Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Total Solar Eclipse Explained: Live!

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

It's time for a bonus episode! this time, we flew all the way to Spain to record a live podcast under the total eclipse. We brought a ton of gear and crew to do our best to make it feel like you were right there with us so we hope you enjoy! This episode is in partnership with AirBnB! Thanks to AirBnB for helping make this possible. Watch BTS on The Studio channel: https://youtu.be/ZrAkCJS9H1s Follow us on socials: Marques: https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd Andrew: https://www.threads.net/@andrew_manganelli David: https://www.threads.net/@davidimel Adam: https://www.threads.net/@parmesanpapi17 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin Waveform Threads: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Waveform Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/waveformpodcast/?hl=en Waveform TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Intro/Outro music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Marquez told me that if I can tell him a fact he's never heard about an eclipse, he'll give me $100 per fact. And then what did you do? Did you look up a bunch of crazy obscures? I looked up facts Marquez did not know about the igloor. So, you literally Google. Bring him on. All right. Did you know? Yo, what is up? People of the Internet, welcome back to another very special bonus episode of the Wayform podcast. We're your host. I'm Marquez. I'm Andrew. And I'm David. And I'm Alice. Yeah, I'm Adam.

So audio listeners, this one, I don't usually say. this, but I'm going to recommend fully 100% that you switch to the video version, because if you are watching that, you can see we're in a totally different location. The Wayform Studio is out in Zaragoza, Spain today. And I say out because we're outside. Literally, under the sun, baking. Yeah, we're baking in the heat. But for a very special occasion, because we're here to see a total solar eclipse today. The eclipse has already started, but the total is going to be happening during this episode, which is very exciting. And about how long? In a About, well, there's a little clock in front of you.

A little clock, excuse you. This is the Elio Rufus 9,000. This is a custom-built eclipse timer complete with live ambient temperature, live light meter reading, like obscurity percentage reading. This is the real deal, bro. And I can't read it quite from here, but I think there's probably about 41 minutes till totality, which is very exciting. Thanks to Airbnb for helping make this possible.

This is a very different podcast. best, but I'm so excited. I'm so excited we got to do it. Okay, so I just want to jump in real quick to explain just in case anyone doesn't know what is a total slurred clips. Why are we doing this? Why are we here? Why do we want to see it? As you probably already know, the moon orbits the earth, and every once and while they line up in just the right way where the moon casts a shadow on the earth. Prove it. You'll see. You'll see. Give me 40 minutes. You'll see. But when that does happen, in that shadow, it creates a pretty phenomenal effect, and in the center of that shadow, a total

Total Solar Eclipse, turns day to night briefly. I have all sorts of fun facts. I want to go through with you guys as we lead up to that. Real quick, why are we in Spain to see this versus New Jersey? It's a really great way. There's a lot of reasons, Andrew. Fantastic question. I'll start with one of our fun facts, which is the width of that shadow is only 50 to 150 miles wide as it passes on planet Earth.

And so there's just a very narrow band where you actually get to see the moon block out the sun. And for this particular eclipse, we are right near the end of that band. This shadow goes from Greenland to Iceland to the edge of Portugal and through Spain. We thought about many of these other places to possibly shoot this podcast. But we ended up landing here. Maybe we should go over the backstory of how we got here and how we ended up choosing and actually putting this together at this spot. How does this all start? Well, like all great stories, this one begins in Ohio.

You knew that's what you're going to say? Like, ever good story. Yeah. Okay, so this is a complete, a literal complete coincidence that this happened, right? You might have watched our autofocus video about hybrids, right, on the main channel. We went out to a car collector in Ohio to go shoot that. And then I remember seeing a bunch of headlines on Twitter about how, oh, there's going to be this total solar eclipse in the continental United States. If you get the chance to make the road trip to get to the path of totality, you should totally go see it.

And I looked it up. And unfortunately, it was conflict during our shoot. But luckily, it happened to be exactly where we were shooting. So we went out and we shot that. And when the eclipse happened, we put all our cameras down for most of them. And we paused the car shoot and we just watched an unbelievable eclipse happen. And to me, personally, that's the coolest thing I've ever seen. It was the coolest thing I've ever seen.

And so I, you know, we've up there. Several of us now have seen it. You weren't even there. He was in Ohio. I was in Ohio. Well, I would love if by the end of this eclipse, you guys can all weigh in on what you think of it. But yeah, this was my inspiration to see another one. And that was 2024.

That was 2024. The last one. And we have clips in Slack of you putting footage of you guys all freaking out trying to yell. Like, oh, my God, what's happening? Oh, the clickets. Oh, my God, I can't hear anything. It was so cool. Yeah.

It was so cool. So here we are for this eclipse. It has actually already begun. Oh, I'm so sorry. Oh, that's one interruption. Yeah, yeah. The Eleo Rufus 9,000 will be interrupting us from time and time. That one is just to announce that we are about 20% obscuration, obscurity.

I don't know what the actual word is. I do know to Google that before flying all the way to Spain. But, yeah, so at 20% obscurity, as I'm sure you know, Marquez, there's no difference. There's no difference. It's not, you can't tell. But can anyone actually read the temperature just so we can take note of how much because the temperature will be dropping. Brandon, can you see the temperature here?

91. 99. 92. 91. It's begun. Almost as hot as the podcast studio. It's true. Almost.

It is. That's the Greece's Fahrenheit, by the way. Even though we're in Spain, we're still doing Fahrenheit. Yeah, it's very hot out here. Okay, so the original plan was we got to go, we got to see this eclipse. But which one of these places do we choose to go see it, right? Because it goes through Greenland, which is really close to, like, the, the, North Pole. It's super remote. That was already a little bit wild. There's kind of no roads and

no plans out there. Then it goes through the west coast of Iceland. That one is interesting. Very tempting. I would love to go to Iceland and see a total solar eclipse. Seeing is the harder part in Iceland. Yeah, we're a little spooked. The weather changes very quickly in Iceland. It can be sunny and then it's cloud. If you have a weather app, don't even have a weather app. There's no point. Yeah, just look up. Marcus will still have a weather app? Yeah, I'll still have the weather app, but it is constantly cloudy out there. Marquez has a weather app for that. Okay, somewhere.

I have my Doppler predictions. I can see when it's, it is currently, as of this very moment, cloudy and a little bit of rain in Iceland. So I think we made the right call. But then we saw that it also went through Spain and a little bit of Portugal. And that sounds fun. So we started this whole long scouting journey because, as you can see by this video set up, we have this all very well planned.

So we've got our tables and our chairs and everything. I'm dead serious. But if we get a behind-the-scenes of this, we have this wide shot where the eclipse, where the sun sets behind us will be right in the middle of the frame, which is amazing. Pretty crazy. It's pretty sick. If you want to see, there will be a studio video up by the time this comes out. So you can see how all of this was shot. This came together in quite the flurry.

But there's so many moving parts. We also had to find a place that we could actually shoot this and not be. surrounded by other people trying to look at the eclipse because it's a pretty common thing to actually go travel to go see the eclipse and experience it photograph it video it and that's all of spain right now is people trying to find cool places to shoot this so we had to find a place that we could get like a low on the horizon view of the sun that would not be filled with people so we actually managed to do that shout to harper she's also behind this camera over here and so there's many more many more factors that we all went through we had to find a hotel at

that wasn't already booked because people are traveling here. It was a whole thing. But now we have found this spot, and I think we did a pretty good job. What do you guys think of the scenery? Oh, my gosh. Are you kidding? I don't know if the exposure will let you see super clearly, but behind us is the most gorgeous valley of vineyards.

It's just lush green pastures all the way to the mountains in the back of our scenes. Yeah, you can superimpose this in post. It's unbelievable. Audio listeners, close your eyes and imagine. Unless you're driving. Unless you're driving. Don't do that. Wash the dishes.

Yeah. There's also... Start away from the dishes momentarily to appreciate this year. You can imagine that your plate you're washing is the sun and the cup. Yeah. The sponge. So it's cool about this, and I think we're going to try to get a drone up later to really get a good view of it. But what's cool about this is we're elevated a little bit, and there are some very distant mountains.

I'm going to guess they're like 100 miles away. I really have no idea how far away they are, but they're pretty far away on the horizon. And there's this huge valley between us. and the mountains. And when the shadow finally reaches us, we're going to see that shadow, like, race across the valley at like a thousand miles an hour. What? And it's going to be a pretty excited. Okay, that I didn't know. A thousand miles an hour? By the way, I have looked up a lot of eclipse stacks. I am full of them. I was saying earlier, I'm approaching NealdaGrasse Tyson levels of complete coverage of this topic. So anyway, was that an eclipse pun? Yeah, yeah.

Oh my God, he's on it today. For weeks, I've been like, Marquez, how's the doc coming along? He's like, Don't worry. I got it. I got a doc. I have a separate doc that I haven't shared with you guys, which has a bunch of trivia questions about eclipses. And if you're down, I would like to be like the sort of interim trivias are

and ask you guys. These are meaningless points. It doesn't matter. Wait, no, what do we win? I want to win something. You get the eclipse classes. If you get one wrong. Oh, God, deal.

But I do have a separate dock secretly that you haven't seen full of eclipse facts. At some point, I'll ask you some questions about eclipses. Okay. One thing that comes up a lot when shooting or when looking at eclipses is people want to take pictures of them, take videos of them. We are actively doing that right now. We have a couple methods that we're using that we'll get into in a second. But I figure since we have David, we should talk a little bit about what it's like to point a camera at the sun.

Or if that's even a good idea. It's a bad idea. Generally, we're kind of doing it because we have solar filters. We have all this kind of stuff. If you have enough NDs, you can stack them. You can make sure that you're not setting your camera on fire. You said a lot of words, I don't know. that you probably know more.

Yeah, bring it down. What's a solar filter? A solar filter. Okay. There's a lot of different types of radiation that are coming out of the sun. You know, it's heat, it's gamma radiation. It's all this types of radiation.

Solar filter is basically a really, really, really, really strong ND. ND is neutral density. Basically just cuts the amount of light that goes through the filter and reaches the other side. These are effectively solar filters, these little glasses that you would put on. This is what we use to look at it.

Fun fact about these eclipses. Until it gets to a very, very certain point near the center, the amount of light that's coming at you, like relative to what your eyes are picking up, is almost the same. So when you look through these glasses and you look at the sun, that eclipse could be half done. And still, if you look at the sun with your bare eyes, which you shouldn't do, especially if you're a human. Bare eyes. Unless you're driving. Unless you're driving. It's still going to be way too bright and you're going to set your brain on fire. Now, what a lens is is basically a telescope. It's like a telescope. What happens when you raise

you know, a microscope off from the concrete, it sets ants on fire. You don't want to do that to your camera sensor. That's bad. That's really bad. Yeah, so the lens is focusing whatever light comes through onto the sensor. Yes. Pointing it directly at the sun's probably not the best idea.

Probably bad. That's why we're putting the filters on in front of it. Yeah. I'm pretty proud of our setup. Over on this side right here, you've got a little close-up camera with a, what is that, a 500 that we're all the way zoomed in on with the solar filter in front of it.

I'm just 600 millimeters about the right focal length generally to shoot an eclipse. If you want to get like the whole corona and everything going on. It's going to be moving through the sky and so we'll adjust that. I'm just proud of this setup. I've looked online for videos of people watching eclipses, and yes, there's lots of videos of this, but I don't know if it's ever been done quite like this. We're going to try to like lock exposure so you can see the light change as we sit here.

We're going to try to get close-ups of the sun. We obviously have Ellis's... The Elio Rufus 9,000. The Elio Rufus 9,000. So it's a whole thing. Yeah, very exciting. Your camera, if it has autofocus, do not use the audio. to focus to take a picture of the sun.

It's really bad at tracking the sun. It's essentially infinity. It's effectively. And your camera is not good at focusing at infinity. It uses contrast and things like that to focus. So set it to manual, go all the way. Use it between F8 and F11. That's where the lens is the sharpest.

Nice. You've really got to hone in right there. Would all this also apply to film? The film thing is weird because you don't want to be taking pictures of the sun at all until the actual total solar eclipse is happening. That is mostly true. However, you're metering for middle gray, which means everything's going to be a little bit of like a mid-tone.

If you want to be able to bring out those highlights, you want to overexposed by a little bit. But the cooler photos when you're taking a photo of eclipse, a lot of people will just zoom in, zoom in all the way and just get the eclipse happening. That's cool, in my opinion, way cooler photos is to get environmental photos, your friends, your family, context,

some very cool photos from Mexico. of an eclipse happening and there's like crazy birds flying around because animals famously freak the hell out when the eclipse happens because it gets really cold really quickly. You can actually feel it getting colder already. Yeah, the crickets going off, I think was my favorite thing that happened in 2024. Just like, it's night? Yeah, it went from suddenly daytime to suddenly nighttime and all the animals behaved in weird ways. I slept through my alarm.

I did see cricket earlier, so I'm kind of hoping we get some of it there. Confirm, they're here. So another fun fact about eclipses is, well, we know enough about the solar system and the celestial bodies in it that they're predictable. Like we know when they're going to happen and where. And for the next thousand years, we know all the eclipses that are going to happen and when they're going to happen and where in the sky they'll happen. And we knew that this one was going to be low in the sky. And at first, that concerned me a little bit. I thought, oh, it's not going to be really that bright when it turns to night.

So maybe it'll be less dramatic. And the one we experienced in Ohio was the middle of the day. It was overhead and it went to nighttime and that was crazy. But from what I understand, because this one is right at the very end of the eclipse, the shadow is really elongated and will sweep in really fast and it'll get darker, faster. Oh, no. And so I'm looking forward to seeing that. That's going to be crazy.

Faster than the last one, because the last one felt like a light switch. The last one, and I have videos of this because our memories are cruel. They sometimes confuse us. I thought it was like a 10 minute eclipse. I went back and watched my video of it. about the last two minutes that it started to really rapidly get darker. Yeah, two minutes of getting dark, which is still very fast. I retract the elephant comment. But I'm excited to see that be a little bit different. Plus the different colors of it being Spain and having, you know, this little

sunlight light that we're having. It'll be cool. I just looked at the sun again. Stop looking at design. It's so tempting. Perceived brightness and luminance is also logarithmic. It's going to be like we can see, we can see, we can see, and then instantly just boom, when it gets in the center. And why is it logarithmic, David? I don't know. It's your favorite thing. It's the inverse square law. Oh, yeah, inverse square law.

Yeah, that's true. The further away a light source is, I know it is my favorite thing. It's fine. So there's a trivia question I'd like to ask you guys. Oh, God. Okay. All right. So there's a very special reason why a total solar eclipse is possible and why it looks the way it does.

There's a term actually that I want to just jump in and make sure we have here called magnitude. And when the magnitude of the sun and the magnitude, of the moon are equal, essentially when they're the exact same size in the sky, and they overlap each other coverage, magnitude is 1.1.0. And so a perfect 1.0 is a total solar eclipse, right? Does anyone know why that's possible, why that happens exactly perfectly in the sky? Magic? Magic. Coincidence? I'm going to play, we don't have a speaker out, but in post, I'm going to add the trivia waiting music. Nice. Nobody knows? Why does it happen? Why the moon can go possible because lots of other planets have moons.

But if you watch a solar eclipse on Mars with its moon Europa, you just see a chunk floating in front of the sun and it doesn't fully eclipse the sun. It doesn't cover the sun. Magnitude never reaches one. But on Earth, for some reason, we have this perfect one-to-one. It's not just like luck. It's not just like... It is luck.

Oh. I guess that's a fair answer. But the answer is because it appears... So the moon is... what 250,000 miles away, something like that? I wouldn't know. I'm a kilometer. 250,000 miles away.

Yeah. So the sun is 400 times further away, but it's 400 times bigger. Whoa. Oh. So because of that perfect ratio, they appear the same side. So that's how we get the one. Yeah. So it really is just a random stroke of luck.

It's just a random stroke of luck. That's crazy. Mark, has yesterday you asked me my favorite moon fact. Is that your favorite moon fact? It might be, honestly. So the one, you want to say the one that you said? I said my favorite moon fact is what I assume is also based on luck

that the moon rotates at about the same rate it revolves so that we always see the same I think I think that's very beautiful and poetic but I don't know if that's because of some law of the universe or if again it's just kind of based pure chance which is pretty crazy so some things just spin in the sky is what you're saying

what well one revolution of the moon since it revolves is the same length as one orbit so it always faces us perfectly. Are there other moons that are turning? Yeah. The moon is hitting a perfect parallaxe. Exactly.

All the time. The moon best camera person confirmed. Yeah. The moon is actually just hitting trick shots all day and night. Anyway, okay, quick break. This bonus episode is done in partnership with Airbnb, so shout out to them. You don't need an eclipse to go to Spain. The travel is a lot of the joy that we get to experience.

in the first place. And it should be immersive. It's not just about the tourist landmarks. It's about getting to know the people and the culture and seeing the world through fresh eyes. And so Airbnb is really the perfect way to do that. I've used Airbnb to book a lot of stays in the past. I've been lucky enough to travel all over the world for Ultimate Frisbee, as you guys have probably noticed by now. And I'm going directly to the World Club Championships after this in Ireland. And of course my team booked a really nice place to stay with Airbnb. The last time we had a world championships four years ago, we also booked a place to stay with Airbnb,

and it was awesome, and we won. So we can't rule out Airbnb being parsing. Nope. Can't rule it out. So thanks to Airbnb, when you explore new cultures and meet new people, you discover new things about yourself, and Airbnb is the best way to book the perfect stay

for your next adventure. So shout out to them for sponsoring this episode. Shout out to Marquez for that one day. Wow, one day is crazy. We couldn't screw it up because of the clock. Yeah, this is all real time. This is real time. time.

Yeah. I was waiting for you to screw up so that I could be like, everyone always asks what we do in ad breaks, and you can screw up. Now we're cooking. Marquez told me that if I can tell him a fact he's never heard about an eclipse, he'll give me $100 per fact. And then what did you do? Did you look up a bunch of crazy obscures?

I looked up facts Marquez did not know about the igler. You literally Google. Bring them on. All right. Did you know? Did I know? That helium, let me try to see if I know before you've revealed the whole fact. Word per word.

Word for word. Did you know that helium? Uh-huh. Do you know it yet? It's one of the gases in the corona? No. is the only element we didn't discover on Earth. Okay.

Healing is the only element we didn't discover on Earth. But rather that we discovered on the sun, no? Wait, you mean that like balloons predate, like are after space travel in the tech tree? That's exactly what I'm saying. You're saying that the periodic table had no helium on it, and that was the first element, maybe the only element that was discovered by looking out into the sun and stars. during an eclipse in India, they saw a band of color that they didn't know what it was. Wait, who banned it?

Oh, they banned the color, yeah. I can't see it. They saw banned color, yeah, sorry. And just like in our episode about how the James Webb WST, James Webb Space Telescope sees into the past, they used that to pinpoint the exact element that was happening. And they didn't know what it was. and they named it Helios, Helium, Helios, after the sun. That's why it's called helium, and that's how I discovered it.

Do you know how I know you get the hundred bucks? Because Marcus went, oh. Yeah. You don't say that when you know it already. Can I get a chance at $100? That's good. I don't know if that's an eclipse. I guess it's an eclipse.

It was during an eclipse. Yeah, yeah, that's fair. I'll give you that. They saw it around the Corona. What year did you say? 1868. But the James Webb Space Telescope? No, no, no, no.

Just like during our day, did J.OBST episode where they use the elements. They discover, whatever. You just listen to it. Listen to the episode. That's a good one. I did not know that.

Wow. 100 bucks. 100 bucks. There it is. I have another one. You want to go back to back? You can go for back to back. You want me to go back to back?

Now Marquez's another fun fact. Now if you didn't know this one, you owe Marquez a hundred bucks. No, no, no, no. Just double or nothing. I'm trying to remember it. I have to open my laptop. Can I throw one out there? Which Marquez knows because you read this.

So, listener of the show, Tom is an astronomer and sent us a bunch of facts, asking to get as obscure as possible. And the way I know Marquez's research much as he was like, I've read- Another eclipse button. Nice. I was working on that. But there was one where he knew a little bit about it. But so in 2024, amateur astronomers discovered a comet during the eclipse.

Oh. Sorry, that one's not really anything either. It's just 50% obscurity. Oh, okay. I can tell. Yeah, looking at it. Which was then, so Marquez knew about the comet during the eclipse, but it was then destroyed.

the next day during its closest approach to the sun. Something also similar happened in 1882 in Egypt where they saw a comet and then never saw it again. Wow. That's crazy. That's wild. Okay, I remembered mine. Okay, so maybe this one doesn't count, but the other one did, for sure. All right.

So the Spanish are preparing for a really intense hit to their power grid because five megawatts of energy is going to drop between the 90 seconds that the eclipse is happening, which is 13% of their total grid code. capacity during that time. Yeah, we passed a lot of solar panels. I was noticing that. A lot of solar.

13% of the total energy they are receiving at any given time is just going to disappear. And so they are like a little bit worried that people might lose power. And they need to make sure that like all of the stored energy actually can get pushed through the grid. That is a fun fact. 13%. Wait, did you know that? That's 100 bucks. I did not know that.

I'm telling you. That's good. That's really good. We got fun facts. Yeah. Mark has your turn. I can see it. I can see it slowly starting to get slightly dimmer.

I don't know if you guys are feeling that too. The shadows are a tiny... The sun is officially half covered. Yeah. And it feels a little different. Yeah. But it's not like dramatic yet. Yeah.

Just a little... Oh, I look direct. Okay. Don't do what I did. Okay. Let me see if I have another fun. Oh, yeah. Okay.

So eclipses are very predictable, as you know. You look so excited. So we can look forward on the calendar. And just decide, like you guys are probably ready to heard about the next major eclipse, which is Egypt. Egypt in 2028 or 27, which has a famously six and a half minute totality. Crazy. Which is insane. The one that we are going to witness when we reach a 1.0 magnitude is about 90 seconds long, which is still crazy.

90 seconds of no sun in the sky is still crazy. But six and a half minutes is historically long. That's long. Do you guys know the longest total solar eclipse that is theoretically possible on planet Earth? Seven minutes and 28 seconds. I feel like you spoiled this at dinner last minute. I think you did. But I can't remember.

Seven minute 29 seconds. Were you paying attention? To Marquez talking at dinner? I thought it was seven. We don't have whiteboards but you can all just, uh... Yeah, I'm saying seven to nine. It was like seven 28 or something. I'm putting the sixes. I'm gonna go say, I'm just since 45.

No. Taking the over. Yeah, David know that it's a just short, just short of seven and a half minutes. I knew Dave was paying an exemption because he wanted a hundred bucks. Theoretical eclipse possible. So that one next year, not that I have plans to go, but if anybody's going to be in northern Egypt or northern Africa in 2027, you're in for a treat, my friends.

Long, it's so long you have to go. How far did we travel for the 90-second eclipse? For this? We brought nine people who traveled an eight-hour flight, a three-hour car ride. Seven cameras. Closer to like 10 hours for some of us. This is funny.

My goals and rule, Actually, maybe you have this rule too. I have a golden rule whenever I'm playing Frisbee for like pickup or any random stuff. I don't like to drive for longer than I'm going to play. So if it's like an hour long of pickup, I won't drive more than an hour to go. We totally broke that rule for it. We are witnessing a 90-second event that we traveled days for. Yeah, but we're potting for eight hours.

True. And this is an elite amazing podcast. Wait, Andrew, you said for some of us, the drive was more than three hours. We got a flat tire on the way. That's true. Full story on the studio channel. But at least you got a flat tire in like a super fun populated area full of stuff to do, right? Listen.

I'm going to say truck stop, but compared to truck stops like in Carney, it was a pretty sweet truck top. And there's an adorable dog that kind of looked like Mac. So if I'm going to sit behind at a truck stop, I'm going to do it with a dog that looks like my old old ones. Very cute. That's pretty fine. Working on pixel content and the Spanish sun. I have a bunch of sweet pictures of David working on a bunch of articles in random spots along the side of the highway. I have another, I have another

random trivia question for you guys. Hey David to us. So David has one point. I don't know if we're keeping track. One, I thought it was due. One point and $200. Oh yeah. Well, that's separate.

All right. So officially this is the second solar eclipse that some of us have seen, which we traveled and went specifically out here to see this one. Wow, it's getting a little darker. Yeah, you get set out of getting... There is a term.

61% obscurity, and we've dropped about 4,000 luxes. It's chill or too. I feel like it's not hot. Yeah, it's getting colder for sure. Nice and chilly. What's the temperature? 88.

88. It feels like 78. That's crazy. Sweet. There is a term specifically, a Google, a dictionary defined term for people who go and travel and go see eclipses specifically. Do you know what this word is? Eclipse chaser. Wait, wait.

An eclipse chaser. Yeah, buddy. I do this one. You know the word? Oh, it's an actual word for Eclipse Chaser. It is a word for Eclipse. It's a word for a solarometer. Wait, yeah.

Is it like a, is it a port? Portman Toe is like two words combined, or is it just one word? It is one word. Solar file? Damn, I was going to say heliophile. Is it just astronomer? Lover of the sun. You guys are on the right track.

I don't want to give it away, but that's not a bad guess. Is it a... Solarometer. I'll keep giving you hints until you get it. On a scale of 1 to 10, how silly is it? It's like a 5. It's kind of silly. Oh, so it's kind of silly.

Midwimsy. Midwimsy. Is it a coverage enthusiast? You're close. Solar enthusiasm. Combine what you just said with what you said earlier. A file or the solar file? Is it a cover file?

You're close now. You're close now. It's a... It's Latin root. Oh. Cover file. You're so close. If you don't know it now, it's got.

Mova file. That's fine. Hit me. An umbra file. The Latin word for shadow is someone who chases eclipses and travels for them. So we're all umbra files. I'm going to go look at this.

Yeah. Did you have to look recently? It's like crescent moon right now. Holy moly. Holy moly. Okay, that is a full crescent sun. Wow. We might be close to the podcast where none of us are looking at the camera anymore.

Because is this what you'd call a waxing gibbis sun? This is waning, but yes. It is a waning crescent, the opposite of what you said, actually. But it's pretty cool. Give us the sun. Oh, I looked at it and it didn't hurt. Yeah, it did. It did.

It did. It did hurt for a second. It was a quick glance. Don't do it. Don't do that. Don't do that. So we're getting close. I think you'll have to excuse me. I'm going to try and put the drone up. We're going to do it. It's happening. I like this idea. Good luck. While you do that, can I talk a little bit?

I'm going to start getting it right again. What's the time left? So we're about 14 and a half minutes from total. It's crazy how interesting the light is getting right now. This looks beautiful. Do you think if we held up like a... You see that Hat Harper has right there? Yeah.

Can you bring that hat over here? So what I see a lot of people doing, when the sun gets really, really small, it's like a point light in the sky. And people will bring literally like a colander, like a strainer or whatever. And when you do and you hold it up to the light, the shadows are like crescent-shaped.

This is because it's like a pinhole camera. Exactly. So this is a bunch of pinhole cameras. I am seeing the thing where, depending on the angle you hold stuff at, your shadows get softer and sharper. And this specific eclipse, the shadows go horizontally. So you're going to have to have

some sort of surface to shine it on to. Thank you. This is a total coincidence that we have this crate, but it's got these slots in it. Great coincidence. Oh, that's so weird. Wait, take a video. Look at these.

You can kind of see it. You can kind of see it. Yeah, it'll get more interesting. Okay, as we go. A pinhole camera is basically any small, tiny, tiny little hole that inverts the light that's coming through that hole. The more circular, the smaller. Oh, there it is.

Look at that. You can basically make a pinhole camera out of anything. And the reason it gets really interesting is because the light source is the sun, which has a mask on it now. And because it has a mask, all of the little doplets are going to have little shapes. Are you ready for this? I'm ready. See the bottom? See the holes in this?

See the circle in the middle? I said, oh, there's a circle. We got a circle. Whoa. That ain't no circle. Oh, I see it. There's a singular circle. Yeah, that's a crescent circle.

It's supposed to be a circle. I don't know if you're going to be able to catch that. Adam's pointing his camera at it. We'll cut it in if it looks any good. Yeah, if not. Sorry. We'll just bump the contrast up to 1,000. A thousand, yeah.

I'll just put a Michael graphic. How quickly can he turn these around? Yeah. Yeah. That is pretty awesome. Yeah. All right. I did mention the width of the path of totality earlier, so I guess that's off the table for points. Only 150 miles or so to really be in the path of totality. Yeah, that's the path of like how wide it is for you to be in the center of the shadow where a magnitude is one and you get a total solar eclipse.

Of the heart? A 99% solar eclipse will look like this. It will look like it's daytime. It won't get nearly as dark. So I'm very excited for the dramatic. Yeah, I remember last time when you guys were in Ohio, I remember going to the beach that day to try to get a better look at it. And you couldn't tell.

Because you had a partial. Yeah, unless you had the glasses. With the glasses and you looked at it, then you can see a little bit of the obscurity. Yeah. Other than that. That's crazy. All right, here's a crazy fact. Let's go.

There's zero shot you'll ever get it, so I won't even try to ask. I'm just going to tell you the fact. Okay. The next Halloween total solar eclipse. What? 2692. That's a wild. Oh, wow.

I'm going to go to that. The last New Year's Day total solar eclipse. The last one. Was 1889. Oh. That's actually pretty recent. That's around for that one. When's the next one?

Which holiday? Uh-huh. Can you never get a total solar eclipse? Seco to my day. Holiday. The leap year. My birthday. Holiday.

Christmas? Is it Christmas? I'm pretty sure. Cinco de Mayo. I said that already. No. No. Holiday.

July 4th. No. In Spain. Oh. That is, sorry. That's a call for our temperature check, which I guess we sort of already did. But, Rufus, I can't, can you yell at me? 87.9.

So we dropped to 0.1. It feels a lot cooler, though. Yeah, it feels breezy. That's fine. The droplets on my back are not falling as often now. We're at 656. All right. 656.

The line on the graph is for math. Yeah, we have a recording, a graph that just is watching. We probably should have screened recorded that computer when we started, but, you know, whatever. But we started about. Oh my gosh. 7,000 lux of light. So we've dropped so much. We're on daylight.

Wow. It is so crazy. You still can't stare at the sun, but it's almost completely covered. Oh, it got way dark. Yeah, I got way darker. Whoa, it's getting dark fast. Okay. Back to your question.

I'm going to say Valentine's Day. No. Damn. Is it a holiday in the United States? Yes. Is it the 4th of July? It is not. You said thanksgiving?

Is it Christmas? I said, it is not. I didn't say Thanksgiving. New Year's Eve? No. Easter. Yes. What? Wait, why?

Because of the way Easter is drawn into the calendar, it's always a specific set of dates relative to the full moon. Relative. And by definition, a total solar eclipse can only happen during a new moon, which is about four weeks after. And Easter is typically two weeks after the first full moon of the month. So you can never have a total solar eclipse on Easter. That's crazy.

It's wild, right? Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. Anyway, okay, it is cooking now. Oh my God, the light is getting so good. Yeah, looking across the fields is insane. Don't look at it.

The shadows are pin sharp. Yeah. Pin sharp right now. It's a drone. You don't even need the glasses? You're doing this. You're not using the glasses? Andrew's just free soloing the drone right now.

The drone is up. While Andrew gets that drone in sky, I just want to say, while I have 30 seconds, Rufus devised a genius way to measure the light out here with this little clip with a piece of sort of diffused soft white plastic. Yeah.

So we're actually using the iPad's camera looking at that piece of white to deduce how bright it is outside. Is it the front facing camera? Yes, it is the front facing camera. I think it would be more dramatic if we're... Looking the other way? Facing the sun.

Well, we're going for ambient light. So if it was facing the light, the camera would just be looking right at the sun and it would blast. That's an incident meter over there. It is literally an incident meter, and we've been checking with an incident meter, and it is just so accurate.

It's crazy. Rufus absolutely. Not spot on. That would be spot me. Incident on. So shout out Rufus and his genius technological skills. He was like, what if we just get clip, put clip on iPad? And we were like, okay.

This is so cool. This is interesting. It says I currently have weak satellite signal. Whoa. And I can't go more than 10 meters. So is there a potential that that's because of what is happening right now? Satellites shouldn't be affected. Why does a satellite need to talk to the drone?

Sorry. I think it should be fine. Reasons. Oh, there's a bird. Oh, the birds are leaving. They're so upset. Oh, there's only two. It's fine.

They're going crazy. They're just having a good time. There's only two birds in Spain. There they are. We got it. Yeah, we're entering the last couple minutes where we're just going to be looking around and gawking at what's happening

and hopefully video viewers, hopefully if you're an audio listener, we switch to the video version so you can really feel what's going on with us. We're about to hit eight minutes. Yeah, eight minutes. The light turns metallic. I read this in the description that the light turns metallic.

I'm not sure what metallic means, but the light feels really different. I think I can actually explain this one. Yes, please do. I believe it is something called the Percinji effect. Okay. And the reason the Percinji effect is that our eyes, wow, okay. You did great, sweetie. I reread this so many times, and I know I'm going to get it, like, slightly off, but our eyes deduce brightness from reds much more.

than blues. And so as the sun begins to go away, our eyes use fewer cones which see color and more rods which see luminosity. So we become way less sensitive to red light, which is a lot of what's around us.

And that's also why faces sort of look monochromey during an eclipse. Yeah, certainly, I don't know, I can't see the camera feed, but I bet we look really different than we did. Do you think Mantis shrimp freak out

during the eclipse? Wait, why? Because they can see like nine times the amount of colors that humans can. Oh, really? Was that a shrimp fact during the eclipse? Wow. Where's Mariah? Yeah, any of them are above ground.

Mantish certainly. Which can also punch the speed of a bullet. Whoa. Whoa. We can have two. That's a sequence. I'll do the fun facts around here. Sauter eclipse.

Yeah. I think that green light is half, your eyes are half as sensitive to green light. Because that's why there's two green pixels for every red and blue on a TV. on a display. The vibe's getting weird. The vibe is getting weird. It's kind of feeling like an accelerated sunset, right? The wind is picking up.

It's like if you put a sunset on like 2x speed. Yeah, like 5x speed. It feels like a photo filter on. This is crazy. This is, the dynamic range of the environment is very low right now. This is, okay, yes. I'm going to take some photos of you guys. I'm going to take a photo of this.

It's not going to show up. Yeah, no good luck. It's crazy. Do you have any other fun facts? I do have one more. I knew it. And this is maybe. This is maybe the, I don't know if I say this is a fun fact or just a crazy, a strange fact.

So, first of all, this is sort of blended. There are several different types of eclipses. There's lunar eclipses, as you know. There's this, which is a total solar eclipse. There's also partial solar eclipses. There's also something else called an annular eclipse. Anybody know what that is? Every year.

It's when the moon blocks the year. Oh. Not annual. Annular. Isn't it like It has to do with another eclipse Correct? No Does the eclipse eclipse the eclipse? Is it like

Yo annulo to annulas? Oh, I'm in Spain for three days Because we're in Spain? Oh the shadows are getting long Nice. I'll just okay an annular eclipse So as you probably know the moon orbits the earth Sometimes the moon is a little bit further away from Earth And so when it does line up perfectly and cast a shadow on Earth at its maximum furthest distance from the earth, it's actually not big enough in the sky anymore to fully cover

the sun. And so it will do the alignment in the sky, but the magnitude never reaches one. And you see some of the outside of the sun as well as the sun, as well as the corona. And it's called a ring of fire. It's a very special, very different-looking eclipse. And that one you still probably can't look at, question mark? I think you probably want to play it safe and not look at it because it's not a total slope. You're seeing some of the sun. Default answer should be don't look at sun. Yeah, that's fair. But very, very interesting phenomenon that leads. to my final fun fact, which is that the moon is moving away from the Earth very slowly at a rate of about one inch per year.

Wait, so there's a future where it just like spins away? Yes. Which means we die. That means there won't be solar eclipses forever. Which means there's a finite number of solar eclipse. Wait, so there will be a last total solar eclipse? Will we be here for that? We're potting.

We will not be there for the last. It is so much darker. Yeah, I mean, especially when you take the glasses off. Yeah. So the question is how long till the last total solar eclipse? Is it before or after? You can just random, totally random guess. There's no way.

I mean, you're going to be dead. It's fine. I guess. 10,000 years. 10,000 years? I'm going to go with 1 million. 1 million years? 1 million years.

Okay, wait. Let's say 10 million. I can do some napkin math. You said it moves away at 1 inch. And I know the ratio is 400 to 400, right? And that's miles. Oh, yeah. It's not 400 miles.

But so one, how many miles are, how many inches are in a mile? That's like, 250,000. That's 5,000 times 12. So that's like 60,000 inches. So I'm going to guess, uh, I've lost track of the math. Yeah. I give up. It's about half a billion years.

Oh, swag. I win. Oh, my God. It's completely covered. We're good. It's almost completely covered. Oh, it's happening. It's like, you know what's crazy?

Three minutes left totality. Yeah, this isn't even totality. If you look through the glasses right now, it's almost completely covered, but outside it's still pretty bright. What is the, what is the magnitude look? like it's like 90% coverage it's probably 90 98 that's got to be 97 yeah my coverage 74 but it's just an estimate it's a sliver in the sky right now here's something that I remember last time that happened that automatic light just turned up oh yeah oh yeah enough that the lights are

starting to think all the sunset oh it's getting so dark all the sunset stuff or I guess there hasn't been a k if you're driving a car your headlights just turned on like all the sunset stuff is happening right now. I think I heard my first cricket also. That was me. Starting to get cold. The birds have gone quiet. Yeah, it's the two Spanish birds. The light is dropping. It's getting so crazy. And we're closing it on that last phenomenon, which we're going to be

able to see, which is the shadows racing through this valley. In about a minute, they're going to start really accelerating and coming towards us for that last 1% to get to totality. Do you think we're going to be able to see it coming, or is it going to be like, blink and now we're covered fast. That's a great question. I have no idea. I'm really excited to find out. We're like up a little bit.

Yeah, we're like elevated. Yeah, we're like elevated over the valley, which I'm excited to see what that means. Last time we were in the middle of a field in Ohio at the same level as all the other ground. So I can see lights turning on. Oh, it's getting darker. I can visibly see it getting darker.

Wait, still don't look at the sun, guys. Yeah, don't look directly at the sun, but look kind of a little bit. The Elio Rufus 9,000 will alarm for when we need to put our glasses is back on. Okay. Back on. Right at the end of totality.

Yes. When it pokes out the other side. That's a great. When you hear the Auga, it's time to be safe. Guys, it's getting so dark. 90 seconds. 90 seconds till full coverage. Oh, look at the birds.

They're freaking out. The birds are flying away. It is getting dark fast. Oh my gosh. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. Wow. We got a perfect day, guys.

No clouds. Insane. No obscurity. It's a perfect day because my four friends are here. here with buddies. Yeah, screw the rest of you guys. Sorry. Continuity, man. I'm building the scene.

Only the people we could see. Sorry, Harper was on camera. So, and I did acknowledge I can see it on my phone. So my six friends are here. I can see the eclipse. There's less. Sorry, Brandon. Sorry, Brandon, come on camp. Then it's continuity.

Oh my gosh. It's getting so dark. My seven friends are here. Sorry, everyone's just watching us freak out because we have like 30 seconds left. 45 seconds. How am I supposed to have my mic and take photos? Oh my gosh. So the last 30 seconds, shadow bands rippling shadows.

It's getting really dark. I'm not seeing shadow bands, but wow, there's a lot more shadows. All right, 30 seconds, folks, 30 seconds. It's so dark, it's so dark. It's the sliver of a pinpoint of a sun in the sky you can imagine. Mark has wear your glasses. 20 seconds. I'm not looking at the sun.

Okay. But it got dark really fast. That was incredible. Wow. You're almost there. Oh, guys, it's happening. It's happening right now. It's happening.

Look at it. You can see. You can look at it now. Can you look? I'm waiting. I mean, I'm looking. Whoa, it's so crazy. Whoa, it's dark.

There's a shadow. There's a shadow. There's a shadow. It looks like a ring right now. It wiped across the sky from right to left. Holy shit. From right to left. So the right side across the left, and there it is.

And that's the coolest thing I've ever seen. Wow. This is way cooler than last time. That's so freaking cool. It's so cool. Enjoy the next 90 seconds. No, you're good. You're good.

Video viewers hopefully are getting this. crazy shot that Brandon is manning right now in the camera. Everyone looking at the total solar eclipse. It sees it? Oh my God. I can't wait to see that. So what you're seeing is Bailey's beads. So there are craters on the moon that slivers of the sun are actually peeking through.

So you can still see a bit. So the glow around the moon is the corona. And then the little Bailey's beads and the little birds flying around too. Marquez, you did prove it. I did ask earlier to prove it. I don't hear any crickets. do see one very lucky pilot getting an airborne view of this insane flying. It's so crazy, guys.

It's like, I remember it being the coolest thing I've ever seen. Oh, wait, sorry, I want to acknowledge. The horizon is bright, bright, bright, bright, bright, bright, bright, bright, bright, bright, dark, dark, dark. So to the right, you can see the end of the shadow. Oh, and there's a crazy cloud over there. I don't know if we couldn't see during the daytime. It'll go away again when the sun comes out. Like, the sky has a shadow on it.

Yeah. It's crazy that you can see it moving from right to left. And you can see the corona's blowing up on the edge. On the left edge, there's a big solar flare. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my God. It's so beautiful. I mean, maybe because it's closer, you know, the sun seems brighter than last time we did it.

Maybe because we're in Spain and not Ohio. Oh, glasses on. Glasses on. Glasses on. Oh, wow. That's so fast. The Eleo Inphus 9,000. It did it. Nicely done, Rufus.

And now everything's going to. The Elio Rufus comes first, you know. And the drone, luckily I checked again because it stopped recording at one point, but now it recorded through that whole part. And it is getting lighter again almost immediately. It's like sunrise. Oh my gosh. Holy crap. That was so cool. Nice little sunrise from right to left for you.

That is. So what I noticed already immediately, remember the super high overhead one we saw? We had a 360 degree sunset. Yes. That one was far more directionally right to left, which is cool that we got to see that. That's not a bad. I'm literally shaking right now. That is so cool.

That was so cool. Wow. That was amazing. It feels like you stepped into a sci-fi movie because you see this stuff happen and sci-fi all the time. There's eclipses happening in Star Wars and all the stuff. And seeing it with your eyes is it just doesn't feel real.

Yeah. It's so wild. That was so cool. I know it is like very privileged of us to say if you get the opportunity, go see one because it's not easy to, but if you have the chance. Yeah.

It's not as good as like Instagram Reel. Yeah, but seeing this on YouTube is way better. Yeah, you can't share this with one click. YouTube still doesn't figure that out. Have you seen this? I really, I'm hoping the capture was as amazing. I mean, obviously seeing it in person is going to be the coolest thing ever,

but I hope our capture gives people a taste of what we just got to see. Can you imagine that for six and a half minutes? That would be pretty surreal. I mean, appreciating it for 90 seconds was fun. That was so cool. Getting to stare at it for six minutes. Can you imagine seeing that not knowing

it was a solar eclipse? Yeah. Oh, my goodness. I would make the Scooby-Doo sound. I would go, oh, the sun is coming out, guys. This is crazy. Good morning.

Good morning. The fact that eclipses are predictable has led to a lot of crazy stories in the past and will, of course, lead to crazy stories in the future. Have I convinced anyone here to become an umbraphile? Kind of. We kind of already are. We've already done two.

We did the first one by accident. This one is our two is a coincidence. Three is a pattern. If you do three, you're in the club. If you're paying for you. for it again. No, actually, Marquez, I'm gonna go back to

one of my favorite German expressions ever, which is Einmal ist kind mall. Once is never. Now that we have done this twice, we have done it once, which is never. It feels like we are way more prepared. What does that mean?

What just happened? I don't know. It's German. I don't know what that's supposed to mean. No, it's like, I don't even know why I'm going to this right now, but the idea that like if you do something once, it's like, yeah, you do it.

But as soon as you do something twice, it's a part of you. You know what I mean? Once is never. Okay. I like it. That was beautiful. I can see that.

Thank you. Landing the drone very safely and... Safely. Hopefully we got that shot. It's day again, guys. It's day again. I hope you slept well. The song's coming back out.

Good morning. out over there? Well, first, this podcast doesn't happen without Harper, Rich, Rufus, Brandon coming to help us. And it really doesn't happen. You guys. Without Juan, Isabella and Lucia. If you guys all want to come in

camera for a minute on my camera, if you want to be in a YouTube video. This is like, seriously you guys put so much work into this and it's been a long two days and it's, I mean, this was the coolest thing. I hope all of you thought that was really amazing. Yeah. So it's glad we got to see it.

glad we all got to show it to some people and without any further ado we'll catch you next week yeah regular episode yeah so i want the pixel maybe oh yeah there's a pixel thing i don't know there might be