When I go running I listen to Roderick on the Line. In this way, my body is exercised but also…my soul.

On the episode I listened to tonight Roderick and Mann steered into some seriously philosophical territory, as they are wont to do.

The part that really stuck with me was when Roderick was staring up at the stars, trying to sleep on a beach in some Dutch city (at 34 minutes in):

What I realized, in that moment, was that the lights of the city, the electric light, has formed a kind of dome over the cities where we live. And it is a protective dome, a protective shield, that shields us from full awareness of how deep and infinite space is.

Right, so we sit in our cities, and our electric lights have blanked out the sky, for us, and we no longer have first hand experience of the existential terror that is available to you at any point in time if you just try and spend one night outside on the beach or in the forest.

And that is something that human beings knew intimately throughout the whole course of human history.