Stuff You Should Know - Selects: How Floods Work

Episode Date: September 16, 2023

Floods happen when more water is introduced to an area than can be quickly removed. That's about it, but there's more to floods, what causes them and the havoc they can wreak. Join Josh and Chuck in this super-saturated classic episode of Stuff You Should Know.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sometimes the pop culture we love just teens hits differently in retrospect. Maybe it's a tabloid story we couldn't get enough of or an illicit student teacher relationship on our favorite show. We're Suzy Bannock-A-Rum and Jessica Bennett, posts of the new podcast in retrospect, where each week we'll revisit a cultural moment from the past that shaped us and probably you to try to understand what it taught us about the world and our place in it. You're the first person that I've talked to about this for years and years. Listen to In Retrospect on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you find your favorite shows.

Everyone in our country has a voice. It's something that says not just where you come from, but who you are. Welcome to NPR's Black Stories, Black Truths, a collection of podcasts and a celebration of the hosts in journalism who've always spoken truth to power. Our voices are as varied, nuanced, and dynamic as the Black experience, and stories should never be about us without us. Find NPR Black Stories Black Truths on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everybody, I'm going to take you on a trip through time back to January 6, 2012. When the world was supposed to end, wait, was that when the world was supposed to end?

I think that's when the world was supposed to end. I don't even remember now. That's how BS, that Mayan calendar thing was. At any rate, I'm annoyed now, so I'm just going to go ahead and let you listen to how floods work. Bloods are a terrible tragedy. We explain how they literally happen in this episode. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio.

Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bright and that makes this stuff you should know. The podcast, the saturated podcast. This week, super saturated, bloody podcast. Yep. I don't know why this came to mind. I didn't see any blood that happened on the news.

I think I happened across it searching randomly and I thought, it's a good one, I haven't covered that one yet. Flooded stuff always creeps me out. Oh yeah? Yeah, I think it goes back to my days in Toledo as a young boy. Many times growing up in my house on Beverly Drive, there were, the mommy would flood and My basement would flood as a result and sometimes it would come all the way up to like the top step really Yeah, yeah, and I just think about like all my dad's tools down there like underwater. Yeah, weren't supposed to be right It was just really creepy because you just open the door and step on the landing and then there's just water

You can kind of see like the top couple of steps that was suggested all the other stuff that was down there. So I think since then, I've always been fascinated and creeped out by the idea of things that are supposed to be above ground submerged. Like ships. So when we talked about the Bermuda Triangle,

like a plain ship down there in the trench, never to be found like, woo-hoo. Yeah, that's creepy. Yeah, same thing with floods, man. It didn't, it doesn't creep me out like that, but I get it. Okay, there. So, Chuck, yes.

I take a UR familiar with flooding. I am. Do you remember the one in 94, down in Albany, the great flood, the Flint River flood? No. Oh, man, it was all over the news. Like, there were like, in Albany, Georgia? No. Oh man, it was all over the news. Like there were like, and Albany Georgia? Yeah.

I don't remember that. There were caskets, like 400 caskets were loose. And we're just kind of floating around. They were, they had this weird tendency to congregate toward trees or around trees. And so people started lashing them to that because they had to have a court order to even grab the caskets But apparently it was the second worst cemetery disaster in the United States couldn't find the first horse

1994. Oh, I was an Athens at the time. I was I was not up on News it was a big it was a big big thing I'm surprised, but it was really creepy. You can see pictures of like caskets just kind of floating around. Wow. Yeah. They recently found a human school that they think was part of the remains that was moved by the flood. Jeez. Yeah. It's amazing how out of the news loop I was while I was in college. Yeah. Because it was pre-internet. Yeah. I didn't get the paper. That was in college who gets the paper and reads it I knew people who sold the paper. I didn't have TV So yeah, I knew about class and working at McScally Grill and

Sleeping late and all of the kinds of things that I can't talk about. That's awesome I remember the Gulf War that happened. Well, because of that internet that came after your college years, like two decades after your college years, you can see video of the news footage from 1994. So you're fine. It's like stepping back in time. I will do so. Well, let's talk about flooding Chuck.

First, I guess to understand floods, we need to give a brief primer of the hydrological cycle. Yes, we do. If you ask me. There's been about the same amount of water on earth for a long, long time. Yeah, I thought this was fascinating. Yeah, but it hasn't always been in the same place as we know.

No, and it's not the same water, necessarily. Right. There's a constant loss and gain of water. Yeah, every day you lose water, obviously, to the atmosphere. Yeah, where like the solar rays and other cosmic radiation just blasts water vapors into like nothing. You're gone. You're no longer water. Sorry. As that is going on, volcanic activity in the core, or not the core necessarily, but in the inner earth, is releasing water and it about balances out on a day-to-day basis.

But did you know that volcanoes release water? Sure, after I read this. Yeah, we even did a hub volcanoes work podcasts, and I don't remember talking about it releasing water, but when water is generated or introduced into the upper earth and the atmosphere, it comes from volcanoes. Thank God.

60% of volcanic gas is water vapor. So it balances out on a day-to-day basis, which is pretty remarkable. Yeah, almost as if it's happening that way for a reason. I know. Are you familiar with the Anthropic Principle? No, what's that? We'll talk about it sometime. Right.

Oh, it's not directly relating to this? No, it's about the concept of why everything is so falling and has fallen so perfectly into place that we are able to notice this and say, wait a minute, it's almost seems like we're supposed to be here. And the anthropic principle is like, yeah, and there's like five million other worlds out there

that didn't happen like that. So we aren't there to say, wow, it's almost like everything fell into place So we're supposed to be here interesting. Yeah, we'll see you just told me about it right now done tricked you Water can be all around the earth in three different forms is everyone knows you have liquids rivers oceans lakes Rain Solids we've talked about and this this kind of collects a lot of our podcast

in a way, like the clouds, and now we're talking about the Antarctica, lots of frozen water, the Antarctica, at the poles, the Antarctica, or it can be gas, which is water vapor in the air. Yes. And it's all moved around by the wind. Thanks to the sun. And remember, I can't remember which podcast we talked about it in, whether it was the sun or clouds or something, but wind is created by the exchange of air.

Warm air is heated at the surface and rises. Yes. Cooler air rushes in to fill that vacuum. Yeah. There's your wind, pal. Yeah. And then, well, once that warm air rises though,, it's also going to get colder and form little droplets of water, which form together to form clouds, which we went over in fluffy little clouds. Right. Yeah. Because the sun

heats the ocean surface that evaporates, like you said, it rises, forms clouds. And then, eventually, those clouds become pregnant with rain and rain falls down, right? That's right. As the rain falls down, it fills waterways, rivers, streams, that kind of thing. Underground waterways. Waterways, yeah. But for the most part, some of it does go to fill aquifers and that's storage. But the vast majority of it makes its way back to the oceans where the process begins again.

And everything is complete in the circle of life. That's right. The cool thing here is, wind is pretty consistent across the globe. Wherever you live, your weather is pretty consistent. You might think if you live in Atlanta like, oh, that's crazy. In December here, it's 65 degrees. But by and large, if you look at the big picture, your weather systems are pretty consistent on a day-to-day basis, although, in the case of flooding, anything

can happen on any given day to knock things out of whack. Right. So you have a storm comes about a thunderstorm and you're like, wow, it's a pretty bad storm. Because you are capable, your area is capable of experiencing a storm, your area is capable of experiencing a freak storm, like a huge thunderstorm. Sure.

That dumps so much precipitation on the ground in such a short amount of time, that these normal waterways that have been formed to hold the normal amount of water become overwhelmed, the water fills up, spills over the banks, and there's your flood. Yeah, and that's the key, what you just said there. These waterways, they form over a great, great period of time. You don't, a river doesn't just spring up

over the course of a year because there's a lot of rain. It takes like several years. Yeah, it takes a long, long time to sort of get a feel, I guess, of how much rain there is generally. And so this is how big I'm gonna be if I'm a river in Georgia. Exactly. This is all I need to be except for the freak of current, and oh my god, now it's a flood. But then after a flood, it goes right back to where it was before. It's not, rivers don't tend to plan their size for the worst case scenario.

There you go. They're very lazy. That's a great way to say it. Lazy, lazy rivers. So, like we said, the most common cause, the one that people are most familiar with, the most common cause of flooding, is a large storm that allows an anomalous accumulation of precipitation. Yeah, where the rain could be melting ice from a mountain or snow. Yeah.

But rain is the one we think about most often. And like you said, because weather and patterns are pretty stable over time. In a lot of places, depending on the season, you're going to get a anomalous normal precipitation, right? Like monsoons, seasonal flooding. Right, so with the monsoon, you have, in the winter time, the air over the land is colder than the air over the ocean. So the air over the ocean is rising and the air over the land is moving out to fill it up. So that means the wind is blowing out toward the ocean. That's right.

In the summertime, the opposite is true. And so the wind is blowing in toward the land, and that brings with it the monsoon rains. Yeah. It brings with it water. And this annual monsoon flooding, we talked about it. We didn't call it that because we're not that smart, but in the howl of the Nile River works. Yeah, exactly.

It was, and still is, a very big part of how they thrived over the years was they knew that the Nile would flood each year and extend the water out, and when it waters receded that left a nice fertile banks in which to live and when it waters receded, it left a nice fertile banks in which to live and plant foods. Right. And remember we talked about some of the problems from the Aswan Dam and other dams that they built along the Nile to control flooding,

basically say we're gonna release this amount of water so we can go crops year round and people aren't gonna lose their houses to the Nile flooding every year. That is actually one of the big causes of flooding too. Dam breaks. Yeah. Did you see that dam video I sent you? I didn't have a computer.

You didn't look, you didn't see it on your... It was flash. Oh, it's really neat. I'll look at it later. I can't remember the name of the dam, but it's in Washington State and in October of this year, it had like a controlled demolition. And they just blew a hole in the bottom. And all of a sudden this water surge can pouring out

and fills this area up. And then it starts to recede. And you see the water behind the dam just start to go down as the water in front of the dam starts to go up. It's really neat looking. Not to check that out. Yeah. Or if you're from Pennsylvania or a historian, then of course you know about May 31st, 1889,

the Johnstown flood. And it wasn't just Johnstown, by the way, it's known as the Johnstown flood, I think, because that was the largest town that it flooded. But it was, I think, 14 miles upstream from Johnstown was the South Fork Dam, and it hit a couple of towns on the way. Finally hit Johnstown, a six to ten inches of rain in 24 hours, to the tune of a 60-foot wall of water going 40 miles per hour. Wow rush through town 20 million tons not gallons 20 million tons of water and It was the first big disaster relief effort by the Red Cross. Oh really? Yeah, I got a number of 2,209 deaths

17 million in damages which would be be over 400 million dollars today. Wow. Like close to a half a billion in damages. Wow. And springsteen fans might remember that from the song Highway Patrolman. These things about the Johnstown flood. Really? Yeah.

Okay. That's a folk hero, isn't it? He's all over it. We also remember we talked about in the human caused earthquakes episode, the Vion Dam in Italy. A landslide caused a wave to go over the dam and killed 2,000 people. It seems to be the number when a dam breaks

or if each 2,000 people die. You know what I think is cool is after having done like 400 plus shows, like, our world is starting to narrow a bit. Yeah. You know what's really crazy? What? We've already had this discussion. Oh, yeah.

And now we've come back to having it again. Really? That's really narrow. Well, I just think it's cool when you do a podcast on flooding and it's also one about the Nile and clouds and volcanoes. And I mean, we're still a long way from covering the sun. Yeah, the sun.

We're a long way from covering the sun. We're a long way from covering everything but our worldview is narrowing in a good way. And now we're like men and knights. This is In Retrospect, a podcast about pop culture from the 80s and 90s that shaped us. I'm very much a product of the pop culture I consumed, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I'm Jessica Bennett, a New York Times writer and bestselling author. I'm Susie Bette-Kerrem, an award-winning TV producer and filmmaker. Every week, we'll revisit a moment in cultural history that we just can't stop thinking about. From tabloid headlines to illicit student teacher relationships and one very memorable red swimsuits. I found myself in Pamela Anderson's attic as you do.

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Because even if you're not a gear head, everyone has a car story. Land plays a big part because you know you can have a lot of rain but depending on what kind of land it's falling on is going to affect how much it floods if it floods at all. Like the soil in the middle of the forest is going to really soak up a lot of water, hard clay or rock or obviously concrete and asphalt aren't going to soak up much if anything. So that's going to lend itself to flooding. Yeah, and agricultural lands, crop lands that have been tilled, they're more prone to flooding than woodlands.

Do you want to know why? Yeah, why? I was wondering. You got that? We're about to circle right back again, but two earthworms. Ah, that's exactly why. That's why woodlands don't flood like farmland because there's more little passageways from earthworms. Yes, and if you till cropland, if you till the land

has a deletrious effect on the earthworm population. Are you still saying that word like that? Yes. The earthworm population in the area, they basically leave, they take off or else they're cut in a bunch of pieces. So it does have the very deleterious effect. Deleterious. Deleterious. What is it? Is it species? Now it's wrong and that one.

You got it. You got it. You got it. You got it. It's called out big time. It's species. It's deleterious. It's not deleterious.

Talk about species. Oh, I was talk about species. Species. I was wrong on species because it's there are two acceptable ways of saying that. No, there's a right way species. No, no, no, if you look it up, it says species or species. I can't say it. I can't even keep track of the difference between I and me. Concrete an asphalt, which I mentioned Josh. Here in the Western world, there's a lot of that going on.

If you go to a city like LA, which I lived in, as you know, they have these concrete flood relief channels built in. Yeah, you don't even have to go to LA. You can travel there via the movie Greece. Oh, like the LA River Basin? Is that what that is? Yeah. Yeah, that is in T2.

It's in the movie Them. And these, where they have the car race, they call it the LA River, which is kind of funny. Yeah. Before they paved it with concrete, they used it for the canoe scenes in a lot of the Tarzan movies in the 30s. Oh, yeah.

It's all just smoking mirrors. Yes, it is. Mashed was in Malibu for God. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's all just smoking mirrors. Yes it is. Mashed was in Malibu for God's sakes. Yeah. Levy's Josh are another reason it can flood as we all saw with the disaster with Katrina New Orleans when the Levy breaks as Robert Plant said. Got no place to stay.

No you don't. And do you remember earlier this year when they purposefully opened the uh... more gansas spillway yeah basically the sacrifice some local cropland for a lot more down river and that's what the point and the reverse of the the thinking usually or had well you have been historically well that's the point they make about all of these though is generally they're great for that area but there's generally there's going to be

a problem on down the line at some point. Well the same thing with concrete storm basins it's the same it's you're you're basically just saying all right let's get the water through here and then when like the data runs out your county line you handle it and here's your flood County, but beneath us. Well, what I couldn't find about the Morganes' spillway was the the effect like I saw like a hundred articles on the fact that they're gonna open it up and then the only article I found post releasing like I think it was first time since 1973 the opened up a lot of these gates was like a week after they said Well, it doesn't look like it's gonna be be as bad as they thought, and that's all

I found. If it's the one I'm thinking of, it was a huge cluster that was on the Army Corps of Engineers, they created an incorrect estimate, and it really screwed up a lot more land than they thought. Oh, really? If it's the same one I'm thinking of, it was this year or last year? Yeah, it was spring when the rivers were rising. Yeah, and they said, we can't do,

say, New Orleans again. Right. So we're gonna open up a lot of these gates. Like, up in like Missouri or something, right? No, no, it was in Louisiana. Okay, well, there was one in Missouri where they let this levee loose and flooded some cropland

and ended up screwing things up all the way down and like, or over to Tennessee. Wow. I can't remember. So I guess those are two different stories. So if you live in Louisiana, I'd like to know the effect because I know they said it wasn't as bad as they thought,

but I couldn't really get a pinpoint of the damage. And I want to know what happened in Missouri, okay? Okay. Let's talk about the coastline. Yeah, and we didn't mention by the way hurricanes too. Yeah, tsunamis. Yeah, tsunamis hurricanes, big problems, as far as creating flood conditions.

That's right. But yeah, the coastline, you were talking about levies and dams, they fall into man-made ways of diverting water to other people's problems. And we figured out ways of, I guess, protecting our beautiful coastlines from mother nature. That's building walls, basically, sea walls.

It's like, have your worst waves. You're not going to erode this beach. But the problem is, is the whole process of erosion is part of creating and keeping beaches healthy. Yeah, and beautiful. Yes. I remember I used to go to Hunting Island, South Carolina when I was a kid, and my mom went not too long ago, and she said that they have actually, like, the whole coastline

is different now from when I was a kid. Really? They had to move a lighthouse inland because it had eroded so much, but they just, you know, they let it happen because it is a natural part of beaches, and it's a natural, like, oceans, beaches, rivers, they're all dynamic. Right, exactly. You know, they're all going to move earth and water, and that's just the way it's supposed to be. And when humans step into trying to prevent that,

bad things can happen. Well, and we try to prevent it because we tend to settle near water. It's each transportation, it puts living on the beaches nice. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, even with the river too, it's like there's your cropl land, there's your easy access to irrigation, easy transportation, food, water obviously. So we need to live near water. And then when these natural processes happen and take our houses away, we're like, okay, let's figure out how to solve this. And sometimes the solution is just kind of exacerbates the problem.

That's right. Or creates a new one. Yeah. So we just got to figure things out. I think we're working on it. OK. This is one really cool part I thought was you always see how a flood waters will wash a car away

or something. Yeah. And it doesn't even look like that much water. Yeah. And you think, I drive my truck like through a river in the North Georgia Mountains, and you just plow right through it. And that's like twice as deep and really rushing river.

You say, take that nature. Yeah, take that nature. But the difference here is, I thought this is really interesting is water, what water wants to do is level itself out. So when you've got a lot of water from a flood in a place where there's previously no water at all, it's going to want to find its level as soon as possible by rushing really hard. So it's just going to be a lot more force than the steady stream of a river. It's really easy, is that? That's all there is, too.

So like a couple of feet of water can wash a car away. Two feet. Two feet of water in a flood condition, where it's rushing from a higher level to a lower level. That's great. Balance out can wash a car away. Listen, honey. And six inches under those conditions can knock a human off his or her feet.

And that's how people die in a flood. Well, I think half of the deaths associated with most floods are from people trying to forward a rushing water in their car, spillway in their car. Yeah. That's the problem because you get carried out and you're in your car and you're trapped and that's that. That's sad. It's very sad. Flash flooding? The most dangerous of all floods? Yeah, this jogged my memory when it was talking about

big Thompson Canyon, Colorado. I think we might have hit on that at some point because it jogged my memory too. You want to talk about it? Well, yeah. In 1976, July 31st, Colorado was celebrating its centennial. And at about five or six o'clock, it started rain. And it was a really weird thunderstorm that didn't move. It just planted itself for four hours over big Thompson Canyon, rain 12 inches in four hours. And that's how much that area gets in a year usually. I mean, yeah, that's crazy in four hours. And a 20-foot high rush of river

going about 14 miles an hour by 9 p.m. washed through the canyon. And it was so like out of nowhere, which is what a flash flood is. It's not like, hey, you know, with the Johnst down flood, they had warnings, even though people didn't heed them. And most of the times, you know, a flood's coming. But with a flash flood, they were just like trapped. Plus, there, there also just happened to be thousands of campers down there celebrating the centennial of Colorado. It was, well, the perfect storm. But the, the, the river

that feeds the canyon normally, big Thompson River, is apparently normally pretty slow moving. The old Big Teddy. But because of this flash flood, it was dumping 233,000 gallons, 882,000 liters of water into the canyon per second. Per second. So that's a lot. So basically a flash flood is like a flood,

but it's even more concentrated, and the water's moving even more violently. That's crazy. I got the number between 139 to 145 dead. Five were never seen again. Jeez. 400 cars, 420 houses, and 40 million, which would be about 150 million today.

Yeah. And interestingly, three years ago, this one guy was found alive in Oklahoma 20 houses and 40 million, which would be about 150 million today. Interestingly, three years ago, this one guy was found alive in Oklahoma that they thought died. He left town that morning and didn't tell people. I think they came up in records and he was like, no, I'm out here in Oklahoma. I'm just fine. He didn't even realize that he was on the death list. Weird. Yeah. I didn't, he didn't even realize that he was on the death list. Weird.

Yeah. Well. But they still remember every July 31st, they still pay remembrance obviously in Colorado. Give it for them. Yeah. There's also, I mean, you think about cars being washed away and people being knocked off their feet and being flooded in canyons, but there's also a lot of problems with flooding after the fact.

Like a flood brings with it, a lot of silt and mud and nastiness, sewage. Sewage, and when the flood waters recede once again, all that stuff sticks around. Yeah. Apparently Florence Italy suffered a pretty big flood on the Arno River, right? Yeah, 1966. And Florence, of course, is one of the great repositories of Renaissance art, and a lot of

the repositories in that repository were basements and first stories, and that stuff got flooded. And apparently they got a lot of the stuff back to at least good quality a lot of it but they were I looked up there was 600,000 tons of mud and sewage oh my god after they left 14,000 works of art and a hunt sorry three to four million books and manuscripts and records and I don't know how many out of the 14,000 were restored but I bet it wasn't 13, 500 you know what I'm saying? Yeah, because a lot of the stuff was completely destroyed. That's, that's awful. Yeah, it's very sad. At least invading hordes didn't set it on fire on purpose. Yeah, also killed about a hundred people. Yeah. Which you always hear about the artwork. Like I had to

really research to find the amount of deaths Really, yeah, well not that much research, but a few extra clicks I guess And then disease is another big problem to you said sewage chemicals the deceased All of this oh, yeah is mixed together and it's an Albany that probably was not a fun soup. No, so if you are, if your area is flooded, you want to basically boil any water that you're going to drink or drink bottled water

or get one of those one air, the water manufacturers that sucks the water vapor out of the ambient air and converts it to bottled water. Oh yeah. Did you hear about the nettie pot deaths recently? No. These two people in Louisiana died, and they believe it was from using the nettie pot, which I use on a daily basis. And they got a brain eating amoeba. Crosse.

Into their nasal passage from using contaminated water to nettie with. And my friend, you know, I've been netting for like six years every day and my friend was like, do you about that? Oh, I wouldn't do that for you. I was like, come on, dude. Did your friend know that he sounds like that when you say when you know I was aping him. He sounded much more intelligent than that. Okay. But I'm not going to stop netting. Well, you have to boil the water at least. Do yourself that favor. I'm not going to do that.

Chuck, brainy eating amoeba would not look good on you. I'll take my chances. All right. This is In Retrospect, a podcast about pop culture from the 80s and 90s that shaped us. I'm very much a product of the pop culture I consumed. Yeah, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I'm Jessica Bennett, a New York Times writer and bestselling author. I'm Susie Bedecarem, an award-winning TV producer and filmmaker.

Every week, we'll revisit a moment in cultural history that we just can't stop thinking about. From tabloid headlines to illicit student teacher relationships and one very memorable red swimsuit. I found myself in Pamela Anderson's attic as you do. I put that red swimsuit in a safe because it seemed everybody wanted it. We're digging deep to better understand what these moments taught us about the world and our place in it.

I want you to really smell the axe body spray that emanated during this time. It was presented more as kind of like a crime topic. Okay. Not a love story. Not a love story. It had been branded on the uteruses of every single woman from C to shining C. Listen to In Retrospect on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Everyone in our country has a voice. It's something that says not just where you come from, but who you are. Welcome to NPR's Black Stories, Black Truths, a collection of podcasts and a celebration of the hosts in journalism who have always spoken truth to power. Our voices are as varied, nuanced, and dynamic as the Black experience, and stories should never be about us without us. Find NPR Black Stories Black Truths on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jerry Luggen, store manager of BioWiln number 3842, and I want to invite you or wherever you get your podcasts. This is where we unwind and have a chat about the news of the day. Looks like Chris Christie might be running.

Honey, if you finish one thing, Chris Christie ain't doing its running. Employees only. That means no normies. Keep out, buddy. It's just for us by well employees. Hey, did an insurrection. Honey, it didn't work. You can't hold somebody accountable if it didn't work. I love that so much. We sort of apply that to my criminal record. This is where we talk freely about all the stuff happening in the world. It's employees only. courtesy of Ron Howard, the new podcast

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but also writers and actors, community organizers really anyone who shows up every day and keeps doing the work. There's so much out there to distract us, but all of my guests bring tremendous passion and commitment, an ability to block out the noise, and I should probably warn you, lots of sports metaphors. You stay calm and focused on releasing the ball, getting it to a receiver, and hopefully getting it into the end zone on behalf of the American people. So join me for this conversation and more.

Listen to you and me both on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I guess that's it. I got nothing else. I got nothing else floating in here. You want to call out for anything in particular? Yeah, sure. If you live in Big Canyon or, or Johnstown or any shape story. Yeah, I bet you got some some personal anecdote.

Yeah. Of a family member maybe. Yeah. You can, oh wait, wait, we haven't done list of them yet, man. We were about to jump to the gun. Oh, I thought you were about to announce. How's it about to, about to give our email address? Well, if you want to learn more about floods,

you can type in floods in the search bar at Howstuffworks.com, and I said search bar, so it's Chuck's turn for a listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this request from Adam to save birds before this bull. Request of what? Request from Adam to help save birds before this bull. Okay, he has a thing going on and it ends at this bull. I got you. So we want to get it out. I come to humbly beg a favor, guys. No, he knows how to get our attention. He said he could apply us with beer

if his loyalty is not sufficient. In this case, it is sufficient. I don't know. Beer can be mailed. My NGO's fundraiser needs a plug. We are the Alamos Wildlands Alliance and the research director there, and we are trying to create a reserve in a rare habitat.

We also do research in education and a remote part of Northwest Mexico. We run a biological field station called the Navopacia Field Station. You can check us out on Facebook. And our website is www.alamoswildlands.org. And that is ALA-MOS wildlands.org. And it's a US-based nonprofit. It's very small. Run by volunteers, mostly he says.

Run by birds. Run by birds. And for the second in a row, they're doing a fundraiser called the birdathon. And it's like a walkathon, but instead of miles, walked, people get pledged for the amount of bird species they see in a given day. My team had 163 last year.

One day, it's pretty good. It is a fun way to raise money for conservation in a place that is unique and rare. It runs from January 30th to February 5th. We often have a super bird Saturday. When most people go out the day before the s*** bowl, which is a football game, played here in the United States. American football, not... European football, not soccer, or rest of the world football. Yes. More teams are always welcome.

We have at least eight now, though some have yet to register, and anyone can start their own team or just donate. It's really easy and it's on a website. The money goes to a good cause, it's text deductible, and here's something sad Josh. The environment and animals only get about 2% of charitable giving worldwide. I have to be honest I'm surprised that the environment and animals he says. So humans get the other 98% I guess. Which you know, charitable giving is good no matter what, but forget about our free creatures. It is pretty low.

Attached are some pictures of my team, the lucha doors. We wear masks and capes while birding, so kind of ties in nicely. Totally. With the podcast we did on Mexican wrestling. Yes. Which was not this one. Can we post that picture? I don't know, I'll check.

Okay. And then he is his wife's team. It's called the boobies, named after the blue-footed boobie, a common bird that we have down here. Regardless, guys, thanks to both of you for helping to make being smart, cool again. So please go check out www.alamoswildlands.org and sign up and sponsor someone for this Vertathon Superbird Saturday.

Get a team together, help these guys out. It's awesome. Tweety. Did you mention the S-Ball? Did you use the actual name? Because I think we can get in trouble for that. For saying s***, I don't think you should say it. Really?

Yeah. We'll find out. How can we get in trouble? Like, apparently, they actively sue people who use that word, like even mentioning it. Like, remember the Simpsons? They never mentioned where they were going when they went to that huge football game, and Dolly Parton, the episode, the Dolly Parton was on.

Now, I have the halftime of my life. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, you're right. All right, so we can just beep that out and people be like, small, what's that? Right, exactly, nice. Okay, well, if you have an NGO that you think we'd like to plug, we're happy to do that from time to time.

You can tweet to us, especially if it's a bird NGO at SISK podcast, you can send us some sort of message on Facebook at facebook.com, so I wish stuff you should know. And you can send us an email to stuffpodcast.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 are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Sometimes the pop culture we love just teens hits differently in retrospect.

Maybe it's a tabloid story we couldn't get enough of or an illicit student teacher relationship on our favorite show. We're Suzy Bannockerim and Jessica Bennett, posts of the new podcast in retrospect. Where each week we'll revisit a cultural moment from the past that shaped us, and probably you, to try to understand what it taught us about the world and our place in it. You're the first person that I've talked to about this for years and years. Listen to In Retrospect on the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Everyone in our country has a voice. It's something that says not just where you come from,

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my podcast, UNME Both. On this show, I'll be talking to people I admire about one of my favorite subjects, getting things done. We'll hear from folks in positions of power like Democratic leader, HEPKIM Jeffries, but also writers and actors and really anyone who keeps doing the work. So please join me. Listen to UNME Both on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On his new podcast, six degrees with Kevin Bacon, join Kevin for inspiring conversations with his friends and fellow celebrities who are working to make a difference in the world, like actor Mark Rapolo. in the world. Like actor Mark Ruffalo. You know, I found myself moving upstate in the middle of this fracking fight, you know, and I'm trying to raise kids there and, you know, my neighbors like willing to poison my water. Listen to 6 degrees with Kevin Bacon on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. you