It Could Happen Here - How to Survive The Hottest Summer Ever (So Far)

Episode Date: August 9, 2023

James, Margaret, and Gare discuss the incredibly hot temperatures impacting much of the world, and talk about ways to survive as global temperatures continue to rise.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You should probably keep your lights on for

Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, everyone. It's James here, and we have a wonderful episode for you today on heat

and heat illness and how to protect yourself and your community and your animals when it is hot, which it is right now. But I just wanted to record this little pickup to tell you that this isn't medical advice. We do this every time we do these. I am not that kind of doctor and I'm not your doctor. And I just wanted to reinforce especially that, yes, generally if you're hot, it's a good idea to drink fluids and get out of the heat. If someone is losing consciousness or really, really sick, you need to get better medical attention and then you can learn how to give on a podcast, right? So that's when you call someone whose job it is to look after people.

I just wanted to reinforce that obviously pouring water down the throat for someone who's lost consciousness is a very dumb idea. So please, if somebody is seriously unwell, seek medical care. Enjoy the episode. All right. Hi, welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast where we thumb our nose at God, which is what I was doing just before the podcast began. Maybe we'll include that. And today we're here to talk about how God is smiting us with massive heat waves and i'm joined today by margaret killjoy and garrison davis say hello everyone hello everyone so called so called free thinkers

yeah my sheeple have joined me uh this is this is what I get for doing an episode about sheep. So as you will be aware, if you are in just about anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere, it is very hot at the minute. It's very hot in cities in Europe. It's very hot in the United States. It's very hot in parts of North Africa and the Middle East as well. It's the hottest June for how many years, Garrison? July. July. That one. It is the hottest July in, it is 120,000

years, according to the most recent estimates released like three days ago as of time of recording. So yeah. Yeah. And we've had the hottest day in history like four times in the last month or something yes the in the in the first half of of july we had we had two days in a row where it was the two hottest days on record and we had two other two other days that were also the hottest days on record um it's it's pretty concerning it's nothing that people haven't been warning about for many, many decades. But it's bad and it's very warm. Yep, and it will continue probably to get warmer. So I think the way we want to approach this

is I'm going to start off with talking about some stuff related to like exertional heat illness, because that's the thing that's most acutely concerning for people right especially if they work outside if they recreate outside if they're doing stuff outside where they can't get out of the heat um so i think to start off i want to talk about things that might make you predisposed uh then i'm going to explain a little bit of how the body cools and then some of these different stages of heat illnesses and how one might go about treating those or seeking further care if you need to. So to start out with, there are some things that can make you predisposed to heat illness.

The biggest predisposition I've come across in my reading is previously having heat illness. So I can certainly speak to this. reading is previously having heat illness so i can certainly speak to this yeah like i think i got heat stroke for the first time uh it was racing bikes in spain i think but i then remember getting again racing bikes in vietnam and just like being really bad like having to have iv fluids uh like vomiting uh sort of even some like sort of uh not loss of consciousness but definitely like confusion and erratic behavior and stuff and the line between that and dying is pretty narrow right you can have like multiple organ failure and stuff certainly if yeah if you don't respond to that or if you misdiagnose that and that's definitely um it's

like i'm someone with diabetes right so people can sometimes if you're erratic or confused people can assume you're hypoglycemic and you need some sugar but you don't in that situation we need fluids and electrolytes and to be cooled quickly um so uh yeah that that is yeah you can die people do die actually the mortality is quite high. Like I, to prepare for this, I went and looked at Advanced Wilderness Life Support course I did. And people can look it up.

AWLS, University of Utah does one. And you can access lots of the stuff online for free. But they would think the mortality is quite high from these like heat illnesses. And I think that's probably especially true in wilderness medicine, because it can be hard to cool someone down, right? If you don't have means of like, if you don't have access to ice, you obviously not got air conditioning out there.

If you, the best thing you probably have is running water. Hopefully you have running water, right? And I think probably it's something that people might not have been concerned with unless they either lived in a very hot place or were very active people or who traveled a lot before. So yeah, if you've had heat illness before, then you do need to be careful. And you will probably know if you've had it before. But if we go through all the symptoms, you've had them all and never, I guess, got diagnosed.

And lucky you, maybe you just found out you had heat illness. Other things that can predispose you can be a lack of acclimation. Again, like this is one that I think kind of stands to reason for most people, but like if you go from a cold place to a hot place or the place you are suddenly becomes hot, having been cold, it's going to take you a few days a week to become acclimatized to that heat right um and your body will change things about your body will change so we don't need to go into but uh you can also lose that i don't think so i think um so back when i was exercising more seriously uh i would um we would do heat acclimation by going in a sauna after a training ride.

And the idea was that like you gave yourself this big bout of heat stress and then you could go back and cool down. Right. So I think if you were in AC for most of the day, it was okay. I'm sort of guessing here, but getting that bout of heat stress and then recovering and get just like any other training that you're doing. that bout of heat stress and then recovering and get just like any other training that you're doing seems so like but if you go outside into the heat and then come back into the cool you're still acclimating yourself yes compared to just great hanging out in in you know uh somewhere where it's cold all the time and you do want it you don't want to overdo it right you don't want to be like oh yeah i'm going to acclimate time to go for a 10 mile run like like ease into it

make sure you're hydrating. Make sure you're taking breaks in the heat. There's also a lack of conditioning, right? So that's why you see a lot of heat illness. Maybe that's the first time I got heat stroke was like pre-season workouts for like, especially like collegiate athletes and things or athletes who are more seasonal athletes.

So people who have been parked on their backside for a few months or in class or whatever whatever and then they come and start doing a rigorous training regime and that can uh that can predispose you right so they can cause you to be more likely to get a heat illness um and then there are some medications right so you'd probably say on your medications but things like beta blockers antihistamines diuretics you don't want to be drinking too much alcohol and some conditions too right heart disease skin disease existing dehydration fever obviously right your your temperature is higher to begin with and diarrhea and vomiting which can cause that dehydration right so look if you have diarrhea and vomiting it's not a good idea to also be you know going out and exposing yourself to a lot of heat right um so all of those things can make you more predisposed

but you can have none of those things and still get heat illness um i think the way to understand it is like the way we'll talk about the way our body cools um so it does that through evaporation uh people will be familiar with sweating most people sweat uh and so if you the sweating allows your body to cool right the evaporation of the sweat allows your body to cool um so people who don't sweat or people who have injuries which mean they don't sweat some of their body again are at higher risk for heat illness right well and this also ties into like wet bulb temperature and the fact that if you're in a more humid place you have to consider the heat very differently right um and so yeah yeah the east coast versus the southwest for example of the united states will have very different options available to them both inside

and outside about how to cool down based on the knowing the humidity outside is going to be as important for people as knowing the actual temperature yes definitely and most of the time now if you're using a phone app which i think most people are doing to check the weather that you can find that it'll give you the humidity and might give you a wet bulb or like a real feel temperature. But certainly, like I was recently on a trip to the Marshall Islands and I was running at like 85 and I'll run at 85 all the time and I was dying because the humidity was so high. So yeah, where the humidity is high, you're not going to be able to cool as much right so you need to be more careful uh radiation that that's when your body um is shedding heat

through like i guess electromagnetic energy um that makes up most of your cooling when the ambient temperatures are less than body temperature so once the ambient temperature is above your body temperature, I think in Fahrenheit, it's like 96.6. Your body's going to be relying on other methods, right? That one's not going to work. Conduction. Conduction doesn't really make up much of it. It's not really that useful a way to cool. It doesn't really make much difference.

But like people will be familiar with conduction. If you've ever slept without a sleeping pad, if you've been been camping you'll realize how much colder you get on cold ground um and then the last one is convection right so that's heat transfer between the body and a moving gas or liquid that's why wind chills the thing uh okay because that air is whipping past you right cooling you down um and that's also the convection is one that we can use to cool people down if they overheat, right? Like jump in the creek. So, yes. Or if we don't have a creek,

we can get you wet and then fan you. Okay. So maybe we can, if we're outside and we have those big Therm-a-Rest sleeping pads, we can get some air moving that way and help you cool down. If we know the ways the body cools,

then we can maybe use those right and we we have to understand like you said the the relative humidity right so when our body gets hot especially when it starts to overheat it'll shunt some blood uh to the skin right vasodilation um it will also increase cardiac output uh and increase catecholamines which activate the sweat glands um so the uh hypothalamus will also regulate heat production in the body and there's been two so i don't understand two of the words you've recently used but okay which were the words which are the words about the the catechol the cacophony and the hyper means Catecholamines. Okay. It's sufficient to say that the body, you start to sweat more

and your body begins to regulate how hot it makes itself. Okay. I got that one kind of from context, but what's this next one? Okay, so your hypothalamus is like your, your body's kind of internal regulator and what it's doing is,

it's, in this case, it's regulating the heat production of your body okay so it's trying to um it it's not making you hotter from the inside i guess um that's probably a terrible explanation um okay so let's go through the different stages of heat illness uh we can start off with things that people will be i think we can probably skip like sunburn many of us will be familiar with summer many of us will have been sunburned many of us will understand hopefully we're wearing our sun cream when we go outside right um or just wearing our sun cream and covering ourselves up from the sun yeah not just

like uh running around with our skin exposed to the sun when it's 110 or what have you um so step up from there would be heat cramps and cramps can come from various things right like i think not all cramps are caused by sodium depletion or potassium depletion people sometimes think that it's a potassium thing um some of them can just be caused by over exertion. It can be your body's way of being like, hey, stop. So like if, you know, if it's 50 degrees out and you're trying to run your fastest 10K and you have cramps, that's not a heat thing. That's just your body being like,

you're not ready for this. Yeah, that's kind of my experience with running. Yeah. Yeah, your body's actively rejected it. Yeah. It's because it knows. I tried to join track when i was in ninth grade to impress a girl neither part of it worked i'm sorry to hear that it's fine but it's for the best okay i'm glad that you can share that with the audience oh i thought i was just wait i don't know someone's listening yeah anyway yeah unfortunately

so if heat cramps right they're mostly going to be in your calves. People will be familiar with the sensation of a cramp, I'm sure. When we're experiencing heat cramps, we want to obviously cool off, stop doing the thing. So if we're running, it's time to stop running. If we're cycling, it's time to stop cycling. It's unlikely you'll get them when you get them swimming. There's other kinds of cramps.

But, you know, if we're exercising, it's unlikely you'll get them when you get you get them swimming that's other kinds of cramps um but uh you know if we're exercising it's good to stop it's good to cool down and it's good to rehydrate um so that's where you're going to start with your oral salt solution and generally uh from what i've seen it's a sodium thing so that that's just like a quarter to half a teaspoon of table salt and a liter of water um this is the electrolyte thing that people talk about yeah yeah exactly um and as we get further into like these heat illnesses um one of the things that you want to be careful of you're trying to rehydrate someone when it's overloading on carbohydrate so you want a less than six percent carbohydrate solution um you that can mean just not pounding gatorade which i think can be like the sort of standard response for some people okay um because it just it doesn't empty quite

as quickly as something which has a lower uh carbohydrate content right okay but people who are drinking go ahead drinking straight water doesn't rehydrate you as effectively as drinking electrolytes right like if it's really hot out you pretty much need to be hydrating with electrolytes this is unless you're like eating a salty snack or something this is what i've heard from people yeah there's a thing called hyponatremia which which is um when you the opposite that's like low sodium right then that's uh that can happen sometimes from just drinking straight water without any sodium. It happens rarely, but it definitely can happen. It can happen in like backcountry travel

where people don't think they're exerting themselves. They're just kind of walking and drinking a lot of water. It can happen in marathons. Like it happens sometimes in marathons, people are just taking the water from the aid stations, just drinking the water. Yeah, it's never like, it's, you know, when it's hot, if you're having you know when i was bike racing i used to do one drink of water and

one drink of electrolyte even in the heat pretty much like one bottle there are two bottles on a bicycle then i think that's a fine thing to do if you're in the heat and then you're exercising um you you don't need to be smashing gatorade all the time because that's a lot of sugar and it might that will also not empty from your stomach um so you know a modern sports drink should have the right solution um you know there are lots of brands i'm not going to recommend one but uh there there are lots of different brands which should have a decent sort of four or five percent carbohydrate solution and pick one that tastes nice to you and then we move from there into a couple of different things heat exhaustion and heat syncope um heat syncope is when you'll

see people like like fall over um and it happens often like the only time i've seen it happen is people stopping after like a long run like uh specifically like when they push themselves really hard right and it can actually be um it can be people who are not particularly uh dehydrated or or hypothermic um but instead of a long run and heat you're not acclimated to uh it can blood can pool in the legs and um it's it's often people who are elderly are not very well acclimated um and it's normally when they're standing and stationary um and that's something that you can treat uh by elevating the feet whereas the person lies down and then just getting them out of direct sun sunlight and helping them rehydrate right so helping them cool rehydrate um you're going to see that in nearly

all of these cases cooling someone off it's the most important thing to do um so next one we'll talk about heat exhaustion again like you'll know something is wrong in in these situations right like if someone's just just like falling over you will know something is wrong if someone's yeah then in this case if he's like you'll know like having had heat exhaustion heat stroke like you you yourself will also know there are certain like uh like ecstasy is the big one right when people people quite often get heat illness when they're like at raves on ecstasy and that's just because obviously like altered state of mind plus dancing uh plus plus this drug which is um you know your body is not not making its usual responses i guess

yeah and that can be so like you know if it's 110 out maybe that's not the time to be doing mdma and and raving cop cop sorry cop behavior james yeah yeah i can't stand by and hear, as you spread this MDMA slander, people should absolutely be knowledgeable about what causes serotonin syndrome and be careful about mixing other substances. But I cannot have you just disparage the good name of MDMA like this. Oh, I will take it one step further and tell you that at least with my research, both caffeine and alcohol make it far more likely for you to suffer dehydration and related heat.

Dehydration. Yes. This is, this is just, this is an actual problem that people should make like with MDMA. This is something to, to look up because of, because of the way it affects your serotonin levels.

It can cause you to overheat if you, uh, take too much or come out with other things, or if you're in a hot, sweaty, crowded room and you're dancing too much without taking breaks, this is a thing to consider. Um, yes. Yeah. I had, uh, there was a person, I, it was, I think it was referenced in the, in the course I did where they would talk about using a drone at a rave to identify people who are hypothermic. That's cool. And be like, you are too hot.

Step away from the dance floor to identify people who are at risk, which is an interesting idea. That's cool. I think, yeah. So just, you know, something to consider as you go forward with your summer plans. So other signs, right? Tiredness, weakness, dizziness, headache, fainting, nausea, vomiting, muscle cramps.

Nausea and vomiting is rough, I remember. The worst heat on us I've ever had was in Vietnam doing a bike race. One of the rules in a bike race is you can't take um supplies from your support car in the last 50 kilometers and it was just so hot i remember being like i'm baking inside my skull i'm baking inside my skull like and i'd been previously in like a little group in front of the main group so i also hadn't been able to access water from my car then and then drop we got caught by the main group is what happened and And I remember being like, okay, good. Now I can get my ice socks and put them down my back

and I can get my cold water. And then I went back and the guy was like, no, no, no. It's like 49 kilometers. And I was like, oh, this is bad. This is really fucking bad. And it was really bad. Did you finish the race or did you? Yeah, I did.

I finished the race. i'm not sure that was the right call but congrats yeah no no it's a terrible decision uh i have the picture somewhere my teammates put me in a shower with like my legs above my head it was just like waterboarding me with cold water and i was being given ivy fluids they were all like uh this is bad he's not he's not in a good way um yeah yeah but you know sport is good for you keep keep sporting out there kids yeah everyone was very concerned for me my all the stuff i came up with was like stay inside don't exert yourself like avoid caffeine and alcohol james is like if you want to push yourself past your limits.

Yeah, yeah, don't, don't. It's bad. We did everything wrong, right? Like it was in December, the race, because the Asia Tour doesn't take a break at like the December end of year time. It takes a break for Ramadan. So obviously coming from the United States, we were relatively less fit than we would have been. We were not acclimated.

I had a fat beard, which did not help. and like my hair was longer than it is now like my body was not losing heat uh everything was uh just bakuna doing this this race yeah yeah going out there like full uh i look if there's nothing that uh what what is more white man on the left and you know like a white dude with a beard it's like all of them right kropotkin bakunin marx and you have to try it and oh yeah don't do that don't do that to yourself we talked about heat syncope and the last one is heat stroke so what differentiates heat stroke uh from heat exhaustion is that higher body temperature above 40 degrees celsius which is 103 104 fahrenheit okay if you're seeing 103 it's time to pick up the telephone and call 9-1-1 um if you can if you're in an area where you can do that but it doesn't matter it's 103 104 i guess it's that

you're very hot at that point um you're gonna have hot red skin fast drunk pulse headache dizziness nausea confusion people can also lose consciousness um so uh the this is very serious right and the line between this and and really serious lasting complications is quite quite small so you do need to be very extremely concerned i will say that like when you're taking someone's temperature um taking it uh at the extremities is not necessarily going to give you the best uh idea of what their core body temperature is right um so that's for the reason that like if they're hot if like if it's hot they're hot on the outside right like your ear or what have you um and then if you've if you've then tried to cool the person and you're seeing like a lower body temperature in their hand or if you yeah if their hand's been in ice you know an ice bath then you might see a cooler temperature there

um there's there are like rectal probes are used for this not something to be doing in a sort of non-consensual manner um they're not really something to be doing unless you're like a medical professional but um if you're if so just don't be relying i guess like you know people have those little heat guns that they like to use and stuff yeah might not be the most reliable source of information although it might be useful for the initial uh diagnosis right yeah even then like if even if you can just do an oral thermometer as opposed to like the temperature of your forehead is x yeah like if it's 110 then the temperature of your forehead is going to be hot right oh i see what you're saying yeah yeah totally okay versus

you know you're trying to get as inside as possible i guess yeah i remember people doing cooling experiments where you had to take a pill when it measured your internal temperature um and well bluetooth out or something wow and yeah so that's fun times i think that's cool as hell i want one rescuing it later sounds like not fun um yeah yeah yeah it does make an exit from the body. So with this again, right, you want to cool the person down. And the way we can do that, it's like ice packs right in the groin, neck and scalp. So I used to do like just tights. Like if you're wearing tights, put ice in those and put those down my back of my cycling

jersey or cycling. You can put them in the groin. Obviously, the person has become like a heat casualty you can put them in the groin armpits uh the like the neck um and you can also if you don't have access to ac obviously you've got ac you can put the person in an air-conditioned environment to help them cool down you can put them in an ice bath um you'll see that like at hot weather events um i'm trying to think there's there are a lot of other conditions that you'll see at hot weather events we don't really have time to to talk about but things like rhabdo are very very concerning um if someone's exercising in the heat but you'll often see at the end of hot events

uh in first aid tents they're popping people in ice in ice baths to cool them down they've got some of these symptoms. Like 15, 20 minutes, I think, is how long you want to put them in there for. But if you're starting to feel headache, dizziness, nausea, I guess my big take-home here is get out in the sun, stop exercising if you're exercising, and start hydrating if you're not hydrating with that carbohydrate solution. You're looking to drop that cool temperature, that temperature below that that kind of danger zone right and

ideally get it back to to where it wants to be which which i think in fahrenheit is around 96.6 um you uh you probably don't want to actively cool someone all the way down because you can overshoot and they can get hypothermic and so like uh they can they can get too cold if you're like you know dumping them in a freezer or like uh um you know actively cooling them too aggressively so that's something to be concerned with as well and you don't want the person to start shivering uh because the body's trying to heat itself back up at that point so you can't be uber aggressive uh but i think having said all this like i said the big take home is like if you start to feel sick dizzy uh under well when you're outside in the heat get out the heat get some water get in the shade if you can get air conditioning

if you can uh if you're at a job site you know if there's like a trailer where you with this air conditioned go in the trailer uh like it's not worth your life even if it's your job you want to know what's fun is that um what's fun in the united states there's no federal law that says you can't make people work in the hot weather um without hell yeah uh some states less than half i don't have the notes in front of me i had the notes for a different thing i recorded recently um some states like 16 of them or something maybe have laws against working people outside in the heat um but most states don't the federal government is like considering one right now but that is like

probably years away before it could be enacted but it's like basic worker protections like don't have people work outside without enough stuff to make sure they don't die of it um consider forming a union yeah google uh blair mountain for more information on how to respond uh if you're not. If you're not allowed to take breaks for the heat. Yeah. Yeah. Talking of how capitalism is killing us all, Margaret, it's time for us to break for some adverts of things people can buy.

Oh. Hey, guys. I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic

happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. or wherever you get your podcasts. Modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.

I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now,

and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls

we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they don't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it we have we have some breaking news here folks we have some breaking sheep news

so it turns out during during james's last sheep episode he talked about having texel sheep yeah when it's actually tessel sheep so this is no they're definitely texels who's like pretty exciting here um who uh texel is the largest northwestern islands of the of the netherlands it's one of those european places where the pronunciation where the pronunciation does not match how it's written. It's Tessel Sheep, not Texel Sheep. So this is pretty exciting for me. And usually James gets to make fun of how I pronounce words. And now look who's laughing.

So here we go. Well, should we go. Well, should we move into machinations versus machinations, or should we just move on? No, I think we could just move on here. This is fine. We'll just start a Buenos Aires and move from there. Yeah, Garrison, the speaker of Frisian.

I have a hard life. They did not teach me how to say words in Canada. It was all speaking in tongues in this school. We didn't actually learn much English. Much words. Don't worry. We're all learning as we go. You see, there we go.

Yeah, I've just learned that. The place is called Tessel. And then there's the sheep from there. Is there an X in it or something? No. Yes. When you're, yeah. Is there an X all the time?

T-E-X-E-L. Yeah. Oh, I see. But X sounds, the X sounds like an S. Yeah. Tessel. When you're speaking in it. Fascinating.

Yeah. Wow. And all my life I've been misnaming the very sheep that many of you enjoyed hearing about. Sad. No wonder the sheep weren't coming when you called. They felt disrespected. Well, never mind. Yeah. Well, to be fair, I just go out there and say sheep.

So, you know, I'm hedging my bets with the pronunciation of that one well you want to talk about animals and heat waves i would love to yeah tell me what to do with your sheep i can also talk about humans and heat waves so actually ironically one of the things that i learned i don't know whether or not applies to sheep i was talking before this to one of my professional animal friends who has worked in veterinary clinics and also as a professional horse person. So there's some stuff to know, right? For all of the people who aren't humans. Different animals need different electrolyte formulas if you are going to feed them electrolytes. And, for example, dogs need more sugar and less salt because their bodies don't get rid of salt as much, right? They don't really sweat nearly so much.

Occasional Pedialyte or some other like non-gatorade-y thing is fine every now and then. And probably Gatorade is probably fine every now and then. But don't be like, like you can go hiking and just drink electrolytes right not sugar water but electrolytes um but don't do that with your dog even if it's super hot out um there is dog specific stuff and there's formulas you can look up for dog specific making your own uh don't shave your pets this is the one that I don't know if applies to sheep my friend said this does not apply to sheep you have to share that you want to have to share your sheep or else they will overheat and die yeah okay yeah you gotta want to share your sheep yeah uh some animals you want to shave some animals you don't if you have animals you should look this up ahead of time some people

like run out and shave their cats and dogs if uh in the heat wave this is a very bad thing the the hair is designed to protect them from the sun. Also, especially like if you have a dog with a double coat, it does a lot of weird heat transfer stuff and it's really kind of cool

and magic. Brushing and grooming are very good. If your dog is like slow to its summer coat or it's summer is suddenly here 11 months of the year

or as I predict, there's going to be two seasons. There's going to be summer, which will last for nine months, and then there's going to be hell mouth, which will replace what was previously summer. Don't take your dog out in the hottest weather. It is better that your dog pisses inside that gets heat stroke. It is harder to identify heat stroke in a dog, but if the dog is panting a particular amount, there's other things about looking at the gums and

eyes. I got bitten by a dog that was having a heat stroke on 4th July. It was good times. I feel bad for both the animals involved in this. Yeah, I feel fairly secure in saying that the people who were looking after the dog aren't listening, but they made a series of very poor choices yeah uh yeah and like it wasn't wise um hiking is my main activity and is like my main bonding with me and my dog and i am not doing it during a lot of the heat wave um and i'm finding other ways i'm you know because i'm i have to drive a decent way to go hiking right so i can't do it early in the morning

unless I wake up earlier than I want to. But if you are going to do outside activities with both yourself or with an animal, consider doing them at early in the morning or late in the evening or middle of the night, I don't know, whatever. If you have animals that can't come inside, because overall what was going to apply to your animals is it was going to

apply to humans, like get them into the AC. Like, what are you doing? But a lot of animals you don't have room for inside, right? Unless you're a medieval Irish peasant, in which case I've read way too much about how much those animals live inside.

yeah. Cows under the house. So the warmth comes up. Oh, um, so classic, you want to cross breeze in your barn or coop or whatever. If it's a coop, you want to make sure there's a place at the top

for air to come escape, and you don't want the box-style coop with only one entrance if you're dealing with heat waves. You want a lot of cool water that is easy to drink. And so a lot of people who normally feed their animals with the nipple-style feeders, different animals who have different ways of watering them, no nipple style feeders during a heat wave. The animal needs to be able to get the water easily. For chickens, you might want to bring your nesting boxes down to the ground floor where it's cooler.

You also might want to consider insulating the coop like with hay bales, for example. You could stack them up next to your coop. Horses have yet another electrolyte mix. My horse professional friend uses one called Gallagher's Water, but points out that it's like mostly bougie people use it when most people have horses are bougie, but not all of them, right? At least where I live, other places. Okay, so it's only necessary in extreme circumstances. It's only better than water in extreme circumstances. Most animals do very well with just drinking water.

And also, you can probably consider, if you live somewhere wester than I do, you can consider misting systems if you have the money in the infrastructure and misting systems is basically just like it it pumps water out into a mist and the mist cools everything down and below about 70 humidity they're fairly effective below 50 of humidity they're incredibly effective and so they and it's not that you get wet it's that they do it's like it's like the air is sweating the air is they're like you have in uh if you go to restaurants in phoenix outside they have them yeah um i bought some really cheap off like craigslist um they could like super cheap like i think i just have to go and get them um yeah but no i'm like so jealous because it wouldn't work where i live oh you can't use them because of the high humidity i mean they do a little bit here but not very effectively yeah i know your chickens don't want to be living in a too damp

environment it could be bad for their lungs um so don't be running one inside all the time yeah and like inside but I think it certainly like my chickens will go around it when it's hot it seems to work. And one person I talked to and this is like I did a bunch of research about this but it's inconclusive one person I talked to during the wildfire smoke

actually set up a particulate set up a misting system because mist picks up and drops particulate matter to the ground. Um, there's a lot of research that says this particulate absorption happens. There is no research to say, this is how you handle wildfire smoke with outside animals.

Um, but that is something that at least one person I heard from is doing and science backs it up, uh, for human animals in terms of preparedness, just to run through all this stuff that I've been keeping track of, the way that you're going to deal with all this, if you're not outside, right? If you're outside and you're dealing with this stuff, you're going to use what James talked about and keep track of how you're feeling and get into the AC. I mean, the main thing you want to do is get into the AC, right? You don't want to do strenuous

exercise. You want to check alerts on your phone or your weather radio if you're a cool prepper and have like the little weather radio. You probably want to use the buddy system outside if it's getting really hot, if you can, right?

Just like having someone who can keep track of what you're doing. If you don't have another way to get to AC, consider public libraries and other places. This is a very good

time to look after your neighbors and some of your neighbors are housed and might not have ac some of your neighbors don't have houses and probably don't have ac unless they live in their vehicles in which case they might have some ac but not all vehicles do um and so it's a very good time to look after people whether it's giving people rides to public cooling centers or whether it's setting up public cooling centers, or they're just letting your neighbor who like, like come over because your AC is working and theirs isn't. Um, you want to, I mean, one thing that you want to do is just accept that what we're dealing with isn't normal. And I'll get to that in a moment. But so if you're a renter, you have fewer options, right? In terms of like

structural preparedness, there are some things that you can do running fans, unless you're a renter, you have fewer options, right? In terms of like structural preparedness, there are some things that you can do. Running fans, unless you're a podcaster, running fans is a very good idea. If you have ceiling fans, you want to make sure that during the summer, they run counterclockwise and during the winter, they run clockwise.

So just look and be like, I want it to push air down and you can visualize the direction it'll turn to push air down. That's the summer one. Can you change the direction they spin? Yes, there is a little switch on every ceiling fan. I can see the one behind you. I didn't know this. Don't do it while it's spinning.

If you look on your screen, no, don't be a coward, Garrison. Don't be like like walk me through it okay i i think i see it now yeah but but don't but close your eyes and just go for it you want me to put my arm up and then it's less because you're gonna stick your head in there so you can get a good look at where the switch is oh no garrison's deceased. Oh well, good thing they left me their jester costume. You'll never find out any more about Cop City now. Cop City has to end because there's no other way for us to find out about it. They finally stopped it.

All right, so other things that you can do. Evaporative cooling is the coolest thing in the world. Again, if you're not in a humid area this is why humidity is absolutely terrible and i picked the wrong part of the country to be from um wet bandanas wet clothing uh there's actually like it's kind of sad when i was saying that there's no labor protections about heat some farm workers like developed a like an immigrant farm worker developed a uh cooling vest system that she's like working on that there's like articles about where it just uses evaporative cooling to cool people and it's like

one of those things where I'm like that rules and also it's absolutely awful that that's like where we're at where we're at you know it's not like oh let's have better labor practices and stuff and if you have a house if you have like a place that you can really do preparedness for, um, there's, I mean, we'll just get an air conditioner. Don't run your air conditioner as like low as it'll go. It just doesn't actually make things any cooler. Air conditioners are generally designed and only, um, cool things. I want want to say was it like 30 degrees below outside temperature or something um yeah and i think also depends on like the size of the relative space you're cooling and the btu capacity well so i'm saying that they're sized for that by like

regulation if someone comes and is like oh what size ac should i put into this house it's going to be i want this size house house to be cooled 30 degrees. I think it's 30 degrees. It might be 24. And so if you run your fans, you actually can keep your thermostat up about four degrees. And if you don't have AC, there's a lot you can do with like thermal mass, right?

Is your friend, like if you have a, if you can choose which house you're going to live in, living in brick houses is great or Adobe houses houses it depends on where you live and what your climate is um you want to keep your curtains closed during the day and open at night if you're trying to keep out the sun but then let out the heat into the cool night air assuming that there's still cool night air depends on where you live as we enter into this nightmare world um reflective window insulation thingsy things, like the thing that you put in your windshield can help.

There's stuff you can do when you accept that it's an emergency. But then the other thing is that running ACs puts a lot of strain on the power grid, and we're already starting to see more grid failure, usually in the brownout style rather than the blackout style. But when everyone's running their AC, the grid is not designed to handle it, and there are problems. And so, one, you get these citywide text alerts that are like,

hey, everyone, please turn down, whatever. Make your AC less cold. turn up your ac like turn down whatever make your ac less cold cold and and this is an example of something that we should do and listen to but it's really fucking annoying because it's not our fucking fault that the world is heating up right and they're not like turning off time square they're telling everyone you know they're not turning off the ads yeah speaking of ads it's a good time to pivot to some more stuff. Yeah. It's wasting power and energy. Even in the emergency, there's still the ads.

Here you go. Hey, guys. I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout?

Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all it's light-hearted pretty crazy and very fun listen to post run high on the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts welcome i'm Danny Thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora.

An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters, to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnne Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating.

I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend,

and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head,

search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. And we're back. Hopefully it was for gold which is uh useless in the heat death of the universe just want to throw that out there yeah but it it does keep its value compared to cash just until neither of them have that that's why whiskey oh wait no wait mutual aid now that's

why i've been talking about my on my on my series of john zersion inspired nfts that i minted last year and oh boy have they only grown in value am i i'm telling you this is this is what's gonna hold me through whenever the thing happens. Yeah, I will be at your door with my wanting to trade ammunition for apes, as I always am. Find me in the group chat. There's one other group of people

that I want to talk about really quickly about who we should check in on, and that is prisoners. There is no way, from my point of view, I want to talk about really quickly about who we should check in on, and that is prisoners. There is no way, from my point of view, I'm going to have a lot of bias here, there is no way for us to justly face a climate emergency while we live in a carceral society. In Texas, this is where most of the news is right now, but it's not like it's better other places as far as I can tell. In Texas, since mid-June, between nine and 23 prisoners have died from heat. But no one knows because Texas refuses to say that anyone has died from heat. They haven't done that since I believe 2012 is the last time they admitted someone died from heat. However, two-thirds of Texas prisons don't have air conditioning and a bunch of people are dying randomly of heart attacks in their 30s because they're dying of heat.

Jesus Christ. Yeah, I think earlier in like the first few weeks of July when it was getting very, very hot, I believe it was a pretty young woman died in the Fulton County Jail here in Atlanta. Yeah, sure. And it's they're doing an investigation to see why. So, yeah. Oh, good. Don't worry. The Texas State House passed money to put AC into prisons and then the Senate rejected

it. Cool. Big thing is the money because not much money in law enforcement. So I can see how they're struggling to afford that. Yeah, there was a oh, I didn't write down the numbers in my script but there was like a many millions of dollar budget surplus that they didn't apply to oh i don't know uh not having people die for having been accused of owning weed. Yeah. I don't know, whatever.

I get really fucking mad about this. And I think that it is like... Yeah, it's fucking horrific. Okay, and then the last thing I really want to say is that this was the hottest month, right? That any of us have ever experienced. It will be the coolest month in our memory at some point you know um or rather whatever it's not getting colder july in our in our memory at some point yeah

yeah like like next year might be a little bit cooler because of natural cycles or whatever right but it's not coming back we're not going back to normal. And for me, this month marks a sea change. Literally, the Antarctic ice did not come back this winter. It's winter right now in Antarctica. And there's a five or six standard deviation away from normal amount of ice there right now. Five to six standard deviations is more than if you flipped a coin 100 times and it came up heads every single time. It is like more than a one in 3.5 million chance, right? It is a very big number.

It is a very abnormal thing. Nothing like this has ever been seen before. And I don't want to say this to make people afraid because I don't think we need to be afraid. Whatever. Fear is complicated. You can't be brave unless you're afraid. That's what I will say. You cannot have courage.

Courage is the act of responding to fear. And we should notice the fear and not let it control us. But it really is time for people to very seriously look at not what's going to happen by 2050, but what is happening now? What is happening now? What will happen in the next three years, the next five years, the next 10 years, and start making decisions based on that. That is what I want. I don't want to tell people what those decisions are. I want people to get together with the people that they care about and figure out what those decisions are. One of the things that I would recommend is building resilient

communities, is looking at how to build communities, right? And there's a lot of ways, a lot of like scenes can become communities. A lot of extended families can become communities. A lot of religious organizations are communities. Okay. How, and then how to make them resilient, how to collectively look at how to handle these things, whether it's literally just having a plan for like, okay, if the power goes out, who has the whole house generator where I live, someone around me has got to have a whole house generator. I don't have one. I want one, but they're expensive. Whose AC is still going to be running when the power goes out, right? Or whether it's like, hey, how can we collectively help each other's houses have rainwater catchment systems, right? How can we collectively be building up food sovereignty as well as food storage? How can we have,

I want to see personally, I want to see days of workshops at community centers of all different ideological compositions getting together and being like, here's how you can food. Here's how you dry food. Here is how you set up mesh networks. I just, Here is how you set up mesh networks. I just, I think it's time. I think that I'm tired of saying, hey, bad stuff might be coming because it's not might be coming now. It's here and it's really bad.

And I think people stick to the might be coming because they're afraid of despair. And I will say that despair is not good, right? But that is something that we can fight. How do we fight despair is also part of this. And the answer to that is agency. And when we can find ways to act with agency, that is, I mean, there's like studies about like in disasters,

people who express agency have like less PTSD, right? When bad things happen. And even if if the agency like i mean i remember like one point getting arrested right and being like all right well i'm keeping track of like i know that cop's badge number i know this i know this i'm you know keeping track of stuff in case there's a lawsuit later i totally lost that lawsuit but like that helped me get through that situation. Right. Everyone else won the lawsuit, but because I was in black block, I did not win the lawsuit.

That's funny. That's funny. Yeah. Anyway, actually it might've been because I refused to give my name. Anyway, whatever. It was a long time ago.

And her kiss filled this. And just, so yeah, act with agency. That is the solution. the solution the solution it is it's like like it's not the solution to despair it's a way to deal with it in the same way that we're not looking at solutions to climate change anymore we're looking at ways to deal with it right because it's already here yeah yeah we some of the episodes that me and robert researched to put together for the original it could happen near season Season 2 stuff. A lot of us talking about

mitigation versus adaption. And almost every day it looks like we're getting more and more committed to just a full adaption model because these things are really not going to be... The most common widespread effects are not going to be mitigated. There's still a few cataclysmic scenarios that that probably could be averted but things are going to get so much so much worse and that will be to to deal with that we will have to adopt a large variety of adaptions and it's gonna suck uh but it's it's what we're gonna have to do i i don't know but yeah i've but there's

there's a variety of like reactions to this i mean i i think i should just put together an episode on this sometime in the future but like there's as this as the intensity of the situation is more and more like uh as as as it becomes more and more clear we we're going to get a variety of reactions, especially from people on the right who used to be very much purely ignoring or denying this problem. Some on the right have skipped over the whole part where they've been wrong for so many years

and are going to start applying extremely authoritarian and nationalist solutions to this. Others are just doubling down on denial because facing the facts of the horrible situation we're in is more and more frightening. It's harder to admit that you're wrong and realize the terribleness of the situation. situation. The most recent example of this is I've been checking on the replies to CTV News, which is one of the biggest Canadian television news stations. They've put out a few stories about how July is the hottest month. And in the replies to this story, there's just a shock and honestly shocking amount of, of pure like flippant denial of what's going on. And this has been an increasing problem in Canada. And it's, it's,

which is ironic because actually Canada's economy is probably going to grow during climate change because they're going to take over a whole bunch of agricultural production from the States. They're actually going to become a much bigger economic player. But the amount of just pure denial that we're seeing in Canada and we're seeing get like increased is extremely worrying. Yeah. And it's one of those things that's really hard to deal with.

Like it's also something I talked about in my Hyper Objects episode. But like it's like it's the same thing if someone's like in q anon you can't like you can't like out logic them from q anon you have to you have to you have to tell a better story um so yeah this is you need a solid place to stand like before you can push someone if you see what i mean yeah but like i don't know it's it's just been it's been concerning because i've been seeing a whole bunch of, a whole bunch of these things about how this is the hottest month in 120,000 years. And yeah, that is a, that is a like a horrifying thing to learn. And you can like look at, you know, what this, what the sources for this are.

But the fact that so many of us are just, just denying this is that like, as you, like you can go outside and feel it as well like it's like it's and that's not how climate works all the time but like i've certainly i think many of us have have felt the effects of this um and also like the death numbers can't lie either um yeah yeah um and like i just got back from a trip which will be a podcast soon uh to the marshall islands where like it is extremely evident that sea levels are rising and if they continue to rise at the rate that they're rising then these places will be uninhabitable within

the lifetimes of people who are alive today and uh it it's very odd to or very sort of discordant to see that and then yeah log on when you get home and see someone being like, oh, it's natural variation or, you know, like, oh, it snowed last winter or, you know, something which shows like an incomplete understanding, but still like just a knee-jerk rejection of like all the evidence we have that the climate is changing and it's it's not coming back but i i find myself the same that i have that same feeling sometimes when i see people refuse to engage with solutions even with people who just are like sure oh that's real

there's nothing we can do about it. So we're not going to try. Like feels very like, and I don't mean like, I don't even mean a specific way of trying. I don't mean everyone has to go get arrested, gluing themselves to famous things, or everyone needs to go set things on fire. Everyone needs to only focus on growing food or like, but just when I see people like,

just being like, well, there's nothing. So I'm just gonna not take it into account in my decision-making. I'm like, even if your decision-making is like, like I made the decision to move near my family because of climate change. I didn't move to where the climate is going to be magically stable. I moved to where I can spend more time with the people I love and be in a better position to take care of them. You know, like I just,

I feel so like, I don't know. I was whatever. Yeah. Yeah. No, it is. And it's very difficult to see people just sort of,

uh, I know sort of fiddle as a Titanic. I mean, like, like, shutting down is one of the easiest reactions to stress and ignoring it. Totally. Both the V-admit denial of this, as things are obviously getting more and more intense, the denial gets more and more intense,

but so is the type of doomerism that leads you just to checking out, to being like oh this is so bad there's nothing i can do so i'm just gonna completely ignore this and then that's also another way of just like sectioning off this part of your brain so it so it doesn't actually impact you it's it's it's functionally quite the same and i can't blame people for it and that's what i think people often think that I am judging for them for that. And I'm not, I just feel like I'm, it's just, it's hard to engage with sometimes. Yeah, but I think a good point to end is like maybe the best prep you can do for climate change

is not like buying a bigger air conditioner or moving to somewhere where you think there is a better chance that you personally as an individual will be better but it's building a community that can be resilient and that can like weather the storm and like having seen a country which is losing its very minimal amount of land to climate change and how communities have come together to protect each other uh during that it's kind of reinforced to me how important community is as opposed to stuff yeah absolutely also with communities you can get more stuff

you can make your own stuff that's true seize the means of production but not for the pure marxist point of view but from the i'm I'm like joking, but I'm actually like, this is what people should be preparing to do. Like, a climate revolution that's less about like, oh, we're going to put in someone smart and charged who's going to fix everything, and more a climate revolution that's like, we're going to create bottom-up solutions and not let people stop us from creating bottom-up solutions.

Yes. That would be good. Don't be a good revolution. Consider implementing that. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. Hey, guys. I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast Post Run High is all about.

It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You should probably keep your lights on for no tales from the shadow. Join me,

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in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday.