Stuff You Should Know - The Colorado River Compact

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

Deciding how to share water is pretty important stuff when there isn't much of it around. Today we dive into the Colorado River Compact.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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That's right. If you live in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, or California, this one's for you. Yeah. Or if you're interested in. water supply. This one's for you as well. If you like really difficult interstate treaties, I think you'll like this one as well. There's one person out there that's like, oh my God, guys. Finally. So yes, we're talking about the Colorado River. We're talking about the compact of water sharing among those states, the basin states they call them, which is a pretty cool name, of sharing the water that comes out of the Colorado River,

which is about almost a 1,500 mile long river that winds through the southwestern U.S. all the way into Mexico. And it helps feed all of those states, most of which should not have the populations that they have and wouldn't otherwise, were it not for their ability to tap into the, the water from the Colorado. That's right. And by the way, I remembered halfway through your opening Salvo that this was a listener suggestion.

So I looked at it up real quick. And this is from George Bounchen. Oh, nice. Thanks a lot. George. This is a good idea. Yeah, I agree. So I bet George lives in one of those states.

But like you said, the Colorado River, very important. It provides, I think Julia helped us with this. And it supports roughly 10% of Americans. and $1.4 trillion economically. So it is a very, very important river system that starts there in the Rocky Mountains and then flows generally southwest. And there are all sorts of tributaries

and things that feed into it. As we'll see, that has become a bone of contention here and there, but a lot of it is there are bones of contention because this river compact that they forged in 1922 to say, hey, how are we? going to divide this water up. Everybody wants to use this stuff. It's up now this year, right? In 2006. Yeah. And they're trying to figure out, you know, what to do about the next 20 years. And there's, especially between California and Arizona, but a lot of the states have bones of contention with

one another on how this water is used. Yeah, because there's almost a self-defeating pickle that they've been in just from sharing this. By having access to that water, They've been able to boom like cities like Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Tucson. The list just goes on. They are able to have these huge populations in golf courses, in industry, and agriculture, in the Imperial Valley in California, because of the Colorado River. So that's attracted more and more people, which means you need more and more water. So those bones and contention have grown over the years. And now that it's 100 plus years old, yeah, there's an issue.

There's a problem with this that we're going to see because this river is like, I can't take any more. Yeah. Well, yeah, and we're going to get into that stuff too because there's not as much water as they thought there would be. And it seems like it's getting, it's not coming back to the boom days for reasons that we're going to talk about. But one thing we should talk about is why water. is so important out there. And obviously, one of the reasons is because there's not much of it. Highs out in the desert can reach over 125 degrees with great regularity, annual rainfall. This is near the Hoover Dam. And, you know, we did a great episode, I think, on the Hoover Dam. Between Nevada and Arizona, annual rainfall, there's about four inches. So the Colorado River is the thing. It's the most key thing that we have at our disposal to keep things alive. Yeah, it's mother, lifeblood, life giver.

That's what they call it there. Yeah. So let's talk about the Hoover Dam. Not just the Hoover Dam. That one gets all of the credit. There's also the Imperial Dam, too. Yeah. That diverts water to the All-American Canal, which is a very smart, I think, name

because it's one of those things where if you dispute the water going there, they could be like, well, you don't like the All-American Canal? Do you hate America? Yeah, sure. So there's the Boulder Dam, now the Hoover Dam, and the Imperial Dam, and both of those help bank water for what we know as the lower basin states. And the upper basin states are the ones responsible for essentially filling those water banks. That's right. So back when this, you know, in 1920, when this thing was first enacted and ratified, well, I guess it was ratified a little more slowly over time, as we'll see.

But California and Arizona were developing much more so than places like, you know, Colorado and Wyoming. So as far as the upper and the lower basin, the lower basin areas were really exploding at the time. If you were closer to those headwaters, you didn't have those dams. There weren't opportunities to sort of divert that water to save up for the future maybe. So all of that water was going downstream where they were. collecting it and using it, which is sort of where the animosity began, I think. Yeah, and the upstream states in groups that were using that water, we're like, well, wait a minute, we want water too.

Like, what's going to happen? We need something, we need somebody to come in and figure out, like, how we can get our water too. And there was a Supreme Court decision that really scared the upper states, the upstream states, which was the doctrine of prior appropriation, which was applied to water. rights. And the prior appropriation basically means if you were the first one to start using something, from that point on, you have seniority. So if you ever come up against a conflict between you and somebody else, if you're the senior one, you automatically get preference. And California and

Arizona have been using this water through water projects before, say like Colorado or Wyoming or Utah. And that meant that they were going to get the short end of the stick, no matter what, just because California and Arizona had these booming populations. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, to be clear, that Supreme Court decision was basically that that first in time, first and right, applied across the state lines. So. Yeah, yeah, good point. You're sharing this river, but they were using it.

So, like, sorry, that you can't now take that away from them, essentially. No. But, like you said, Colorado and Wyoming and other states, New Mexico, we're like, well, we want to grow one day and do these big projects, too. We're just not there yet. It's 1922. Give us a break. So they got together to negotiate this thing, the Colorado River Compact in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in November of 1922. Nice. Nuts and bolts-wise, it was kind of cool.

It's the first time more than three U.S. states divided water among themselves. And we're going to talk a little bit more about the law of the river because it's got a lot of tendrils to it. But that established what would evolve over time as what's called the law of the river. Yeah, for sure. So here comes Herbert Hoover into our story. If you were waiting for Hoover to show up, by God, here he is. President? No.

He was the Secretary of Commerce under President Warren G. Harding. But he did such a good job. He eventually became president, and they renamed the Boulder Dam, the Hoover Dam, thanks to Herbert. Yeah. Right? Or because of Herbert. So he steps in and says, hey, guys, we need to figure out what's going on here. We need to figure out how to basically let these water-thirsty states do you.

their projects because these are great projects, we can all agree. But at the same time, we need to make sure that these upstream groups, when they want to do their own projects, if they don't do, they'll have the water that they need. But we want development throughout the system. That's the key, right? And most people don't know what Herbert Hoover sounds like, but that was an exact impersonation of what he sounded like and the way he talked. Yeah, yeah. But here's the deal. He was like, you know, let's not divide it up by states.

Let's not apportionate state by state because that just makes too much sense. He said, let's split up the Colorado River Basin into two equal parts and a lot equal amounts to each half. So you've got the upper basin and your lower basin allotments and we'll talk about numbers here in a second. Sure. But within those, then you distribute by state. I don't know. Like you've got the upper portion splitting it. between, I guess, everything but California and Arizona, right?

Aren't they the only two in the lower basin? No, Nevada, I think is as well. Oh, Nevada, that's right. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So the one proposal that they initially came up with, though, kind of one of the key early things was they promised the lower basin, all right, you're going to get some extra water here because you've already got these projects.

You're kind of grandfathered in because you've got these projects and developments underway. So you're going to get some extra water. water, and nobody really liked it. The lower basin didn't even like this idea to begin with. No, Julia helped us with this, and she turned up a quote from one of the men who was involved in this compact in 1922. He was the one from the representative from New Mexico. He said, I will register my vote as a yes, but I do it only because to my mind it is the least objectionable of the attempts that have been made to frame the idea expressed in it, and not because I approve it. Yeah, he held his nose and voted yes.

Yeah, and he apparently was not the only one who did that. So they met 27 times. They finally signed the Colorado River Compact. And another great Hoover quote is that this was a problem of more extreme complexity than will ever be appreciated by the outside world. And just after researching this for a little bit, I kind of understand where he's coming from. the amount of stuff that you would have to take into consideration to do this even remotely, fairly, with your eye on development is just, I can't imagine keeping all that stuff together and coming up with it, let alone coming up with one that you could get seven different states to finally sign on.

There's no way. I mean, they all signed on, but like he said, no one really thought it was super fair. Right. So the compact, like I said, divided things up into the upper and the lower basin, and that divide actually has a place, like a physical place, which is Lee Ferry, L-E-E-F-E-R-R-Y. Not Lee Perry. Not Lee-R-R-Y. That is at the border where the river passes from the upper watershed to the lower watershed, and that is where there's really unique place, quite frankly, where all the tributaries upstream come together in this one beautiful single stream. before splitting back up again to other branches on the other side.

So they looked at that and said, hey, Lee Ferry looks like probably a pretty good spot to divide this into Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Utah. And then like Josh would one day say, Arizona, California, and don't forget Nevada, Chuck. For sure. So, yeah, it's also just for you Grand Canyon fans. It's not the same Lee's Ferry. This is Lee Ferry, and it's nowhere near it. I think if you're a Green Canyon fan, you've got to know that by now. You'd hope so, but what if you're new to being a fan of the Green Canyon?

You know, you don't want to... That's true. I don't want to set them up to make fools of themselves around the campfire. So this is one of the problems, and we're going to talk about this later too, but they did a little bit of research on water flow because they had to figure out, like, all right, how much water is that even? And what they measured was 16.4 million acre feet, splitting that up into almost 50% each,

7.5 million acre feet per basin in perpetuity with the rest left over for Mexico. And we're going to talk about that. But just so you know, a one acre foot of water is enough water to submerge an acre of land to the depth of one foot. I came up with that one. I knew I wasn't going to have to make the joke.

I knew that you knew I was going to make that joke. You can't read that without thinking how Josh Waters' is lawn. That's how I would farm, too. I would just submerge the acres of land at the depth of a foot and be like, wow, I'm done with irrigating for the year. That's right. Here's your rice and crayberries. So an acre of land at the depth of one foot or 325,85,851 gallons of water.

So they measured 16.4 million acre feet of that and split it in half with the rest going to Mexico. Yeah. Mexico is like, hey, what about us? And they're like, you get 1.5 million acre feet. Just from us, for friends, as friends, Mexico, we love you guys. And they're like, oh, we love you back. So I think they split Mexico's allotment between the upper and the lower basin equally. Yeah.

Right. There is also another group of stakeholders that kept getting overlooked and are still overlooked to some degree. And that are the Native American tribes whose reservations draw water from the Colorado River. And the only appearance they made in the compact was nothing in this compact shall be construed as affecting the obligations of the United States of America to Indian tribes. What's that even mean?

It means that the Indian tribes are going to have to fend for themselves in court if they want any of this water. And apparently every time they did, the states, the seven basin states, at least some of them would lobby behind the scenes, use their clout to try to get the Native Americans from, to get them denied their access to the water. Of course he did.

I think there are 30 tribes that have a claim on it. And right now, I think 23 are legally drawing water from the Colorado to fulfill their needs. But that means that seven have not had a chance to in over 100 years. That's right. So as far as how this actually works, over a 10-year period, the upper basin has to, to deliver at least 75 million acre feet of water to the lower basin. And they measure it there at Lee Ferry. That's like, that's why the dividing point is there.

Actually measure this water. And the upper basin can store whatever they have left over after they've delivered that to the lower basin and their portion to Mexico. And then one other thing, you kind of already mentioned it. Those projects that were already underway were really close to being developed. Yeah. They were allotted. extra water until I think Lake Mead reached 5 million acre feet, the reservoir.

So, yeah, after that, it was like, nope, you get your water from the same allotment as everybody else. That's right. And once those projects are done, like for all new projects, if you're in the lower basin, you've got to start using your reserve or your allotment, rather. Yeah. I think that fan of complex interstate treaties is really happy right now. I imagine so.

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So you can imagine that there was a lot of problems once they came up with this proposed plan to get everybody on board. And in fact, Arizona didn't sign on until 1944, like a couple decades later. Yeah. And the other six were like, okay, we need to just rewrite this a little bit

so this can proceed forward without Arizona. And I guess Arizona and California have always had this standoff, This angry kind of tiff, arow, something like that over water rights. And California typically wins that one. Yeah. What I couldn't find out is what did they do in the meantime? I guess they just took as much water as they wanted. Oh, okay.

It's not like they said. That's my guess. Yeah. All right. That's the one thing I couldn't quite find. Because, I mean, they wouldn't go like 20 years without, they'd be like, well, we're just going to go without water. I would think not.

I would guess they'd just take whatever they wanted. What I don't understand then is if they did that, why did they finally sign on if they had unlimited water, you know? Yeah, that listener who is really into the river projects, they're going to write in, I'm sure. Yeah, we need to hear from them. All right, so now I promise talk to the law of the river. That is the more complex set of laws and compacts

and court decisions and contracts and all these guidelines and stuff that have been issued over the years. It's altogether called the Law of the River, but the Colorado River Compact is sort of the spine of this. Yeah. But we do have to mention these because a lot of them have popped up over the years. There was the Boulder Canyon Project Act, which we previously mentioned in 1928, that officially ratified the river compact. But that's where the Hoover Dam came from, Boulder Dam at the time, and that All-American Canal. And that's when they officially apportioned everything out.

within that 7.5 million for each. Arizona got, for the lower basin, that is, Arizona got 2.8 million. California got 4.4. Nevada got 0.3 million. Yeah, and the upper basin went with a percentage, right? Yes, I think Colorado got the most at 51% in Utah, 23, New Mexico 11, and Wyoming 14, right? That's right. So that was, that's how they finally got it a portion.

That upper basin, that wasn't until 1948 when they finally divided it all up. Yeah. And one reason that that could wait is because even still today, those upper basin states use way less than their allotment of water. I think California uses more water than all of the upper basin states combined, even though the allotment is different. Yeah. And I think that the upper basin states have basically had to bow to the idea of progress and just let the lower basin states use more than their allotment of water. Yeah, that's right.

There was another, and like you said, that was 1948 for the upper compact. 1963 comes along. You have Arizona v. California, where the decision was handed out. They were basically like, what do we do with the surplus water in the lower basin? And this decision said California, Arizona split it at 50-50, but also these five Native American reservations. and some wildlife refuges and recreational areas, like, they get some water too. Yeah. There's also, you kind of mentioned how tributaries can become its own bone of contention or point of contention.

I guess California was using tributary water before it got to the Colorado River. Because like you said, all those tributaries branched together and come together at Lee Ferry and then branch out again. I guess California was just tapping into one. Like, do-to-do, don't mind us. Yeah. We're just taking upper basin water from one of the tributaries, and the court was like, that's fine. That doesn't count as Colorado River apportionment.

Yeah, that was 1964, right, with that decree? Yeah, and Arizona went, California! There was the Colorado River Basin Project Act of 1968. That basically just greenlit a bunch of projects on both sides, you know, both basins, upper and lower. But the key part of this one, I think, was it said, all right, if there are any overcap reserves during water shortages, California gets the rights to those. Yeah, because they had the earliest projects. So they had that first in, first right thing.

Also, that act created the Central Arizona project, which brought water to Phoenix and Tucson. And the population of Arizona doubled since 1993 when the Central Arizona project was finally completed. doubled because of the water that was diverted to Arizona from the Colorado River. Yeah, I mean, it's gorgeous out there. I lived out there. People always loved Arizona, but they were thirsty. So this really helped out. Yeah, for sure.

It gets kind of dry out there. Yeah, I lived in Yuma. And, you know, that's where, well, we'll see. Yuma plays a part. Huge part. Surprise pop-up appearance by Yuma coming up, everybody. Yep. Let's see.

There's also review, mandated, reviews every five years. The Department of the Interior was directed to take over managing this thing. And then in 1973, thanks to the Nixon administration of all people, the Endangered Species Act basically said you need to prioritize environmental protection over development projects when they conflict, which, wow, like, is that still in force? Yeah, probably not. One thing they decided to do in 1974 was give Mexico better water. So the Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Act said, all right, let's get some salinity control going over the water that we're sending down to Mexico. So, you know, they need good water down there.

And then along came a drought, a drought that lasted from the year 2000 in the year 2000 to 2023. And by 2007, the basin states were like, hey, hey, the river's not flowing quite as much as it used to. So they got together and they basically, like, we need to coordinate these discharges from Lake Mead and Lake Powell down to the lower basin states because these allotments, the river's not keeping up with the allotments anymore. We need to rethink this. And they started to really take notice of this change that the river was undergoing, starting in 2007. And since then, it's just gotten worse and worse and become more and more critical. Yeah, for sure. That led to 2019 with a drought contingency plan, which is basically just like, hey, we all need to work together with conservation here.

Because this drought is murdering us. Yeah, that meeting was like when they cut to the control tower in airplane. and everybody's just losing their minds? Yeah. That's what that meaning looks like. Yeah, for sure. Chuck, I feel like we've reached another great place for a break. What say you about taking a break?

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Nope, it's podcast time. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. Hey, Jonas is available now, and their first guest is a big one. Paul Rudd. You know, Steve Carell is a great singer. Can you tell you not to audition at the office or something?

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And then there's your body having its own program. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and host of the podcast. a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. We share stories and scientific insights to help us all better navigate these periods of turbulence and transformation. There is one finding that is consistent, and that is that our resilience rests on our relationships. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty. that none of us likes.

Listen to a slight change of plans on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so we're back. We mentioned, you know, that long drought and conservation efforts that were happening and are happening but aren't nearly enough.

And we need to talk about some of the reasons why it's not enough and what's going on out there. And one of the problems is that, you know, I mentioned early on when they calculated the flow of the river at 16.4 million acre feet per year. This was one hydrology study that was done in Yuma, Arizona of all places. Yeah, there's a pop-up. It's very strange. They went down to Yuma. It was based on a

single set of measurement measurements. This is, if you don't know where Yuma is, it's hundreds of miles downstream from Lee Ferry. Some people are like, oh, oh, okay. Yeah, so it didn't make a lot of sense to do right there and much less just do one. So they had another available study, even at the time. There was a survey from a hydrologist named Eugene Clyde LaRue, who hiked hundreds of miles all up and down the Colorado River, taking measurements all over the place. Yeah.

And that had about a million and a half gallons less per year. Acre feet even. And they said, let's go with that other one, because 16.4 million is a high. number and we think that's just the one we should go with. And that was a big mistake. That's ultimately what they did. I saw that there was a total, that, that Leroux study was widely available. People knew about it. And they were like, nah. That was, that means that the, the agreement overstretched the water supply from the Colorado River from the very first day.

It was never able to supply the all of the water that was being divided among the states. That was a huge, huge problem from the. outset, right? And in fact, scientists have estimated that the basin states have been taking about a million acre feet per year over what the river can supply for decades. And right now, they think that the river's producing about 13 million acre feet per year. So even if they had gone with LaRue's estimate, a 15 million acre feet, it would be producing less now. And not all of it is because more water is being drawn from it than it can provide. And a lot of that instead has to do with the fact that 70% of the Colorado River's water flow

comes from snow melt from the Rockies. And I don't know what to tell you if you don't believe in climate change, but the Rockies ain't been getting nearly as much snow every year in general as it used to. And as a result, the Colorado River has shrunk to 80% of its flow compared to, I think, the 1990s. Yeah. So that's a big problem. Another problem is how this water is being used and how it's always been used. If you're talking residential use, commercial use, industrial use, that's only about 20 to 25% of the Colorado River.

Yeah, get this. The rest of that is agriculture. And specifically, agriculture to mainly grow alfalfa. and hay to feed cattle. And if you're wondering, why in the world did anyone ever decide to raise cattle out in the middle of the desert? It's because of the 1877 Desert Land Act.

I think you can walk us through that, but Julia found a quote, though, from a guy from a Vox Media article named Kenny Torella, he said, if policymakers and agricultural researchers were to start our food system from scratch, they probably wouldn't put a bunch of cats, in the middle of a desert. Yeah, and there's a lot of reason for that.

They suck up a lot of water because that half of that water going to just grow hay, that doesn't include all the water that cattle drink themselves. Their hooves can pack the arid soil more, so that soil is less able to hold moisture when it does get water. And, yeah, the reason that it happened is that desert land act, like you said, that was essentially created to send people out to improve the desert, go figure out good stuff to develop the desert. And the idea in and of itself was good,

you could just go up and be like, I want some land, please, and they would give you some land, and you would go farm it. There were two keys. One, you didn't have to live there. And two, corporations got a bunch of people to go in and act as their agents, dummies, essentially,

and get that land that they then turned around and sold to the corporation for next to nothing. The corporations put huge amounts of land, together and started raising cattle on it. So, cattle corporations have had a stranglehold on this area for a very long time, and they've been able to dictate a lot of the water policy, which is why agriculture is such a huge part of water consumption in this area. Yeah, for sure.

And, you know, like you mentioned earlier, that the snow melt, not happening, there's been such a drop that basically we're in danger of what's called the Deadpool state, which is water flowing into a dam, but not enough water coming in to flow back out. So they're basically saying that, what is this, Lake Powell, later this year, I guess this is 2026, the water level might drop so low that it's not even going to spend those turbines anymore. And that means you're not generating hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam anymore, and that's a big, big problem. And then the next problem beneath that is that the water level isn't even high enough to make it through the penstocks, which basically are like, we're not even messing with the turbines anymore.

We're just trying to get water out of the reservoir down to the lower basin states. If the water levels go below those penstocks, that means the water's not going to make it downstream, which means that all of those areas have been choked off from their source of water, which is really, really bad, like catastrophic level bad. The electricity is bad enough, but the water is just that would do it for those areas. Yeah, for sure. So they're trying to figure this out, obviously, because this is a big problem as the river compact is coming due for re-upping or renegotiating or whatever.

In 2024, the Bayesian states got together and they were like, all right, here's our proposals for 2026 to deal with what we're dealing with now and also to try and safeguard against the future. do it maybe in a more fair way. And the lower basin approach, California, Nevada, and Arizona, they said, all right, let's have conservation measures that are triggered based on average capacities of everything combined, like not just our portion. And we all share these reductions together as well. And we're committing to being, you know, a part of that. Yes. And the upper basin said, no, we're not going to go along with that. In fact, we're not going to,

to commit to any cuts whatsoever because, frankly, you guys have been using all the water up to this time, and we are sick of it. We're not going to do anything to help you guys. Yeah. And so, yeah, they're like California, Arizona, they're like, Nevada, you're okay. Sorry, you're wrapped up in this.

But California and Arizona have been using way more water than was their share. And so now we have this conflict between the lower basin approach and the upper basin approach. And the stalemate, it keeps getting kicked down the road. And they just blew past their most recent deadline of February 13th, 2026, which was a Friday the 13th, which is also my anniversary, too. Oh, yeah? Yeah.

But this was a— Happy late anniversary. Thank you very much. But as far as the Basin states were concerned, it was not a happy Friday the 13th. No, it wasn't. How long you've been married, by the way? Let's see, 14 years now. That's Josh Math, though.

What would you say? She would say, that's close. It's 14. 14. That's nice. Nice work. Yeah, thank you. I didn't have to come up with a percentage or anything.

Right, right. Or Big Macs. So in January of this year, I mean, that was February, they passed the deadline. But the feds basically said in January of this year, like, hey, like, this is getting tiresome. And basically sort of like the parents walking in the room and saying, hey, if you guys don't, get a framework together yourselves and work together, we're going to do it for you, and we know nobody wants that.

They released a 1600-page report with options, basically, saying, hey, this is, we're going to do this for you if you don't work it out. Yeah, and remember that prior appropriation doctrine? Yeah. That's essentially what will be enforced. That's like the basic option

that the federal government would probably choose if the states don't come up with their own plan. Yeah. And that means Arizona is toast, and California is going to be just fine. Because California has the oldest projects, and I think Arizona has some of the youngest projects. That's, yeah, I don't know what's going to happen with that.

Again, they just blew past their deadline. I saw that California is trying to figure out how to do desalination projects. Yeah, yeah. which would help a lot of stuff. But that's, I mean, they're going to have to bill, I think, $40 billion worth of infrastructure to do it, which I don't think they have that in their pockets right now. Didn't we do a desalination episode like 15, 16 years ago?

I don't know if it was that long ago, but we definitely did one. It was about desalination saving the world, basically, because of the impending water crisis. It feels like a long time ago. It does. That COVID, it really messed time up, didn't it? Yeah, also just lots of time passing. That too.

That really messed up time. You got anything else, my man? I got nothing else. This is a little shorter, but I hope we cleared it up some for the basin states. Get your act together, everybody. You got to work together. The feds are going to step in and slap your wrists. There you go.

Well, since Chuck talked about fed slapping wrists, of course, it's time for listener mail. Yeah, this one goes back. I don't know if we read something like this or not, but I know it during the In the Julia Child episode, we couldn't think of the name of the pants, the short pants. A lot of people said cigarette pants. You said culots. Oh, yeah, yeah. The word I think I might have been looking for, Vicky points out, was probably Capri's. Oh, yeah.

Or Clam Digger pants? Sure. I've heard that, too. That's what Vicki says. And funny story, guys, I heard about Capri Pants on TV. When Mary Tyler Moore was selected as Rob's wife in the Dick Van Dyke show, she specifically didn't want to be wearing pearls in a petticoat and a dress. like Mrs. Cleaver and Donna Reed. Mm-hmm.

So producers finally gave in and said, all right, you can wear those Capri pants, which she really had to fight for. But the pants were considered risque at the time, and they said that she could never be filmed from the backside wearing those pants. Huh. I've long thought, wow, you never see Mary Tyler Moore's bottom

in the Dick Van Dyke show. Now I know why. And that's from Vicki Reed. I've always thought she dressed so adorably in that. Oh, yeah. adorable in that show. What a great show, too. Mary Tyler Moore is a treasure. She is.

Who was that, Vicky? Vicki Reed. Thanks a lot, Vicki Reed. We appreciate you. Capri pants, clam diggers, whatever you call them, they're pants, and they're shorter than normal. If you want to be like Vicky and get in touch with us and help us out, we love being helped out. You can send it via email to Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of IHeartRadio.

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