WEBVTT - Black Blizzards of the Dust Bowl 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:06.680 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.680 --> 0:00:13.920 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:13.920 --> 0:00:16.680 My name is Robert Lamb and Douglas. We're gonna kick 0:00:16.680 --> 0:00:19.520 off the podcast with just a brief reading from a 0:00:19.560 --> 0:00:23.760 little work of fiction that many of you. If you're 0:00:23.760 --> 0:00:25.560 like me, you were forced to read at some point 0:00:25.640 --> 0:00:28.120 and maybe didn't enjoy it, or maybe you got to 0:00:28.240 --> 0:00:30.560 you you have the opportunity to read it later when 0:00:30.600 --> 0:00:33.760 you could enjoy it and appreciate, uh, the the many 0:00:33.880 --> 0:00:37.320 values of the text. But here's just a little bit 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:40.160 from the novel The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. 0:00:41.000 --> 0:00:43.600 The dawn came, but no day. In the gray sky, 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:46.040 red sun appeared a dim red circle that gave a 0:00:46.040 --> 0:00:49.120 little light like dusk. And as that day advanced, the 0:00:49.200 --> 0:00:52.280 dust slipped back toward darkness, and the wind cried and 0:00:52.280 --> 0:00:55.560 whimpered over the fallen corn. Men and women huddled in 0:00:55.600 --> 0:00:58.480 their houses, and they tied handkerchiefs over their noses, and 0:00:58.480 --> 0:01:01.120 they went out and wore God to protect their eyes. 0:01:01.760 --> 0:01:03.800 When the night came again, it was black night, for 0:01:03.880 --> 0:01:06.400 the stars could not pierce the dust to get down, 0:01:06.840 --> 0:01:09.399 and the window lights could not even spread beyond their 0:01:09.400 --> 0:01:12.200 own yards. Now the dust was evenly mixed with the 0:01:12.280 --> 0:01:15.440 air and the emulsion of dust and air. Houses were 0:01:15.440 --> 0:01:18.920 shut tight and cloth wedged around doors and windows. But 0:01:19.000 --> 0:01:21.679 the dust came in so thinly that it could not 0:01:21.760 --> 0:01:24.200 be seen in the air, and it settled like pollen 0:01:24.280 --> 0:01:27.240 on the chairs and tables, on the dishes. The people 0:01:27.319 --> 0:01:30.399 brushed it from their shoulders. Little lines of dust lay 0:01:30.440 --> 0:01:33.360 at the door sills, and it goes on like that. 0:01:34.240 --> 0:01:37.440 But but I B it is a bleak existence, and 0:01:37.560 --> 0:01:40.959 Steinbeck captures it so so beautifully on the page. And uh. 0:01:41.000 --> 0:01:43.840 And since we are in this podcast discussing uh, some 0:01:43.920 --> 0:01:46.600 of the science behind the dust bowl of the Great 0:01:46.600 --> 0:01:50.200 Depression and the measures that were used then and now 0:01:50.280 --> 0:01:54.360 to counter these traumatic ecological effects, it seemed fitting to 0:01:54.440 --> 0:01:56.440 kick it off with that, yeah, which was, of course 0:01:56.480 --> 0:01:58.640 the dust bowls that the backdrop for the Grapes of 0:01:58.720 --> 0:02:01.640 Wrath and or talking about is a time period between 0:02:01.720 --> 0:02:05.520 nineteen thirty one and nineteen thirty nine, so a good 0:02:05.600 --> 0:02:10.160 eight years of this sort of existence of drought and 0:02:10.960 --> 0:02:14.920 winds and clouds of dust that just plagued people, and 0:02:14.919 --> 0:02:16.360 it just must have seemed like the end of the 0:02:16.360 --> 0:02:19.040 world for many people it was well and of course, 0:02:19.040 --> 0:02:20.880 and the other part of this is that the Great 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:23.960 Depression was going on. So, um, those are a good 0:02:24.120 --> 0:02:28.040 field times, healthy lands, not at all. Yeah, Now the 0:02:28.120 --> 0:02:31.400 roots of it kind of stretched back. Of course, the 0:02:31.440 --> 0:02:34.720 roots of any bad time are always always go back 0:02:34.760 --> 0:02:38.800 into a more prosperous eras um. So you you go 0:02:38.880 --> 0:02:41.920 back to the to the late nineteenth century of pioneers 0:02:41.919 --> 0:02:45.120 that moved into the semi aread midwestern southern plains of 0:02:45.160 --> 0:02:48.680 the United States. Um. And they're enjoying some prosperous years 0:02:49.080 --> 0:02:52.799 and they're they're they're planning, they're harvesting. It's going well. Um. 0:02:52.840 --> 0:02:56.000 But then a recession set's in following the First World War. 0:02:57.040 --> 0:03:00.480 Farmers need up their profits, right, staying up their reduction. 0:03:01.040 --> 0:03:05.880 So they turned to the machines, the machine machines um, 0:03:05.960 --> 0:03:08.519 and not so much robot overlords or anything, but rather 0:03:08.880 --> 0:03:12.760 mechanized farming techniques. They bought plows and other farming equipment. 0:03:12.880 --> 0:03:17.120 In between nineteen thirty more than five million acres of 0:03:17.160 --> 0:03:21.079 previously unfarmed land went under the plow. And so they 0:03:21.160 --> 0:03:24.760 were getting record crops in Yeah, which was great, but 0:03:25.080 --> 0:03:28.799 we also lead to overproduction, right, So that supply and 0:03:28.880 --> 0:03:32.760 demand was way off, and uh you know, as a 0:03:32.880 --> 0:03:35.760 as a result, you had a bunch of wheat um 0:03:35.800 --> 0:03:39.120 that was overproduced with a great depression, and that leads 0:03:39.160 --> 0:03:42.240 to severely reduced market prices. Yeah, there's too much wheat 0:03:42.320 --> 0:03:44.520 and there's not as much money to buy it with anymore. 0:03:44.600 --> 0:03:47.760 So so whatater farmers gonna do. They're gonna try and 0:03:47.800 --> 0:03:51.400 earn back their production cost by planning more wheat, expanding 0:03:51.440 --> 0:03:54.400 their their fields even more in an effort to get 0:03:54.440 --> 0:03:56.839 blood out of that stone. Yeah, but the problem here 0:03:56.920 --> 0:04:00.400 is that wheat is not so great um in in 0:04:00.480 --> 0:04:03.840 a drought. In fact, the natural drought resistant grasses are best. 0:04:04.640 --> 0:04:06.680 But unfortunately a lot of those were peeled away with 0:04:06.720 --> 0:04:10.000 the plowing and the wheat again was placed in there, 0:04:10.440 --> 0:04:14.720 and also on any unused fields were also left bare. 0:04:15.840 --> 0:04:18.880 So what do you see happening here? You see a 0:04:18.880 --> 0:04:22.640 lot of dust, right, and plus it uh, plow based farming, 0:04:22.680 --> 0:04:25.680 it kills the soil. So the fertile top soil that's 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:29.520 so essential to anything growing out there, it gets uh 0:04:29.760 --> 0:04:32.320 it's it's it's literally turned up into the wind. The wind. 0:04:32.360 --> 0:04:35.039 It's it's it's it's turned up by the plow, the 0:04:35.040 --> 0:04:38.359 wind catches it and it blows away. So and without it, 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:40.760 so the ground becomes less nurturing to anything you're trying 0:04:40.800 --> 0:04:43.480 to grow in it, and it becomes even more susceptible 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:46.560 to drought. Right, And then of course in two what 0:04:46.680 --> 0:04:51.400 they saw happen again this beginning nine that that's really 0:04:51.400 --> 0:04:54.240 when the drought set in and the pain stop. High temperatures, 0:04:54.279 --> 0:04:57.839 the sun's just bacon everything. Yeah, and just one year 0:04:57.880 --> 0:05:01.280 there were fourteen dust storms report of course he's were 0:05:01.320 --> 0:05:05.480 known as the black blizzards, and the number actually increased 0:05:05.720 --> 0:05:09.080 to nearly forty. Right, and you should I'll make sure 0:05:09.120 --> 0:05:11.440 that includes some sort of a historic photograph on the 0:05:11.480 --> 0:05:15.120 blog posted accompanies this, uh, this what this episode. But 0:05:15.440 --> 0:05:17.200 if you do like just a Google image search for 0:05:17.320 --> 0:05:20.920 photos dust bowl, you will see some of these just 0:05:20.920 --> 0:05:23.880 just really apocalyptic looking images of just i mean just 0:05:24.000 --> 0:05:26.920 stuff right out of the grapes of wrath. Uh, you know, 0:05:26.960 --> 0:05:30.600 these these thin farmers and their their families standing there 0:05:30.880 --> 0:05:34.800 and on the horizon, just dark, billowing dust clouds. Yeah, 0:05:34.800 --> 0:05:37.640 because we're talking about but just by the end of right, 0:05:38.080 --> 0:05:40.320 just just a couple of years into this, thirty five 0:05:40.360 --> 0:05:43.719 million acres of farmland ruined and the top soil covering 0:05:43.760 --> 0:05:48.760 one million acres blown away. Yeah. And you know the 0:05:48.800 --> 0:05:51.159 region again, as you've talked about, was that the Southern 0:05:51.160 --> 0:05:56.000 Grape Plains, but um in in really in particular Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, 0:05:56.000 --> 0:05:59.880 New Mexico, and Colorado were affected pretty greatly. Yeah. So 0:06:00.440 --> 0:06:03.479 what happens, I mean, the ramifications of this. You have 0:06:03.520 --> 0:06:07.000 farmers losing their land, they can't stay, they can't they 0:06:07.000 --> 0:06:10.000 can't pay for it. Uh, they're having to flee elsewhere 0:06:10.000 --> 0:06:12.200 to find work. They're going to California and try and 0:06:12.240 --> 0:06:16.280 find migrant labor jobs. Um. Yeah, if you've ever heard 0:06:16.320 --> 0:06:19.039 the term okay, that's what it is. That's abejorative term, 0:06:19.120 --> 0:06:21.279 you know, referring to people who you know, you could 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:22.880 have come from Kansas, but you might have been called 0:06:22.880 --> 0:06:26.160 in Oki after Oklahoma if you showed up in California. 0:06:26.760 --> 0:06:30.080 Mainly because there were only so many jobs available in 0:06:30.440 --> 0:06:34.200 um in California, and of course all the people coming 0:06:34.279 --> 0:06:38.560 in from the Great Plains really just made all the 0:06:38.560 --> 0:06:41.080 the people in California pretty upset. Yeah, there's a lot 0:06:41.080 --> 0:06:45.200 of animosity between the native California's and the the the 0:06:45.279 --> 0:06:49.720 foreign workers in their midst exacerbated again by the economic conditions. 0:06:49.760 --> 0:06:52.000 So what so what really fascinates about me about all 0:06:52.040 --> 0:06:54.039 this is that, I mean, you have this, uh, this 0:06:54.160 --> 0:06:59.560 ecological disaster that occurs due to um in large part 0:06:59.600 --> 0:07:04.200 to reagonized agriculture. Humans remake their world an attempt to 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:07.640 uh better feed themselves and to uh to better um 0:07:07.960 --> 0:07:10.800 supply these standard of living they become accustomed to, and 0:07:10.840 --> 0:07:13.120 in doing so, they almost create a desert in the 0:07:13.120 --> 0:07:17.600 middle of the United States, um and uh. And luckily 0:07:18.000 --> 0:07:20.480 people realize what was happening, you know, and then they 0:07:20.480 --> 0:07:23.080 were like, well, let's let's fight this. Let's let's solve 0:07:23.080 --> 0:07:26.400 this problem before it gets any worse, because it was 0:07:26.760 --> 0:07:29.400 already pretty bad. So it's it's interesting to look at 0:07:29.440 --> 0:07:31.440 these at some of the steps that they took to 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:34.600 to fight the dust bowl, to fix what had been broken. 0:07:34.760 --> 0:07:36.360 And that's what I think it's so fascinating about this, 0:07:36.360 --> 0:07:40.280 because it really is this large scaled effort by the 0:07:40.360 --> 0:07:44.160 government to to come in and uh, you know, try 0:07:44.240 --> 0:07:48.640 to reverse nature. Well, actually we shouldn't. The anti nature, 0:07:48.640 --> 0:07:51.640 I suppose you could say, well to to sort of 0:07:51.640 --> 0:07:54.640 take a more modern and futurist way of looking at 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:56.040 It's It's kind of like when when you look at 0:07:56.240 --> 0:07:59.400 examples of climate change and people looking at the way 0:07:59.520 --> 0:08:02.600 that that humans have remade the climate of the planet 0:08:02.880 --> 0:08:06.239 and then trying to to fix it, sometimes with crazy 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:09.280 schemes that also tinker with the environment, like the idea 0:08:09.360 --> 0:08:11.880 of of putting hole munch of mirrors in orbit or 0:08:12.440 --> 0:08:14.840 essentially setting off all I mean, they're their whole list 0:08:14.840 --> 0:08:21.440 of different crazy seed clouding, various uh geo engineering techniques 0:08:21.480 --> 0:08:24.040 that have been proposed over the years where you know, 0:08:24.080 --> 0:08:26.160 it comes off like the water and the tub is 0:08:26.160 --> 0:08:29.320 too cold, so let's add some hot and then and 0:08:29.320 --> 0:08:31.120 then you can imagine a situation where the water in 0:08:31.160 --> 0:08:32.680 the in the tub is too hot, so let's add 0:08:32.679 --> 0:08:36.839 some cold. Eventually does the tub overflow? I don't know. Yeah, 0:08:36.840 --> 0:08:38.720 And when we talk about see cloudy, we're talking actually 0:08:38.720 --> 0:08:41.920 about munitions shot up in the air, particularly during or 0:08:42.000 --> 0:08:45.080 right before the Olympics in Beijing, and they were doing 0:08:45.120 --> 0:08:47.920 that because they were trying to get actual rainfall to 0:08:47.920 --> 0:08:50.760 come down to clear some of the pollutants in that city. 0:08:50.880 --> 0:08:53.040 So that's what one of the things we're talking about. 0:08:53.080 --> 0:08:56.599 We're talking about engineering your environment. Um, let's talk a 0:08:56.600 --> 0:09:00.880 little bit about how Fdr Franklin Deleanor Roosevelt actually created 0:09:00.920 --> 0:09:03.320 something called the shelter belt project. But of course there 0:09:03.320 --> 0:09:05.559 were other steps that were taken on a more economic 0:09:05.640 --> 0:09:08.680 level of various stuff with the new deal um civil 0:09:08.679 --> 0:09:12.160 conservation core that came into and created all these new jobs, 0:09:12.160 --> 0:09:14.439 and people are going around planting trees and digging ditches 0:09:14.480 --> 0:09:17.559 and the like reservoirs. But the part that, you know, 0:09:17.600 --> 0:09:20.520 the part that really interested us, was some of these 0:09:20.559 --> 0:09:25.200 things such as the shelter belts, which again, imagine the 0:09:25.240 --> 0:09:28.240 situation here. You've tinkered with the natural environment. You've taken 0:09:28.280 --> 0:09:32.200 the landscape and changed it into wheat fields. And your 0:09:32.240 --> 0:09:34.240 problem here is the wind is just sweeping across with 0:09:34.280 --> 0:09:37.280 all this dust. So you want to somehow break that wind, 0:09:40.480 --> 0:09:44.280 break it with trees. Yes, exactly, you want to break 0:09:44.360 --> 0:09:46.520 up the wind. You want to you want to build 0:09:46.520 --> 0:09:48.960 a wall against the wind. And what is nature's wall 0:09:49.000 --> 0:09:52.240 against the wind? Um in many cases, it is trees. 0:09:52.640 --> 0:09:54.400 So the idea of these shelter belts is to is 0:09:54.400 --> 0:09:58.000 to plant rows of trees besides fields to slow the 0:09:58.000 --> 0:10:01.640 wind and reduce wind to roach uh. And and of 0:10:01.720 --> 0:10:03.320 course that wouldn't be the only thing. And also there 0:10:03.360 --> 0:10:06.480 was also this push for no till farming, UH, so 0:10:06.520 --> 0:10:09.520 that you're not turned taking your precious top soil and 0:10:09.559 --> 0:10:13.000 turning it up and letting the wind take it. Um. Uh. 0:10:13.040 --> 0:10:15.760 There's UH. And then there's also strip cropping. There was 0:10:15.800 --> 0:10:19.520 another technique which was you've seen pictures of this. I 0:10:19.559 --> 0:10:21.199 had seen pictures of this and didn't really realize what 0:10:21.240 --> 0:10:23.040 I was looking at un til now. And uh. And 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:25.920 this is where you have a strip of crops planet 0:10:26.000 --> 0:10:28.480 and there's a strip of dirt and some crops planet 0:10:28.559 --> 0:10:31.160 and strip of dirt. And from an aerial view especially, 0:10:31.200 --> 0:10:33.240 it looks very it's very beautiful. It's like and there's 0:10:33.240 --> 0:10:35.760 a pattern there across the fields. You've probably seen it 0:10:35.960 --> 0:10:39.320 if you've had any kind of you know, flights across 0:10:39.360 --> 0:10:41.959 the states. But the idea here is you're gonna use 0:10:42.040 --> 0:10:44.720 this section and you're gonna let this section of soil 0:10:45.160 --> 0:10:47.679 replenish itself and then the next year the parts of 0:10:48.000 --> 0:10:50.560 the parts, the strips that are crops will be dirt 0:10:50.640 --> 0:10:54.079 and the strips that are dirt will be crops. But 0:10:54.720 --> 0:10:57.480 the shelter belt, how did this play out? What was 0:10:57.520 --> 0:11:00.480 the original idea? Well, I mean this this idea it 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:02.760 was pretty huge. It was a project that was estimated 0:11:02.760 --> 0:11:05.000 to cost seventy five million dollars over a period of 0:11:05.040 --> 0:11:11.040 twelve years UM. And you know, of course funding disputes arose. 0:11:11.320 --> 0:11:15.720 FDR had to transfer the program from the Civilian Conservation 0:11:15.840 --> 0:11:19.040 Core to the w p A, where the project was 0:11:19.080 --> 0:11:21.880 a little bit more hamstrung. Um. So what they were 0:11:21.880 --> 0:11:25.680 talking about is replacing farmland with forest, and that of 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:29.120 course did not go over well with all the farmers, right. Yeah, 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:32.840 they were talking about forest like structures that mimic natural conditions, 0:11:32.880 --> 0:11:36.439 basically walls made out of forest. And then yeah, this 0:11:36.600 --> 0:11:39.440 side argues about it. This side brings up some concerns 0:11:39.480 --> 0:11:43.079 and the the uh, the finished product is somewhat diminished 0:11:43.559 --> 0:11:46.839 from the original design. Yeah. And in fact, you know, 0:11:47.440 --> 0:11:49.839 on a lot of the land that was supposed to 0:11:49.840 --> 0:11:53.560 be used kind of got um attenuated to the point where, 0:11:53.679 --> 0:11:56.320 you know, some some of the original plan was like 0:11:56.400 --> 0:11:58.240 have to the amount of plan that was actually able 0:11:58.280 --> 0:12:02.160 to be planted. Also, what was planted um was very 0:12:02.160 --> 0:12:05.160 different from the original plan. You know, Conifers were something 0:12:05.160 --> 0:12:07.880 that they thought would do well in some areas um, 0:12:07.880 --> 0:12:11.080 but politics and economics force them to instead rely on 0:12:11.240 --> 0:12:14.480 cotton woods. And the reason why they planted cotton woods 0:12:14.480 --> 0:12:16.760 is because they grew pretty quickly and they were a 0:12:16.840 --> 0:12:20.160 much more flashy, obvious sign that there was a plan 0:12:20.280 --> 0:12:23.720 in place and being cultivated. And people were really kind 0:12:23.720 --> 0:12:27.280 of anty about this. Again, remember it's the Great Depression. Um. 0:12:27.320 --> 0:12:29.880 You know, people are in dire circumstances. They don't want 0:12:29.880 --> 0:12:33.080 to wait twelve years to see this plan come to fruition, right, 0:12:33.120 --> 0:12:35.320 And you have politicians involved in this that are very 0:12:35.320 --> 0:12:39.960 concerned with not only the the act of helping, but 0:12:40.000 --> 0:12:43.520 the perceived act of helping, right, right. And but it's 0:12:43.559 --> 0:12:45.560 a huge effort, right because you have to get everybody 0:12:45.559 --> 0:12:46.959 on board with You have to get the farmers, you 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:48.360 have to get the politicians, you have to get the 0:12:48.640 --> 0:12:51.360 public um. And of course it's just always a problem 0:12:51.360 --> 0:12:52.560 when you try to get a bunch of people in 0:12:52.559 --> 0:12:56.960 the room to agree on something. So was it successful, um? Well, 0:12:57.000 --> 0:12:59.800 on on on one hand, no, they I mean they 0:12:59.800 --> 0:13:05.120 were able to completely um reverse the effects about the 0:13:05.120 --> 0:13:07.680 four d fifty million hectares of arid land in North 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:13.040 America still suffers from moderate to severe desert desertification. But um, 0:13:13.080 --> 0:13:16.439 they did say that it reduced it by sixty from 0:13:16.480 --> 0:13:19.880 the amount of soil blowing around. So definitely definitely a 0:13:19.920 --> 0:13:22.000 success when you look at it in that view. And yeah, 0:13:22.080 --> 0:13:23.480 and of course this is one of those things when 0:13:23.520 --> 0:13:25.559 you step back historically, it looks like much more of 0:13:25.559 --> 0:13:28.160 a success than at the time. And you know, some 0:13:28.200 --> 0:13:30.760 forming practices came out of it that we're really beneficial 0:13:30.800 --> 0:13:32.800 that are still being used today. Right, all right, we 0:13:33.040 --> 0:13:37.000 are going to talk about Stalin and why he let 0:13:37.480 --> 0:13:42.320 a quack biologist create his own sort of Great Stalin 0:13:42.400 --> 0:13:44.920 Plan for the Transformation of Nature. That's the actual name 0:13:44.960 --> 0:13:47.560 of that, the Great Stalin Plan for the Transformation of Nature. 0:13:47.960 --> 0:13:51.200 I love that. It's it's so beautifully Um Soviet you 0:13:51.240 --> 0:13:54.000 know it is as well, we will bend nature to 0:13:54.040 --> 0:13:57.920 our will beginning now. Yeah, it was. It takes us 0:13:57.960 --> 0:14:04.400 back to October eighth. Soviet government announces that, uh, what 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:07.360 was actually the world's first state centered program to reverse 0:14:07.480 --> 0:14:11.480 human induced climate change. Uh. They were going to construct 0:14:11.520 --> 0:14:16.640 five point seven million hectares of forest in the Russian South. Um, 0:14:17.000 --> 0:14:19.960 you know, they were gonna irrigation canals, were gonna be built. 0:14:21.040 --> 0:14:24.440 It was a crazy gigantic project. They were gonna be 0:14:24.440 --> 0:14:27.000 shelter belts like we were talking about these these treat 0:14:27.120 --> 0:14:29.920 forest strips to break up the wind and uh, and 0:14:29.960 --> 0:14:31.960 they were gonna create like that. The idea was to 0:14:32.000 --> 0:14:35.960 sort of recreate this imagined prehistoric state of the land. Yes, 0:14:36.000 --> 0:14:39.400 they were going to try to change the topography of 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:42.880 this land, which I think is so ambitious and so 0:14:42.960 --> 0:14:46.160 sort of wonderful. But of course the problem is that 0:14:46.280 --> 0:14:50.680 Stalin had been taken by the ideas of this quack biologist, 0:14:50.760 --> 0:14:54.480 Trophim Dashenko. And this guy was given carte blanche over 0:14:54.520 --> 0:14:58.240 Soviet agriculture science um. And he had no solid scientific 0:14:58.280 --> 0:15:02.280 theory on how to properly cultivate for shelter beds. And 0:15:02.360 --> 0:15:06.840 he actually understood plant and trees is coexistence in terms 0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:10.800 of class warfare. Yeah, and I mean seriously, this is 0:15:10.840 --> 0:15:13.360 this is sort of what his um, the whole plan 0:15:13.520 --> 0:15:16.960 was predicated on. Okay, and here's a little excerpt about 0:15:17.000 --> 0:15:19.480 what he actually had to say about it. And I 0:15:19.520 --> 0:15:22.280 will try my my Russian accent, although I'm gonna apologize 0:15:22.280 --> 0:15:26.160 in advance for these are mortally afraid of step grasses, 0:15:26.320 --> 0:15:30.400 particularly colch grass and catchweed. Okay, I'm gonna stop doing that. 0:15:30.800 --> 0:15:34.360 The first attachment of step vegetation in the struggle between 0:15:34.360 --> 0:15:36.480 the step and the forest. And then he goes on 0:15:36.520 --> 0:15:40.120 to say planting oaks and dense clusters, however, could give 0:15:40.160 --> 0:15:43.760 them an upper hand in this battle. Wild plants, particularly 0:15:43.840 --> 0:15:47.560 various species of forest trees, possessed the biologically useful property 0:15:47.800 --> 0:15:51.120 of self thinning. At this point that someone would want 0:15:51.160 --> 0:15:53.040 to interrupt and be like, dude, are we still talking 0:15:53.040 --> 0:15:55.400 about forests? What are you What are you really getting at? 0:15:55.680 --> 0:15:58.000 Oh no, no, it gets better, It gets better. He says. 0:15:58.080 --> 0:16:01.320 Dense sprouts of wild plants be these oaks in this case, 0:16:01.640 --> 0:16:04.320 so regulate their number by means of self thinning. But 0:16:04.480 --> 0:16:08.160 it's individual members cannot interfere or oppress each other. And 0:16:08.200 --> 0:16:10.800 at the same time, the entire area is occupied by 0:16:10.840 --> 0:16:14.760 this particular species. Other species competitors of a given species 0:16:14.800 --> 0:16:18.360 are not admitted to this area. And so I love 0:16:18.400 --> 0:16:20.680 this um. And this is according to Malcolm McGrath. He's 0:16:20.680 --> 0:16:24.320 the author of Stalin and Modernity UM. He says the 0:16:24.320 --> 0:16:27.360 fittest oak trees survive and pass their genetic material to 0:16:27.400 --> 0:16:30.040 their offspring right while the less fit trees do not 0:16:30.120 --> 0:16:33.840 survive or reproduce. Leshenko suggestion that oak trees banded together 0:16:33.920 --> 0:16:36.240 and regulate their own growth, so it's not to oppress 0:16:36.360 --> 0:16:40.520 or interfere with each other. Violated this most basic notion 0:16:40.560 --> 0:16:44.280 of Darwin's theory. Leshenko had a misunderstanding basically of genetics 0:16:44.280 --> 0:16:48.000 and biology, and he couldn't help really to to antimori 0:16:48.040 --> 0:16:52.040 fize vegetation and imbue it with human traits. Like I 0:16:52.080 --> 0:16:55.200 can't help but imagine him like throwing a meeting together 0:16:55.240 --> 0:16:57.960 at work and doing this thing where like the proper 0:16:58.000 --> 0:16:59.800 trees to be planted will be the ones that do 0:17:00.000 --> 0:17:03.960 not steal other people's lunch from the refrigerator, and you know, 0:17:04.000 --> 0:17:07.639 we're just taking out some of the kind yeah yeah, 0:17:07.720 --> 0:17:10.440 and those oh those shrubs, Oh how they hate those 0:17:10.480 --> 0:17:13.840 trees and those trees and shrubs. Um. But it would 0:17:13.840 --> 0:17:15.679 mean it was kind of a big deal because this 0:17:15.800 --> 0:17:19.480 was a huge project, and in fact, in celebration of 0:17:19.480 --> 0:17:23.000 the plan, they had symphonies and stories were written. In 0:17:23.040 --> 0:17:28.040 a painting showed Stalin unfurling maps of his agriculture schemes. 0:17:28.080 --> 0:17:31.080 But as so often happens with with schemes that are 0:17:31.080 --> 0:17:34.600 so attached to an individual, yeah, the individual dies, stal 0:17:34.720 --> 0:17:38.199 ends up dying. Uh in the and then it's kind 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:41.280 of falls apart. Yeah. See, that's that's that's the problem 0:17:41.320 --> 0:17:44.000 of a dictatorship in this uh well in many cases, 0:17:44.040 --> 0:17:47.080 but particularly here, because there's not a lot of voices 0:17:47.080 --> 0:17:49.359 that were being heard, a lot of voices of dissent, right. 0:17:50.000 --> 0:17:53.000 There weren't a committee of members brought in to say, hey, 0:17:53.080 --> 0:17:55.879 let's talk about this plan and how best to execute it. 0:17:55.880 --> 0:17:58.480 It was basically the brain child of this one guy 0:17:59.160 --> 0:18:01.239 who um who just thought it all had to do 0:18:01.320 --> 0:18:08.400 with with these different socio economic classes of plants. Now 0:18:08.560 --> 0:18:11.240 throughout the world, I mean, we continue this, this struggle 0:18:11.840 --> 0:18:15.320 with and against nature. Um, you know, obviously continues to 0:18:15.320 --> 0:18:20.119 play out anywhere there's desertification or climate change taking place. 0:18:21.000 --> 0:18:23.800 I mean just in the same areas, the same regions 0:18:23.800 --> 0:18:25.960 that were affected by the dust bowl. I mean, people 0:18:26.000 --> 0:18:28.560 still make it there. It's still their job, in their 0:18:29.200 --> 0:18:33.160 their their passion to figure out how best to balance 0:18:33.560 --> 0:18:37.919 agricultural practices and the natural environment. Um. And then in 0:18:37.920 --> 0:18:40.840 other areas, for instance, there's the Green Wall Sahara initiative, 0:18:41.200 --> 0:18:45.040 which called for the planning of three hundred million trees 0:18:45.119 --> 0:18:49.000 and three million hectares of of of land stretching across 0:18:49.520 --> 0:18:52.480 the African continent and the whole idea here of of course, 0:18:52.520 --> 0:18:57.520 to to keep the Sahara from advancing, to keep desertrification 0:18:57.600 --> 0:19:01.200 from taking hold in in in crucial land areas uh 0:19:01.200 --> 0:19:03.840 and then in in China there is there's likewise this 0:19:04.000 --> 0:19:07.840 uh this green wall project there to prevent the Gobi 0:19:07.920 --> 0:19:11.359 Desert from expanding, and so that they've been projecting this 0:19:11.560 --> 0:19:17.120 uh D miles stretch that goes from outer Beijing through 0:19:17.160 --> 0:19:20.000 inner Mongolia. And this is again the forest belt, right, 0:19:20.080 --> 0:19:23.560 the forest belt to service that natural wall against the 0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:26.879 winds and the desert that it carries. And this is 0:19:26.920 --> 0:19:29.159 actually that the dust that's carried over is called the 0:19:29.240 --> 0:19:32.119 yellow Dragon. And each spring, the dust from from this 0:19:32.240 --> 0:19:35.520 northern deserts is swept up and it just whips eastward, 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:39.040 blasting to Beijing. And in fact, in the Sierra Nevadas 0:19:39.080 --> 0:19:42.520 in California, they've found evidence of that dust from China, 0:19:42.640 --> 0:19:45.159 you know, spreading over to the United States and actually 0:19:45.200 --> 0:19:50.199 changing they think there's some um, some somewhat definitive results 0:19:50.240 --> 0:19:52.840 coming back from studies now actually changing the climate there 0:19:52.840 --> 0:19:55.399 in the Sierra Nevada. Well yeah, so these yeah, these 0:19:55.480 --> 0:20:00.439 dust storms, they can pose quite the problem from human civilization, right, 0:20:00.520 --> 0:20:03.840 I mean, and for for agricultural practices especially. Yeah, and 0:20:03.960 --> 0:20:06.840 in a lot of cases, this is a life or 0:20:06.840 --> 0:20:10.040 death matter, right, um, and trying to control it just 0:20:10.040 --> 0:20:12.880 sort of makes sense. I mean, it's unfortunate that there 0:20:12.880 --> 0:20:17.159 are ways that we have, um sort of screwed up 0:20:17.160 --> 0:20:20.480 the land man has. And then of course there's you know, 0:20:20.480 --> 0:20:23.199 obvious weather patterns that we can't do anything about. But 0:20:23.320 --> 0:20:25.440 as much as we can go in and ameliorate this, 0:20:25.720 --> 0:20:28.000 you know, the better, And it actually gives me hope 0:20:28.040 --> 0:20:31.320 for terraforming in the future sometime. Yeah. You know, if 0:20:31.320 --> 0:20:33.000 we know what we're doing when we go into go 0:20:33.040 --> 0:20:37.520 into these these foreign worlds an attempt to recreate earthlike conditions, 0:20:38.119 --> 0:20:41.560 we'll have a better understanding of what earthlike conditions actually are. Right. 0:20:41.600 --> 0:20:44.240 I think the more manipulation we can uh you know, 0:20:45.400 --> 0:20:49.000 do here on the Earth, positive manipulation, the better our 0:20:49.080 --> 0:20:54.199 chances are understanding other atmospheres and environments and sort of 0:20:54.240 --> 0:20:57.159 adapting to them. So, you know, we talked about the 0:20:57.160 --> 0:20:59.440 Dicen sphere, we talked about all these other um sort 0:20:59.440 --> 0:21:01.760 of what seemed pine the sky projects in the future, 0:21:01.840 --> 0:21:04.879 but really mean this is this is um sort of 0:21:04.920 --> 0:21:07.280 like where the Rubbert meets the road in terms of 0:21:07.320 --> 0:21:09.560 trying to carry that out at a different level. Yeah, 0:21:09.560 --> 0:21:10.720 and I think that's it's one of the things that 0:21:10.800 --> 0:21:13.560 makes the desk bowl so fascinating and and and FDR 0:21:13.760 --> 0:21:17.040 SO and the US government's approach to dealing with it. 0:21:17.040 --> 0:21:20.679 It serves as an interesting, interesting model and an interesting, 0:21:20.880 --> 0:21:23.680 uh you know example. Well, all right, let's uh, let's 0:21:23.720 --> 0:21:27.800 ask the robot to bring us some mail. All right, 0:21:27.920 --> 0:21:30.640 thank you. Let's see what we have here. We heard 0:21:30.680 --> 0:21:36.000 from a listener by the name of inc No co Sorry, 0:21:36.040 --> 0:21:38.879 the email confused me. Their ink and the email and 0:21:38.920 --> 0:21:42.040 then they're coal at the bottom. Uh. Cole's points out 0:21:42.160 --> 0:21:46.040 that HSW we were talking about using the saying hs 0:21:46.080 --> 0:21:48.840 dow here at work instead of how stuff works h 0:21:48.880 --> 0:21:51.199 And he says, HSW has five syllables because of W 0:21:51.400 --> 0:21:55.679 has three syllables. How stuff works has three syllables total. 0:21:55.920 --> 0:21:58.439