Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0519: Anti-trivia: The world’s biggest drainage basins (Canada is huge)

Episode Date: March 3, 2016

This “anti-trivia” episode lists the world’s biggest drainage basins by area. The top 10 drainage basins cover 25% of the world’s land! What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed by the US Army Band.

Master of Memory 519. Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. What makes a fact important or worth learning? I find that a really fascinating question because you can memorize all these little interesting dates of wars and you know battles in history and numbers of people killed in battles you can memorize the populations of countries and you know the relative sizes of cities you can learn that shanghai the

largest city in china is bigger than the top seven cities in the U.S. combined. But really, ultimately, what makes any of these facts important? I mean, there are really two categories that you can put any fact into. A, a fact that's important to me, you know, very relevant to me personally. So, you know, the address of the place that I'm staying right now is pretty important to me, although in a cosmic sense, it's not that important. And then we have cosmically important facts, like the best-selling book of all time. I would say that's fairly cosmically important because that's information that more people know than just my little circles. So learning and reading the top selling book of all time is pretty important.

And then even going outside of that, more cosmically, the biggest city in the top, you know, selling book of all time is pretty important. And then even going outside of that more cosmically, the biggest city in the world, Shanghai. That's a pretty important thing. There are 24 million people in that city. That's cosmically important. Or even stepping outside of that, outside of current geography and going into, you know, all of time. The Mongol conquests killed tens of millions of people. That's a huge event and a huge cosmically significant thing for the population of people all over the world when you look at it in a global perspective. Now, the purpose of this podcast

is to teach people all over the world. I know that this reaches about 200 countries. And even though most of my people are in the West and speak English because they're listening to this podcast in English, and even though it is from my personal perspective as someone who lives, you know, pretty much always in the Americas at this point, I'm most interested in the cosmic facts. Today's cosmic facts go beyond cities, go beyond human activity, go beyond country borders, and all sorts of things that are so fleeting and so trivial in terms of just who is where and who said what. And we're going to the basic physical geography of the world and looking at drainage basins.

So something you might hear that's, you know, you could argue it's trivia, but it's actually pretty significant, is that the Amazon is the largest drainage basin in the world. So you can say the Amazon is the largest river in the world, but obviously there are tons of rivers that drain into the Amazon, and it covers a huge portion of the world. In fact, the Amazon covers about 6.1 million kilometers squared, which is, you know, half again as many as its second competitor. In fact, if you're dropped into South America, just at random, anywhere in South America, chances are about four out of ten that you're in the Amazon's drainage basin. And I find this fascinating because you can just follow the water as it flows and know exactly where you're going to end up.

You're going to end up where the Amazon hits the ocean, you know, drains into the Atlantic Ocean. So categorizing the land of the world as it stood for millennia, regardless of human activity, that's where the water is flowing, and we can categorize the entire world, basically, into drainage basins. In fact, if you learn just the top 10 drainage basins, you know 25% of the landmass of the world. So let's look at those drainage basins and look at where the water is flowing and how it categorizes the different land around the world. First, we have the Amazon River in South America. And again, it covers 6.1 million kilometers squared of land. Next, in North America, we have the Hudson Bay drainage basin, which is 3.8 or 3.9, between 3.8 and 3.9 million kilometers squared. And that's a

huge amount of Canada. Canada is actually much bigger than that. Canada is really enormous, bigger than the U.S. But anyway, so that's the Hudson Bay drainage basin. Next we have the Congo River and its drainage basin, and it's very close actually at 3.7 million kilometers squared. So if you thought that the Nile was big, look at the Congo River's drainage basin. If you're dropped into Africa, it's more likely that you're in the Congo River's drainage basin than you are in the Nile's drainage basin. Next we have the Caspian Sea and everything that flows into it at 3.6 million kilometers squared. Then the Nile at 3.3 million. The Mississippi and Missouri River, you know, talking about the Louisiana Purchase and everything involved there, the Mississippi-Missouri River at 3.2 million.

The Rio de la Plata drainage basin in South America at 3.2 million. So the Rio de la Plata drainage basin in South America at 3.2 million. So the Rio de la Plata, along with the Amazon River, make up most of South America. Then the Ob River in Asia, which flows into the Arctic Ocean at 3 million kilometers squared. Next, we have the Yenisei River in Asia, and that drains into the Arctic Ocean, with 2.6 million. And then Lake Chad and everything that drains into it has about 2.5 million kilometers squared as well. And it's very interesting to go and look at a map and plot these drainage basins and see where the water is running. Regardless of human civilization, if you were just dropped at random on the world, anywhere in the world where there's land, you know, not being dropped into the middle of the

Pacific Ocean or anything, but any landmass in the world, chances are one out of four that you're in one of these drainage basins. And if you follow the water, you're going to end up in either, you know, one of these lakes or seas or at the ocean at a very specific point. In tomorrow's episode, we're going to be talking about the most eaten foods in the world. So we're going to be talking about staple foods and agricultural foods. Meanwhile, what do you want to learn? The world's knowledge can be yours. Leave your learning request at masterofmemory.com slash question,

and I'll talk to you again soon.