The Art of Manliness - #312： The Costs of Light Pollution and the Benefits of Darkness

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well throughout

00:00:18.660 human history the nighttime sky has been a source of inspiration for art literature philosophy and

00:00:23.620 religion but if you're like most people living in cities or suburbs or even rural parts of the

00:00:27.720 country you've likely never encountered a truly dark night thanks to electric lighting the nighttime

00:00:32.840 can be as bright as day and while it's allowed us to function well into the midnight hour electric

00:00:37.500 lighting has deprived us of many of the spiritual and physical benefits that only come out in the

00:00:42.420 dark my guest today has written a book where he explores the decline of darkness in our modern

00:00:46.160 age his name is paul bogard and his book is the end of night searching for natural darkness in an age

00:00:51.200 of artificial light and today on the show paul and i discuss what true darkness actually looks like

00:00:55.680 and the type of undark night that most modern folks experience he then shares where the last

00:01:00.640 few spots in america and europe where you can still experience true darkness and what the night sky in

00:01:05.220 those places looks like we then delve into what we miss out spiritually by not experiencing true

00:01:09.520 darkness as well as the health detriments that come with being exposed to artificial light 24 hours a

00:01:14.360 day paul also shares some of the common myths about darkness such as the idea that darkness is more

00:01:18.540 dangerous than light the show is going to inspire you to seek out a remote area of wilderness so you

00:01:22.640 experience the beauty that comes with a truly dark night after the show's over make sure to check

00:01:26.260 out the show notes at aom.is slash bogard paul bogard welcome to the show great to be here so you wrote

00:01:35.540 a book called the end of night and it's all about how night time has pretty much ended for most of

00:01:41.800 human civilization i'm curious what led you down the path to start exploring the end of night and why

00:01:48.120 darkness has these benefits that we often overlook well i guess i think of myself as lucky i grew up

00:01:54.260 in minneapolis but the year i was born my grandparents and parents built a cabin in the northern part of

00:02:00.120 the state where we call it up north here so all my life i've been going up north to this cabin on a lake

00:02:06.260 and so i grew up with what i would describe as real night or real darkness that's you know darkness

00:02:13.220 without really any artificial light and i used to still do actually take the canoe out into the

00:02:19.480 middle of the lake and just kind of lie back under the stars and soak in the universe so having that

00:02:25.740 firsthand experience of a real night and real darkness especially as a kid and growing up i took

00:02:33.200 that with me into the rest of my life and when i was looking for a subject to write about after college

00:02:40.020 i started thinking about nighttime and writing about it and when i discovered the problem of

00:02:45.340 light pollution everything just kind of clicked and all of a sudden i was writing about all the

00:02:49.980 benefits of darkness and all the costs of of light pollution why does darkness have such a bad rap

00:02:56.660 because like i mean everyone's afraid of the dark like that's the thing you're supposed to be afraid of

00:03:00.160 we do everything we can to illuminate the dark what's going on there yeah there's no doubt about it i mean

00:03:06.500 i think a lot of you know this issue of of light pollution comes down to our fear of the dark and

00:03:12.080 you know it's a fear of darkness that goes back pretty much as far as we go back i think and

00:03:18.520 you see it in in historical literature nighttime and darkness as being the time of thieves and

00:03:24.820 danger and that kind of thing and then certainly our popular culture has uh reinforced that you know

00:03:31.820 so that's when attacks happen that's when home invasions happen that's when the bad guys come out

00:03:36.400 all that and so i think if you asked most people kind of you know when does when's the most dangerous

00:03:43.960 time to be out or when does crime happen people would say at night in the dark and the surprising

00:03:50.740 thing is that statistically that's just not true you know i've talked to police in a lot of different

00:03:56.160 cities when i was writing the book and they said you know everybody thinks that

00:03:59.520 night time is is the dangerous time but you know daylight is when houses are being robbed and

00:04:05.540 and you know people are being attacked by people they know inside their house you know it's very

00:04:10.600 it's relatively rare to be attacked outside so we have all these preconceived notions about

00:04:15.820 that darkness is dangerous and to go off that then that light is safety and that more light is more

00:04:25.240 safety and you know it's important to say that some light can certainly help us be safe outside help

00:04:31.040 us see our way but the the challenge is that we just think that more ever more light will make us

00:04:35.940 ever safer so we keep pumping out more and more light yeah i thought that the chapter on sort of the

00:04:41.300 myths of darkness being unsafe because that's what you hear right whenever like for home security

00:04:45.940 like you gotta have outdoor lighting have a well-lit house because bad guys like to do things when they

00:04:52.520 can't be seen but you make the point and i think a police officer made the point like well bad guys

00:04:56.880 also like to see what they're doing exactly yeah i heard that again and again when i was researching

00:05:02.620 the book that you know i heard people say uh bad guys are just as afraid of the dark as we are

00:05:08.040 and they you know they like to be as you said they like to be able to sort their tools in the light

00:05:13.500 they like to see what's going on and you see it on you know remarkably if you go to say a website

00:05:19.580 of a police department your local police department you're bound to see a message that reads something

00:05:25.420 like you know make your house safe at night light it up light up your yard so even the police are kind

00:05:31.300 of following behind this questionable notion that you know light makes us safe and darkness is dangerous

00:05:37.800 yeah and then i mean you also to point out like too much light can be dangerous particularly on

00:05:42.560 roads and highways where just we flood the streets with light and it actually creates this glare that

00:05:47.680 makes it harder to see and can increase the chances of accidents yeah it's really true i mean i think

00:05:52.620 especially if you think of you know as you get older your eyes change it becomes more difficult

00:05:58.500 to drive at night in some part because of what's happening physically to your eye but then we have

00:06:04.320 all this glaring light shining into our eyes as well and i think you know when i give talks and when i

00:06:10.800 give readings and that kind of thing i sometimes apologize to people because i say you know once you

00:06:14.780 once i've talked and shown you some of these things you're going to go out into the night and start

00:06:19.560 seeing this everywhere and one of the things you see is glary light you know light that's allowed to

00:06:25.900 just you know we're kind of shooting it all over the place and including straight into our eyes which

00:06:31.400 makes it harder to see which makes it more dangerous at night and let's have light but let's have light

00:06:37.220 just going down where we need it and not shining into our eyes or alternately into our bedrooms into our

00:06:43.720 houses that kind of thing right and going back to the bad guy you had some pictures in there of

00:06:48.480 houses that were just you know had lots of light but you couldn't see the person because there was

00:06:53.200 no contrast or they were wearing all white and you couldn't tell that they were there yeah it's

00:06:58.660 really remarkable there's a great friend of mine sent me this uh two images and and they're in the

00:07:04.180 book of of the same scene of a yard in tucson and in the first scene you just kind of you see this

00:07:10.220 this yard with a bright light and the second scene he's put up his hand to shield the light so that

00:07:16.140 you have the light just going down and nowhere else and then you can see the bad guy who was you know

00:07:20.820 standing behind the in the shadow all the time but because the light was so bright you couldn't see

00:07:26.700 him you're you know bright lights make our pupils shut down so it makes it you know we see makes it

00:07:32.280 harder for us to see bright lights cast shadows where the bad guys can hide and i think even maybe the

00:07:38.220 biggest issue that we're talking about here too is that bright lights give us the illusion of safety

00:07:43.620 so we we look out onto a street we look out onto a college campus and we see it all lit up and we

00:07:49.460 think oh it's safe but you know lights aren't going to make you safe and if somebody's out there

00:07:55.140 they can hide easily and yeah lights don't make us safe lights don't make us safe later on we'll talk

00:08:00.020 more about how we can use light more smartly i guess is the word i'm looking for yeah but uh let's talk

00:08:04.960 about this idea of true darkness or real night what is that and what sort of darkness do most people

00:08:12.720 experience who live in the cities and suburbs yeah i think it's a really interesting question because

00:08:19.020 you know if you ask somebody does it get dark at night they're gonna you know duh like of course it

00:08:26.460 gets dark at night but it honestly it really it doesn't get dark at night not at least not as dark

00:08:31.520 as it used to there's a couple different ways to think about this one is something called the

00:08:36.060 bordel scale which is a a nine point scale starting at starts at nine in our brightest places so pretty

00:08:43.200 much any any city downtown and works its way down to a level one which would be what we call natural or

00:08:51.260 real darkness so that is darkness as it was before the advent of electric lighting essentially and

00:08:58.880 what's remarkable when you start thinking about it this way is to learn that most americans live most

00:09:04.640 of their lives in levels five and above so this whole second half of the scale of darkness is something

00:09:11.820 that most of us never even experience we don't even know what it what it looks like and it's getting

00:09:17.780 harder and harder to know what it looks like certainly in the lower 48 states there are very few places

00:09:25.200 that you could honestly say are a level one darkness where there's no evidence of artificial

00:09:31.120 light either you know no uh no light off on the horizon or uh no light even in the sky from or on you

00:09:39.260 know from uh from a distant town or something like that so yeah it gets dark and it gets darker in the

00:09:44.700 countryside than it does in the city but it doesn't get dark like it used to and if you've you know if

00:09:51.620 you've lived long enough uh as i have i guess to to grow up with experiencing real nights real darkness

00:09:59.780 and now you're in the same place you've seen the change it's not as dark as it used to be

00:10:05.220 and so i mean where can people still experience darkness unaffected by human light here in the united

00:10:10.640 states well you know the if you're uh this is the crazy thing if you're east of the great plains so

00:10:17.980 the whole half of the eastern part of the country technically there's no more natural darkness left

00:10:23.920 uh again there certainly are dark places people go stargazing you know um some of the national parks

00:10:30.340 thinking of acadia up in maine or out on uh the outer banks uh some places in west virginia

00:10:36.720 there are places where you can experience you know close to a real night but to get back to

00:10:42.220 that real natural darkness you have to get out into the ocean off the coast or if you're lucky out into

00:10:50.400 the western states sometimes you can get back to some southern utah is a great place to go the oregon

00:10:56.740 desert there are places where you can you can get back to it but for most of us most of our nights

00:11:03.380 we're not even close and how does the night sky change when there's little or no light pollution

00:11:10.320 because i think you know we look at the stars and like oh there's some stars there you can see the

00:11:13.960 big constellations like the big dipper cassiopeia but what happens well how does the sky change

00:11:20.580 whenever you have absolutely no light interfering with your stargazing yeah it's an entirely different

00:11:26.500 experience really i'll give you a good example which is when i was working on the end of night i was

00:11:31.980 living in winston-salem north carolina and working at wake forest and i remember walking home one night

00:11:37.240 and i was in the fall and i looked kind of over into the eastern sky and i saw you know the stars of

00:11:44.040 orion which are great the three stars in the belt and betelgeuse and rigel these super bright stars and

00:11:50.800 and you know everybody most of us know what orion looks like i couldn't really see any other stars but i

00:11:57.180 was you know psyched to see those stars and then i learned soon after that that these stars in orion

00:12:03.340 are 98 or 99 percent brighter than any other stars in our sky so essentially what i was what i was seeing

00:12:10.640 were these super bright stars and i wasn't seeing 98 or 99 percent of the stars i could be seeing most

00:12:18.100 of my students have never seen the milky way which is an awesome experience and when you do get into

00:12:25.080 those experiences of sort of what i'm saying is real night or real darkness you can have the feeling

00:12:31.780 of there are so many stars that you feel like you're falling into them it's just this kind of

00:12:37.420 disorienting dizzying experience and the stars are rising out of the horizon on one side and falling off

00:12:44.780 the edge of the earth and the other and you it's just the surreal almost surreal experience you'll start

00:12:51.900 to have a different the sky actually if you're in a dark enough place actually looks more deep blue

00:12:58.840 than it does black so there's actually enough light in the sky that it causes just an entirely

00:13:05.000 different experience and it's it's an experience that used to be completely common that all of us

00:13:10.680 would have experienced if we'd been alive you know 100 150 200 years ago and now it's something that

00:13:16.920 very few people ever experience right and you talk about uh vincent van gogh's starry night that famous

00:13:22.800 painting and everyone's kind of like what's going on there like it's blue it's not black there's 0.88

00:13:27.200 different colored stars but you think that he's like tripping on something but just the way you

00:13:32.720 described it like that's probably what he saw like he saw a deep blue sky with different colored stars

00:13:38.180 yeah that's a great example i often show that image in my presentations and i say you know

00:13:44.340 van gogh has it had his had his issues but i think that uh you know a lot of people look at that

00:13:49.740 painting and they just think he was as you said dripping on something or a crazy man or something like

00:13:53.820 that or as one museum guy described to me van gogh was a werewolf of energy you know we just think he

00:14:00.200 was this this uh unbelievable human being and that may all be true but he was also seeing a sky that

00:14:07.280 we no longer see anymore and we have evidence of that in his letters to his brother theo where he

00:14:13.220 would write about the different colors of stars over paris which you know you go to paris these

00:14:19.220 days and you're lucky to see two dozen stars let alone the colors of of the stars so when i'm talking

00:14:25.800 about that painting sometimes i say you know the night sky has inspired artists for you know all of

00:14:33.200 history um van gogh's the one of the best examples of that and just think about all the young van gogh's

00:14:38.600 out there right now who are not being inspired yeah so i mean yeah it seems like not being able

00:14:43.540 to see the full solar system that's what's out there has probably really disconnected us from the

00:14:49.740 cosmos or nature in a in a weird spiritual way i definitely think so i mean i like to say that you

00:14:56.620 know we've taken what was once one of the most common human experiences which is walking out the

00:15:01.460 door at night and coming face to face with the universe and we've made that one of the most rare of

00:15:06.160 human experiences and that that experience that first-time experience of coming face to face with

00:15:11.540 the universe has as i said that inspired art but it's also inspired religion philosophy spirituality

00:15:17.380 science all these things all these elements of what it means to be human and there are a lot of costs

00:15:23.780 to light pollution that have we can attach dollar signs to or talk about in terms of human health

00:15:29.280 environmental health but then there are also these what are often sort of intangible costs you know what

00:15:34.960 do we lose when we can't see a real night sky it's hard to put a dollar sign on it but that doesn't

00:15:40.820 mean it's not incredibly valuable to who we are as a species so what was life like before we had

00:15:47.940 electric lights i mean did i mean right now because of lights we can just be out 24 7 and everything's

00:15:54.560 fine what happened what was life like before that did people just stay in as soon as that didn't you

00:15:59.520 know as soon as the night came didn't leave their homes or were they out and about what was life like

00:16:05.180 you know everything that i found was that it was a mix you have some stories of when night came

00:16:12.680 people went this is i'm thinking especially in in western europe people would you know go inside and

00:16:18.680 kind of batten down the hatch you know as though uh they were on a ship and a storm was approaching you

00:16:23.720 know lock lock themselves inside kind of turn over the outside to the the bad guys as it were but then

00:16:31.420 you also have stories and and and histories of night being the time of freedom you know of when

00:16:38.100 people who were in one way or the other in bondage during the day were then at night kind of allowed

00:16:44.600 their freedom and they could go see their friends or they could be with their partner my fiancee was

00:16:50.360 in rwanda last summer and she had these remarkable stories of towns that you know have either no

00:16:58.120 electric light or electric light only for part of the evening and then the rest of the night is dark

00:17:03.980 and she said you know people would come out and see their friends and the streets were you know alive

00:17:08.700 with with neighbors and seeing themselves and the night became this friendly friendly time where people

00:17:14.660 were out and about rather than this what it is i think too often even in modern society kind of a

00:17:21.160 time when people are nervous and anxious and and kind of going inside to hide so historically they

00:17:27.240 were both both things but i think it's so hard for us to even imagine what it's like before electric

00:17:34.220 light because we're so swamped in it that it's hard to think like what would i do if i were in that

00:17:39.140 situation right you also talk about how people stayed in bed longer than we do like they'd go to

00:17:45.060 bed pretty much when it got dark and they'd lay there and sometimes they would wake up in the middle

00:17:50.720 of the night and now we think oh man it's insomnia this is i gotta go to the doctor get some ambien

00:17:55.560 but for them that was just like a natural part of sleeping you would have a first sleep and then you'd

00:18:00.700 wake up do some stuff and then have a second sleep and wake up in the morning yeah it's it's a

00:18:06.140 remarkable thing uh this was discovered by a historian at virginia tech who wrote a book called

00:18:11.060 at days close who discovered in the literature from western europe this what you just mentioned

00:18:16.440 the the idea of first sleep and second sleep and it makes a lot of sense if you think about it you

00:18:21.560 know if there's no electric light if there's no electricity to do all the things that that we do

00:18:26.920 when it gets dark out folks would go to sleep and they would they would sleep for a while and then

00:18:31.920 they would wake up at one or two or three in the morning and have this uh this intermission as it

00:18:38.080 were in their sleep and he discovered stories of you know couples would uh make love they'd have you

00:18:44.320 know conversations uh people would get up and go see their friends people would pursue you know their

00:18:50.320 their private hobbies you know things that they didn't get to do during the day and then they would

00:18:55.580 go back to sleep and sleep until the sun came up so to extrapolate that forward to our time where we

00:19:01.340 think of like waking up in the middle of the night is you know we freak out if we wake up because we're

00:19:05.700 like oh my god you know you know do i have insomnia is something wrong and a number of the sleep docs

00:19:12.040 that i talked with said you know this is a totally normal thing what is pretty unnormal is this idea that

00:19:19.260 we we go to we you know stay up into the night with our electric lights go to bed at 11 get up at

00:19:25.200 seven and sleep straight through it's it's not like that normally right so let's talk about

00:19:30.880 light pollution and its effect on the ecosystem i mean we call it pollution we don't think of it as

00:19:35.940 that we think of pollution like a smog and stuff going into water but light can harm our environment

00:19:42.040 so what ways has light pollution harmed our ecosystems you know it's it's this is the issue that really

00:19:51.120 brought me to writing the end of night it's the thing that matters to me most is our impact

00:19:55.560 on ecosystems and our fellow creatures and the surprising thing is we just don't know that much

00:20:03.280 about it it hasn't been studied that much it's in the early stages and yet when you start to think

00:20:08.720 about it and another a number of biologists told me this and talked to me about this if we think about

00:20:14.660 the fact that life on earth evolved with bright days and dark nights and you know we we generally we

00:20:22.340 generally acknowledge that we need sunlight it's really important but they said you know we also

00:20:26.580 need darkness and then you think about how much light pollution there is how much uh and light

00:20:33.100 pollution is the definition essentially is the overuse and misuse of artificial light so it's just we're

00:20:39.360 using way too much we're kind of blasting it all around and essentially what that does for

00:20:44.100 nocturnal creatures and crepuscular creatures those creatures that are active at dawn and dusk is it

00:20:50.960 ruins their habitat and so they have evolved to depend on darkness for mating for migration for

00:20:59.300 feeding for all these different things and then we come along and light up the light up the night

00:21:04.580 we essentially ruin that habitat yeah so go ahead sorry oh go ahead no well i was just going to give

00:21:11.340 you know a couple prime examples in north america for example we have more than 400 species of birds

00:21:17.000 that migrate at night people don't know that you know during migration season and and in some ways

00:21:22.460 all year round at night there are there are birds moving overhead migrating and they are drawn to our

00:21:29.940 artificial lights they're drawn off course they're drawn into urban areas a lot of the birds that end up

00:21:35.940 flying into windows during the day were drawn into that area at night by our bright lights we're having

00:21:41.840 a real problem with insects being sucked out of the ecosystem because they're drawn to artificial

00:21:47.200 light at night just kind of from the lowest uh the base of the food chain insects up to the top of the

00:21:54.760 food chain we're seeing we're everywhere we look we're seeing impact of artificial lights on different

00:21:59.680 species yeah i think the most visceral example that i've seen i think it was a planet earth the

00:22:05.100 documentary of one of them about sea turtles when they hatch they use the moon or the stars

00:22:10.980 to like figure out where to go right back to the ocean but with artificial light like they're

00:22:15.900 heading towards like busy streets and they're getting run over that was probably the most visceral

00:22:20.640 example i've seen of that it's a really dramatic example you know these these sea turtles that have

00:22:26.200 evolved for over hundreds of millions of years to come on the shore lay their eggs when the when the

00:22:33.480 eggs hatch the hatchlings come up onto the beach and they have evolved to scurry toward the brightest

00:22:38.720 light on the horizon which is as you say has been the moon light or the stars on the ocean which is

00:22:44.620 obviously the way they're supposed to go now the brightest light on the horizon is the condominium

00:22:49.420 behind them or the hotel or the street light and so they come up and they head that way and they go

00:22:55.280 into the street they're run over they die of dehydration they're picked off by predators it's a real

00:23:00.160 problem and the good news is that a lot of places recognize this and people are you know watching the

00:23:06.180 beaches so that when the when the hatchlings come up they help them to the ocean and that kind of

00:23:10.400 thing but but we lose a lot of you know sea turtles are endangered anyway and we lose a lot of them

00:23:17.240 just from this light pollution and you talk about bats they're often feared because they're associated

00:23:22.520 with the nighttime right but they play a vital role in our ecosystem like they eat mosquitoes they eat

00:23:28.560 bugs and if we don't have bats we're going to have this problem with infestations of insects

00:23:33.120 right exactly bats are such a great example of everything we're talking about here because they

00:23:38.680 are associated with knights and a lot of people are afraid of them for really no i shouldn't say

00:23:45.380 no reason but any danger that a bat might carry from rabies is the prime example is way overblown and

00:23:53.560 when you compare it to the benefits that they bring to humanity we really ought to be loving bats and

00:24:00.240 and praising bats and thinking they are as cool as they really are i mean there's more than a thousand

00:24:05.600 species of bats they when you look at the pictures of them they're they're fascinating faces and the

00:24:11.320 ears and nose and then a prime example is uh the bats down in austin texas who there's uh bats who live under

00:24:20.160 the congress avenue bridge who come out and fly into the it's just this amazing emergence of millions of bats

00:24:27.440 coming out and they fly into the agriculture fields around the city and eat pests and they save the

00:24:33.920 farmers you know hundreds of millions of dollars every year huge value right huge value it's something

00:24:39.860 we ought to treasure uh and yet we're afraid of them so it's it's this this odd feeling that we have

00:24:46.920 for something that is actually helping us so uh besides the the harm on our ecosystems uh you

00:24:53.800 researched that this exposure to light 24 7 might actually have some health detriments to humans as

00:25:01.600 well so what are some of those detriments yeah there there are primarily three different areas

00:25:06.740 and the first is that all this exposure to artificial light is night is contributing to sleep disorders so

00:25:12.460 it's impacting people's ability to sleep their length of sleep sleep docs have a term they use which is

00:25:20.080 short sleep and long light so because we're exposed to so much light way into the night we end up having

00:25:27.080 these short periods of sleep and what i was told which is really compelling is that short sleep or a

00:25:32.700 lack of sleep sleep disorders are tied to every major disease that we're wrestling with these days so

00:25:38.140 obesity cancer diabetes depression you know you name it a lack of sleep seems to have a real detrimental

00:25:45.300 effect the other second area is that exposure to artificial light at night confuses our circadian

00:25:52.220 rhythms which is these these rhythms that orchestrate our organs our body's health essentially and

00:25:58.060 it was described to me as uh if you imagine the organs in your body as an orchestra each one a different

00:26:03.840 instrument the circadian rhythm is the conductor keeps the orchestra together and if you confuse that

00:26:09.520 conductor it follows that the the rest of the orchestra is going to be confused and people think oh it's

00:26:15.920 no big deal you know i can i can pull an all-nighter or i can fly to europe and i can i can function but if

00:26:21.800 you do it night after night after night or a few nights here and a few nights there it leads to real

00:26:28.740 serious issues such that the world health organization now lists working the night shift as a probable

00:26:34.940 carcinogen and the american medical association is really concerned about exposure to especially

00:26:41.500 blue light at night and the third the third area that people are really nervous about is that it seems

00:26:48.140 like so we have a hormone called melatonin a lot of people have heard about that it's only produced in the

00:26:54.920 dark so if you're sleeping with the lights on you're not producing melatonin if you get up at night and you go to

00:27:00.220 the bathroom and turn on the light the production of melatonin in your body stops and what they've

00:27:05.900 found is a lack of melatonin in our bloodstream is linked to an increased risk for breast and prostate

00:27:12.580 cancer so this gets people's attention and all these things together you know what i say to people is

00:27:18.960 like every other creature on earth we evolve with bright days and dark nights you need darkness for

00:27:25.540 for health and if you're not already sleeping in the dark start tonight yeah that uh section about

00:27:32.900 the increased rates of cancer amongst nurses who work the night shift really blew my mind i had no i

00:27:38.660 mean i think we all understand if you work the night shift you're probably gonna be tired and fatigued

00:27:41.600 and that has lots of problems but the idea that it can cause cancer really sounded some alarms in me

00:27:45.900 yeah it does for a lot of people i mean cancer gets our attention and you know we should be careful to

00:27:50.600 say you know we can't say if you see a bright light at night you're going to get cancer nobody's really

00:27:56.300 saying that but it does it seems to increase the risk for cancer and when there's there's a you know

00:28:03.600 a real compelling uh argument that i detail in the book about the the link to breast cancer in women from

00:28:10.700 exposure to light at night and as as the researchers said to me you know even if it's only

00:28:15.660 10 or 15 or 20 percent of breast cancer cases that is still a lot of people and with all these things

00:28:23.080 that we're talking about you know when it comes to to exposure at light at night so much of this

00:28:28.620 exposure could be reduced you know so it's it's so often it's unnecessary exposure with high costs

00:28:37.120 so okay let's talk about that then how can we be more thoughtful about lighting at night times

00:28:42.520 obviously it's not possible just to eliminate all light at night time what can we do to light the

00:28:49.140 skies or light our way without trying i guess mitigating some of the downsides of too much light

00:28:54.080 yeah for sure there's a lot we can do and i'll just you know reiterate the idea too that

00:28:59.800 the problem isn't artificial light it's how we use it basically so we're going to have artificial light

00:29:06.080 increasingly we're going to have electronic light so light emitting diodes leds are kind of

00:29:11.960 taking over the the world and and that's good in a lot of ways they they can do a lot of a lot of

00:29:17.520 wonderful things so we're going to have light how do we use it let's use it thoughtfully and responsibly

00:29:23.460 and uh as good neighbors let's not use more than we need for example in your own house turn off your

00:29:31.080 lights at night and as i was just saying sleep in the dark try not to be staring into your screens

00:29:37.020 before you go to bed the blue light from your screen seem to have a real detrimental effect

00:29:42.300 in our communities we can have what are called light ordinances which are basically just rules

00:29:48.500 that dictate how what kind of light we'll have and how we'll use it and again the the biggest thing in

00:29:54.780 our communities and and all over is if we're going to have light let's direct it downward let's have what

00:30:00.460 we we call it shielded let's have it downward so it lights the street it lights the sidewalk

00:30:05.280 but it doesn't shine up into the sky it doesn't shine into people's eyes so those are kind of the

00:30:10.580 the basic ways i guess i would say is to in your own house be in the dark turn off your your house lights

00:30:17.340 in your communities make sure that your light is focused downward that we're not using more light than

00:30:22.380 we need and as a society then to start realizing that because some light help us helps us be safe

00:30:29.820 more light doesn't automatically make us safer are there any cities who are sort of on the forefront

00:30:35.880 of reducing light pollution or being smart smarter about lighting yeah absolutely and there's a lot of

00:30:42.000 really cool work that's being done with lighting around the world here in the states two prime examples

00:30:48.220 are in arizona flagstaff and tucson flagstaff is remarkable if you go there and a lot of this is

00:30:55.540 dictated by the uh the astronomical observatories that have been there but in flagstaff and in tucson

00:31:02.960 you will see exactly what i'm talking about which is that the lights are focused down sometimes the lights

00:31:08.660 are more uh the colors of the light are more amber colors rather than this bright blue white light

00:31:15.360 and so that's pretty remarkable to see if you go to a you know a gas station for example which are

00:31:21.680 in most of the country one of the prime examples of light pollution where gas stations and parking lots

00:31:28.240 are lit 10 times as brightly as they were only 20 years ago so we've really ramped up the lighting

00:31:35.060 in gas stations if you go to a gas station in in flagstaff or tucson it's much dimmer and at first

00:31:42.160 you're like wow it's super dim and then as you're there you just think well i have all the light i

00:31:47.040 need and there's it's not like these places are overrun by by thieves and criminals everything's

00:31:52.500 fine there's just less light some of the cities in europe like amsterdam copenhagen oslo are really

00:31:59.420 doing amazing things with their lighting lowering the levels of light putting lights actually in the

00:32:04.960 street rather than shining in your eyes so there's a lot of cool stuff we could do with lighting

00:32:09.760 that we're not doing and i think that goes along with kind of rethinking the way that we use light

00:32:15.580 at night yeah and also i guess another recommendation would be for folks to get out to a place where they're

00:32:20.820 they can experience true darkness yeah for sure because if you're i like to say you know if you're

00:32:26.500 younger than about 40 in the u.s chances are you've grown up swamped with artificial light like you don't

00:32:33.740 know what it really is to live without artificial light so having that first-hand experience of

00:32:40.660 getting out somewhere where you can see what a real sky looks like uh and then you know maybe you've

00:32:46.480 heard me talk or you or somebody has pointed this out to you kind of looking around at the lights

00:32:50.260 around you and thinking well this is kind of dumb like why do we need lights that are going up into the

00:32:55.860 sky it's not helping anybody it's not making anybody any safer we can have lighting let's just focus it 0.84

00:33:02.000 down yeah you know it inspired me there's a i want to get out to i live in oklahoma and out in the

00:33:06.640 panhandle there's a state park called black mesa which i don't think there's anything there's no light

00:33:11.960 around there i want to get out there because i don't i know i've seen the milky way once but it's

00:33:16.660 been a long long time and i want to see that again yeah absolutely and i would you know just to touch

00:33:22.500 back on where we were a little bit earlier you know a night doesn't have to be a level one on that

00:33:29.080 portal scale to be pretty amazing um you know you can have what would bring maybe a two or three or

00:33:35.100 four on that scale and you can still be awed by being out at night the problem is that most of us

00:33:42.220 honestly are way up in the seven eight nine range most of the time you know so we're just really not

00:33:47.600 we look up and we see 25 stars when really we we ought to be able to look up and see 2500 stars

00:33:54.680 that's the difference that most people don't don't realize so paul you've got a new book out

00:33:59.280 and i haven't had a chance to read it but it looks fascinating it's the same thing i love how you take

00:34:02.420 these like sort of obscure ideas things we take for granted and try to flesh things out it's about

00:34:07.800 dirt what what caused you to explore go from the night sky to exploring the ground beneath us

00:34:13.980 you know it's a it's an entirely different subject in a lot of ways but similar themes which is to say

00:34:21.780 i'm really interested in the the costs from our separation from nature and the benefits from

00:34:29.180 being connected to nature and realizing our connection to nature so you know the end of

00:34:33.840 night is about being cut off from darkness because of we're using too much artificial light

00:34:38.120 and the ground beneath us is is really about this uh firsthand experience of natural ground

00:34:45.040 we are cut off from that as well we live this kind of stunned me when i when i found this out but

00:34:51.300 we live um in in the civilized west 90 to 95 percent of our time inside or in our cars and then when

00:35:00.260 we walk outside we walk on pavement a lot of us so we've lost a literal connection with the natural

00:35:06.480 ground and then i started thinking about all the the really vital grounds that we don't have a lot of

00:35:14.000 us most of us don't have connection with especially like the soil that provides our food the the

00:35:20.200 grounds that give us our our energy even the grounds that give us our spirit and that was one of the

00:35:25.520 great things about the book is to learn not only about soil and pavement but also to go to places

00:35:32.920 like gettysburg and talk about hallowed grounds and to other places talk about sacred ground what do we

00:35:39.240 mean by those places and why are they important so it's another it was a really fun book to write

00:35:45.380 and hopefully takes people uh in a lot of neat places well great well paul where can people learn

00:35:51.000 more about your work i have a website i would invite people to uh it is uh paul hyphen bogard

00:35:57.680 so p-a-u-l hyphen b-o-g-a-r-d and um you can read about the books and find out lots of good stuff

00:36:04.460 fantastic well paul bogard thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure

00:36:07.300 it's been my pleasure thanks very much my guest is paul bogard he's the author of the book

00:36:12.480 the end of night you can find that on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere he's also got a new

00:36:16.340 book out about the ground beneath us it's called the ground beneath it's about dirt you can find

00:36:20.440 out more about his work at paul-bogard.com also check out our show notes at aom.is

00:36:25.340 slash bogard where you find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic

00:36:28.920 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:36:45.800 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy the

00:36:49.660 show i've gotten something out of it i'd appreciate it if you give us a review on itunes or stitcher

00:36:52.960 that helps us out a lot as always thank you for your continued support and until next time this is

00:36:56.940 brett mckay telling you to stay manly

The Art of Manliness - June 13, 2017

#312： The Costs of Light Pollution and the Benefits of Darkness

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