Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and there's Jerry over there, and I just want to say this is stuff you should know, the Chuck's Birthday edition. Birthday Chuck, Thank you, thank you. Okay, So back to it. Yeah, we got a I got approval from Josh to do a special front loaded listener mail. I'm a little tense about this. I'm not I'm not gonna lie. Really, you were like, it's his birthday, I gotta do it. Yeah, I had to give in. Uh for those of who don't know the end of the podcast, some people just switch it off when you start your little uh dobbledygook at the end. But we read mail from listeners which can be informative and instructive and fun and heartwarming and say ad and they're really good. So you've been missing out if you don't listen through to those. But I'm gonna do want to hear at the front because this just came in as sheer coincidence that it happened to dovetail with today's topic. So while Alex lash Here of New Zealand did not suggest this uh topics such that we took the suggestion we are already doing it. You sounded like a mobster trying to stuff So here we go from Alex. Hey, guys, following up on the National Park app, I like to suggest you complete the trifecta and do dark sky reserves and marine reserves. I'm from New Zealand. My dad played a part in the formation of our own dark Sky reserve in the McKenzie Basin. There's a joint effort between the local uh Maori eui. I'm probably just mispronouncing everything. Uh Takapo tourism, which is the town in the University of Canterbury who ran the Mount John of Erbitory in the area. My dad was head of physics and astronomy at the university at the time. It is a truly life altering experience to look up and see a skylit brilliant by the Milky Way with no light pollution and into Capo you can do a tour uh to look through some of the telescopes for a better view. And this from Alex lash And he's attached a picture of a of a photo that his friend took of the night sky with the observatory in the foreground, and he was like, there is no special cameras, just mounted on a tripod to lead that exposure open for a long time. And brother, it is. You should check out this email from Alex. It is unbelievably gorgeous and we forget what is up there in the sky when you live in in most places in the world. Yeah, I mean they say that in the US and Europe, nine percent of us live in light polluted skies that are so light polluted that we can't see like the Milky Way, you just can't see it. It's there, we just can't see it because of all the light that we put out. And so yeah, so that is an amazing photo. So to see something like that in person, it really kind of and to realize that it's out there, it makes you kind of sad. But at the same time, it makes me very determined to go somewhere and see. Unfortunately, I've been looking around. There's not a lot of places that I want to go anyway, So it's gonna have to be a special trip, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, And it is. You know, occasionally when I have gotten out to the desert or out in the middle of the ocean on the one cruise ship I went on, and you see those stars, it is a reminders like those things are always up there, and so we get to see so little of that in the city. Uh. I mean, you're lucky if you get a smattering of stars if you live near a city on any given night. Yeah. No, it's definitely true. And like skyglow in and of itself. If you don't stop and think about what it is, it can be kind of beautiful in a weird way. It makes you feel like you're alive and connected to everybody who's alive in that city, right then, weirdly, or does for me, I should say. But but when you but when you do stop and think about what it is, it can make you pretty sad. And then when you do see something like you get like it's just a taste of what the night sky is supposed to look like, like chuck in a truly like dark night, like a night sky that isn't polluted with light, Like Venus and Jupiter are so bright they can make you cast a shadow, that's how bright they get. The Milky Way does too, like you can cast a shadow from Venus and Jupiter. It's just mind boggling to think of you can't even see Jupiter. Maybe you see Venus, like if you're lucky around a city, But like you said, smattering of stars and some skyglow is basically what you get. So I think the thing that really kind of makes me feel like, man, we were so close. It was up until even like sixties seventy hundred years ago, like you didn't have to very far from a place like Atlanta or New York or Boston or you know, wherever any city to to go find something like this, like maybe just drive out beyond the city limits are here or there. Um. But today we've been increasing our artificial lighting even faster than our pollute. Our population has been growing, and so it's gotten to this point now where we've lost a lot. And there's some people saying, hey, not only are we losing stuff, we're actually gaining all sorts of negativity too that we need to start addressing. And that is the upshod of light pollution. It really does stand as a type of pollution when you dig into it. Yeah, and this is one where we're gonna you know, arm you with some information, maybe gently remind you about some best practices without trying to be to preachy about what you do at your own home. But you know, it's not just skyscrapers and and big city stuff. It's the individual humans home that as far too much light pointing up at the sky these days, and it all adds up, it does, and um, a significant portion of it is wasted. If you start looking at um light pollution. Uh. I guess warning people, right, yeah. Uh, you know, if you start hanging out with that crowd, you'll find that they also very frequently say, hey, you can save a lot of fossil fuel emissions and a lot of money on electricity if you just use sensible lighting that doesn't pollute. Yeah. So let's talk about the history of it a little bit, because, like I was saying, it's not a very old problem that we faced, but it's really kind of grown by leaps and bounds in recent years. Yeah, and big thanks to Olivia for help with this one. I think this is kind of right up her alley. Uh. She points out that, you know, astronomers obviously were some of the very first people to say, hey, we've got a problem going on, and this was in the late nineteenth century. There was an astronomer name Givon, Yeah, who talked about cold smoke a problem and of itself and quote the abuse of electric lights end quote, that we're basically wrecking uh Giovanni's view from uh the observatory in Italy there at Brera. I guess in Brera, but the Brera Astronomical Observatory it's in Milan actually so. But the problem was that Sappiarelli was too cool to take his sunglasses off, so he was not exactly like um, a reporter you could rely on unreliable narrator in Gucci sunglasses. Yeah, I've noticed, like I've I've gotten to this weird point in my life, chuck, where rather than use the word I'm looking for, I use five different words that are clumsily strung together that kind of get across what I'm trying to say. You've gotten to this point, Okay, I feel like it's stepped up, all right. Yeah, I need a little more perspective on myself to be thinking about how I be. No, don't. You don't need to think about that anymore than you already do. Okay, So, uh astronomers were among the first. They were also authors Olivia points out there was a naturalist and author named Henry Beston who was a great quote, it's kind of sad. Uh, there's a night mind you with lights and ever more lights, we drive the holiness of night back to the forest in the sea. Today's civilization is full of people who have not the slightest notion of the character or the poetry of night, who have never even seen night. Yeah, we take those people out and in the night think what was there? Who's that? Who's there? Where's my flashlight? So things really kind of got going like like people people were aware, like there's there's all sorts of light pollution going on. Um, all you have to do is try to get some sleep in a in a city where there's tons of lights on to under stand light pollution and have it affect you. So it's not like people didn't realize there were issues with overuse of artificial lights along the way, but it wasn't until the fifties that anybody actually started to do something about it, which, if you stop and think about it, if if really we started to run into this problem around the beginning of the twentieth century. Less than half a century later, UM, people were already moving to address it. And the whole thing started in Arizona thanks to a richie rich astronomer Personval Lowell, who had built um an observatory, great Lowell Observatory out there, um near was it flag Staff, I believe, and the Grand Canyon. Yeah, and um it was a great space at the time when he built it in four But by the time I think that nineteen fifties rolled around, when they were looking to expand their like, already, Flagstaff is just too bright for our telescope. What are we going to do well? And they said, and this is what all observatories. Basically he had to do was move out even further. So they moved out about twelve miles southeast of the city. But then even then they were like, you know, at some point this is gonna be a problem as well because of the way that humans just expand their footprint with suburbs and ex serbs, and so let's actually do something about it. And so the Flagstaff City Council is a sort of one of the first measures in the United States on light pollution banned the searchlights. When you grew up in the seventies and eighties, you remember this you don't see you don't see him anymore, which I guess this is why I've seen it as recently in the last like ten or fifteen years. Oh really, I have seen one in and I didn't even remember them until this article. But uh, when a big business would open up, or just any business that could afford dire spotlights, they would have these searchlights, spotlights like these bat signals, just kind of flowing back and forth in the night sky, and I get you know. The idea was you would just say, what's that light? Yeah, drive, I need to drive toward it. I got nothing else to do. I need to find out if there's a new Aaron rent exactly exactly. And people do that, I guess because they used them. I mean, those search lights weren't cheap to rent, I would imagine, so they must have been effective if people use them for that long. I remember those all the time when I was a kid, and Flagstaff City Council said, at the very least, no more of those dumb things. They're like, yeah, it's exciting, true, but it's it's wrecking Percival Lull's telescope. So they actually, yeah, they were the first city in the country and maybe even in the world to pass something that protected dark skies, and that kind of set like the tone for the Flagstaff and Tucsign area, which I can't remember if they're even remotely close to one another. Um, super close. Now, our good friend Blair Bunting actually uh, I think they live in Flagstaff now, so he's probably gonna send us an e disabusing me of any notion that flag Staff and Tucson are anywhere near each other. But the I guess Tucson copied Flagstaff maybe and started to say, hey, we should protect our dark skies too. Yeah. I think it was just sort of in the air in Arizona. And in the early nineteen seventies Tucson pass some laws that said, hey, all these lights that are pointing upward, let's just point those down at least. Uh. And then over the next few decades they moved like two different kinds of lights that were a little softer on the visual spectrum, not as bright. One of the big problems we'll talk about later is all the blue light these days from led s and electronics and things like that. But um, do you have the blue light? Oh my god, are you? Are you trying to get better sleep, and like not looking at your phone before bed. I've got that um that night shift thing on where like from sunrise to sunset it's um or suns set to sunrise, it's like a yellow it's like yellow stuff automatically it does that. Yeah, and I don't. I try to read books more at night too. I think it's but it's more just like the light bulbs, those light fixtures, I don't care what time of day it is. They just look like you've made the decision to to do everything you can to drive yourself insane. So you're you're going with the blue light led eds. Well you should avoid those, right, I think so, Yeah, I don't have them in my house. Good for you, Chuck. I mean, that's one of those things like l E d s are great because they last a long long time, but they make different kinds of l D s now, so you don't have to have those blue light ones. So there's this group called the International Dark Sky Association. They were founded in night by somebody who was part of that push and I think Tucson and start protecting the dark skies. They are big time into saying like hey guys, we need to figure out some something else. But aside from these blue A blenk l Eds that are really not good, we'll really just stop all over blue light l e d S whenever we get a chance later in the episode. But the point is is the International Dark Sky Association has been introduced now and they are responsible for Alex Lash's favorite thing, certifying dark sky places around the world. Actually I think there's a hundred and seventy of them. Yeah, like dark sky sanctuaries. Basically, UH, if you do the right thing. If if this is your goal and you do the right thing, some people might say it's the wrong thing. Um, you can get certified places in I believe, um, Minnesota. I think there's a park in Maine the UH caught it in Woods and Waters National Monument and Maine. UH Cosmic Campground in New Mexico one that is I don't think on the list. But I had a dark sky experience at Sapolo Island, Georgia a few years ago. Uh. This is when I was at the very misguided notion that I was going to try and direct a little independent movie. And we a couple of friends of mine and I went down there to scout Sapollo Island, which is one of the Barrier islands of Georgia that is virtually uninhabited that there's still some of the original gichi Uh people that lived there, but it's like there's no electricity. So the guy that showed us to our place was like, take your flashlights at night because there are no street lights. There are very few people and it is dark. And we got this little golf cart to ride out to the lighthouse and original golf cart it was pretty original. Um, but we got out on the little road, the dirt road and turn the lights off, and man, it was unsettlingly dark. You could you literally could not see your hand in front of your face. Oh really, I was gonna ask you if your eyes acclimated to the dark so that you could see better than you thought you could eventually, but this is like when we first switched them off, and you just forget about just street lights and just people and all the light that comes in. So it was saw the best guy there I've seen in a long time. And um, it's just weird when you're in a place that's super dark. Yeah, yeah, I can't imagine because you're not used to it. You're a city slicker. I'm a city slicker. So um, that's pretty much brings us up to where we are now in history. As far as light pollution goes, it's a big old problem. There's some people at the fringes of this starting to try to get everybody else on board, and we're gonna kind of dive into what actually makes light pollution. After a break, let's do it a birthday break. Oh okay, and we're back and it's still Chuck's birthday. Happy birthday again, Chuck fifty one. It's a weird number. Yeah, but if you add them together at equals six and six is perfectly fine. All right. So my daughter's age comes full circle. By the way, I took her to her first pro sporting event last night. Went to a Hawks game. Oh wow, what do you think? It was interesting? I mean, I knew we would have to leave it like halftime just because of bedtime. But she made it through the half, got a little squirmy. But you know NBA games, there's a lot of extra fun stuff going on. Fire cannons. Yeah, they had dogs catching frisbees and T shirt cannons and all that. Yeah. On the court, it was great. Uh So, anyway, light pollution, I guess we should talk about the four main kinds, right, and I have bigger problems with some of these than others. Yeah, So the idea, the International Dark Skies Association UM has basically identified four types. The first one is glare, and that is basically like, if you look up at a street light, yeum, the that light is going to basically hurt your eyes. You're looking, You're you're being hit with glare from the street light. That's right, that's a kind of light pollution. It makes sense. Um. The the reason that that's light pollution is ideally, you should have to be standing directly under that the light fixture of the street light and look up for the for that glare to happen. That's just not the case. You can be half a mile away and look at a street light from the side and you're still going to get hit with that same glare. That's why it's a problem. That's what makes it light pollution. Right. The second one is want to have a big problem with is a light trespass. And this is when you have a neighbor or somebody that has a floodlight like pointed in your bedroom window and sometimes they just keep it on. Um that's not the case with my current neighbor. Just to be clear, I don't think he listens, but he's he's pretty good. He like I do, have the motion sensor floodlights that only pop on when something is moving. But be aware of the light that you cast from your home. Is is all I'm that's is preachees I'm gonna get. I just realized two days ago that the old front security light replaced all the rest of them with those motion detector ones. But the one I've left so far, um, the it's it's very old, like the the on offs which is actually like rusted in place. It's been on all day and all night like, and it has been shining at my neighbor's house luckily, Luckily, I think their bedroom is on the other side and they're also there. They're very friendly. Um, they would say something if there was an issue. Um in very friendly. Man are very friendly people. But I just realized it. So now I ordered like a replacement light and had to turn all my lights off because that one is just sitting there, sitting on It's crazy. And also when I think about the electricity, it's wasting during the day. It's like, come on, don't be so stupid, you stupid light. Uh. There's called clutter, which is um. I mean, it's described by Olivia as bright, confusing, or excessive groups of lights. Yeah. I looked into that. What does confusing mean confusing is that, UM, we have something called contrast illumination that we use for night vision. So a light that looks um less bright than another light is going to be further away. With artificial light, that's not necessarily the case. You could have like a porch light that's even brighter than a street light that's further away, and it's going to confuse our eyes and mess up our night vision. And then also I have the impression that just having a big smattering of individual lights across the landscape at night is is clutter as well. But I think the problem is it really messes with your night vision. Yeah, we do have a porch light. To be clear, I'm not advocating for like total darkness of your home, but we leave the porch light on at night. Uh, like Tombodette says to do. And that's it. You got a Motel six now at your house. I live in the management office. It's quite nice and comfortable. It's affordable. Yeah, it's your side hustle. Then you've got skyglow, which is I think everyone kind of knows what this is. This these are just the culmination of city lights. And if you've ever driven into Las Vegas from the desert, you see that skyglow from a long ways away. It's just sort of a big glowing dome in the distance. And that one seems to be a problem that's not just from light pollution, but also air pollution too, because you can you can see skyglow just fine on a cloudless night and it's reflecting actually off of all the particles in the atmosphere. And then if there are clouds, you can see the clouds usually quite clearly. You're not supposed to be able to see clouds, but that's part of skyglow as well. And as we'll see the villain of this episode, um blue wavelength led lights are particularly problematic with skyglow because those blue wavelength that blue wavelength light actually travels very far and can create skyglow hundreds of miles away from the city. When you're when you're way far away from the city, you'll still be able to see it just fine. Yeah, And Lyddy included this fun you know we're kind of talking about he kind of just forget in the city and you get used to stuff. She included a fun little story from when Los Angeles had a big power outage across the city and people are calling in very concerned and reporting what ended up being the Milky Way galaxy in the sky, right like if they thought it was a gas cloud or something. I'm not sure, just something concerning. I think, like, hey, there's a weird looking glow in the sky, and uh, they went, it's fine, it's the Milky Way. So UM, I was saying earlier that our our light UM emissions have been increasing faster than the human population. I think it's about it increased about six percent a year between two thousand. Uh that's a lot um and so it's tough to keep up with and it's also tough to get people to kind of give those up. As we'll see. But one of the things that UM that has has kind of become a newer problem, like artificial lights like porch lights that get left on all night, UM, that kind of thing. Those have been a problem for a real long time but one of the newer problems, Chuck his satellites. Yeah, we talked about how many satellites are up there flying around, and that's a problem. I think we talked a lot about that in the Space Junk episode. It's a problem for that reason. But it's a problem because they're interfering with astronomy and uh in our night sky, aren't they? Yeah? In particular, so there's satellite streaks. Um. They used to show up in about point five cent of satellite images or of astronomy images that were taking at twilight, which is when you can see satellites most clearly. That's also the time you can see things like comets and meteors most clearly. So in addition to being an annoyance, UM, it also potentially poses a hazard because it makes it more difficult to track uh nearer objects that we want to keep an eye on that maybe coming toward us. Although if you see don't look up. It wouldn't matter anyway if we identified something like that in time. Did you see that? Yeah? Was it good? Oh? Yeah, you haven't seen it yet. No. The reviews were so bad that I avoided it, really like abysmally bad. I don't get that at all. Uh. That I was just like, I'm not gonna waste my time. Uh. And then I got nominated for Best Picture, and I was like, well, how if it's so bad? Like, I genuinely don't understand what the bad reviews were. Not only was it, like, you know, engrossing and like well done. And I thought Vice was terrible. I thought it was a terrible movie. So I'm not like some just Adam McKay fan. I also thought The Other Guys is one of the worst movies ever made. I think you and I walked out of the theater on that one. Okay, So I've established my bona fides. I'm not some lackey for Adam McKay. But it was a really well done movie and it was really entertaining too. Just looks up real quick. He's got a fit for what it's worth on Rotten Tomatoes and on Metacritic. I don't get it. It is definitely nowhere near that bad. All right, it was actually pretty good. I think you'd like it. I'd always go to the Roger Ebert dot com because I still trust the reviews there and give it one point five stars. Man, So seriously, Chuck, I would like you to watch this pretty soon. We'll come back on another episode and tell everybody. Don't tell me first. I really wanted to be raw, and I wanted to hurt. If it's gonna hurt, you know what I mean, And just tell me what you think. I'm watching his Lakers show, which is fun. Oh is it good? Yeah, it's fun. I would recommend it. Okay, Well, i'll take your recommendation, you take mine. Yeah, I definitely want to see what all the stink is about. Uh, but you gotta finish your stat though, because he only gave us the front half. So yeah, so I think they showed up in half of a percent of images before. Now they're up to something like um of images taking at twilight and it's just gonna two years. Yeah, and it's just gonna keep getting worse and worse because um, we're adding more and more satellites. And by way, I mean Elon Musk with starlink um. Apparently I think he's got or applied for permission for fort satellites for Starlink Internet Um service satellites. It's gotten weird um challenge put into a fight. I know, I know, Yes, that is demonstrably weird, not just to a fight, a fight for like all the marbles over Ukraine, Like if he beat up Vladimer Putin, weird Putin was going to have to leave Ukraine, I guess was the thing. It is very weird. I agree. Maybe he thinks we're living in a cartoon simulation of real world. I'm pretty sure he does. But there are So there's gonna be something like a hundred thousand satellites in the next few years, they think, because people like Elon Musk and others are just launching launching launching, and it's going to be more and more problematic, which is a problem, like you said, for tracking the Earth objects. So that's the kind of thing that people should pay attention to. Well. Plus also they pose a problem for astronomy and that they use radio signals to transmit, and we use radio telescopes to pick up radio transmissions, and apparently the satellite people and the telescope people are not necessarily coordinating, so they're not making the satellites of invisible to the radio telescopes by using specific wavelengths that the radio telescopes could then tune out. So I think that's a problem in that sense as well. Yeah, here's one stat uh, without telescopes, just with your regular vision looking up in the sky, satellites will very soon make up one intent visible lights in the sky. That's a lot. So those aren't stars you're seeing up there, No, it's about those will be satellites. Which that's also a problem in that sense too. Um, we might as well talk about it now. Um. One of the things that that I find very satisfying because it keeps coming up whenever you look into light pollution and people um advocating about doing something about it, is that there are a lot of indigenous cultures around the world who, um, whose heritage is predicated at least in part on the night sky, on celestial stuff and not just like really bright stars like you could see it a city, but like really subtle stuff too. And it's extensive and has it's like a deep catalog of the cosmos that they use as part of like their worldview and some of their religious and spiritual views. Um. And that is being um infringed upon just by satellites and light pollution too. Yeah. I think, uh this one, Uh it wouldn't a direct quote, but O Livia says that there are some scholars out there that are saying this is basically like a cultural genocide that we're seeing happening to some of these cultures that rely so much on the night sky for you know, not just navigation but rituals. And uh, this is happening in Australia, and I think Indigenous Hawaiians are kind of big on trying to preserve that starlight for their culture as well. Yeah, and it's it's being prevented from being passed on from generation to generation because the same things that were there and could be for like talked about and passed on hundred years ago, you just can't see anymore in a lot of places. I thought that was really interesting. It comes up a lot, and you know, some some people, um try to co opt it to basically say, like c C. We need to we need to get rid of light pollution. But um, it does seem to be like genuinely included at the table now. Yeah, for people like the International Dark Skies Associations, like they're like and this is a legitimate issue too that we need to be taking into account. Should we talk about animals? Yeah, so it's an annoyance to humans and We're gonna also talk about real like health effects on humans in a bit, but it's obviously going to interfere with animals. Um And there are many many examples, everything from uh, you know, city birds thinking it's morning and you know, five and six hours before they're supposed to be awake with their little friends in the countryside, they're up and chirping and singing their bird song. Uh. Two animals that navigate at night like literally depend on the night sky for their migrations, and it confus using or completely throwing off base their migration patterns to where you know, they lose their way, to get lost, they could possibly even die. Yeah, and it's I mean, I guess just cities having a lot of light tends to attract migrating birds in particular, so that you see bird strikes um, which usually results in the death of a bird, really increase a couple of times a year when they're migrating one way and then when they're migrating back the other way at a different part of the year. Um. And I came up with a website, Chuck that I thought was really interesting. It's called bird cast dot info. You came up with it, meaning you designed it yourself just this very morning. It's pretty good considering I don't know what I'm doing and I did it in a couple of hours. Hey, thanks to squarespace, right, I really shouldn't take credit for somebody else's work. No, it's not my website. But they have migration forecasts like maps, and you can type in your town and it will it will show you like the next few days of what what the expected bird migrations are going to be like, um, like numbers wise basically, and you can actually adjust your outdoor lighting at night to help those birds because they are attracted to light. They're normally diurnal, meaning that they're active in the daytime. Those birds that are migrating, but they choose to migrate at night, which means they're not pros at navigating at night necessarily. Um So they can be easily thrown off, of course, by being attracted to like a city with a bunch of bright lights. And then even worse than that, they frequently will dive bomb into windows with a lot of light for reasons I'm not entirely clear on. Yeah, to the tune of you know, and everyone's like, sure that happens, right, now and then. There are about a billion birds a year that die from running into glass in the US alone. Yeah, and we have lost um thirty almost thirty we've lost of our birds since the nineteen seventies, like a net loss overall, not just from from running into buildings. But that's the big chunk of it, is bird strikes into buildings. Yeah, so a lot of cities are I think Chicago started back in the late nineties, started with these lights out programs where you know, they basically say, hey, if you live in a or you know, have a high rise office building, you turn that stuff off at night, or you close the blinds, or do both, or move to only task lighting, or at the very least turn off decorative lighting at night. And a lot of companies and buildings have gotten on board with this kind of thing, thankfully. Yeah, the guys who walk around with the huge ring of keys getting on board with that kind of thing. I thought they like it dark. Some Something I didn't realize, chuck, but that I find kind of awesome is that there are a lot of insects species that that pollinate and visit flowering plants at night when you're asleep, Like there you in their thing did not realize that same. But it turns out that those insects can be greatly impacted by artificial light UM and so that apparently in turn has a deep impact on the um neuroth object callback has a deep impact on the pollination of flowering plants. And they did a study in the Bernese prealps beautiful name um and it's typically dark there. So what they did was they they they surveyed how many insects UM arrived under normal conditions, right, yeah. I think they worked with about three hundred species of insects that do their business at night, uh and I think sixty plants. And they found that when they turned on these uh led street lights that near these meadows, that the pollinator visits drop sixty two percent. And that was a thirteen and people like, oh, you know, but what's the big deal, you can just do it during the day. It led to an overall thirteen percent drop in fruit production. So you know, the trickle down effect that this has. We talked about this kind of thing all the time in ecosystems. It's no different for nighttime pollinators. Like if you like to eat your fruit and have abundant, you know, fruits and vegetables. This is one thing that's disrupting that. And it can also impact the plants directly to like light can trick them into thinking that the days are not getting shorter even though they are. So they're getting um artificial feedback UM and they're keeping their leaves longer. There's some types of cacti and palms I think that have been shown to um not flour at all when they're exposed to artificial light at night, which I don't think we said that that's the that's kind of like the the the in group term for light pollution artificial light at night or allan, allan or allan. Yeah, sorry, all the ones listening. We're not picking on you from this point. And Karen's sure it stinks someone's name has been co opted. Yeah, for now, I think that's fading. You know, it'll pass it. It's already out, I think. Okay, Like, if you're still saying that now, it's you maybe a Karen, what about those poor little sea turtles. Yeah, so one of the things that sea turtles used to get to um the safety of the ocean after they hatch on the beach is light like, they go towards the brightest light that they see, and normally, under normal circumstances that's the sun or not the sun, but the moon reflecting off of the water kind of guides them. They can be very, very bright. And I found out recently it had been a while since I guess it's seen the moonlight like a full moon over the ocean. Uh. And when we went to Amelia Island after Disney World, I had a night like that on the beach where it was like daylight out there. Yeah. Remember that amazing that great shot had to have been Yeah, of course it was just made up, but it was a great looking shot. And Joe versus a volcano and he's out there in the middle of the ocean on that steamer trunk and that moon just rises over him. I forgot how big it was. What a great movie that was. Yeah, we haven't talked about that one in a while. One of the best. Um. So, what do they have to do with the sea turtles? Yeah, that's why they tell you to not use your flashlights on the beach during sea turtle season because that light confuses them. Yes, And if you have a beach house, typically you're asked to keep your outside lights turned off and even inside lights turned off so that you don't accidentally attract the hatchlings because when they move away from the water where they're relatively safer, um, they sometimes walk right into the jaws of wily coyote. Right, And I imagine beach house people, uh comply because I think they probably love their sea turtles and they try to be generally good stewards of their their area. If there's anything people who own beach houses are known for its compliance. Should we take a break? All right, we'll be right back. Okay, So now we've reached the point where a lot of the humanists can start to get on board to this, because artificial light at night a K light pollution has terrible effects on human beings as well. Yeah. So, I mean, obviously some of the stuff is just getting worse sleep and what that does to your body as far as anxiety and stress and you know, headaches and migraines and things like that. But I know you dug up some interesting stuff on cancer even, right, Yes, so it's that blue wavelength LED light has been linked to something called global DNA methylation and methylation. Do you remember way back in our episode on can your Grandfather's Diet? Like, yeah, something well, and it was it was about epigenetics. Well, DNA methylation is how epigenetics happens. It's where a methyl group is put onto a gene to turn it on or off. And what they found is that this is a huge trigger for things like diabetes, type two diabetes, I should say cancer, specifically breast cancer as far as light's concerned, and that this DNA methylation can be triggered in turn by exposure to artificial blue wavelength light at night. It messes with our circadian rhythm and that's one of the ways our bodies respond to it. So it is not an exaggeration to say that being exposed to blue wavelength light at night can can trigger cancer in your body, or potentially type two diabetes or a whole host of chronic conditions. Yeah. I mean it's such a problem that the A m A. I think in six officially like issued guidance on limiting the impact of Elie door led outdoor lighting systems. Uh. And you know when the A m A is like officially weighing in on something, that means it's got sufficient evidence to do so. It's not. It's not saying this is sort of annoyance to your neighbors. It's saying this is legitimately impacting the health of people. Yeah, and it's definitely been linked to breast cancer at least. But um, from what I was reading, the fact that it's been now shown to trigger DNA methylation um suggests that there's a whole bunch of other horrible things that could happen as a result. So steer Claire, seriously. If you have an iPhone, just go into your settings. I think it's um, oh, what's it called, chuck, It's like nighttime or something like that. Um, sweet sweepy time. It's in your display settings or some where you'll find like brightness and all that. And um it's like night night shift I think, or something like that, and just turn that on. Just do sunset to sunrise and you will night shift night shift, thank you, um, and you will, you will. You will be much the better for it. And I think there's apps also you can add onto your Android phone too. You don't have to have an iPhone, and you can probably do the same thing to your computer as well. Yeah, night shift I head mine on. I didn't even realize it. Good for you, Jack, uh so, And I love how Livia put this. Uh, the good news about fighting light pollution, she says, is there's a lot of low hanging fruit. It really is kind of that easy. Um, there are so many things that individuals can do in their on their own properties. Uh. The I d A estimates that thirty of outdoor lighting in the US is wasted. So you know, a lot of this lighting that people have isn't even doing the thing that is supposed to be doing if it is wasted. Uh, And it's a financial loss to about three point three billion dollars annually and twenty one million tons of CEO two emissions. And this is just from wasted light, not from just having lights right exactly. So, like I was saying before, like it it goes hand in hand talking about light pollution and mitigating it goes hand in hand with keeping people from wasting electricity too, and some of that low hanging fruit, like this is stuff you can do on an individual basis. And then if you really get into this and you really want to make a difference, Um, you can like teach yourself and arm yourself through um, through kind of outreach that the i DA has to go educate your city and get your city to put in different kinds of street lights that UM shield from light pollution so that you do have to like go stand underneath it to to to get that glare UM and so there isn't light trespass and and there's less sky glow. UM. There's a lot of things that you can do, So a lot of things you can do on the local level. UM, but one of the big ones is just like stop and think like do I really need light in this area? Like does there need to be some some blaring like blue led street light on my shed that I don't even have anything in Is it really like needed? And that raises a big question, Chuck, Like a lot of people are saying, like, well, what about crime. That's why we light the night is is to to prevent crime. And there's plenty of studies that say, yeah, if you add some artificial light, it will reduce crime. But there's apparently an equal amount of studies that say, actually, not only does that not have an impact on lowering crime, in some cases that actually increases some kinds of crime. Like if you want to make sure that you're the side of your school building is um really well lit for graffiti artists at night, you should make sure that you have all sorts of artificial lighting. Um. You can use some studies make the case that, uh, you are more it's easier to size up a person for whether they're a target um by a criminal when in a really well lit place and vice versa. UM in the dark, your eyes are more acclimated to seeing things in the dark, like a criminal who might be waiting up ahead for you. Yeah, Like I mean you think about it. If you're on a really well lit pathway, Uh, the the nearby shadows are really really dark, and that's where these people could be. You know, not to be too you know, fearmongering. But but that's where they're laying in wait for you. Right, But that's true, Like big light creates big shadow and darkness nearby. And you know, when they do studies, they do show that is reduction in crime. But when you look at like the overall number, like it reduces crime at night, but the overall number of crimes is a much less percentage. I think reduction at night in a place like New York, whereas if you take a whole day it's about four percent overall, which means most of the crimes are committed during the day. You think of nighttime as being more scary, but more crime is committed during the day. Right. And also when you're considering whether you need a light or not one that I saw, Chuck was um uh, like, do you need to leave your back porch light on? And normally when you leave a light on, it's to do two things. Is to deter somebody, but in that case you might actually be making it easier for the criminal to see their way into breaking into your house, right, um. And then secondly, the other reason you would do it is to is to expose those people to provide witness as well. Who's watching the back of your house at night, Probably no one. And in fact, if you don't have that light there, you may force the criminal to use a flashlight, which is going to be even more suspicious than somebody standing at your back door. Or you might use a motion detection light, which is from what I've seen, the optimal thing to do if you're worried about security but also concerned about light pollution. Yeah, because then they walk back there in the dark and then boom hit him. With the spotlight and if you you know, if you have the security cameras at your house, those things worked really well in the dark these days. Uh So if security is your issue, there are ways to get around that that that's not like lighting up your house like a prison yard. That's it. I got nothing else. I don't think I do either, actually, So that's it for artificial light at night, Alan a k A. Light pollution. Hopefully this has opened your eyes a little bit to it, but not so much that you're blinded by the glare, you know, right. Uh And since we front loaded listener mail, we'll just use this and to say, read the word about stuff you should know here in your uh fourteen Yeah, yeah, basically yes, that just basically yes, like next month will be in your fourteen And uh. We don't talk a lot about trying to grow the show, which we should probably do. More so tell a friend, tell a neighbor, tell a colleague about stuff you should know, and introduce him to the podcast. And it really helps us continue to do what we do. Yeah, and not just a podcast, Chuck, we have a book, a New York Times bestseller. We do. In fact, we have a trivial pursuit game. That's right, that will hopefully be on store shelves again soon. Uh yeah, And what else? We sell tufts of our hair. Sure, I got a lot of hair right now, I can. I can send out tough so we can make some money. But that you gotta cut me in, Okay, all right, Well, if you want to get in touch with us and try to purchase some of Chuck's hair, you can email me at stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H