Hi, everybody. Chuck here on a lovely Saturday morning. Cut my cup of hot tea. I'm looking out the window at a blue sky. The birds are chirping. It's all gets as far as your select mind goes. And today we're going to talk about droughts because California is in the midst of a bad one. And we talked about that and more in this episode How Droughts Work. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W Chuck Bryant, and Jerry the chairs there making copies and this is stuff you should know. That was a classic skit, wouldn't you say? And that one of the only ones I liked by that guy by Rob Schneider. That wasn't the biggest fan. Uh did you see the one We're Stinging? He's like staying stingling ling ding ding making copies. Yeah, it was funny. I mean, I'm not anti Rob Schneider, but I just wasn't like, how could you be anti Rob Schneider? Honestly, nobody. It's like being mad at like a friendly horse or something. Yeah, exactly, that's stupid friendly horse. Yeah, I hate his guts. Yeah. Uh what a weird intro. Yeah, well, par for the course pretty much. My friend. Well, although his career has dried up. Oh that was good and vicious. Man. I hope he doesn't listen before we get into the whole drying up reference. Chuck, we are long, long, long overdue for giving a huge shout out to our Kiva team. Yeah, that's right. Uh several years ago, it feels like many years ago, we did a podcast on micro lending and we said, hey, let's start a Kiva team. Kiva is a international lending organization micro lending where they pair you with people. Actually they it's all over the world. Now you need money on a small basis, you loan them the money. You can get paid back and pull your money back out, or you can reloan it. And we have a very active team. And let's hear some numbers. Okay, so, um, our team captain Glenn of Glenn and Sonya team captain Fame sent us some stats recently. We have the stuff you should know. Team has eight thousand, four hundred and fifty three members as as of July thirty one. Um, how much have we loaned so far. Are you ready for this? We need a drum roll, Jerry. Can we put in some sort of drum roll effect or at Wilhelm scream or something like that. All right, Okay, that's nice, that's very good. Here we go. Three million, two hundred and fifty one thousand, twenty five dollars. Dude, that is crazy. Yep. And that's out of a hundred and seventeen thousand, five hundred and thirty nine loans, which is a total of thirteen point nine loans per member. I don't know how people are doing like nine tenths of a loan, but that's impressive in and of itself. Yeah. So what that means is people get repaid and they just kind of do what I think we do is just kind of roll that into another loan. Yeah, you relan it. They make great gifts. I think at least one person sent you to Kiva gift card to congratulate you and Emily on Ruby Rose. That's right, And that's always a nice thing you can do at holiday times or birthdays. Yep. It's whenever it's not too late to join, like we're not like, oh, you're new to the team, like it's a very supportive, great team and again, like you said, very active. You can go to kiva dot org slash teams I believe it's plural slash stuff you should know, or just search stuff you should know on kiva dot org and we'll bring up our team and you can join and be embraced by our teammates. That's right. Yeah, So thanks to Glenn and Sonia as always for nudging us in the right direction and keeping up with the stats. Big help and um and congratulations to our team on getting the three point to five million dollars and change and loans. Absolutely. Okay, So droughts, huh, Rob Snyder VA. Droughts the natural progression of things. Don't forget sting was in there. Um, all right, let's talk droughts their serious thing. Yeah, I mean it's uh, it's it's natural disaster is what it is. It is. Although so Robert Lamb wrote this article that that forms the basis of this in part. Yeah, Robert of stuff to blow your mind, Award winning stuff to blow your mind. Yeah, yeah, they wanted to ward. Congratulations. Um, the heat points out that droughts are fairly natural. There's a lot of debate over whether climate change exacerbates droughts UM. But for the most part, droughts are natural. They're seasonal, they're temporal, they come and go, or in some cases they just stay. And then you got a desert and it's it becomes a natural disaster when you apply human city to it, kind of like do you remember those overhead projectors, and they would have transparencies, so there could be like different they could overlay stuff, so so you have drought transparency and it's just whatever. But then you overlay humanity on it, and then it becomes a natural disaster. Yeah, I thought that was a pretty good point actually, when that Robert made um in and of itself. If there were no humans, that would be a drought um. The land would dry up in certain regions, Animals would leave because there's no water, but it's like who cares, you're not humans. Vegetation would die or the few animals that could stay would stay, and the few plants that could still grow would grow, and then that would just be the new ecosystem, right, and then no big whoop. Potentially, if it wasn't permanent, it would shift back and the life would come back to the area. But again humans, like you said, wouldn't give a big whoop if it wasn't for humans living everywhere, growing crops everywhere, and using tons and tons of water mostly to grow those crops. So we've talked about this again and again, but UM, what I saw the most recent stead I came across of the global supply of fresh water is used to irrigate crops, and that only half is reused, is captured and reused, so that means we lose a lot of water to agriculture, and and agriculture is kind of leaky, you could put it that way. Um, And the fact that we try to grow crops everywhere and use a bunch of the fresh water creates this kind of vicious cycle that exacerbates droughts or at the very least, UM makes our reliance on a climate to not be droughty really really, um, really important. I just put a lot of words together and their scents in there somewhere makes total sense. Like, just go back and listen to that last sense a few times, everybody, They will finally come through. Uh. It is serious business, though, and very sad and devastating. Between fifty and a hundred thousand people. Uh, died in two thousand eleven in East Africa with their drought. And right here in the US we have suffered through uh some pretty rough drought here in the last fifty years. Um. In two thousand twelve they said it was the worst conditions in fifty years in corn production. Uh you put a dent in corn production, that's gonna put a dent in the world markets. Well, yeah, it's a big deal. America runs on corn. Well in the world, condonuts, it's even dunkndonuts have corn in them. The world to a certain degree runs on America's corn too. Yep, you know what I mean. Yeah. And when um, something like corn, as we'll see, agriculture gets hit by drought obviously, and when it gets hit by drought, because of the globalized marketplace that we live in today, when food prices go up, some of the poorer country t get priced out of the market and they see things like food riots and starvation and all sorts of bad stuff. So droughts have like terrible effects. It's a snowball effect. And it seems like I don't I don't know if it's getting worse and if it is getting worse, worse, if it's anthropogenic or whatever, but there, Okay. Texas. In two thousand and eleven, Texas had the driest year since eight, which happened to be the year it started recording this kind of stuff, so it's it's the driest year on record for Texas. Two thirteen, California had the driest year on record thanks to the ridiculously resilient ridge UM, and Australia went through what's called the Millennium drought from two thousand nine. They had a terrible drop. They actually, like some places like Melbourne actually um figured out how to live in drought conditions, to survive and actually keep going pretty well. And a lot of people are studying what Melbourne did because they did it so well. That's because Australians are resourceful and smart people, very resourceful, you know, but not smart and smart. Okay, I wasn't saying anything. I'm just kidding, rubbing my eye. I got distracted. So uh well, we even here in Georgia we had a pretty wicked drought. Remember two or three years ago, do you remember the governor like lead a prayer circle praying for rain and it rained? Did it rain? It did rain? And uh I don't remember that part. Now. It rained, and there was a lot of hullabaloo because they were like, well he led the prayer circle on the day where they called for like nine ye did it rain? Wow? They were praying because that would be kind of cool, That would be kind of cool. I don't think that's what happened though, Um, but I do remember that. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that praying for rain. Do your rain dance. There was talk of war between Georgia and Tennessee, and Tennessee said we have guns. Yeah, And Georgia said we have guns. We have guns too, yeah. And there's a tense standoff, and we left and went to New York City where there are no guy, we had something on the books already. Uh. So let's talk to the basics of drought. Um. Drought is obviously when it doesn't rain enough to sustain uh the ecosystem like it should. It's basically you're losing water through evaporation, which is when water vaporizes or transporation, when water moves you know, through the soil and through the plants and then leaves and it's not so useful to us, right, So you're losing water faster, faster than it's being replenished. Yeah, that is a drought. And again this is this is all viewed through the lens of humanity. Like water isn't lost when it goes through the soil, so it is to us until we get it out of an aquifer that's being replenished. UM. But it's not necessarily lost unless you really look at it through the human lens. Uh. And there are many, many factors that go into whether or not a drought occurs and how long it lasts. UM. Here are a few immediate causes. One is high pressure zones. UM. Sinking error means you get a high pressure zone, which means you have clear skies and warmer temperatures. And if that stalls over a region, then um, more water is going to evaporate. So that's gonna exacerbate the problem. That's like the ridiculously resilient ridge over California. UM. From I think two, it was just this high pressure zone that just said I'm sticking around here for a while. And not only was it did it lead to like high temperatures and low humidity because it's a high pressure zone. UM, it also blocked tropical cyclones that normally are brought to California by the westerlies. It just shot him up toward the Arctic or down towards Mexico and California for two different reasons, didn't get precipitation, and it's still in a pickle as a result. Well, usually when you have a prolonged drought, you can point to a number of factors, like the ironically a perfect storm that causes no storm. Another reason is um air pollution. UH. There's a decade long study completed I think in two thousand thirteen UM from the University of Maryland go terps UH and they found that air air particulate, which is pollution dusts at sulfates um produces more UH intense storms in wet areas, or it leads to more intense storms and wet areas and reduces rain and drier areas. So basically just again exacerbates whatever is normally going on there. It creates weather extremes, creates weather extremes. It's a great way to say it. That's weird though, because so particulate matter. Yeah, I'm trying to figure this out, so the they don't know. The mechanism is uncertain at this point, So there is no answer. If that was your question, I'm abandoning figuring it out. Then. Uh. And then here in the southeast one causes wind blowing inward from the ocean is usually good thing because that brings in from the Atlantic on the eastern seaboard, brings in warm, humid temperatures and uh in the summertime, and if they shift or weekend, then they're going to bring in less moisture and less rainfall. And I think that is what happened. It was a wind shift. And uh, whenever it was we had our drought, when was that was that? It may have been something like that around then. Yeah, I mean it was fairly severe. Um. I just remember all the lakes were way down and they I don't think we got to the point where they were had forced rationing, but they were advising everyone and asking everyone to be better stewards. It was a big deal. Everybody was really nervous. I think that the lake where Atlantic gets his fresh waters down like twelve feet or something like that. It there was serious stuff. Um. Did you you talked about like like changes in um in different areas from did you did you mentioned lno Nino? Do you remember that Chris Farley when he was El Nino back in the nineties. It's like, I am El Nino, which means the Nino in Spanish, so you know what that is. I sort of remember that. There's a documentary on about him now, which I'm eager to see. Oh yeah, I haven't checked out. I forgot about that. I want to see that as well. Um, so El Nino is actually um named for little baby Jesus. Did you know that? I did not know that. Yeah. Back in the sixteen hundred, Spanish fishermen um off the coast of Mexico UM named it El Nino because it was this weird arrival of really warm water in December in the winter months. So they're like, oh, well, obviously it's the Christ Child. So then aimed at El Nino. And that is when there's warmer than average water temperatures in the tropics around like basically off the coast of Mexico, right, and those warm the air and create wetter than average conditions in some parts of the US and other parts of the world, and drier than average conditions in the other parts. And then there's the reverse of that, La Nina. That's right, and that's colder than average temperatures. So those places that normally get wetter than normal and drier than normal or flip flopped. But either way you get extreme weather events like floods and droughts from this. And they aren't exactly certain what creates this, just that they're pretty sure it's natural. Yeah, well, actually they do have a decent idea. Um, in two thousand three, something happened, which the same thing happened in the nineteen fifties when we suffered a pretty bad drought in the US. Uh, there were there are two ocean cycles that basically flip flopped, the Pacific Decadal oscillation and the Atlantic multi decadal oscillation. And these things flip back and forth basically over time, and they cause either more rain or less rain. And the p d O is what causes the shift in those surface ocean temperatures. So what what causes the shift the Pacific decatal oscillation? Okay, so but what caused these things to flip flop? Well, they just flip flop periodically over over time. Basically, UM, I don't buy that. They're like something makes those things flip flop. Well yeah, maybe, so, I don't know. I mean, that's what I want to answers. Some people probably say that's just the cycle of nature. I guess, so that's a cop out. But they say that every twenty to thirty years, Uh, this is going to happen. And when you combine them with with other factors, is it basically gives everything a boost. Is and that's what creates al nine or n Yeah, that's what they think. It's more like it works in concert with Elena and Lennia. So these things have happened at the same time, which is the reason California is in such a droute right now. So you have the warrn p d O plus Lenno means it's going to be wetter and cooler. Uh p d O plus Lninia equals dryer and uh Laninia is influenced by the trade winds basically blowing on top of the water. I think you already said that. You're right. It just like circulates that water and the deep water comes up to the surface. Chili, Yeah, from chili or it's chili water chili water, so um, chuck. There's different categories or people love to categorize stuff, right and um, there's actually different categories of the categories for droughts. I thought that was kind of interest, a little bit of a brain buster. But um, you can kind of subdivide the categories for droughts into um, geographical or seasonal descriptions and then descriptions of drought severity. Right, So with a geographical or seasonal description, it's kind of like, here's an area, and this is the kind of drought conditions you can expect. So there is a permanent drout, which is basically what you think of with the desert. It's a place that gets a minimal amount of precipitation and it never catches up to the amount of evaporation or transporation. That's right, right, So that's just it's just always dry there. Permanent drought. It's an arid climate air climate. Uh. And then next you have seasonal drought, which is like a drought comes dry conditions come on a predictable UM calendar. Yeah, like the dry season or the wet season in the country. Uh, those two are pretty standard. Um, no big surprises there. But the next couple, Um, you almost said no big whoop again almost did you saw that? My mouth went? Unpredictable drought is when there are irregular dry spells where it's usually humid or rainy, um and then invisible drought. I'd never heard of that. I think that's fascinating. That's when it is raining and you think, how can we be in a drought because it's raining, It just means it's it's too hot probably and it's not raining enough because too much evaporation and transpirations going on, so it's invisible to the naked eye. It's like being skinny fat to where you like you'r thin on the outside, but your liver's got a ton of fat all over it. Oh. I thought you're gonna talk about the people that have like really thin faces, but from the nick down they have weight. No, I hate those people. Oh chuck, you're going to get some mail for that now. I hate those people. I'm jealous of those people because I have a big, fat face. Like there's no picture I can say. I could show my legs or my arms, and people say, what a thin guy. You know, I think you look great, but everything from my nose to my waist gives me away. I'm gonna do that. I canna start posting pictures of my legs in my arms, like Danny DeVito. He always does the troll foot that has still have a nice, small, tiny butt too. We've all noticed. I'm gonna take pictures of that. It's the talk of the office. Um, everyone's pictures of yourself. Everyone's body is fine. I'm not body shaming, all right, that's good. What I'm saying is I'm jealous of people with thin faces. I got you, all right, So we got we got one category down, which describes like a region in area, although invisible drought doesn't really fit into that. But what als Okay? Um, the next group of categories, um man, I sound like we're we're using an overhead projector this is this dry? It's appropriately dry for the drought episode. Well, you have to go through these, you know, it's part of it. Okay, So the other these these categories make sense to me. They described like the severity of a drought, right, and you can pretty much go from one to the other and it makes sense. So like a meteorological drought, it basically says that you know, this week, well, this this time last year, we had about an inch and a half more rain than we got this year so far. No big whoop, no big whoop. Yeah. Basically, my brother in law, also named Josh, would notice this kind of thing because he's a little bit of a weather bug. Yeah that I like weather bugs. Okay, well you would like Josh, and he's one of the few things a few people besides like maybe a meteorologist who would notice this, which is why it's called the meteorological trought. That's right, Like you would have to be really paying attention to even notice this. That's right. Okay, that's stage one. Yes. Stage two is an agricultural drought, and that is when you're talking about crops, and agriculture is going to be one of the first industries parts of the world affected by drought obviously, so this is when farmers are starting to notice. You might hear a news blurb or two if there had been drought in the news, but it still hasn't Like you're not walking around the streets talking about it yet. No, just farmers and Josh are speaking to one another about the drought. That's right. What's next, Josh, the hydrological drought. This is when like we start to notice, and that's when you're like, hey, man, I went to my lake house this weekend and it's all ugly. Yeah, like clay red muddy junk. Everywhere. I can see the submerged buildings. The underwater cities are visible, like in lakelan near You know there's a town down there. Oh yeah, yeah, you didn't know that. I don't think. So there is a town down there. And when Lake Laner gets low enough you can see it. You can see a Gulf seventies six sign sticking up out of the lake. Wow. Yeah, like the old like ball one that's orange with the blue seventy. What was the town m like some part of Buford or something. I guess yea. Interesting. You didn't know there's a town in under lakelan Ear No, I didn't didn't that Creepsville about creepy. It's creepy. I think it's cool. I mean if there were people living down there with gills, that would be creepy. So the point is, Chuck, that we notice the people with skills. Notice if everybody starts to notice the hydrological drought, it's like the talk of town um. And then the next step is where it gets really really bad socioeconomic drought. This is when the government tends to step in and say you who have odd number um, addresses can water on Tuesday's Thursdays. Those of you with even addresses can water on Monday Wednesdays, or it can flip flop. It depends on your local government. True, isn't that set in stone, right? But the point is is, Um, there are now restrictions taking place, There are now things being enforced. The people are are being asked to cut back, and and the reason why it's because there you're we're seeing a real effect like through the economy. Yeah, like Robert points out, something I've never really thought of, a tourism of course, is gonna dry up it with the water in some places, uh, food shortages, UM shipping maybe affected, uh imports and exports, and in less developed parts of the world that can be really bad. Here in the US it may just mean socio economic annoyance, but in other parts of the world it could lead to political unrest and armed conflict and panic and disease and like really really bad stuff. Right, So that's socio economic drought, and uh, let's take a break and let's talk a little bit about other effects of drought in the dust bowl right after this, So Chuck, we kind of just gave some overview of like how drought works or how bad it can get. That's right, So what causes this? I mean we talked about whether being a factor. Obviously, there's not a lot we can do with that. You know, we have we have our how weather modification works episode that we did and a TV show based on that too, a TV episode, UM, but not everybody agrees that, say, like cloud seating works. Some people say it really really works, other people say it doesn't really work. Yeah, we talked about cloud seating a couple of times. I think it's been used, um to affect during wartime to wash out trails supposedly, Yeah, and Vietnam. Right, that's what they say, But why, I don't know. Everyone's not convinced. So when it comes to things like El Nino or law Nina, as it stands now, at our primitive technological place in human history, there's not much we can do about that. Um. The most we can hope to do is really kind of figure out what causes drought in other ways and if see if we can do anything about that. And the UM person in the hot seat or the thing in the hot seat, as far as that goes right now is climate change, and there's a big debate over UM whether we can do anything about drought conditions through climate change and all that has to do with CEO two supposedly. Yeah, Well, between the last five decades, between nineteen fifty and two thousand, worthy warmest in six hundred years in the United States temperature wise, and UM, I'm sorry, I think that's globally, but in the US and the Southwest, they are predicting a rise UM as much as nine degrees by the year on UM, and that is accompanied by the two degree to degree one point four degree rise over the past one years. So what they think is that as more and more c O two enters the atmosphere, this rise in temperature that it creates from this greenhouse effect UM will actually create drought like conditions. And one of the ways that it will create drought like conditions is by creating high pressure areas which remember don't have UM a lot of humidity. They have high temperatures, they're dry conditions, and they also UM simultaneously. UM this denser air and dense air above it, right, or warmer air above it prevents the air below it from rising, right, because that's how winds and and UM currents air currents are formed. Warm air near the tropics rises and replaces the cooler air to create this cycle. Right, that's right. Well, if the air above it is equally warm, the air below can't rise. And when you have a lot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, that air in the middle I think in the mesosphere um stays warm. So you've got a big chunk of the atmosphere just hanging out around the your surface. And when the upwelling doesn't happen, you don't have the upwelling action. That also creates thunderstorms and generates large amounts of torrential rain, which really helps things when you have droughts. So they think, and this is all just a conjecture at this point, but that's the big explanation for how climate change can lead to drought like conditions, and that if we can reduce the amount of C O two in the atmosphere, we can conceivably reverse those drought like conditions. Well, and don't they think that climate changes in general causes more severe everything like your storms and stream flooding and ah, so I mean it's definitely something to consider. Yeah, sure, try to tiptoe around this one because there is a debate not really. No, No, it's basically fraudulent. Whether there's a debate over whether climate change is real. The climate change is real, like almost all scientific consensus is the debate that it's a human cost or not, and whether we can do anything about it or is there no debate about any of that. No, there's debate still, but it's not real debate, Like the scientific community is generally in in agreement that there is climate change and that it is a real problem. Um, I don't know what the consensus is on whether we could do anything about it. I think probably most people would say we should at least try. It's worth trying. Sure, why wouldn't you Well, a lot of people say that you shouldn't because it will affect like it'll have her economic progress, or say, for example, like China, Um, say the US is like, oh, hey, we're laying off of greenhouse gas emitting stuff and we're getting a little greener. You guys should too, And China would say, well, you guys kind of got to this point by spitting a ton of C O two into the atmosphere. It's China's time, GHO sit over there and be as green as you want, leave us alone. There's a lot of political land mines to two trapes around um in in getting everybody on board to reducing the climate footprint or the carbon footprint of humanity. Yeah. What what to me is when you see, usually on social media, when someone said, you know, in the wintertime, like the coldest winner seen in years. You know, so much for global warning, warming, warning, warming, a warning? How about that? Maybe they should change the name is Fred slip. Uh. But there's a great video that Neil de grass Tyson does. Um. You can find it on YouTube about the difference between weather and climate because those are two entirely different things. And he does this little thing on the beach with a dog. That's great, and that Neil the grass Tyson way with his shirt mostly on button Well he's on the beach of course. Uh. He's got on his clam diggers, you know, his Hawaiian shirts unbuttoned. And he is a cool cat. He is a cool cat. But he um, yeah, he explains it very simply, the difference between weather and climate. So before you go say something dumb like it's super cold on in June so there's no global warming, just go watch that video. Yeah, that's my recommendation. And uh, I want to recommend a book called Merchants of Doubt right now I'm reading and it's about how, um, the tobacco industry, climate change, TONI all, all this stuff, um is largely the result of pr Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, it is a very interesting book actually, and I think there's a documentary based on it that just came out to If you don't like reading, who does? Um Robert points out to in this article, Uh, predicting drought isn't really something you can do necessarily. Um. You can predict seasonal droughts a month or so out, and you can, I guess you can predict certain conditions that like right now they're saying that California is probably in trouble for the next twenty to thirty years. Like, I don't think they see an end in sight because of the various climate factors going on. It's not like, I mean, any rain would help, But it's not like a rainy few weeks here and there is going to do make much of an impact, right, It's pretty scary out there. Well, that's one reason why they're studying, for example, Melbourne, Australia or Melbourne Victoria, Australia. I'm not quite sure how you say it properly, um, but under this drought, this millennium drought, Melbourne dropped their water usage by like under drought conditions, and they did it through like local recycling programs. Apparently one really effective program was electronic billboards that said, like the shared reservoir is at like of capacity right now. Like here's what don't forget what's gonna happen if we all run out of water, so like recycle your water, use gray water to water your plants, that kind of stuff, um, and it worked really really well. They should just do dumb in photographics for Americans as like the water getting lower and then like dead people at the bottom. Here's where we're headed. Does it make sense to you now, person watering your lawn and be like Los Angeles, there's a lot of dead people in our reservoir are buried at the bottom. I think I two read a little bit about the l A drought or Southern California in general, that they're they're not making enough headway with their conservation measures right now, like it's not putty much of a dent into it, Like their public campaigns yeah. Yeah, yeah, selfish people still watering their stuff. Well, it's the law of the comments. Like supposedly any shared resource people are just like, let everybody else can serve. I'll be I'll be fine. Just give me everything I need. This little bit doesn't make a difference. Yeah, And they were this this article, I think it was a Scientific American article. I was reading about Melbourne being so successful. One of the ways they were being so successful was taking this shared resource, this reservoir, and saying, like, all of us share this, and it's down to this level. So are you going to be the jerk who like makes a drop even more by taking more than your fair share? Um, don't be the jerk. That should be their campaign, right. One of the problems is this California isn't just have a just a single shared reservoir. They get their water from a number of different sources. Yeah. Um, so that's kind of that. That would be tough to like hit that same note with California. Yeah, but as goes California, as goes the US economies, I think. Uh, some estimates say California is the eighth largest economy in the world. The state of California. Oh yeah, so I've heard that before, dire consequences potentially. So let's take one more break, Chuck, and then when we come back, we're going to talk about dire consequences. Indeed from the nineteen thirties in the United States, that's ka the dust Bowl. So I teased the dust Bowl in the beginning, and then we didn't get to it. But now we're getting to This is just like TV. And I became a little uh oh, I know, just keeping people on the hook. I became super interested when I was in Oklahoma recently went to the Woody Guthrie Museum in Tulsa, which is great, by the way, and they had a whole section on the dust Bowl. And I didn't know much about it. I mean, I knew generally it was a drought uh in dusty, but I hadn't looked into it too much. And since then I've studied on it some and watched the great Ken Burns documentary on the dust Bowl. It was very good. You know those parts of that um appear in uh Interstellar. Oh really were their clips of that? Yeah? I don't remember. I couldn't they play it like it's people really like Interstellar? No, not really Oh I love that movie. Yeah, I love it. I thought that was such a great movie. You really didn't like it. I had a lot of problems with it. I loved it. My My biggest problem with it was, uh, just just do the let the viewer figure out the movie. Like I felt like every ten minutes, somebody was explaining something, same guy, same problem. I don't think so man didn't run into that. You know how much I hated that part in an inception. When you watch Interstellar again, just make a little note anytime someone explains what's going on, and you'll have like twenty times written down on your little note back. I guess I didn't. It didn't bother me in this one bother me. And it's not like I have anything against Ellen Page in particular. Oh sure you do. You you're a juno hater, says something to do with Ellen Page. No, I'm just joking anyway. I know. I just for some reason, it didn't stick out to me in Oristellar. I just thoroughly enjoyed that movie. Well good, I'm glad you did. I want to reign on your parade anyway. That parts of the Ken Burns documentary show up in interstellar, but it's great just on its own. UM. And the reason we bring up the dust bowl is because it's actually it's larger than just a drought. People tend to think of it as a drought, but it's actually um one of the one of the It demonstrates things you can do to prevent drought from becoming the worst case scenario, which is exactly what happened with the dust ball. Yeah, it was. It was one of the worst natural disasters in the United States history, for sure. Yeah. And it was just one natural disaster compounding another and another and another. And what happened actually starts in the nineteenth century when America was undergoing its westward expansion and UM, the US government passed the Homestead Acts, and these um gave land grants to Western settlers, UM who wanted to set up farms of between a hundred and sixty and then later on three twenty acres, which sounds like a lot, but they're actually not when you start thinking about these massive states like Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas and all of US UM. And so what happened was eventually these plaine states, the semi arid grassland was carved up into a huge patchwork of smaller farms, and um, people started farming and things started going really well. The land became productive very quickly. Yeah. And and at first things, um, they were farming somewhat sustainably. You know, they still had grasses and still had cattle grazing on these grasses, which is all good stuff. And these are these are native grasses that were dry resistant already. They were acclimated to this again semi arid climate. That's right. So let's flash forward, or fast forward a bit, um to post World War One in the nineteen twenties. Um, there was a recession and farmers all of a sudden said, you know what, we can get these new machines and use these new mechanized farming techniques to try and make more money and turn some of this grass into wheat. Yeah. Because I mean, if you if you have like a ho right and you're just hacking away at this semi ara ground, you're gonna be like, I've got acres, but I'm just going to farm twenty of them because this is a work, you know. Um, But if you can go buy a plow and some oxen and the later on a tractor to drag those plows. Um, you can turn all three twenty acres into productive crop land. And so they overproduced wheat. Yeah, there was a there was a bumper crop year in where so many farmers bought so many plows and used these mechanized methods of farming that there's a bumper crop of wheat, so much so that the price of wheat plummeted. And it just so happened that there was a recession, like you said, at the same time, So there was an oversupply of wheat and an under demand for it because everybody's that's right, and so everybody said, well, what do you do. You just plant more wheat, plant more wheat. Yeah, basically expand your farms so to try and turn a profit. And so all of a sudden, all these drought resistant grasses were no more. Uh, there was wheat everywhere. And apparently wheat does not jibe Um, that quantity of wheat doesn't jibe with the natural landscape. Uh. In the soil became dusty and dry, and uh you couple that with a drought which hit hard over the period of like three years and high winds and everything blew away. Yes, so a hundred million acres of top soil ended up blowing away like just blew away. It wasn't there any longer. All that was left was the rocky subsoil like blue to the east coast. Yes, Um, some of it blew to California depending on where the winds blew. Some blew all the way to Washington, d C. Which actually proved to be fortuitous because that got Congress's attention. And um, these things were called black blizzards. And there's man, you've seen the footage. It's just amazing when these huge, towering clouds of black dust were just coming towards these what looked like these tiny little miniature houses. Um, it doesn't look real, No, it doesn't. But this really happened on the Great Plains in the thirties. Yeah, we're talking a hundred and fifty thousand square miles over Oklahoma are parts of Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico. And the drought itself was from thirty four to thirty seven and sixty percent, sixty percent of the population left. Yeah, a lot of them moved to California. California wasn't very happy. A lot of them left their farms and we're just broke. Basically, they were um like the first generation to find themselves underwater because a lot of them again remember like there was this this drive UM to make more money by producing more wheat, even though there was an over abundance of wheat UM. So they really over leveraged themselves by borrowing more for farm equipment and farm hands and farm supplies and UM. When the bottom fell out on the wheat market, they were over extended and their homes and farms got four closed on. So they, like all these people who were just at one like just a little while back, we're farming middle class people were now like um homeless and on um root sixty six and basically doing the grapes of wrath thing. Yeah, I mean, like you said, a lot of them moved west, uh and I think you said that California was not so happy with that. About ten percent of them ended up in California, and um, it was not a great time for the country as a whole. So they they didn't want all these new people they call them Oaky's even though about we're from Oklahoma. They didn't want them coming in there trying to get their jobs. Uh, and it was it was bad news all the way around in California. So UM in actually, what's a pretty good, pretty good example of the federal government doing something really really right. Um. They stepped in, actually FDR stepped in with the New Deal UM and created a lot of measures that tried to alleviate the worst effects of the dust Bowl. And one of the things that they did really really well was create the Soil Conservation Service. Yeah. That was a nineteen thirty five and basically strict instructions to farmers to uh plant grass, plant trees, how to plow, how to terrace, um, how to hold rain water, how to portion off your farmland um. And not just grow wheat over every square inch of it, right, Yeah, leave some land to be fallow and regenerate after um one year of production or a couple of years of production. UM. And one of the other big pushes that's still going on these days is no till arming. One of the big problems that they that they did with with by knocking out these these grasslands was first they got rid of the native grasses that were good at holding the top soil in place. But then they actually tilled the top soil and loosened the whole structure of everything, so it was easy to blow away when these strong winds came in. UM. And apparently top soil takes something like I've seen in a few places five hundred years to produce one inch of new top soil. So once it blew away, it wasn't coming back. UM. And I'm not quite sure how they've replenished it since then. I mean, I know that these soil conservation measures are helping, but I mean, is it just grassland that's growing on subsoil still for the next couple hundred years. I don't know. You know what, I know that somebody out there knows that, though well, please some farmer. I do know that they said by the early nineteen forties much of that land had been rehabilitated. UM. And not only did the from its step in and still install install a lot of new laws and measures, but they also bought a lot of land UM to take it out of production. Yeah, about eleven million acres just to you know, keep it grassy and stable. UM. And the new deal brought it wasn't just the Soil Conservation Service UM. The we won't get into all these, but the works progress administration was created. Uh, the I think the SCS is now the Natural Resources Conservation Service. Uh, and they just you know, they really stepped in and said, we can't let this happen again, even though in the nineteen fifties there was another bad drought. But I think, yeah, the measure that, yeah, I remember in the seventies, that's why we have skateboarding. Oh yeah, that's right. I mean not completely, but it's when they went to the swimming pools because they were empty in California. But thanks to those measures, things in the fifties and seventies didn't reach the levels that they did in and UM, I read this really great article called Rethinking the US Bowl and I can't remember where it's from, but it's posted on the podcast page for this episode on our site. UM and it was basically saying like this was a really good example of the government stepping in taking really good measures. Um, because ultimately what created the dust bowl was parceling out the Great Plains into these small farms. If you're a small farmer, taking soil conservation measures is not economically beneficial to you. You're not gonna see a lot of the benefits. And it's going to be very expensive, right, And if you're just a small farmer, it doesn't matter. Your farm doesn't matter. But if you put a bunch of small farms together and no one's taking soil conservation measures, then what you have, as far as from an ecological standpoint, is one gigantic farm with no soil conservation measures. And that's what set up the Great Planes for the Desk Bowl. Federal government came in and said, you guys are small farmers. You don't have to be big farmers, but we're gonna put a bunch of you together to form what's called the Soil concert Vation District, and we're going to say, if you plant these trees for wind breaks and you do these other soil conservation techniques, we're going to subsidize your farms. And it worked really well, and a lot of small farmers got these subsidies, and the Great Planes was saved. Hooray. Right, But then the same article is like this is also a really good example of how the federal government doesn't work because as smaller and smaller farms were bought by bigger and bigger farms and consolidated into like big Agra, these subsidies are still available for these farms and farming companies that would have carried out these measures anyway, because they would directly benefit from the money that they put into it. They're still getting government subsidies from it. So it was like it worked really well at first. Now it's not working anymore. It's just kind of a waste of money. They should have had a stipulation in there though, that like farms of certain size or something I don't know, should have, should have, could have, would have. I found that really interesting. I can tell really get why you suggested this dust Bowl drought episode. Yeah, it's a good stuff. We've had a lot of um asks for this one lately. So have you got anything else? No, sir, Well, if you want to know anything else about the dust bowl and droughts and that kind of stuff, go to how stuff works, type those words into the search bar and it we'll bring all this up. Uh. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this batty email from a bat bat guy. Um. Hey, guys, went bat biologists specializing and threatened an endangered species in the Eastern US. It's a great episode and you nailed it especially the section on echolocation. I'll add that while most in sect devorous, insectivorous bats do catch their prey while on the wing um, some have specialized to flutter slowly and their echo locations are so sensitive and high pitched, and they're hearing so sensitive that the bats can glean insects from vegetation in the darkness. This be in response to stealthy moss that have learned to sense bat echolocation and evade round and round goes through predator prey arms race. One clarification, though, is regarding the effect of white nose syndrome. You said the podcasts that the itch is what wakes the bats from hibernation. It's more that the bat's immune system is ramped up by the late stage fungal infection, in their metabolic requirements are beyond what they have prepared for the damage. Wing membranes are especially susceptible to evaporate water loss. In most hibernation interrupted bats are thought to die of lack of water rather than lack of food. Additionally, new studies indicate that the clinical signs are in stages of the disease and that the chemical imbalances cause internal damage. Before the visible fungal high fade. DO one mechanism for this is chronic respiratory acidosis caused by increased dissolved CEO two levels in the blood. Wow, man, I told you it's a bat biologist. Listen to you guys every day. Uh And I've taken s y s k onto the woods on bat surveys more than once. Thanks for the PA. We've been on a bat survey before. It's a great balancing act of fact and b s of to each their own and holding humanity to a higher standard. You guys consistently hit it out of the park. Man, that is nice. That is from Jason Whittle and uh, my wife's hometown of Akron, Ohio and where Lebron lives to that's right. And you know what we actually got our episode shared by um oh boy, now I can't think of it the Bat Society. It's the best society of America, the world Bat Society. Can't remember which one, but one of the larger bat organizations shared our podcast and was I said, we did a great job. So I thought that was Oh man, that's awesome. Well, thank you thanks to the Bat Society, thanks to Jason. It was right Jason whittle Um And if you want to be cool like Jason and send us a really interesting email full of tons of facts, you can do that. You can tweet to us too at s y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us that email to stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com, and in the meantime you can hang out at our super cool home on the web Stuff you Should Know 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.