Stuff You Should Know - The Nile IS Just a River in Egypt

Episode Date: October 18, 2011

The Nile River has been flowing south to north for about 30 million years, and the human race's cradle may have been along the Blue Nile stemming from Ethiopia. Find out some amazing facts about what may be the world's most important river. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. That makes this Stuff You Should Know express edition. Monday morning edition. It's the Chili's to Go edition. I think Monday mornings are my favorite time to record.

Really? Are you kidding me? It's the worst of the worst. Oh, so you were lying. That was lying. I got you. Oh, wait. Yeah. Before we get into this, can we give a quick Kiva shout out? Yeah, we totally should. Thanks to Glenn for emailing us to be like, hey, busy movie star guys. We need you to pay attention. Glenn of the Glenn and Sonia's. Yes. Hey, guys. So, Chuck, we have reached the $700,000 mark in loans from our Stuff You Should Know Kiva team, kiva.org, slash team, slash Stuff You Should Know. It's a microlending organization where you loan in increments of 25 bucks to people who use it to basically keep their businesses going, start new business, buy inventory, whatever.

And it's basically global peace through capitalism. It's Nito Torpedo, and we support it. And not only that, not only did we hit the $700,000 mark, we just celebrated our second anniversary. We did it in like two years. That is nuts. So, we're on track from Glenn as the ubermath genius of this, heading this up. I think he says we're on track to hit our three-quarters of a mill goal in mid-November. Yeah. The original goal was to hit it by the end of the year. Crazy. Yeah. The juggernaut that is team SYSK on Kiva rolls on. So, congratulations to you guys. $800,000. Now, about a million bucks. I can't even wrap my mind around that. Do you remember how all this started? Yeah. That's a simple podcast. Yeah.

It takes a village. So, a way to go, everybody on our Kiva team. And we're not exclusive. Our Kiva team is very open and friendly. Again, if you want to go join, it's kiva.org slash team slash stuff you should know, right? All right. Back to denial. Okay. So, denial. Chuck. Yes. Have you ever heard of an ancient man-eating crocodile named Gustav? Yeah, man. I watched a video on him. Did you? Mm-hmm. He is enormous and scary. He's pretty creepy looking. So, for those of you who aren't in the know like Chuck, let me tell you a little bit about Gustav. He's what, 20 feet long, Chuck? Six meters. Okay. Yeah. He weighs a ton. He does weigh a ton. Which is what, more than 2,000 pounds these days, isn't it? It's a ton.

And he's about 60 years old, they think, which is pretty substantial because wild crocodiles, he's a now-crocodile. Wild crocodiles live to about 45. Yeah. I think he's closer to 70 now, actually. Yeah, that's right. Because he was about 16, 2004. So, yeah, he's pushing 70 and he is very old. And he also has a real taste for humans. Yeah. I think some, I think a lot of that is true. I think there's a lot of legend built up, too, though. Well, there's this guy, this hunter of him. His last name is Faye. What's his first name, Chuck? Faye Ray. No, his first name is Patrice Faye. Yeah, he was the documentary that I watched when he tried to catch him. He seems to be something of a controversial figure. And he's a bit of a cat in Ahab,

and Gustav is his quick quake, at least. And anyway, the point is, I would say I think about 300 people are attributed to dying to Gustav. Yeah, and some legend has it that he sometimes won't even eat you. He'll just kill you, which makes me think, you know, that's probably not true. Right, he kills for sport or something. Yeah, exactly. So Gustav has been on the loose in Burundi for a long time, and he is a Nile crocodile, and he's in Burundi because the Nile actually flows partially through Burundi, which is the whole reason I brought up Gustav in the first place. It's a great way to start. It was okay. You know much about the Nile? A little bit. I know a thing or two. Do you? Uh-huh. It is just a river in Egypt. But it's not just in Egypt. So

true. If you have a problem with the title, stop emailing, because we know what we're talking about. It's technically, if you want to know, it's in Uganda, Sudan, Egypt, Zaire, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and the aforementioned Burundi. Yes, and throughout all those countries, the Nile, it gets fairly wide. I think it's up to 10 kilometers wide at its widest point. 10 clicks? Yes. I don't see the width. That's good to know. But 10 kilometers, that's a substantial width for a river, right? It's over five miles wide, which is kind of wide. But at the same time, for flowing through 10 countries, it's still fairly narrow compared to its length. Yet, about 370 million people depend on the Nile to survive and have for a long time. Not that many

people. A very long time. As a matter of fact, in Ethiopia, where one of the Nile's headwaters are, it's considered the cradle of the Kush people, which is the Black race, I guess, and possibly the human race. It's the cradle of the human race. I've heard that. But don't tell the Aryan Brotherhood, because they will be mad. Yeah, they'll get mad about everything. Yeah, they do. humorless, Josh. So, tell us some more about the Nile. There's some amazing facts. It is a river. It is. But it's an amazing river. Man, it's not even the longest river, is it? No, the Amazon generally is quoted as a little bit longer. I think they said the most recent expedition they found out, and they used advanced mapping equipment. Right, which is advanced.

The Nile's about 4,175 miles long. 6,719 kilometers. And the Amazon clocks it, and we're going to do an Amazon show too, at 4,225. So it's about 65 miles longer. Yeah, and that's, I think, that the new Nile, as we'll call it, includes the new headwaters south of Lake Victoria. Is that what they determined? Because they used to say it was originated in Lake Victoria. Yeah, now it's south a little bit, right? There was a guy, that was controversial when the guy came up. There was a guy named John Henning Speck, or Speak, and he was an English explorer who lived to 1864. Before his death, he went on an expedition to Africa and went off by himself. He got, his co-expedition leader got injured, so he went off

by himself. Like Gustav? And found, I don't think it was Gustav's father. Right. And he found Lake Victoria and said, well, this has got to be the Nile, and came back. Look at this big lake, must be the headwaters. And there was this big public debate over whether it was real or not, and between the guy who was injured and not on the expedition, and Speak. And so finally, Speak was like, fine, you know what, let's go back. So we went back and they found the place where the Nile exits Lake Victoria. So Lake Victoria has traditionally been the source of the Nile, but they found that actually, no, there's some headwaters somewhere in some forest in Rwanda. Yeah. And you say that it's south of Lake Victoria, which is crazy, Chuck, because that means that

the Nile flows south to north. Yeah, I remember when I was a kid, I thought that was so strange, because I thought south meant lower. And it's just not the case in Africa, the low land, or I'm sorry, the high land is south. Right. And so it just flows toward the equator with gravity like it should. Yeah. Toward the equator. Never had a cavity. Not just not one. So, um, yes, the, the, that is kind of big news, though, that the, the headwaters, the source of the Nile, um, it has changed that it's, I like how it's somewhere deep in a forest in Rwanda. That's pretty cool. That's fairly mysterious. It is. So it still has a mysterious origin. It's always had this kind of, um, mysterious dark Africa vibe to it the Nile has. Sure.

So Josh, let's talk about the tributaries. If you're going to talk about the Nile, you got to talk about the fact that there's the white Nile, there's the blue Nile. The white is the, the newest source south of Lake Victoria is, is the white Nile. Easiest to navigate. It's the longer section, but actually has less water. Yeah. Feeds less water. So we're going to talk about how the Nile like raises and lowers in a little bit, but it's the white Nile that's responsible for that. Yeah. And it's, uh, it's lightish gray in color for the sediment, which is why they call it the white Nile. The blue Nile is very sparkly blue in its origins in the Ethiopian mountains and, uh,

provides about two thirds of the water to the river. And then it turns darker as it goes. Like in, in the Sudan, things get dark. The blue Nile. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and the, there's also another tributary that's the two largest tributaries, the blue Nile and the white Nile. I also found out that after the Nile exits a lake, like it comes out of Lake Victoria, that's called the Victoria Nile. Then it gets to Lake Albert. Victoria's Loverboy. And then after it exits that, it's the Albert Nile. So that it's named kind of based on where it is in any given part in time. But the other, the third major tributary, the Atbara River, um, which comes out of the eastern portion of Sudan is actually, um, they think it's the original source of the Nile.

Oh really? The Nile is about 30 million years old from the tertiary period. Wow. But they think that that was the original source and other rivers started coming out and joining together. And now it forms the huge massive Nile. Well, it goes through a lot of twists and turns on the way, and we'll talk about a couple of those, but let's go ahead and just tell you the ending now. Spoiler alert. It splits again in Egypt into the Damietta, which is on the east side. Or is that on the west? Damietta is on the west, east, the west. Damietta is on the east. Rosetta is on the west. I had it right to begin with. I had it right at one of those times. And that, uh, and then, you know, it splits in the two main things, but it's really a fan of many,

many little fingers that all spill out into the Mediterranean Sea. But did you notice what those two things were called? The Damietta and the Rosetta. They were called distributaries, right? You have tributaries coming in. Distributaries. I was like, yeah, that's where the word distribute comes from. Crazy. That was what's sad is I was like, wow, there's the fact of the podcast. That was it. Yeah. I like all the, the, the canal stuff. Do you? Yeah. I mean, it's not the fact, but I just thought that was the coolest stuff. Yeah. How they made it work for them. Yeah. So as the Niles flowing from south to north, it's pretty, it's pretty, I mean, it's wide, it flows, but I mean, like it's not, you're not going to get thrown out of a kayak on it

until you get to Aswan, right? Once you get to Aswan, there's six cataracts after that, between Aswan and the Nile Delta. And these cataracts are basically rapids. I wonder how harsh, like really, really navigable boat, like, okay, you got to get out and put your boat on a trailer and drive around and get back in. What do you call that? Unnavigable. There's a word for that when you have to pull your canoe out and do some walking. This besides sucks. Yeah. Bummer. Bummer. I think is what it's called. I'm just, Monday morning, Friday afternoon, I would have that word at my ready. I'm sure that people have hit these rapids before, but I mean, you're talking not just, this isn't, you know,

like a normal river creek. This is the Nile hitting rapids. Right. So there's six of those, and then you get to the Delta and it calms down again. It's the longest kiss in history. That's what they call it, the Arab poets. Isn't that nice? That is nice. Like when they meet, that's the kiss. At Cartoon? Yeah, that is very nice. I thought that was very poetic, which is, I guess, why poets wrote it. Right? Okay. So you want to hear a little more, a few more stats. I actually have a couple stats. Let's hear it. Just a couple more things. If you live on the Nile and you're a member of a certain ethnic group, a few ethnic groups, especially in Sudan, you're described as nilotic. I like that. Like Caucasian. Sure. You're nilotic. If you were

to measure the amount of water that passes down the Nile every day at its peak, you would come up with 79,251,615,372 U.S. gallons, which is 300 million cubic meters of water every day. Wow. And if you wanted to get to the root of the name of the Nile, Nileos is Greek for, are you ready for this? Big River. River Valley. That's a little disappointing. It was a little disappointing. I thought so too. Sometimes it just makes too much sense. So there's a certain culture of people that grew up along the Nile. We mentioned the Kush people from Ethiopia, but they get a lot less press than their neighbors to the west, the ancient Egyptians. Yes. This is after the Great Bend, north of the Great Bend. We left out the Great Bend. Well, the Great Bend is interesting because

it literally runs east to west for a little while, then bends back and runs the other way. Yes. It's going just due north and then it cuts west. It's a switchback. You would call that if you were a hiker. Yes. They found out finally, this is perplexed people who navigated the river and mapped it, and they're like, what is this? It's not supposed to do this because it actually does it in one of the driest points on earth. The whole area around it is dry too. That's worth pointing out is it's in the middle of some serious, serious sand. Well, it depends on what part you're at. It goes through a lot of different climes. Well, that's true. That's true. But when it hits the Great Bend, it's like in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Yes. It should just keep

going north, but it didn't. They found in, I think, 1994 through satellite photos, they found that there's this ancient riverbed that it did used to go straight. Something happened. And they estimate between 10,000 and 1 million years ago, something happened. And now it takes this bend. No one knows what happened. Oh, they don't have any theory on that. It just ain't the same since then, though. Wow. Interesting. I wonder if it was superstitious in nature, if some person stood and said halt to the Nile and it went around him. I don't think so. I think it was the other way around. I think the Nile just was kind of like, did its thing. We're your boss. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs.

America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that will piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid.

Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. People who don't know Bruce have to understand two things. One is he's built like something Michelangelo is carved out of a piece of marble. True. This is true. And number two, he's the first person to show you that at every party at every dinner. Maybe take a shirt off. Shirt comes off like before dessert. I'm Bruce Bozzi. You may not know me yet, but you already know most of my launch dates by their first names and voices alone. That was George and Julia. But believe it or not, my podcast guests see me as more than just a piece of meat like my thoughtful

friend Scarlett. Bruce Bozzi, I love you so much. And I love meeting minds with you. What we do on my new podcast, Table for Two, is what everyone does when they're at lunch with an old friend. We tell stories. We definitely gossip. James Corden wound up kind of ripping off your set. There you go. And we always go deep. Listen to Table for Two on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. So I mentioned that a lot of the northern part, especially in Egypt, is in the middle of Syria sand. And that sand is what protected the Nile and the Nile River basin and the people there because it was, you know, you couldn't just like walk over there and attack them. You were lucky to make it through the desert to get to the Nile.

So it served as a natural protection plan. That's, I didn't realize that. That makes a lot of sense though. Yeah, sure. Yeah. So you know about ancient Egypt, of course, there were several kingdoms, each of which collapsed. Yeah. Very advanced people, so they were one of the cool things we talked about the Nile rising and falling every year. The blue Nile is steady, slow and steady coming out of the Ethiopian highlands. And it's the white Nile coming out of Rwanda and through Lake Victoria and through Sudan that is subject to fluctuations because there's heavy rainfall in Rwanda. There's also a solid heavy rain in the Ethiopian highlands too, though. There is, but for some reason, the Nile stays steady. The blue Nile coming out

of Ethiopia stays steady. And snow melting too is another big reason. So I think what it is, maybe a snow in Africa? It rains on one during one part of the year and then the snow melt happens in another and it equals basically just an equal volume coming out. So on the white Nile, it's subject to wild fluctuation and it drops down. It raises up to 20 feet at its highest point. That is the secret. And the ancient Egyptians were pretty smart about capturing this stuff. They could capture the water and canals and basins so much so that they would have all the water they needed for next year's crops. Let me say that again. They could capture all the water they needed for next year's crops through the Nile. That's right. Specifically,

Josh, the river is at its lowest in May. It's at its highest in September. So between May and September, there's something called the rise, which is the inundation. And then there's the fall, which is the relinquishment, happens around October when it starts the fall. And during that time where it rises so much, like you said, they would capture this water. It would flood the sand there. And when it receded, it would leave this mud, this awesome rich fertile silt. They would dry that out for about a week, and then they would start a plan. That's why the Nile Delta is so lush. It's that annual bringing of the silt. That changed the history of the world. It did. And definitely Africa. And apparently, the silt is between 50 and 100 feet deep.

And it's just this black, rich, nutrient-rich soil that you could grow rocks in. But still, I know what you meant. And like you said, it changed the history of the world. There was problematic, it was a gift as well as a curse, because it would not only bring the silt, sometimes it would bring way too much water. It would come in at the wrong time, and they couldn't harvest fast enough. What the Nile give us, it take us away. Right. Exactly. So, to prevent the flooding and to allow for more settlement, because you need to pack people in there. As a matter of fact, the Nile is one of the most densely populated areas on Earth, right? Yeah. There's a stat here somewhere. I think it's like 3,280 people per square mile.

Yeah. Which is, yes. That's dense, my friend. It is very dense. And it was always that dense. Or not that dense, but it's always been very dense with people, because that was the life, the lifeblood. Right, as they say. So, when you have a bunch of people, you need to settle them where you can. And you can't just let the Nile flood everybody every year and then rebuild. So, what they do is they started building a system of dams. And they started controlling the Nile a little more. So, they can keep the flooding in check. They've got plenty of water for irrigation, but they're losing out on the sediment. Yeah, reduce the fertility some. So, they started using fertilizer. They kind of rolled with the punches over the years from what I

gathered. As far as, you know, building the dams, and they realized that saved the land from being flooded too much. But then also, they said, don't know, we've got to start using fertilizer now. They did. It was part of the Green Revolution, I think. So, it's kind of like, yeah, we've got all this fertilizer, but now we're screwing up the land two different ways. It's basically, it's just another example of humans controlling nature and shooting themselves in the foot, you know? Yeah, but the good thing, the good news is, though, that through their control and through this silt and the flooding, it allowed for a lot of kind of crops that you wouldn't think you would be able to grow out there, like wheat and barley. I think these days, what do they grow? Cotton

even, sorghum? Well, Egyptian cotton. Yeah, the best. Yeah, it's very, very sought after. What kind of thread count you go with these days? Oh, the higher the better. You know what I just recently learned is the higher actually means heavier too. So, if you go out and get like a 1000 thread count sheet, you might not be getting what you're looking for because it might feel more like a blanket. Right, it depends on what thread, what type of fabric they're using. Yeah, exactly. It's all on the weave. It is. And also, you have to look out for, you definitely get what you pay for. If you find like 600 thread count sheets for like 20 bucks on the internet, yeah. The reason why, it is 600 thread count, but they're counting each of the three strands of thread. So, rather than a single thread counting, you know, 600 times, it's one thread divided by

into the three strands that make up that single thread. So, it's really 200 thread counts. Because I've seen those on the internet, you know, 600 thread count for 1995. And then you like pull it up over you and you get like a rash. You might as well sleep in a potato sack or something. You get the Nile rash. Yeah. So, Chuck, we talked about dams. I did a little extra research. It turns out that the Nile connects nine countries and it connects them geopolitically as well as just geologically, geographically. Yes. And apparently, Egypt and Sudan like to make agreements over water use for the Nile. And this has been going on for a really long time. It used to be Egypt and Ethiopia. Yeah. And Egypt would occasionally accuse Ethiopia of, you know, controlling the Nile and keeping the

water to themselves, which they had no way of doing. So, then every once in a while, Ethiopia would threaten to do that. And Egypt would be like, okay, all right, all right, let's talk this out. We're going to keep all the water. Right. So, then it changed between Egypt and Sudan. And those are still two of the biggest players now. So, Egypt has a really long history of blocking projects that would kind of equitably distribute the Nile waters. Yeah. And you remember in 1984-85, Ethiopia had this horrible famine. Do you remember? But the Nile was just fine. They just hadn't figured out or they weren't using it to irrigate properly. And the world didn't really care that much at first. It took a little while to react. Really? I remember it being a big deal. It took

a while. It was a big deal before I found out about it, in other words. Yes. Exactly. I have a little fact of the show for me is to measure the recession and the rising of the river. They used a staircase. They built a staircase down into the river and literally just marked it. It was called a millimeter. And they just marked what stair it was on from time to time. Pretty basic. It is basic, but cool. Because you can't have a big pole, you know. You can't stick a big pole down. How old are those stairs? Oh, I don't know if there's, I don't think they're still around. Oh, really? Oh, that was ancient Egypt? Oh, yeah. The old kingdom. Now they just measure it with advanced equipment. Sonor. Advanced mapping equipment. Advanced mapping equipment.

So what else? Do you want to talk some more about some animals? Sure. The Nile is well known to house crocodiles. The Nile crocodile is a fish eater, for the most part. I didn't know that. Or goats or chickens and whatever happens to be lurking nearby. Yeah, goats I did know. Fish I didn't think of. But they do attack humans. They say roughly 200 human deaths per year, thanks to the crocodile. And Gustav that we mentioned earlier is he's large for a Nile crocodile, but it's not like he's some freak of nature. I mean, there's plenty of crocodiles that get to be 20 feet in length. Well, the saltwater crocodiles tend to grow larger. So he's just big for the area, which in he's old is the hills.

So that gave him the spooky legend. He's as old as a 70 year old hill. Yeah, 67 year old. He's got some neighborhood kids. And then hippopotamus. The hippopotamus doesn't live in the Nile anymore. I didn't find why they're not native. No, they don't live in Egypt. Oh, they live for themselves. They live on the Nile, but they hang around Sudan more now. Egypt gets all the press. But they used to be around Egypt. I'm not sure exactly why they left. Well, probably because the crocodiles, although the crocodiles are everywhere. Yeah. But they would eat hippos, even though they're not supposed to. And the hippos were pretty fearsome in their own right. Yeah, they like to mess up crops, run over people. I mean, we think of them as very

lovable, hungry, hungry hippos. But yeah, you don't really want to get too close to them because, well, it's like an elephant. An elephant's not going to necessarily mean to kill you. If it means to kill you, you're dead. Sure. But it can still kill you just by you being in its way. Right. So you don't want to get too close to the hippopotami. Okay. What about insects, Josh? Who cares? The CDC, apparently they've gotten the malaria pretty well in check there. So you don't even have to get vaccinated any longer. Yeah. If you travel to that area. If you're going to the city, if you're on an expedition on the Nile, you're probably going to need to go ahead and get the malaria. Even if they didn't recommend it, I would get it. Yeah. But they do recommend, you

know, if you're traveling there to take the standard anti-diarrhea stuff, iodine tablets, water purification, all the good stuff that you're going to need to stay alive. And to keep from pooping your skeleton out like that guy said. You said that? One of the listeners, remember? Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's right. What else, Josh? The Nile today, still booming. And you know, that the way they farm there today is still really similar to the way they did it back in the day. Yeah. Like I saw video of, from last week of, you know, the oxen pulling the stuff right on the banks of the Nile. Yeah. It's pretty cool. That is cool. The Arab Spring that led to the revolt in Egypt, you know, Egypt and Sudan are the two big players with water now. Yeah. To get around that,

a bunch of other countries, some of the smaller countries started the Nile Basin Initiative, which is basically like trying to figure out how to do it on their own without depending on Egypt. Right. Right. And Egypt kept going around and blocking their projects. Really? Yeah. However, they could, because you need money for it. Yeah. These are countries that, you know, have just enough infrastructure to keep their people going. Sure. So a new project that's going to really develop the country, they need some money for it. So Egypt would go to the World Bank, and be like, you know, you don't want to do that. So now that there's like a leadership vacuum in Egypt, people are hopeful and worried because Egypt still has, you know, commitments to water

agreements. And it's kind of up in the air at this point, like how it's going to go. Are they going to get stingier? Are they going to get better? Who knows. Interesting. I got one more stat for you. You talked about how densely populated it is. Yeah. Despite the fact that the Nile River Basin only makes up 5% of Egypt's landmass, 95% of the population lives along the Nile. And that's crazy in Egypt. It's nuts. It is. But necessary. Yeah. And the Nile River Delta itself, not just the Nile, but the Delta is so significant that the ancient Egyptians worshipped the Delta as a God, a God, happy, happy, HAPI, who's represented by a frog. Really? Yeah. Hoppy the Delta frog. Yeah. And despite the fact that they do grow things like

cotton and wheat and sugarcane there and citrus fruits, it's still a lot of poor people doing the farming. It hasn't led to like this abundance of riches as farmers. No, it's pretty sad. I don't know what the problem is either. I don't know. I'm not sure. I mean, are they exporting tons of the stuff or is it mainly for their use? I wonder. I don't know. The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course,

yes, they can do that and on the prime example. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss y'all. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. People who don't know Bruce have to understand two things. One is he's built like something Michelangelo is carved out of a piece of marble. True. This is true. And number two,

he's the first person to show you that at every party at every dinner. Maybe take a shirt off. Shirt comes off like before dessert. I'm Bruce Bozzi. You may not know me yet, but you already know most of my launch dates by their first names and voices alone. That was George and Julia. But believe it or not, my podcast guests see me as more than just a piece of meat like my thoughtful friend Scarlett. Bruce Bozzi. I love you so much and I love meeting minds with you. What we do on my new podcast table for two is what everyone does when they're at lunch with an old friend. We tell stories. We definitely gossip. James Corden winds up kind of ripping off your set. There you go. And we always go deep. Listen to table for two on the iHeart

radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Jerry's laughing at us. They're also getting into hydroelectric power, which I could change things. Well, that's one dam. Yeah. I think it's been producing power for a while. It opened in 1970. Well, they're getting more and more into it these days to like more hydroelectric power, more dams. It's huge. So it's like 364 feet tall above the river. What? And it's 12,000 feet wide. Wow. That's an enormous dam. That is big. Took 11 years to build. Really? Yeah. How does that compare to the Hoover Dam in generation of power? I wonder. I keep asking for stats. We don't. I hate Monday morning. You got anything else? No, I wish I did, but I don't. It's pretty amazing. Yeah. And this one

we're going to chalk up to. If you want to know the entire world, we got to explain the Nile eventually. So that's what we did. We're going to kill the Amazon over. Not literally kill it. Nobody can kill the Amazon. We're going to shut it off. Got anything else? No, I should be asking you that. Chuck, you got anything else? I don't. Okay. Well, if you want to learn more about the Nile, you can type in Nile and ILE in the search for it, howstuffworks.com, which means it's time for listener mail. Josh, you know that we read our emails occasionally from our younger listeners? Yes, I do. Because we like cute kids and we like them learning stuff and we like to be role models as far as our show goes to these kids. That's a good caveat. This comes from a listener

from Wisconsin. I'm sorry, Minnesota. Okay. You can't say it like that. I am Eli of Lindstrom, Minnesota. It's a small town located on the nose of Wisconsin. Okay. So I send that. I'm 14 years old and have been listening to your podcast for about six months. I really like it a lot. It is straight to the point, yet it isn't so fact-y. You got that right. Unlike Radio Lab. But I really enjoy your sense of personality you add. You guys don't sound like robots. I was having an anger attack when I heard the Underground Railroad podcast that lady wouldn't know real genius if it hit her in the eardrums. Harsh words. Wow. Your topics include a variety of pop culture, science, psychology, and some downright obscure ones. I listened to you on the lawnmower along

with Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me and How to Do Everything. I haven't heard of that one. Sounds suspiciously like our own. Like Catholic stuff you should know. Yeah, exactly. One of the people who turned me on to your podcast is my scout master Dana. He and I have a very heated arguments and discussions about certain topics on our way to and from Boy Scout Camp. Me being the senior patrol leader, I need to have a certain connection with the scout master in order for things to run smoothly. I appreciate what you guys are doing for me and I hope that you write back. I would get all warm and fuzzy if you went as far as to read this on the air and Dana would not believe it. I hope you have a wonderful fall. Sincerely, Eli from Minnesota. Thanks a lot, Eli.

And Dana, take that. Yeah, I think Eli just won up to you, Dana. Yep, you owe him a s'more cover for that from that. Yeah, I just had s'mores the other day. You mean you and I are into s'mores right now. You build a fire? How do you do it? In the oven. Hey, dude, I don't have like a backyard to have a fire in and set it on fire. I've got a little yard. I set the city on fire. Yeah. Okay, well, if you have a good s'more story or how about this, if you have a good autumn treat recipe, we're in the market. We want it, okay. A good pumpkin pie perhaps. Something like that, something that I haven't heard of. Good autumn cocktail recipes always appreciate it as well. I had a nice autumn beer the other night, the dogfish head pumpkin. Yeah, you've been talking

about that ever since, too. I just had it two nights ago. What are you talking about? No, you didn't, because this is like the third time you've mentioned it. I had it two nights ago. Oh, whatever. You're thinking of your other friend, Chuck. No, I think well, then Chad had one. Okay. Okay, so if you have a good recipe of some sort for an autumn treat, we want to hear it, you can tweet it to us, but it better be short. That's S-Y-S-K podcast is our Twitter handle. On Facebook, we're at facebook.com slash stuff you should know. And you can totally email us totally at stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join How Stuff Works staff as we explore the most promising and

perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil answer for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ophira Eisenberg. I'm a comedian and a parent of the absurdity of telling jokes late at night and then waking up early with a small child in the morning. I have a new podcast called

Parenting is a Joke. I'll talk to other funny people who are also parents. Will we be laughing? Will we be crying? Find out by listening to Parenting is a Joke on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.