs. Field, she wore glasses and she told the class, and she told the class that the reason she wore glasses was because when she was a kid, she stared at the sun too long.

And years later, I worked out that that was just a way to dissuade us from staring at the sun. But for ages, I thought anyone who had glasses had stared too long. I think those things are so tricky because they're great ways of short-term making a kid do something. Never look at the sun.

But so often, like, I think nearly every adult has stories where they're like, realize as an adult that a thing they were told the kid is obviously not. She just didn't have great vision. My one. For whatever reason. And that's okay.

That happens. The one I was thinking about, I mentioned on the show before, is I was absolutely an adult, well and truly, when I was thinking about how dad told me that the bruises were the healthiest part of banana. And it was just like,

just eat the fucking whole thing. Eat it all. But I'm like, I was like, hey, got to eat the bruise. It's gross. It's awful. Absolutely.

So much it black. Yeah. Taste the nutrients. Yeah, good. But I had to. Happened kind of, like when I was a kid, the first house I lived in, um, mom would tell us not to leave our clothes on the floor because red back spiders would get in it. And so I was an adult when I went, here, cheeky little spiders.

And mum went, no, that house had a real problem with spiders. That was genuine. We kept finding spiders in your clothes. I was like, oh, my God. Bread packs. Yeah, because as a young adult, I'm like, you just didn't want me leaving clothes all over the floor. She's like, no. I mean, obviously that's not a great habit to get into anyway,

but there were genuinely spiders in that house. Does feel like redback spiders were, there were a bigger fear in the 90s. Yes. Them and quicksand. Yes. Really thought quicksand was going to be a problem. Both at once.

Oh, good. Oh, man. Imagine sinking into a pit of redback spiders. No, thank you. I reckon I've seen one in my life in our garden shed growing up. Yeah. That's it. But you're right.

Redback spiders. They were the one, the redbacks for some reason. What is it now? What are people scared of now? Inflation. Careful kids, the inflation will get you. Don't leave your clothes on the floor. That'll kill you.

Another myth. I mean, like Jess always says, it's all made up. It's all made up. It's all made up. Oh, interest rates are going up. We could fix that. Yeah. Don't.

Like, it's all made up. There's a small board of old people who are saying that. People who own their homes outright almost definitely. Money's made. up. It's all made up. There's the same people who, three weeks earlier, told you it won't go up. Yeah.

These jerks. Sometimes I think, like, I'm sure there's other life out in the universe, you know? Like, we can't be it. And if we are it, like, this is what we've done. You know what I mean? Oh, we've built high-rise apartments and we go to work nine hours a day. You rather live subterranean? What's the problem there?

I love it. We should live in little huts in the forest. Oh, okay. We should frolic more. We don't frolic. I agree with the frolicing part. I don't you think. There's something really fun about the idea that God is real and stuff.

And he comes back like, you know, millennia after setting up. Because he's been off setting up other planets. And he comes back, he's like, this is what you did? Yeah. Built places to live high? Yeah, that's his problem. Your big thing is just living up higher? Yeah.

I gave you so much time and you came up with. Yeah. Well, how high can you go? My band's up in the score. God's like, okay. You could have done anything. Yeah, we got money that fluctuates what its value is. Yeah.

But inherently, it's valueless. Okay. Cool. What about all these cute little streams I gave you to frolic in? No? Oh, yeah, we've polluted those. I can't think about it for too long. It hurts my brain.

Please go on. So in the years leading up, so he, Delilah's working on this for a while. Hallie sort of dies 20 years before it. So he's doing a lot of prep. He's building up, you know, more info. He's redoing Halley's calculations, improving on them in some cases. How dare he? It must have felt a little sacrilegious.

But I think the, I think scientists like to do that as well. They go pretty good, but I'll, I'll do it a little better. Otherwise, I'm just some guy who's... What, what's your talent? Oh, I'm reading a thing that already exists and delegating. It's called Booksheet. So...

Dave's got a podcast called Book Cheat where he reads the book so you don't have to, if you don't know that. I highly recommend. Listen to it and I love it. And I'm on it sometimes, so those episodes I don't listen to because I think that would be the worst... Are you already there? Yes, that's true. You've heard about it. I love being inside.

That's reminded me that I was halfway through an episode now. I get to listen to it on the way home. Oh, that's exciting. Oh, that's exciting. Thank you. So, yeah, he even tried to use Halley's method, but using Mercury, because Mercury happened a little bit more frequently. But he also realized that it was too small, too close to the sun to give accurate enough

calculations. In his presentation to the Academy, that wasn't, Academy. That was better. He unveiled a map of the globe he put together because he also, in a previous life, was also like a, what do you call a map guy? Cartographer. Yeah, something like, he was some shit like that.

I was so close. Yeah, cartilage. I was so close to being smart-ish for once. Cartologist. Shut up, Jess. Shut up, Jess. I'm going to stop talking. But just no listeners, I'm here.

But I'm done. To be honest, it was a different thing anyway, but something like that. So he put together a map. He unveiled it. to the, at the meeting, which he called the map of mende, which had different coloured zones to show where the transit could be seen. So is that just mean map of the world?

Oh, world map. Is that what I mean, you tell them? You know French. I call this map of the world. Map of the world. Is monde the world? Yeah. That's so funny.

I thought I'm like, I love it. Love it beautiful. It's just, yeah, Wolf's just like, or whoever, it was written that way a few times. Like, why this one word are you translating from not translating from French? Anyway, yeah, in the map, had different coloured zones show whether transit could be seen. Wolf rights in the blue zones observers could, would only be able to see Venus entering the sun in the parts of the world that were coloured yellow, only the exit would be visible, and in the red area, the entire transit could be seen. Obviously, the entire transit was ideal, but they figured out, Delisle figured out a way that even just seeing one point. part or the other when combined with someone else would make those data,

that data is still valuable. Right. This presentation was part of a larger recruitment campaign. He sent 200 copies of his map to scientists around Europe and also French newspapers published it, building public support and excitement for the project. It was like a PR campaign almost. This is big. We don't get many opportunities for this.

Let's all get on board because he needs fun. and the academy's got some cash, I think, but he's needing to go to, like, the king, and he's wanting other countries to get involved and them to get their kings to kick in as well. And they're sort of saying, like, and it was successfully, got it to the point where, you know, British, the Royal Society, they're like,

this is important. This is, like, for the pride of our nation. We need to be involved in this. We need to be at the forefront of it. And it sort of worked in that way. Other countries like the Netherlands apparently were like, like, there's no value in this. They're like, this sounds like, who gives a fuck?

I'm kind of on their team. Yeah, yeah. But they door knocked like the king and just goes, no, just shut the door in their face. Okay, thank you. So, yeah, long story short, his work paid off, and expeditions were planned with astronomers from across Europe. They would have head out in all directions around the globe. But while Delisle, the delicious one, had mapped map and moaned,

at the best locations ago, many of the places were not easy to get to. He wasn't, unlike Dave, wasn't picking beautiful destinations. He was picking them more based on their scientific value, unfortunately. Right, but like if there's one really good spot, surely he'd be going to that one. Yes, but he was. He was just the man the van. Oh, no, this one happens to be in Hawaii. Oh, this one happens to be, oh, in my backyard.

Oh, I'm just going to have a look with a cuppa. There it is. There it is. You say that? You say that? Keep your night down at time, love. See that speck. Have a look at that speck up there.

Gorgeous. Gorgeous. As Podji says, it was not a trivial undertaking, as the transits would only be observable from what were then some of the most inaccessible place on earth. South Africa, Siberia, North America, the Indian Ocean, the South Pacific, and Central America. And you couldn't just jump on a jumbo jubes. yet to get there. No, sorry.

You had to get a good old-fashioned old ship. Admittedly, the ship's probably knew at the time. And you had to hit the high seas. And apart from the very real threats of scurvy disease, that's a high sea. It wasn't a high sea. That was a spotter. I didn't know he did perfect pitch.

It could be AC. D.C. I think that was a C. I think. Hey, Jay, if you could pitch correct that? Yeah, that would be in the post. Don't, and edit the bit out where I'm asking you to do that. Just pitch correct it.

So people, you know, opposite things are going, wow. Jess just went straight to a high sea easily. No, that high sea. Is she classically trained? No. Yeah, there you go. In anything. Classically untrained.

Yeah. They beat it out of you. So, yeah, they haven't, basically, and this is, you know, colonialism is really kicking enough. Europe is going around the world, carving up shit. So I'll love that. People are already there. They've already got it. Nah, I'll love that. Pretty cool stuff. And yeah, so they were basically going to follow the trade routes. There's ships going on these trade routes. Oh, just drop us off. Utilize those, yeah. But apart from very real threats of things like scurvy, other diseases, shipwreck, something that Halley wouldn't have foreseen was that a world war had broken out in 1756

and was ongoing in 1761 when the astronomers were sailing the globe. Great timing. Fantastic. Can we just put a little pause on the wall for a bit, please? This is for science. I'm sorry, do you not care about science? This is a little bigger than your little squabbles. Jeez, that way.

What the frick is going on here? Why are we fighting? Why can't we all get along in the name of science? A voice of that. So the war, have you heard of this? It's known as the seven years war. I've heard of that. How long did it go for?

It actually, because some of them don't go for the name, but this one did go for seven years. Were they calling it the seven year war while it was happening? I think a tower was built. Three, two, one, it's over. Everyone go home. It's all made up. It's like, Jess says, it's saving. It's all made up.

Because we could change the name later. No, we're doing it for the full seven. I know this was a dozy of a war Many think of it as the First World War Which is confusing because there's already a war named that Which happened 150 odd years later as well Which adds to the confusion that the First World War Happened 150 years after the First World War

So I guess this one's sort of like a prequel But Winston Churchill, to give this idea credence Did call it the First World War And it feels like he's the kind of guy who would know Because he was also in the First World War Yeah But the One of 15th world war true 150 years later.

Yes. Yeah. So it did last, unsurprisingly, for seven years from 1756 to 1763. It was fought mainly between Great Britain and Prussia, fighting against France, Austria and Spain, with many other states drawn into the war, including Portugal, Russia, Sweden and the Bengal state, amongst others. Of the state of things at the start of the war, Wolf Wrights, Britain controlled much of the eastern seaboard of the North American continent, as well as parts of India, some Caribbean islands and Sumatra in Indonesia. France counted among her possessions, Canada and Louisiana, as well as plantations in India,

sugar-producing colonies such as Haiti and St. Lucia, and some islands in the Indian Ocean, while the Dutch organised much of their East India trade from Jakarta and the ports of Gaul or Gala. That's one of the few words I looked up the pronunciation of, and annoyingly, people are like saying all sorts of different things. But that's in Sri Lanka and also the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. The war had a fair bit to do with the European powers fighting over colonial land grabs.

I want to oppress these people and exploit their lands. No, I want to be the one who's the exploitative oppressor. I imagine the war's inciting argument went. Wolf writes, not only political powers at stake, but also trading in commercial ventures. Possession of the North American colonies of India, the slave trade in West Africa, and the valuable sugar-producing islands of the West Indies.

Super grim stuff. You're like, hey, what's this noble war about? Oh, who controls the slave trade? Guys, could you stop and think for a second? What are you doing with your lives? We got Halley over here donating scientific work to the next generation for the greater good. While you're doing this fucking shit? Grow up.

Grow up. It's embarrassing. It's so embarrassing. This is just me behind Matt. Just popping up. Yeah, yeah, what he said. Grow up. You guys, they're thick.

Thick already. Jeez. For the New York Times, Charles Royster writes, North Americans associate the seven-year war primarily with the British conquest of Canada, though it formally lasted from 1756 until 1763. You like this, Jess. The war's first shots were actually fired in the spring of 1754.

So it was kind of a 90 war. You can't count that. Shut up. And these shots were fired. It's all made up. These shots were fired between French troops asserting their country's claim to the Ohio Valley. But Virginians commanded by a 20-year-old with the name you might know, George Washington. Never heard of him.

Which is hectic in itself. But anyway, again, this is just a little glimpse into a. story that probably deserves its own episode. But yeah, I think it's just worth knowing that there is a major war going into the background as these hapless scientists are trying to travel to places they've never been before. Take a massive grandfather clock across the English. Exactly. And a clock mechanic.

Guys, please. Please think of the clock. Stop bombing this ship. It's got a big old clock on it. Oppress those people, murder those people, but think of the clock. For science. I briefly consider making this episode an absolute epic, including a longer breakdown of the war and Edmund's Hillary, Edmund Halley's life. I don't know, I'm sorry to get Hillary involved.

But I heard Jess's voice in my head telling me to pump the brakes. Anyway, it's so funny that it ended up being quite long anyway, but imagine if... It could have been longer. I mean, I haven't really got to the story yet, and I was thinking about getting deeper into the war and Hallie's... I was going to do like a full Halley biography. And luckily, I'm glad I went back and at least said his place of birth. Well, we're all glad for that. And where was that again?

Haggaston. Haggaston. I'm sure that's how they pronounce it. It's probably the poshest place in the world. So, yeah, so don't worry. I'm not going into too many details about that sort of stuff. And by the way, I've had to trim out lots of stuff from the actual. because there are so many, many stories of guys traveling around the world.

Across the earth. Each individual story is epic, and I'm, you know, I'm just going to tell you a few of them because, you know, we would be here for about seven hours the time it would take to watch the transit. We were immersed in the studio and we've missed the entire transit. Oh, fuck! So, yeah, we've got tens, if not hundreds of astronomers preparing to travel near and far, but it wasn't just a matter of rocking up on the day. day, as Podji says. The astronomers sent out had to be the best in their profession and profession,

and very well equipped to make the necessary observations. The observer was required to get to the observing station well in advance of the transit, prepare the observing site, in some cases build observatories, set up their equipment and work hard to measure their precise position before and after the seven hours of the Venus transit. Since travel times were measured in months and years in this age. This man observing runs that were to last years in many cases. Oh my God. Podji continues, despite these difficulties, the importance of measuring the distance from the Earth to the Sun was such that for the first time in recorded history, astronomers from all over the world collaborated in an international project to measure an astronomical event.

By modern standards, the scale of the enterprise can be compared to the space program. It required capital outlays from governments, the cooperation of civilian and military authorities, and a few brave adventurers willing to travel far and risk life and limb for a common scientific goal. At this point, we think you're doing a history of the space program as well. So let me tell you about that now. To give you a context. Interestingly, many of the astronomers were English or French, but as I mentioned before, these countries were at war with each other.

Huh. But despite their mother countries being at each other's throats, the astronomers were given letters from their respective powers that basically said, don't worry about these fellas. They just want to go over look at a planet for a bit. So just let them, let them do it. Don't worry about them.

Or as Podji puts it, they were given letters of transit and cooperation to pass through enemy lines and shipping lanes unmoested. Spoiler alert, these letters were usually not respected. Oh, interesting. Because it would be like a pretty, if they were respected, like spies and whatever would just quickly. Oh, yeah, Venus. Yeah, I love it.

Yeah. I love Venus. Yeah, we're going to look at a son. We're going to go through enemy lines. So, yeah. And could you hold this bomb for a second? I'm also imagining like it's written in English for the English guys, right? But then they're going through French.

they're like, I can't read this. I don't know what this says. What does you say? I am assuming they've probably thought of that, but it'd be very funny if they had it. And they write it in real specific, like, local language. Yeah. You know, English.

Hibli, biblie. Hibli, biblis. Have you seen that clip of, I think, an Italian pop star from maybe the 70s or 80s? Yes. We had a hit song with just made to sound like American words. But it's gibberish.

It's what they thought America's sound like. How English sounds. And it actually it really does. That's really good. Yeah. That's really good.

It's possible to sing along to but catchy as hell. So what kind of astronomers would you recruit for such a grand adventure? Buff ones. Probably the best. Oh yeah.

Yeah. But Buff is a real bonus. Yeah. They'll get you to the top of the pot. Yes. Unfortunately, those two things didn't seem to go hand in hand. Oh.

Um, fair to say that they, most of them weren't swashbuckling adventurers. Well, they're dweebts. Most of them, yeah, bookish types. Oh. Uh, whose, whose work involved very little adventure. Oh, listening. I was very, like a lot of solitude, just a lot of staring at the skies. Um, I love those skies.

But you hate solitude. Yeah, you can't be alone. Oh, my God. There's this one. Uh, not with my thoughts. Wolf notes one job description, not for this adventure, but for an astronomer at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich and how depressingly honest it was around that time.

It said they were looking for men who were indefatigable, hardworking, and above all, obedient drudges. I'm like, that sounds like... Oh my God. I don't think I understood any of those words. What was the first word? Indefatigable. I think just like tireless. Is that what that means? Yeah. And then what was this? Hardworking.

I don't know. I don't say. What does that mean? And above all, obedient drudges. Imagine like waking up one morning and your mum's cut that out of the newspaper. Look, I found a job you probably should apply for. Oh, mum. Oh, come on. Yeah, no, you're right, mum. I've just woke it up in the morning. Oh, it's the afternoon. Yeah. Mom's like, I really want, I've got plans for the basement. I can see the gals coming over and playing bridge.

Yes, Mom. I guess, Mom. I'll be the indrudging son. But yeah, these are not exactly characteristics and requirements normally associated with globe-trotting voyages. Yeah, like we're all imagining Indiana Jones. Yeah. So it's just the half where he's stuck in the classroom.

Yeah. Not the swashbuckling part. What, the half where his students have written, like, I love the other eyelids. Yeah, on the eyelids. He is an absolute hunt. I'm doing a primates about that this week with Surin and Marcel. Marcel, he did an episode about it here, but I don't think I was on it. So he did the history of Indiana Jones for a Dugo One episode,

and then he was also on Dugo on the movie club, but Jess, him and I watched it. Yeah, he's obviously the resident. So I'm going to re-watch it this week, and I think, yeah, that probably will be coming out tomorrow, I think. But yeah, if two-go-old listeners haven't had too much of a good thing. So, yeah, so they weren't very Indiana Jones-like. Oh. I mean, they're wearing the tweed, but they weren't wearing the Akubra.

Or whatever that that was, Fedora, I guess. Aussie Indiana Jones. Ozzy Indiana Jones. Now we're talking. Was it a trilby? What was it? Probably none of those. Flat cap?

It's probably that. Was it a snapback? Do you want me to look it up? I'm pretty sure it was a fedora. I think it was a visor. Oh, okay. No. You know, there's a tenet.

The one with the green see-through that the... It was like Las Vegas cards. Fuck, it's a fedora. Sorry. It's a fedora style hat. I was willing... I was just going to let it go, but then you're looking it up. I'm like, damn it.

But I guess, you know, who would correct it? That's good you looked it up because, you know, if I could think of it a star it's like, of the kind of person who might croaked something. Actually, it's a Vador, and I should know, I'm wearing one right now. I'm trimming my beard on my neck. Is that a stereotype that, is anyone still living up to that stereotype? I think it got sort of parodied out of existence, I think.

Don't I reckon? Yeah. No, there's still some people in their mother's basements. Which is interesting, though, because Indiana Jones, he doesn't seem like a fedora wearing guy. It's a real bad PR campaign for fedores, isn't it? It became associated with insufferable people. I know, you know, all those poor scar people from the 90s and 2000.

Well, yeah. For them too. Insufferable, come on. Lovable, fun. Wheat Hornets baseball, for instance. I remember him sadly retiring the fedora. I actually did have a fedora in Europe that I got in Thailand. It was, and it had the black and white cheque sort of striped band around a real scar style.

Holy shit, we're rolling. Oh, yeah, we're rolling. So, yeah, so they were bookish types. Not all of them. There's a couple who were pretty excited for the adventure. Couple hunks. You've got to have a hunk in there. But yeah.

Give us something. And that is basically what they're asked to do. And a few of them said later in their diaries and stuff, they were like, really honored to be asked. And it wasn't until just before going, I'm like, holy shit, this is pretty dangerous what we're doing. And they're like, like, they were so flattered. One guy was like, it was so flattered that it took quite a lot of close friends to be like, I don't think you should do this before I went, wait, oh yeah, there's a huge war on.

Yeah. I'm going to a place that, you know, I've never left Mum's basement before. Maybe I should have gone to the shops by myself first. Yeah, baby step. steps. Really throwing myself in the deep end of a war. So like I say, there are lots and lots of astronomers involved. So I'm just going to take you through some of the highlights slash lowlights. The first astronomer, and this is probably the most famous one to be involved.

He was the one that I read about first in another book, a Bill Rawson book, sorry, Jess. And he only talked about it briefly, and I'm like, what a story. And I got to this halfway through his story. I'm like, I should have just done his story as the episode. You know, I'm now having to sort of be a bit briefer on this, just because I'm like, I've got another few guys I want to talk about. Should have just made him the episode.

Should have done 30 minutes on the space race. God. I can't edit it out. I'm thinking. Yeah, I know. It's like a real sunk cost fallacy thing. I'm like, but I've spent all this time writing all this other stuff. So, yeah, the first astronomy to sign up to the project was a former

Pupil of Delicious Delisle, the magnificently named, get a load of this, haven't looked up the pronunciations, the Frenchman named Guilliam Joseph Hayesson's Jean-Baptiste Les Gentile de la Galasserie. Wow, that's... One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten parts of the name. Greedy. Couldn't fit that in a passport. No.

Yeah, good luck. Guillaume. Gileam. Dave, do you want to... You speak French. Maybe you'd be better. I can already tell that the first name's Guillem. Okay, great.

Can you read that? It's funny if you can because you're, what, about three meters from me? Your response is so big. I've zoomed in on it. Did you really? Yeah. Okay. Guillermo Joseph Hyacinth, Jean-Baptiste, Le Gentis de la Galassia.

Thank you so much. That is someone who's done a thousand days of jewelry. And I got to tell you, I always skip the exercises we have to say words out loud. So I just know some words written down. And I have a no punci. Ah, interesting. Yeah. So do you skip them because you'll normally do it when everyone else in your house is asleep?

Yeah, it's usually 1155. And you've got to do it by midnight or the streaks breaks. So I'm there going, fucking, yeah, yeah, yeah, yep, yep, yep, yep. You don't wake. People are all dreaming in French because of you, because you're all just talking. Yeah, for some reason I was dreaming about asking for an apple. in France In France

Your partner being like a fluent French speaker Yeah It was weird But my French in the dream was terrible So straight because I'm fluent But then in the dream I sounded like an individual Yeah it was an odd man

Oh my God Have I lost my language? So yeah What did you pronounce the bit that's like Le Gentile? Well you say it's a sense No, a sign-El. Yeah, Le Gentile.

Yeah, Le Gentile. Or Le Je gentee. So that's what we're going to call them. That's what most people call them. Le Jeontie. So, yeah. Le Jeontie, we've got the delicious guy. Now we've got the gentle.

Le Jeanty, the gentle. Is he a gentle giant? Is he buff? Is someone on this episode buff? Is anyone buff? Just tell us now if anyone is buff. The funny thing is there's... That's a no.

Well, no, some of these people... There's one... A duo that I'll talk about later, British duo, who were quite famous and are still remembered, obviously, for different reasons. But they don't even know what they look like, which it's really, it's not that long ago. We could make up whatever we want. Yeah, exactly. It was a yes or no question. It's no.

I will say, Wolf does describe one guy in great detail, and it's basically just being like real chubby face. This guy love food. It's like, why are we getting into this? Yeah, it's not relevant. But like you said to me recently when I said, this report's going to be long. I've made the mistake of reading a book about it, and there's so much to keep in, and you're like, you know what authors are like. They're padding.

You don't have to. Well, like, she's writing a book. A book is longer than a pod report. And there are. Not when you're doing it, yet here we are. There are some, and there's so much great stuff in the book. She talks about different world leaders at the time, like the queen of Russia and how she got to the throne

and how she was getting involved. And all these side stories, I'm like, I'd love to talk about all these. But, yeah, you can't talk about it. Yeah, because then at that point you'd just be reading a book out loud. And that probably also exists. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, it does. I know. Yeah. It's, yeah, I think online. Mm-hmm. Uh, la gentile. How about that?

That's close enough. Le Gentile was Cana Zabain and offered to travel to Pondicherry in China, which was one of the locations where the entire transit would be visible. This was seen as one of the key spots. Right. So he was the first to sign up. So he gets first pick. Yeah, kind of.

And yeah, the, the Academy were like, yeah, like this guy, send him here. an ex-pupil of Charlie, the main man, delicious, Delisle. And yeah, so he left France on the 26th of March 1760 more than a year prior to the transit. So he was the first to go by a long way. And yeah, he just wanted to make sure he was absolutely prepared once he landed. But unfortunately, nothing went right for old mate, Le Gentie. As the French were at war with the British, his French ship was constantly having to escape British naval ships,

but he was really like zigzagging his way. It was not a direct route at all. Like there's multiple times, and in the book they go into it, like they were, the British were closing in on them, they were gone and then they just got away. At one point it looked like they were going to be sandwiched

and the British had their cannons either side and they were just going to be like sitting ducks. but all of a sudden the weather sort of swept in and Le Genti later wrote The fog seemed to have been made for us Like the fog sort of covered over And they just slipped away into it Just like saving the day

Thank you weather Am I right I've never said that in my life Thank you weather I've never thanked the weather And I should You live in the home of weather Melbourne Yes

And that's why I take it for granted Yeah, you do. It's a bit like you never thank your mum growing up. Yeah, that's right. But you should. But you should. Anyone growing up out there, thank you mum. Thank you mum.

Thank him for us. Yep. Thank my mum if you run into her in the street. She'd love that. She'd hate that. Really? Oh, yeah. So, all right, well, I've made a few mistakes recently.

I'm going to have to give Amy a call. Well, the thing is you keep, like, going to her house specifically. I said if you happen to bump into it. Oh, okay. Stop turning up on her. She loved them, yes. Um, yeah, and the, and the, uh, the little, it's a little naughty I got her. Silk.

It was very fancy. Did she like it? Nah, I regretted it, sort of. Mainly because of why you're looking at me now. Like your father. Are you thinking about that out? Do I have to call him, Daddy? No, no, no, no. This is, I am actually regretting this.

And, geez, you are just leaving me to it, aren't you? Which is cruel to both of us, I think, because I'm still talking. You could have cut me off ages ago. It doesn't work when I do cut you off. I try to get you back on track and then you go, yeah, so I wanted to talk about eight other things and I'll tell you a little bit about them now. Yeah, mum. And now, let's start with the eyes. Sorry, Annie, if you're listening, I respect you and this is only me.

as a parody of people were gross. I'm certainly not filthy like that myself. So yes, as well as the whole war thing that was making the journey perilous, Le Gentile also suffered from severe seasickness. I don't know if you relate to this, Jess. He wrote that death would be a relief. That's how bad he was feeling.

Yeah, that sucks. But he always sort of kept it positive in a letter to the academy Leginti of downplayed his troublesome voyage, calling it, quote, the nicest and happiest. And reporting, how's this for positive spin? Reporting that they had only lost one man to sickness

and one passenger he threw himself overboard. Only one. It's not bad. Only a couple of deaths. That's not bad. Pretty good. Yeah. People die at home as well, you know.

Yeah. Really from themselves overboard. Yeah. But they would have they could. Yeah. So. Yeah, people throwing themselves overboard just landing in their front garden.

You said, oh, crap. No, no, I'm in the roses again. In the roses again. When will I learn? I just got them back to health after the last time. But he was feeling positive. And he was starting to feel like getting over the seasickness after months at sea. So it's like it was pretty grim.

He was starting to feel better. And then the ship arrived at Mauritius, a stopover, then a French colony. And from there, he was basically defined another ship to take him to Pondicherry in India. Oh. So a bit of it was really left up to them. He's just a guy on the ship. It's something I kept forgetting. I'm like, because different stories are like, wait, why is the ship going off path

for some other thing? Don't they know they've got a scientist on board? Oh, it's not his ship. No, it's just a passenger. He's like hitchhiking. Kind of, yeah. But he does have a letter saying from, you know, the highest authority is like, oh, this is important, please get this guy to where he wants to go.

And he is travel solo? He doesn't have like security guards or like people escort. Well, it's the funny thing, just to simplify the story, all these people who are probably doing like good work as well, just don't get mentioned at all. And so don't ask about them again, please. I won't mention the help. I actually don't know about him, but some of the other ones did travel.

Like I'm going to talk about later, it was travelling with four carriages. Don't ask about them again, please. Please, don't ask about them. That's incredible. Don't ask about that. But yeah, I actually was picturing this guy solo, but, you know, back then, he's like, he's a man with ten names. He probably has servants. Some of those names are his friends.

He was referred to as one man. He's actually four guys. Yeah, he's like, the power ranges assemble. He's like, you know, we got Legentils, my left leg. Greg, my right leg. So his arrival in Mauritius was greeted with, would you believe, this is bad news. This guy was cursed.

Much of the French fleet had been stationed at the naval base of Mauritius that would have been his vessel to Ponticherry. He's like, because there's two French spots, Pondicherry, Mauritius, ships traveled between the two. Ponnercherry often sending supplies to Mauritius and, you know, people back and forth. But when he arrived, he heard that earlier in the year, a hurricane had destroyed most of the fleet. So there was a couple of vessels left, but they weren't just sending them out. They were like, we're looking after these.

We only got a couple left. But he only needs one. Yeah, he's like, just send one over. But unfortunately, on top of that, the British were attacking France's few. strongholds in India, including Ponder Cherry, looked like it was maybe in the gun. So they're like, we're not really going, because you were just going directly into war. And we don't have a lot of ships to spare to just go get blasted by what was at the time a superior British naval force. Le Gertille wrote despairingly to the L'Aademie.

I do not know when I will be able to leave. He wrote it in French, but, you know, that's the translation. While in Mauritius, he waited hopefully for a ship to leave for Potter Cherry, but ships weren't arriving, let alone leaving. And to make things worse, the British held a major French Indian port under siege, meaning supplies were not making it to Mauritius. This led to highly inflated prices on the limited stock that was already there. There's like a shop there, and they're like, well, there's no more stock.

So we need to cash in with the stuff we've got. $50 on Apple. Yeah, exactly. And he wrote home saying life is horribly expensive, moaning in particular about the cost of wine. He's like, all, and there's something about nearly all of them. I won't talk about too much, but all of them are like obsessed with booze. There's one guy who travels on the ship with as much booze as anything else. Like, so much.

Wolf listed at some point, I wish I wrote it down, but it's so much booze. That's like leaders and leaders of different kinds of booze. And then at one point, I think it was him or one of the other guys was like left to have to drink water at one point. He was like the most disgusting liquid of the ball. Which maybe it was back then. So, yeah, he's moaning about the cost of wine. But wolf rights, to make matters worse, Le Gentile was also struck down with debilitating attacks of dysentery. Perfect.

So he's in Mauritius going, I really want to get out of here. So he's been spewing the whole way and then get. and then shits himself. Yeah. Perfect. Perfect. It's all about symmetry. Yeah.

You need some electrolytes. Yeah. For that cost too much at the shop. That's right. They're already like a ridiculously pruss thing. They are. So he was stranded for ages and time was slowly running out. He's like, I need to get there.

Mauritius was not a good spot for the viewing. Oh, because that would have been convenient if you got to set a telescope here. You know what? Yeah. Right. near the tut, which I'm spending most of my time on. So, when all hope seemed lost, a ship finally did arrive at the end of February with orders to send reinforcements to India to relieve the besieged ponder cherry.

A ship called Le Silfide was heading to India and Le Gentile made sure he was on it. He's like, there's no way a ship going upon a chair. He's not having me on. I'm on that ship. It was going to be tight time-wise, but according to Wolf, the sailors reassured him that they could make it in the two months, in two months, which gave him a little bit of buffer to get there and set up. Is he travelling with a clock?

I'm imagining he's got the ground for the clock. Oh, yeah, he's got the clock. They've pretty much all got the clock and the big telescope and different bibs and bobs, like huge crates of scientific equipment. Like, can I hit your ride? Just you? Yeah, sure. He's like, great.

This starts bringing all the shit out. Beep, beep, beep. Okay. All right. So, yeah, he was like, all right, good night. You assure me of that. That's good enough for me. Ponder Cherry was, according to Delisle and Halley,

one of the most important locations on the globe to view it from. And Les Gentile did not want to let down science. He was a company man. It was a company was science. He felt hopeful and things were going smoothly until they hit a monsoon north of Madagascar, which was blowing them in the opposite direction to where they wanted to go back towards Africa.

Wolf rights at the end of April, Le Gentile could see his dismay, to his dismay that the coastline of the island of Sikotra, just to the east of the Horn of Africa, which meant it was only a month of the transit and he was still some two and a half thousand miles away from Pondicherry. He's like, I'm saying a landmass, but that is... That's the wrong one.

That's the wrong one. This is not building well. After seven weeks at sea on this voyage, things are looking hopeless. He left over a year, and now he's got, like, what, a monthlet? He's been on the road for a year. Yeah. And he's nowhere near it.

No. Just so brutal. And he's like, in his mind, he's like, I'm doing this great thing. Yeah. for science. And nothing is working out. At every turn, it's going wrong. Right, but the sailors are like, don't worry, pal, you'll get another shot at it.

Well, for him, it's only eight years. I know, but don't you need both, like, to compare? I mean, you don't need both, but yeah, the more died you have, the better. Yeah, okay. But he, yeah, just, the cruelest thing is that it wasn't just like swiftly over. Like, you're both saying, you're back at home now. nothing could be done about it. Every now and then a little bit of hope comes up.

He's like, oh my God, it's going to work out in the end. Oh. Wait. And then for you, you're back in the middle of nowhere. And in between all that, he is spewing and, you know, just out of every orifice. He's shit. He's not a gentleman. He spewing and he.

Which is really disappointing because I think he is actually a gente. A gentee. He's a gente man. Well, he was. Exactly. And then he got dysentery. He got, yeah. Habs are the best time.

I had to take his license off him. But then, so things are looking so hopeless. But all of a sudden, he gets a bit of hope because in mid-May, they got a monsoon that was working in their favor. Suddenly they're just flying across the ocean. Yeah, exactly. They're just flying along with a monsoon at their back. This is awesome. Wolf writes as the ships.

You're getting air? Yeah. We're literally flying the south of taking us up. Oh, this is way quicker. I don't know why we didn't just fly in the first place. Wolf writes, as the ship sliced its way through the ocean, Les Gentile, allowed himself to hope again. By the end of the month, he could see a line of lights glimmering in the distance.

But, of course, it was all for naught. Firstly, it was not Pondichere. It was a different Indian spot, and that Indian spot was a French port that had been taken over by the British recently. Okay. And they received word there that Pondercherry had just fallen to the siege in Britain as well. So the captain's like, we got to turn back and they turned back for Mauritius. By the time the transit of Venus came about, la Gentile was still at sea.

You'd have a look up just in case. Yeah, you have to have a squeeze. So this is. Sorry, Jess. I did try and keep Bill Bryson quotes to a minimum, but this is what Bryson writes in his short history of nearly everything. The sea was just about the worst place to be since steady measurements were impossible on a pitching ship.

But he did it anyway. His clock wasn't working, I think. It was broken. So he did it with a 30-second hourglass. You know, not very accurate. Every 30 seconds turning over. For seven hours. Yeah, or for how much?

Like, they weren't seven hours everywhere. I can't remember how long. And he maybe only saw, so they're like, seeing the entry, like Venus starting across the sun and exiting are both important. And when it hit the edge of the sun and when it fully exited the sun. So there's multiple points that they wanted to get the times down for. And he basically stoically said, you know, I'm going to do it. Even though he knew deep down that it was the data he got.

was going to be worthless scientifically. Wolf writes, Le Gentile could not fathom what was happening. He had been the first astronomer to leave Europe and now more than one year later, so close to his goal, his chance of observing the wondrous planetary encounter had been snatched away.

And by the British, no less. Wow, there's other people out there. He's imagining having a great time that left after him. Yeah. They're going home, triumphant. Yes. Probably British people as well. And I'm going to talk about some of those other stories in another episode.

But this week, I just want to focus mainly on Les Gentile. His story is wild and it's not over. To give you an idea of how cursed this story was, it was so cursed that in 1992, the story became the subject of a play by Canadian writer Marine Hunter called Transit of Venus. And it was so tragic that the play was subsequently made into an opera of the same name.

You know the story's got to be pretty grim if they're going, this would make a good opera. Hundreds of years later, people are still going, this is operatic. It's not a heartwarming triumphant story if they've made it to opera. So, yeah, he's at an awful time. Everything's gone wrong. But something he does know that there's another transit happening in eight years.

And to make sure everything went absolutely smoothly, He's like, I'm not going home in between. You're going to leave now. I'm going to stay in the area. I'm going back to Mauritius. I'm going to figure out I've got eight years and I'm going to absolutely nail this. Oh my God. I'm matching.

You've got eight years, mate. Go home. That's like when you've got a long layover at an airport, you're like, God, nine hours. Is that worth going to a hotel? Like getting out of the airport and going to a hotel? But he's got eight years. Eight years. I reckon I'd go home.

I think I would too, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think I'd go home, have a good sleep. I'll see, in terms of, like, family, he had family, but he didn't have a partner or kids or anything. So it's not like he's got... It's not like he's got nothing to live for. So what he did was he sent letters home to the academy. He's like, I want to stay here, but I also want to get some cash for doing it.

So I need them to fund it. So I'm like, I can do good work while I'm here. I can... I know there's some maps that haven't been done very well. and these other things. So I'm like, oh, I'll stay here for science. So do some mini jobs. Yes.

But also, I just want to be here. I don't want to have to travel all the way back again in seven years time. But also, like, you might not be alive in eight years' time. Yeah, the way is luck going. But also just like, you could, any kind of illness could take you out back then. You get murdered. Who fucking knows? You could die.

But if that's how bad the seasickness must have been, if he's like, I can't do this again. I'd probably still take the ship home. Yeah, to get home. Push through. Yeah, and then, okay, I might have to get on another ship in six or seven years time. Yeah, I reckon at that point you're going home, you're retraining. Get a new gig. Yeah, I'm going back to MAPS.

I'm going back to MAPS. Yeah. Maps never let me down. Yeah. So, yeah, he's had such a hapless time. Dave, do you want to give his name one more, Tom, I feel like we didn't make the most of it. Gileam?

How did you say it? Guillaume. Giam is Joseph Hyacinth. Yeah, that sounds like that. Hearsent, Jean-Baptiste, Le Gendar de la Galesserie. That's beautiful. I think you're absolutely nailed to every single element of that. I think it's important that we remember.

A syllable out of place. So, yeah, he's decided to stay on. Wait, the eight years for the second transit. Doesn't want to go back to France. Why would you? I mean, apart of the fact that he... hates life on the ship as well. I wonder if that's going to do with it.

It's like, I can't deal with seasickness for another few months or whatever it's going to take. And the war is ongoing as well. Yeah, I guess you don't know how long the war is going to go for. But I would assume it would be done. I would assume if the next passing was going to be eight years from now, I'd be like, I reckon the war will probably done. I'm going to go home for a good six or seven years. Yeah.

I mean, I'll just go home, spend a good, maybe just have about six. About six years in my bed. It's not six days. You know, like, it's eight years. It's so funny because me, I'll be like, yeah, I'll go home for what, a few hours nap? Yeah. If I'm here, I'm like, yeah, do it.

Just get back there, please. Hit the hay, get your head on the pillow, and six years later, go again. And maybe, you know, have a bit of practice out on the sea, you know, build up that tolerance. That's good. It sounds because it sounded like almost like he had done that. You know? So then what's his excuse? He was starting to come good.

Oh, nah. I can't wait to get home. He's definitely got a crush on someone that works in the local general. I was going to say. I was going to say. There's the girl. Yeah. There's an inflation and the price, but also in his pants.

Why? Why did you ruin it by winking at me? I looked away. I missed the wink. Camera one, camera two. I'm just looking up. So he was born September 11th. Oh,

No wonder he's had such a cursed life. 1725. So what does that make him at this point in 61, Dave? Was he 36? 36. So eight years. Yeah, I mean, this is... 36, he's got so much ahead of him.

He's such a young man. Yeah, 36 is so young. And if anyone was younger than 36 at the time of this recording, they'd be even younger. Even younger. I mean, you're really clutching at fucking straws, but we're like a month away. Oh, wow. And a month in his life. Jesus, yeah. That sounds like a drag on.

How many disasters could happen in a month? There's a chance I'll spew before my 36th birthday, you know? Wow. It could happen. It could happen. It could happen at any moment. Especially if you're catching a ship. I'm not one of those people who's like, I haven't thrown up in 10 years.

Oh, man, I had that for a while there. And then I went to Mexico. And I did a burrito tour. And then this chef, who used to work in Melbourne, which is funny. He took us on a tour to not places on the main street, but a lot of back alley stuff, like it's real local stuff.

And I should not have eaten all that stuff on day two of me either because it really messed me up. Yeah. Okay, you hadn't quite... You hadn't really adapted. Yeah. You need to have a couple of sips of the water a day to unoculate yourself. Easy.

But the food was fantastic for taste. Yes. So it's not their fault. It's definitely my. Oh, yeah, it was a new problem. Yeah. So, yeah, so he stays on. And he was very productive in those years that he stayed on as Podji writes.

He said about computing what would be the best location to view the next transit. He's like, Pondicherry is perfect. But at the moment, it looks like it's, you know, it's just not a place like I'm going to be able to be. Yeah, where else? Like, for example, would Mauritius be okay? Yeah, he's like, um. He's like, damn it, I keep redoing the numbers of Mauritius. Where's we moved Mauritius?

Yes. He got eight years. He also made a series of scientific studies of Mauritius and nearby Madagascar, including botany, zoology, geology and anthropology. This guy, he's a talented guy. He was retraining. He's got all theologies. Yes. And that's the thing.

Like, he's known for some of, like, this curse run, but he did a lot of good stuff, and he's known to science for some discovery. and whatnot. He finally determined that the best site for 1769 would be Manila in the Philippines and set about planning his next expedition. Manila was a Spanish spot at the time. It's weird because Spain is so far from the Philippines. Isn't it weird?

It's what a weird time. There's this little group and it's kind of just a few families going, yeah, we're going around the world and we're just going on shopping spree. next door to England, are we? Well, no, that's what I mean. Yeah. At this point, Australia hadn't been fully mapped. It would, but they did have an idea that there was a great southern land.

But yeah, it is, what a, it's just a strange time. It's weird, isn't it? When you think of your God on your side and whatever, we're going, we're spreading enlightenment. Yeah, it's easy to justify. We're doing, we're actually doing the right thing. Yeah. I'm telling myself.

I'm going to this place where this. people have lived quite happily for a long time. And I'm going to make it better. Yeah. And it's mine now. I own it all, but it's better. Yeah. Better.

And the ones that I really want to help make better, the ones that have natural resources or spices or whatever. They're the ones I really. I really want to help them. I want to help them. Help me, help myself to your stuff. So, yeah, he's been very, very, um, productive. He reckons Manila's the spot to go. And he set sail aboard a Spanish ship in May of 1766.

So he's given it plenty of time. He's going to get there to set up with, you know, three years. Three year buffer. Yeah. What is he? Blood airport, dad. You know, dad, they always want to get the eight hours earlier shit. Oh, man, nightmares. That's Dave for us when we're touring. Get there and, oh, baggage one open for six. six hours. But don't worry, I'll stand in line for six hours. Thanks Dave. Wake me up when they open. So this is back to Podgy. After a weary three-month voyage, and you know,

he loves to see voyage this guy. He arrived in Manila to find that the Spanish governor, a guy called Don José Réon, was not especially fond of foreigners, of which la Gentile was, which is It's very ironic for a Spanish guy in Manila. Yeah. He's like, I don't like it when people come here. Uninvolved. And there's something, that's almost something comedically ironic about that. There's something.

I can't put my finger on it. There's something there, I think. It might come to you later. Maybe, yeah. And it's, I don't know if there's any sort of echoes of that in modern day. You know, something's so grim. I was just reading, you know, I've gone off on all sorts of tangents, but I was reading briefly about Vietnamese refugees

in Australia in the 70s and how quite a lot were welcomed into Australia who arrived by boat seeing us home because of the Vietnam War and the 70s is one of the decades that the back when Australia

sort of, it's like you guys who were like wanted to go back to Australia was real Australia. Oh, take us back, right, yeah. If you go back to then, that is when Australia was much more generous with with the country and

and to asylum seekers and open to sharing this huge place. Yeah. But those same people who want to take us back to their somehow remembering it in a way that it was like, it was only a monoculture. Yeah. What?

It just makes sense. It just makes sense. Oh my God. So, So la gentile. Is it a Madnilla. He is trying to set up his observatory to, you know, make his, he wants to, you know, lock down his position. Get that longitude locked in.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But according to Podji, Don Jose suspected him of being a spy and had him tailed and harassed. He just made his life a nightmare. And he soon realized that it wasn't safe for him to stay. So he abandoned his plans No He's like Luckily I've got time up my sleeve

Three your buffer It was kind of like If I stay I'm probably going to be Watching it from a jail cell You know This guy doesn't like Can I sorry

Could I just Could I request a cell with a window Yeah One that yeah Whatever This direction facing Yeah Sun facing

Sun facing A sun facing window I know He's got a southerly aspect on now Cold, wet and dark. You know your aspects. Whatever that was, you said. I've definitely known my aspects of manila.

Yes. Manila always sounded like a delicious city to me. And I think it's just the vanilla thing. Yes. Because manila folders, they're just very dull. I don't eat those. No, but vanilla, anything. Vanilla folders.

Did you hear about the Philippine contortionist? That's like a, I believe that is an old street joke. I actually didn't hear about it. Tell me more. Love to educate it. So, did you hear about this? There's not enough jokes that start with. So have you heard about it?

You heard about this? You've seen this? Oh, gosh. So yeah, he abandoned his plans. He's like, I'm getting out of here. This Jose fella, Don Jose, great name, but bad fella, apparently. I'm out of here. year. So yeah, he decided to finish what he'd started all those years ago by actually

making it back to Ponder Cherry. Oh my God. Which is a place I've never heard of, by the way. No, I mean either. I wonder if it's maybe named something a little more Indian sounding now. It's fun to say. Pondar cherry. That also sounds delicious. Yeah. Oh, it's officially known as Poodoooo cherry. That's the, capital and most popular city of the Union Territory of Putacherry in India. There you go. The city's in the Putacherry District. Okay.

On the southeast coast of India, surrounded by the Bay of Bengal. Really wanted to be the Bay of Putacherry. That would have been really nice. But yeah, so I'll talk about this next week, but the war ends, as we know, and France, it's one of the few things. France sort of doesn't do great in the war, but it's one of the places they do get back from the British. Okay. Under the, but the only thing was Britain's like, you can have it to trade and stuff, but you're not allowed to fortify it, okay? It can't be like a stronghold. You can have it to trade him, but you fortify it,

we're going to unfortified if you know what I mean. So all of a sudden, yeah, he's like, Okay, maybe Pondon Cherry's back on the table. So he could have just gone home for like six years. They would have got it and then he could have gone there. I know it took a long time to get places back then. But it wasn't like it'll be next year or in two years and it takes a year to get home, a year to get like, like, just go home. But you figure this guy's a guy who loves science,

he got to hang out in Madagascar and the 1700s. Like science at home. He's looking at lemurs. He'd be like, what the frick is going on here? Look at all these guys. Go to the zoo and see a lemma. You idiot? You're a million.

Yeah, Melbourne Zoo's got Lima Island for God's sake. They're all there. I saw them huddling together recently. Wait, do you think you should go home or go to Melbourne? That is home. That's a good option. Oh, you reckon he should have moved to Melbourne. Move to Melbourne.

Beautiful city. It didn't exist then, Jess. What? But leave alone the zoo. What? But Lima Island. Leber Island was there. I thought they formed the zoo around Leamer Island.

I think they formed the city of Melbourne. Yes. Around the zoo and the zoo was around the island. And the island around the lemas. Perfect. Yeah. So. I get what you're saying, but I'm a homebody.

So I'm just like, I'd be going home for six years. I'm a home boy. I'd be going for six years. That's how long I've lived in my current apartment. That's crazy. And it's ages. It's so long. You don't remember your life before that apartment.

I don't. But that's more of a memory issue I have. Especially for a man at such a young age. Yeah, exactly. He doesn't have so much life to live. Oh, my. He's a baby. Go home, get some life experience.

I mean, it's so funny. You're like, mate, what are you out there living in the world? Get some experience and go home. Yeah, then you can conch him out of gasca. So funny. Yeah, you're right. We're like, uh, seeing things you'd never have an opportunity to see otherwise. Go home, would you?

Come on. Idiot. So, Podji writes, in February of 1760, he finally managed to secure a passage on an Indian ship bound for Ponder Cherry and the ship had a motley crew of Portuguese and local sailors.

Things, would you believe, didn't go smoothly. They were nearly shipwrecked in the Malacca Straits when the pilot took offence at some sleight that someone on the crew some perceived slot, apparently. He was like, whoa, what did you? You say spin the wheel. Yeah.

No, to the point that he went to his cabin and locked the door. And he was the only guy who could sell this ship. Oh, I guess you don't name me then. Yeah. I'm going to go. Have a lie down. Yeah, I guess I'll just have a snooze, maybe read a book for a bit. See how you go out here.

So all of a sudden, they're going down a really treacherous stretch of water, one of the most treacherous apparently in the world. And he's like, oh, yeah, you'll know where to find me. And they're banging on his door. Legento and the crew, they're all like, mate, we're sorry, whatever he said. Yeah, we agree. Not on. Yeah.

He's sorry, but we're going to die. Yeah, we're all going to, you're going to die. We're going to stack this in a bad way. And eventually they got him out and he did, he took the wheel and they avoided disaster. But it was like a dramatic, like a very dramatic crew. Wow. And this went on for about 32 days. before he reached Pondicherry.

Oh my God, he made it. Did it. Podji continues. At Pondicherry, he received a grand welcome from the French governor, and he was whined and dined and given carte blanche to set up an observatory. He's like, look, this is, it's all coming together. Okay, I made the right cord to leave, Manila, I reckon. Yes.

What's what you're saying? He got, yes. Just remember saying that. Yeah, yeah. He made the right call leaving Manila. He made the right call. Just remember saying that. He must be stoked.

Nothing can go wrong. He's finally made it. Yes. And so he's got a team. He's got an architect and a crew of stone masons. And he spent a year preparing the building. It was a schmick. It was sick.

It was perfect. And in the meantime, he undertook a study of classical Indian astronomy, particularly their very accurate methods. for predicting eclipses. So he's always learning. He's a sponge this guy. He finds out that the Indian people already know this distance. They're known for thousands of you.

And they're like, to the point, like, oh, can you show me the work is out? Oh, it's like, show me the workers out of what? Two plus two. Yeah, yeah. Okay. It's one banana. Look at it. It's one banana.

I don't know how to describe it. It's 150 million kilometers. It's just, look. Yeah. Oh, oh, God, he's simple. Okay. Yeah So still

A lot of this is from Podji Transit Day approached The weather was perfect Crystal clear Great Good news All the years of preparation Were finally about to pay

What is it? Eight, nine years Yes It's coming together It was worth it And all the great stuff He did along the way But this is the big thing

This is what he wants And you're asking us Could it finally finally all be coming up, Legendil? I think it is. Unfortunately, no. On transit day, the sun rose behind clouds and stayed there all day for the transit of Venus. After nine years abroad and traveling nearly 70,000 miles, he wrote in his journal,

I was more than two weeks in a singular dejection and almost did not have the courage to take up my pen to continue my journal. And several times it fell from my hands. When the moment came to report to France, the fate of my own. operations. The clouds. He built a whole thing specifically. It was sunny until the day. Clouds came like, it was almost like they were like,

fucking, like they were giving him the finger. The clouds came from nowhere and just stayed there and then went away just after. It cleared again just after the transit ended. Nine years. See, it's funny. Yes. But if I'd spent nine years on it, not funny. No.

No, not funny. Now, and Dave, what did you say before? It's a good thing. It was a great choice to leave Manila because Manila was obviously not a great place for him in any way and would not be good for the mission. Now, can I put this to you? Manila had beautiful clear scosity. Huh? You can't see the clear skies in the jail cell.

Can't. That's true. Even if you request a sky view, they can't. They can't guarantee that. That's, that's, obviously, people have booked those out well in advance. Oh, yeah, yeah. Years in advance. Don Jose's like, I don't know how this is to do with spying on us.

You're looking at the sun, but we're not going to let you do it. Spying on my son. No, I'm trying. What would you do in this situation? Oh, my God. Yeah. Well, he had nothing else. to do, but wait in Pondicherry for a ship back home.

Oh, not for a third shot at it. And he had to wait. He's going to wait a hundred years. The weight was long as well. Just nothing went right. He was waiting so long that I guess to help fill in the time. He came down with severe dysentery again. And then a fever that he nearly died from while he's waiting just to leave.

Like, no, he's like insult to injury over and over again. Oh, my God. Finally, in 1770, he got a ticket. He got a spot on a ship heading back. He got a fine as well. Oh, no. He forgot he left his, he was parked in an eight-year parking zone. So he got a spot on a ship that was heading back to Mauritius in 1770.

But yeah, and basically he was like, I would prefer to just find one going back to France. But I just don't want to be in the spot where this is like breaking my heart just being here. Pondicherry is... Because every morning after that beautiful... Exactly. I'm looking at the sun non-stop. Yeah, the locals are like, gosh, I've never seen clouds in this area before. I've never seen clouds.

What were though? What was that? What was a bit of smoke in the sky? Yeah, that was weird. What was that about? So, yeah, he gets to Mauritius. He's waiting for a ship heading back for France. He finally gets a spot on a French.

ship very late in the season. So he's just waiting and waiting. She's on the ship. Now you're a shipment. Here we go. Homestretch. Lux's turning around. Home to see the family.

Afraid not. The Cape of Good Hope, they encountered a hurricane that nearly demastered the vessel. Podgy rides leaking and battered. They barely limped back to Mauritius. So he had to go back. He had to go back again. He wasted no time though and managed to talk himself onto a Spanish warship bound for Cadiz, perhaps.

The ship also ran into storms and took nearly two weeks to round the Cape. In August of 1771, we're getting close to two years after the second transit now. The ship docked at Cadiz, sorry for the pronunciations, and Le Gentile. I'm not, the French ones, I'm getting right, I'm sorry for the Spanish ones. So having had quite enough of sea voyages, he then went overland. Yeah, you'd never be getting on a ship ever again. Yeah, he crossed the Pyrenees on the 8th of October 1771,

finally home in France after 11 years, 6 months and 13 days. On arriving in Paris, he found that the caretaker of his home was incompetent and had been robbed repeatedly. Further, his relatives on hearing a rumor that he had died, had proceeded to loot his estate, stripping it bare. They just all went and took their cuts. They basically had him declared dead. Did you think that they would keep your house for 11 and a half years

in pristine state? He was nobility of some sort. Oh, okay, okay. You know, I think he would have left with that. And he's writing home all the time. Yeah. They're like, yeah, we heard he died. I think he's dead, yeah.

Gosh, I would love to hear from him, but we can't. He's dead. But apparently... The Agadami also heard the rumor and had given his chair to someone else. Like, you know, he lost his chair. It was like, he had a lifetime chair. What do you call it? You had the chair for life.

There's a French term for that, I'm sure. A chefileifa. Something like that. Is that right, Dave? Yeah. So he lawyered up and started suing people. He got back what he could, but basically he was bankrupt. You know.

Fuck me dead. Dude. So great. Dude, it's so grim But I couldn't I couldn't just tell this story if it was all grim

It does finally turn around from Blanker because I imagine the biggest insult is that all this stuff happens to you And 250 years later Three stupid podcasts are laughing at you A misfortune Like You'd be like, shut up

Fuck you And I was skip her over all the things But he discovered You know, he documented things He just turned on He's like, what about the iguana I discovered, fuck. He was doing good stuff for all those years.

But yes, so just finally, in positive news, to finish on a good note, Podji writes that things did turn around, and finally things were coming up. Lejeetude. The Academy Academy created a special chair for him. Hey, there you go. That's what you want. Is it a really small one? It's a high chair.

It was really embarrassing. Yeah. That's for you. They start mushing up bananas from the eat. They bedazzled it for him. He's like, okay. And best of all, Podgi rights, he met, courted, and married a wealthy heiress named Madame Poutier.

They lived together in great happiness and had a daughter on whom Le Genti doted. His memoirs of his journey and his scientific studies of Mauritius, Madagascar and India met with great critical and commercial acclaim and established his fame. It was a best-selling author all of a sudden. Okay. And he went from bankrupt to, you know, building up some cash again because of this. But of course, all good things must come to an end. And our man, Dave, can you say his full name from memory?

Giam Hyacinth Le Genti Glacier. I think he missed a bit, but that's good enough for me. And he died quietly at home on the 22nd of October 1792. After all he went through, his hard-earned good fortune from the end of his life stayed with him. And he had, I was trying to paraphrase Podji. I just read it. And Podji writes, after all he went through, his hard-earned good fortune stayed with him to the last. Had he lived just one more year, his position as a prominent member of the French nobility

would have undoubtedly made him another victim of the infamous reign of terror. period of the French Revolution. So he's like, he died of old age rather than by guillotine if he hung around for another year. All right, so the French Revolution, let me tell you about it, a little joke there. So next week I'm going to tell you about a bunch of the other astronomers who went and attempted or did document the transit. it. But yeah, I'm going to leave it there for now because, yeah.

It's an epic tale. It's an epic tale. Yeah, it's going to be a rare two-parter, but exciting. Will they measure it? Do we know how far the sun is from us? Find out next week. As we learned earlier in the episode, you certainly don't. That's right.

The information has not filtered down. And I thought you were an idiot with your tiny, tiny guess. Wow, Matt, I cannot wait to hear part two of this epic story. And hopefully it's a little more successful for some of the other people. I hope someone gets to the right position. Don't look into it in the next week. Oh, I won't. You'll get home tonight and be like, what was that thing we spoke about today?

That was work today. What did you talk about? No idea. If you're going to reflect on anything over the next week, just think about how it ended so nicely for la genteel. Yeah. Beautiful family. Beautiful family, beautiful fortune. died before, you know, he would have had his head chopped off.

Yeah. Honestly, if he, yeah, if he did end up at the guillotine, you'd be like, this guy can't catch a break. I thought it would have been incredible. Yeah, I'm so glad he died of old age. It almost would have been, like for the story, it would have been, and he got back like the week of. Hey, what's this thing everyone's gathering to see in the square?

Yeah. Oh. If it was like a Rick and Morty episode or something, that's what would happen. You know, like, oh, he'd come back, he'd live, there would be a montage of him. living that beautiful life of finding a partner getting around, and then he'd be guillotined for sure. He's not on the block being like,

I never thought I'd say this, but I miss India. So anyway, thanks so much for listening. I really do appreciate that. You indulging me today. That's to you two and the listeners. But this brings us to everyone's favorite section show. I think a lot of people would have just skipped ahead. I know some people's podcasting have a 30-second skipper.

Others have a two-hour one. And that one, if you just press, that you should skip it back and have a listen it's a wild tale but yes this part of the show a lot of people love it it's where we thank our patreon supporters if you want to be a patron supporter you can sign up at patreon.com slash do one pod it's a bunch of different things you can get there including an ad-free feed of the show you can get the video feed on a certain level which some people will be watching now a hello to you you can also vote on topics which many of them did for this one And yeah, you get access to the Facebook group.

It's all, there's swaps going on. They're already working on the next swap t-shirt, swap for patrons. It's a very beautiful, wholesome part of the internet. It's sort of like our transit, you know. They used to send people there. Now we just send t-shirts in our stead. Oh, we're traveling in the globe, or at least our hats or magnets. Yep.

Or bibs and bobs. Now, and thank you to the group's mum so-for. for always putting that together so well. Anywho, that'll make sense if you are a Patreon, if not sign up and you can fear it out. But, yeah, we spend a bit of the time with the rest of the episode. Just thank you people having a bit of fun, to be honest, if that's okay.

Can we have fun? Come on, we didn't have any fun for the last two hours. Let us have some fun. Come on, now's the time for fun. So the first section of this part of the show, we thank some people on the Sydney-Shaunberg level or above. This section is called the fact quote or question section. How's the jingle goes like this?

Fact quote or question. Ding! He always remembers the ding. She always remembers the singing. I wanted to get involved today. So fuck off. No, sorry about that. I meant to say, so shoot me.

No, fuck off was good. It was powerful. I apologise for that. So fuck you. No, no, fuck you. So, yeah, we've got a few people of written in on the Sydney-Shaenberg level. We get to give us fact a quota question. Or really, whatever they like, to be honest,

brag, suggestion, anything. They also get to give themselves a title. The first one this week comes from Caroline Nightingale, aka psychiatric liaison nurse, dash, I'm unimaginative, and it's just my job. Well, that's your title. What's your title? What's shit?

Looked down at a name tag. Yeah. Name is Nightingale. It could have been Lady with the Lamp. Or as Dave mistitled of that episode initially, The Lamp with the Lamp. Yes, I did. It probably should be.

People are commenting, like, making lamp jokes. I'm like, I don't get it. What? So Caroline has offered us a quote, plus, plash recommendation, plash fact. Oh. Question mark, writing.

Is it a fact? New subscriber to the Patreon after listening for many, many, many years. I found this podcast by mistake when my ex was trying to find a free audio book on Kafka's metamorphosis. And we ended up listening to book cheat. And eventually I decided. I do go on might be good too. I was right. How lovely.

And also that's the ultimate free audio book, the podcast. My ex is long gone. So if any... Good riddance. If any of you are single and willing to relocate to South London, let me know. As in the three of us or listeners? I assume everybody.

Okay, great. Open call. Open casting. Open casting. My fact quote of question is a quote from the brilliant comedian Rob Orton. I don't know. Is that how I say it? Rob Auden, who I would recommend to all your listeners. I saw him do stand up a year or so ago and he said the quote, quote, before we started using mobile phones, no one ever said the words, I'm on the bus out loud.

That's very good. That's very funny. So that's probably not the exact quote because it was some time ago. But I think about it a lot. I guess it's a fact too now because I think of it, probably of the boring variety, but you guys can decide that. I don't think that's a fun fact. That's really fun. That's delightful.

I love when a joke stays with you. That's fine. Thanks for all the brilliant reports. My favourite are Matt's. Holy shit, because I'm also bad at pronouncing words. Oh my God. What an episode for you to have this read out on. And on for you.

Please pass on all my best regards to the Facebook group. I deleted my account 10 years ago, but I'm pretty sure Facebook is way more of a thing in Australia. It's not. It's just, I don't know why. It's just got a better community function on it. Ideally, we would not be existing in such a sort of an overall dank and shitty place of the internet. but it is a nice glowing spot on there.

If any computer types have a better solution, I know people have talked about Discord, I don't understand it. It feels impenetrable to me for some reason. Like some sort of fortress. Yeah. And I can't have sex with it. Is that why just is smirking at me?

I can't have sex with that. Believe me, I've tried. Thank you so much, Caroline. Yeah, welcome into the fact quota questions section. Feel free to send another one in whenever you're already. The next one comes from Harrison Kirby, aka Dr. Jansen Majankis, PhD MD, CFCDFS. Wow.

Wow. So we've got a very medical episode so far. I love that. We're in good hands if there's some sort of crisis. Under my question, do you have a fact quote or question? Harrison has written, a bit of fun. Okay. Okay. Okay. We'll see what this goes.

We'll take facts, quotes, questions, suggestions and bits of fun. Or bit of funds. Harrison writes, Hello Lovelies. Hello. Long time listener first time, maybe only time because I'm so poor. Fact quota questioner. I have a bit of a request that I want to ask from you. No.

I'm willing to listen. Jess has already hit on one of those talent shows. Dave's chair is turned around or the other way? Depending on the positive way. Halfway and I'm stuck. I'm just looking at a wall. I'm upside down. My chair's...

I'm like repeatedly hitting the buzzer. It's not working. It's halfway and I'm stuck. What the fuck is with this? I'm in a 45. We have a bigger budget than this. Dave, you're funny. Ronor Keating is turning around stealing my guy.

I'm fucking hot. I wanted him. You saw me, Ronan. I hit this buzzer. I hit this buzzer. You're a dog, Ronan. Anyway, Harrison writes, so it's a note from Jess,

but Dave, still open to you. I'm shortly going to be performed my first ever festival show at the Colchester Fringe in character as Dr Jansen Majenkist, a conspiracy theorist academic and all-round total loser. And I'm wondering if you guys would be happy to do a small bit at the start of the show. Are you flying us over, mate? Because I'm interested if so. Yeah, I've never been to Colchester.

Colchester. To my knowledge. What was that place called Grubville? Haggistan. Haggistan. Grubville. The memory on this guy. Oh, hang on.

It would be really cool to have a short video of you guys, pretending you're in the middle of an episode and discussing Dr. Jansen Mejankas. You guys are the extremely funny professional, so I'm happy for you to take the lead and what you want to do with it, and I'm excited to see here the end results. Any here, I'm off to enjoy all your bonus episodes and everything.

Okay, love you, bye. Interesting, because that means, because Harrison's on the Sydney, Schoenberg level will have access to the video. I was like, wait, how do we film this? We're already filming it. So, Jess, don't talk and the camera won't go to you. Jess?

Because Jess is out. Dave. Yes, that's me. Unless you want to Jess, of course. I said no. Dave, you heard about this Dr. Jansen Mangenkus? Yeah, I've been following them online. And there's some alarming stuff that's being posted.

Yeah. He's meant to be, is this guy meant to be the same? species as us. This guy's got a peanut brain. And a weird face. Yeah. To be honest, that's not where I wanted to start with it. But yeah, he's an odd looking fella. But there's something about him too. I sort of have an underlying in him. He has a certain quality. A little something. Yeah. Have you been near him? He's musty. No. But looking at the photos, I can imagine the must. But the scent draws me in. I don't know what it is.

You can't shana sequa. Oh my goodness. Yeah, but, yeah. I know, something magnetic about him. But his ideas are stupid. Like the guy, like the guys are... I don't throw this word around easily, but... He's an all-round total loser.

In a lot, I've hyphenated those words. That's one word. I'm going to be honest. I like him. I've come around to him. The more we talk about it, the more I like this guy. Yeah, you say, you know, how you feel, and then you figure out. Yeah.

You're into it. Should we call it? Do you have his number? No, but it's probably here online. Should I look it up? Yeah. Dr. Jansen Majankis. Yes.

I've been fighting these urges for so long, and I refuse to any longer. If you get through, can you ask him about the mole on my back? Yes. Yes. I'm pretty sure he believes moles were placed by aliens. Yeah, that's what I was listening to us. That's why I wanted to get his opinion. Yeah.

Stop speaking in it. Can you cover your mole while you're speaking to me? Was that anything? It felt like something. Stay on for a little longer, Harrison, and ask us to do it again if you want. We'll come back to you, but good luck with your debut show at The Friends. That's very exciting.

Colchester. Hmm. Hopefully that's somewhere near Scumfury. No, what was the place? Haggiston. Haggiston? Haggiston. Grubbsville.

It can't be haggiston because that sounds delicious. Now, finally this week in the fact, quite a question. We got Paige McPhile, aka official birder of the pod. Fantastic. Welcome aboard. Page has a fact slash question writing. The scientific name of the American Robin is turdus migratorious. That's my favorite scientific name for a bird because, loll.

Turdice? Turtus migratorious. Yeah, I love that. But my favourite bird is the Osprey. What are your favourite birds? Ooh. I love a Willie Wagtail. Oh, I love a little Willy wagtail.

Yeah, they're so small, but the tail is impossibly big. Yeah. Similar sort of genre maybe is the superb fairy run. Another cute little bird with a bit of brown-blue. And can't go past the Cucca Burrower. You know, question without notice. Oh, my God, I love a Cucaburra. Yeah, actually, yeah.

Well, I like a rainbow lorrakeet. Oh, four. Beautiful. I don't mind the McCall. Like, I like a bird with, like, their heath. Their claws are, you sort of like, gee, that's pretty, that's pretty fun. Yeah, yeah, you go, oh yeah, they were, they were and are dinosaurs. I like pretty much all owls.

Oh, yeah. But, yeah, Cochabur. The sound of a cucarar, if I, if I moved overseas, the sound of a cucararra would make. Make it your ringtone? I'd we'd we'd take it off silent. For the first time in 10 years. Yeah. I love a cucararer.

Yeah, I love those. I mean, we've got to give a shout. My favourite international bird has got to be the Irish magpie. The Irish magpie. That's a hot bird. That's quite a fuckable purpose. We've got to get back to Ireland. Yeah.

Please. Oh, you're not for a show. I love the Australian magpie too. It's fine. Okay. I think they're beautiful. We're just used to them. The warble is very nice.

And they're so smart and they remember you. I love them. I think they're great. And I've only recently been reading about the differences between, I just thought all Australian cities had the same kind of crow. But there's crows and rae. All the capital cities have a different one. And our one isn't even a crow.

It's called the Little Raven. We've got a Raven. Yeah. A little one. But it's not really that small. Obviously, you say them. They're fucking huge. But they're slightly smaller than they're near relatives.

One kind of, like, threatened me a little bit the other day. Like, it sort of, it did like a little like a back the fuck up. As I was walking along, I was like, yo, I'm just walking down the street here. But I think they're, like, you tell them, you're like, I'm cool. They'll remember you. Yeah. So that's good. Fist bump him.

Fist bump him. So that's up, brother. I mean, you know harm. Birds respect you when you say, I'm cool. I'm cool. Hey, hey, we cool. Yeah, I'm not scared. Yeah, but I am.

Sorry, my dog lunged at you. You got close and he thought he had a chance. Page, I hope some of these answers were okay for you. A great question. If you are in the Facebook group, which I think you might be, Paige, ask that question in the Facebook group. I want to see answers from around the world and pictures. Yes.

Got to have pictures. Thank you so much to Paige Harrison and Caroline for their facts, quotes and questions. The next thing we like to do is shout out to a few of our more recent members. Supportees. Supportees. And aren't we the supportees? I think we support each other. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm not exactly reaping those benefits. Is that why they call you the tripod day? Is this you guys being supportive? So, Jess normally comes up with a bit of a game based on the topic. Yeah, where they have to travel to watch. Jess, how do you feel about this? Yes.

I'm going to read out the names and places that they're from, and you and Dave interchangeably, blank your minds, saying a place. Got it. And I'm not limiting you to this earth or even this astral plane. Oh, so this is where they're witnessing. This is where they have to travel to. They go there and then they see Venus from that. There's no limits in time and space.

You can go to somewhere else in the multiverse, wherever you're like. I'm probably going to keep it on Earth. Okay, I'll probably just. I'm just letting you know. I'll probably just do suburbs of Melbourne. All right, well, so are Dave. All right, from Fir Tree Gully here in Victoria. Or you might have been recently talking around.

I always confused it with that Disney movie. Fern Gulley. Fern Gullie, which maybe wasn't even a Disney movie. But from Furntree. Burn Tree Gully. Thank you so much for your support. Rachel. Rachel's got to make the big journey all the way to the big smoke of Collingwood.

Oh, home of the Megpie. Yes. In a way. In many ways. Yeah. So enjoy the journey. Yeah, probably get a train. Yeah.

Maybe a couple of trains, actually. Stop at Richmond, you know? Rachel hasn't given a surname, but in her email address, it really makes it seem like it might be a... Maybe Rachel didn't want that information. out there in the world. Hmm. All right, bleep, bleep part of that if you need to, AJ.

Pretty common name. Just the end, so it's... We'll never know what it is. Who knows where that's going. Next up from Chicagi, the windy city in Illinois in the United States. Jenny Poth. Jenny Poth has to... It's quite a trek.

Got to get to Jakarta. Oh, my God. Next week, that is one of the... the destinations, or as they called it, then, Batavia. Nicely done, Jess, well done. Thank you so much. Great instincts. Next up from Address and I'm assuming, somewhere dead within the fortress of the

Miles and with a name like this, I'd keep things mysterious as well. Rohan Love Land. Rohan. Rohan Loveland, oh my goodness. Any song, any place to the beach was singing about you want to go there. He's been a sign, Bermuda. Oh, Bahama, come on, Pretty Mama. Yeah, so you'd be happy with that.

Yeah, come on Pretty Mum. Come on, come, come, come. Come on. Come on. Come on. Although back then, you're probably thinking, what are you going to just sending me to a death? I don't remember much about the Permuda Triangle. I did do a report on it one day, though. I don't know if you recall that. Yeah, but you almost weren't here.

Sorry, I couldn't. Sorry, I missed that week. From Spearwood in Western Australia, thanks so much to Brooke Jenkinson. Heading to Joburg. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah. Pretty good.

Pretty good. I think next week we hear about Cape Town. Okay. I don't give a fuck about next week. I'm calling ahead. I don't care. Ring, will you answer? No.

I am screening your call. Stop spoiling next week for me. I'm sorry. I'm so excited. You'll forget. From Aylesbury in Great Britain. Maybe where's B.K. Anyway, it's Paul, oh my God.

Paul, oh my God, that's what you'll be saying, Paul, when you finally get a bit of sun in Broom, Western Australia. Haysbury sounds Scottish to me for some reason. No, it's in Buckinghamshire. Okay, let's close out, let's blank our minds, number between 1 and 10. Think really hard about it. Okay, on the count of three, one, two, three, seven. You too.

Who would have thought you'd both pick? pick the pick a such a beautiful number we didn't we didn't we weren't fucking around with that no that was genuine and I was picturing a number seven and I was trying to send it to you

I felt that do you want to quit while we're ahead or should we do a number between one and a million 100% quit while we're ahead yes one a million let's really test this out 746000

next up from Mansfield ooh in Ohio that's Mansfield here in Victoria but her name's Jane No, that's not true. That's, uh, she's in Hollywood.

It's from Mansfield in God's Country, Ohio. Thanks so much to Two Gun, D.C. Actually, you have to come to Mansfield, Victoria. Oh, beautiful spot. Gorgeous. You were, you lucked out there, too gun. Could I point to it on a map? No.

But a beautiful part of it. Gun to my head. Wouldn't do it. I wouldn't even try. If I know, like it's written there and I can just say, I can probably see it if I had a look. I'm not going to. I'm not going to you can. I'd rather die.

From Sydney, home of the beautiful bridge. Oh, my favorite bridge. In New South Wales, Australia, thank you so much to Ben Naylor. Ben Naylor is travelling all the way to Tunisia. I wonder if Ben's Brian's son or grandson. Probably.

Oh, imagine. And finally, from Madison, Wisconsin in the United States. Thank you so much. Amanda Ney. Amanda Ney is going to Cornwall. Oh, beautiful spot. Beautiful.

Do yourself a favour. Get a pastry. Mm. And in particular, maybe a pasty. Oh, sorry. And one more, a little hidden, uh, something in the rough, let's say. From address unknown. I assume me once again from the fortress of the malls.

Uh, thank you so much to Gem. Oh, now I see what I did there. Uh, Jim traveling all the way to Helsinki, Finland. Oh, check out the architecture. Enjoy that. That's nice. Jem's surname, so that's with F. If they wanted to know.

Wow. My cousin, my cousin Finn, when he was about eight, got to go to Finland, and he was pretty stoked. On the way, in the game, passport controller, you'd be going, huh? Huh? Huh? Seen this? And they're like, yeah, we get that a bit.

Yeah. And we don't call it Finland, so. What do they call it? They call it just Finn. Oh. Let's just land. to that. It's land, yeah.

All right, next up we got a triptage club. Oh, triptitch club. Shall I explain what the tripditch club is? Yeah, do want to quickly do that, please. So this is for people who have supported us for three consecutive years. Is that true? I just had a moment where I was like, I'll take over this, and then I forgot what the triptych club was. People have supported us on Patreon for three straight years.

It's an exclusive club. We have everything you need. Once you're in, you can't leave. But why would you want to? because, as I said, we have everything. I'm behind the bar, and I have actually had the oven fixed. Oh. And now it's as hot as the sun.

Oh, that was how you fixed it. Oh, it did it. And that's what you wanted? Well, before it was very hot. Yeah, but this sounds even hotter. This is even hotter. Yeah. It'll make roasts a lot quicker.

Oh, God. Christmas Day, what are you, set the time to about a split second or less? Yeah. What do you need An entire turkey? I've got it covered. Sordered. Dave books a band.

You are never going to believe this. When Matt revealed the topic, I was shocked. I was so shocked that I went blue. Because this week we are joined by shocking blue. And they'll be playing such hits as Love Buzz. Send me a postcard. Never marry a railroad man. And they will, of course, be closing with VIII.

Beanie. Oh my God. I hope they're open and close with it. A seminal hit. It's a banger. It is a great tune. Great song. Great tune.

Great song. Beautiful. Incredible coincidence. Matt's usually at the door as well. I'm at the door. He's got the, he lifts the velvet rope. He's got the clipboard. He's going to read your name out.

That's right. Dave's going to hype you up. I'm going to hype up Dave. Yes. So it's all thin of the mind. Dave's in there. I'm saying he's hyping us all up. Are we ready to go?

Yes. We got six names here. First up from Seattle. If you hear your name, come on here. and everyone from Seattle's going, oh, could it be. From Seattle, welcome in Mark Smith. Do you feel a spark? Because I feel a mark.

Ooh, he's touching you. In, on the shoulder. Appropriately. With permission. Yeah, non-erogynous zone or touching. Non-orogynous. From Edinburgh in Great Britain, Scotland would be precise, I think. Welcome in, Becca warring, warring.

Let me checker you in, Becca. Right this way, VIP service. Oh, you're on the list. You are here. From, I'm bound to butcher this, but why stop pronouncing things right now? From Cotterkill in New York in the United States. Welcome in Kieran Ligin Casey. Kieran, no fearing.

Ooh, fearless. From St. Kilda West here in Melbourne. Welcome in Kala Blues. Tonight the band will be renamed Shocking Kala. Is that a blow, shocking blue. Woo! You are hard to support sometimes. I'm not feeling the blues, you know, I would have thought.

But anyway, finally from Brumfield, in Iraq and Colorado in the United States. Welcome in to the club, Tim Conley. Well, they say the man is him. It's Tim. Welcome and Tim. Calak here and Becker and Mark. Make yourselves at home. Grab a, you know, a very quickly cooked roast of whatever you like.

Whatever you like. We've got a whole barnyard here. We'll roast whatever livestock you like. Point out which pig you want. Cooked, I'll do it. Yeah. That's how fancy we are. You can pick your pig.

Pick your pig. Or pick your whole cow. I don't care. Pick your whole cow. Oh, on that one. Pick your cow. Jess will burn it from tip to taint, as I say. That is correct.

I don't know how to cook meat. I'm a vegetarian. It's a crispy pig. Is that what you want? I don't know. And the last thing we do now, we have for the last few months, welcome in a couple of people in the Triple Tripititch Club. This is for people amazingly who have been supporting us for nine straight years on the shoutout level or above.

Holy shit. We opened a second new door in the Triptage Club into the Triple Triptage Club in there. I think we've still got Leonardo DiCaprio for a little longer. We've paid him the big bucks to paint your portraits for anyone who's in there. Portraits. And he'll paint him in any style. The man is talented. But if you like, can you ask him real nice?

He'll paint you like one of these French girls. So two inducties this week. These people have been for nine years. What absolute freaking legends. If you hear your name, come grab your golden key. Then Dave. I'll salute you and compliment you. And Jess will give you a kiss.

And I will give you an episode from our back catalogue for you to be, well, to have and to hold. You know, in sickness and in health. You are, well, I can never remember with this word. The custodian. Thank you, Jess. All right. So we got two today. I'm so excited.

This is one of them I know quite well, and Jess and I met him maybe around nine years ago. From Kalsundine in Queensland, welcome into the Triple Triptitch Club, Kieran Donahue. Kieran, never stop smiling. Salute. That's true. You got his measure.

How a smiley guy. I think I've seen the photo. And from, yeah, we met, where did we meet him at a original gig in Victoria years ago. And secondly, and finally, from Redditch in Great Britain, welcome into the club, make yourself at home,

allow me to introduce you to Leonard or DiCaprio. Ellie and Nicholas. Ellie, have a cup of tea on me. That's like compliment. It's like an affirmation or like, Okay. That's an affirmation. I'm giving Ellie permission.

To have a cup of tea. Have a relax. Have a bit of you time. Leonardo Cabrio's over here waiting to paint. And Dave's like, I know someone's going to really cheer up. You're going to have a cup of tea. On me. Treat yourself after five minutes.

You time. I'm giving you a bag. Hang on. I have to give Ellie a kiss. Oh, yes. Oh, that was really good. That one felt fizzy on my lips. Oh, I forgot to say, Kieran, you are the proud owner and colour.

custodian of episode 29, Turkmenistan president Sapa Marat Niazov and his crazy antics. That was a good ep. Welcome to Plain. Please look after it. And also Dave will probably give you some salt as well.

Everyone gets free salt. And Ellie. Wow, this is another big one. Was it potentially Mesa's first ever report? It was Mesa's report on the Marvel universe, episode 30. Which he amazingly just rift from his mind. Wild. What a guy.

He just had to be. He has the whole thing in there. And that's for you. You can listen back to that episode while sipping your tea, Ellie. And I will. I've got to get around to it before this gets out of hand. But I'm going to edit in the description of these episodes, Custodian in their name.

That's fun. Yeah, a bit of fun. That's fun. So, yeah, people might have to delete and read download the episode, I think, to make that work. I swear, otherwise, it's not me. It's not me not having done it. It's the system. I can really get it on the front foot.

Yeah. Maybe turn it off and on again. All that brings to the end of the episode, anything we need to tell people just before we get. And we love them so much that we thank them for listening. If you would like to suggest a topic, you can. There's a link in the show notes, or it's on our website, which is do go onpod.com. And you can find us on social media at do go on pod or do go on podcast on TikTok.

Dave, boot this baby home. Hey, we'll be back next week with another episode. Usually we don't know what it's going to be on. But hey, we all do now part two of the fantastic measuring of the transit of Venus. But until then, I'll say thank you so much for listening and goodbye. Later. Bye. Don't forget to sign up to our tour mailing list so we know where in the world you are

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