There’s so much more to experience.

There are people who have organized their lives around the appearance of a total eclipse. They’re known as eclipse chasers, or more obscurely, “umbraphiles” (shadow lovers). They’ll travel across continents for perfect weather, collect decades’ worth of eclipse-related life stories, speak lovingly about the sun’s corona. One example is the retired astrophysicist Fred Espenak, who earned a bit of celebrity when the United States Postal Service chose his photo of an eclipse for a 2017 stamp—an efficient way to spread the news that “a total eclipse of the sun is simply the most beautiful, stunning and awe-inspiring astronomical event you can see with the unaided eye,” he once wrote.

Then there are other people (such as me) who need some convincing that it’s as awesome as advertised. In this episode of Radio Atlantic, I talk with Espenak and Marina Koren, The Atlantic’s self-proclaimed “outer-space bureau chief.” Between them, we learn about the full-body experience of an eclipse, which, if not quite spiritual, is at least eerie, when you know what to tune into. How does an eclipse feel on your skin? What does it do to the animals? What does it do to your sense of time? And what are you waiting for?

Listen to the conversation here:

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The following is a transcript of the episode:

Marina Koren: So in 2017, I was in a park in Tennessee, and it was having an eclipse event, and everyone had their eclipse glasses.

Hanna Rosin: This is Atlantic staff writer Marina Koren. On Slack, she goes by “outer space bureau chief.”

Koren: And so you could put them on, and then you could see the moon eating away at the sun, kind of like a little Pac-Man. And then there was no sun. It was just this silver-milky-white ring that kind of looked like an engagement ring hanging in the sky. There was a tiny, little speck on the corner that looked like the diamond.

Rosin: Mm-hmm.

Koren: And inside the ring and outside of it, it was all the same color, the same deep-evening purple. And I remember looking at the grass beneath me, and the light was just shimmering.

Rosin: What do you mean shimmering?

Koren: I wish I knew. I’ve never seen anything like it before, but I think the very edges of the sun that were visible—and we could see this glowing ring—they were just doing something. The way they were radiating was creating these weird shimmering waves on the grass.

Rosin: Which you hadn’t seen before.

Koren: No. Or since. And I remember when the moon finally slid right in front of the sun, people screamed. And to hear people cheer and laugh and cry out, it was so weird to have that collective reaction. Obviously, we have those types of reactions regularly, but this felt different.

[Crowd shouting]

Rosin: This is Radio Atlantic. I’m Hanna Rosin.

In August 2017, Koren—and millions of other people—witnessed the Great American Eclipse. The path of totality touched 14 states, spanning from Oregon to South Carolina, and lasted all but a couple of minutes from the ground.

Koren: Those minutes go real, real fast.

Rosin: I wouldn’t know, because I missed it. Now seven years later, I—and all of you—have another chance to see one. Lots of spots in the U.S. will fall in what’s called the path of totality Monday, April 8.

An eclipse is many things, but one of them is a measure of time. During the last eclipse, my youngest kid was in elementary school. Now he’s thinking about college. And in 2045, which is when we’ll see the next total eclipse of this scope and scale in the U.S., he will be nearing 40, which is impossible to contemplate, so let’s reel it back.

What is an eclipse?

Koren: That’s a great question. It is a cosmic alignment, I guess you could say, of the Earth, the moon, and the sun. And........

© The Atlantic