Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and Douglas. We're gonna kick
Speaker 1: off the podcast with just a brief reading from a
Speaker 1: little work of fiction that many of you. If you're
Speaker 1: like me, you were forced to read at some point
Speaker 1: and maybe didn't enjoy it, or maybe you got to
Speaker 1: you you have the opportunity to read it later when
Speaker 1: you could enjoy it and appreciate, uh, the the many
Speaker 1: values of the text. But here's just a little bit
Speaker 1: from the novel The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.
Speaker 1: The dawn came, but no day. In the gray sky,
Speaker 1: red sun appeared a dim red circle that gave a
Speaker 1: little light like dusk. And as that day advanced, the
Speaker 1: dust slipped back toward darkness, and the wind cried and
Speaker 1: whimpered over the fallen corn. Men and women huddled in
Speaker 1: their houses, and they tied handkerchiefs over their noses, and
Speaker 1: they went out and wore God to protect their eyes.
Speaker 1: When the night came again, it was black night, for
Speaker 1: the stars could not pierce the dust to get down,
Speaker 1: and the window lights could not even spread beyond their
Speaker 1: own yards. Now the dust was evenly mixed with the
Speaker 1: air and the emulsion of dust and air. Houses were
Speaker 1: shut tight and cloth wedged around doors and windows. But
Speaker 1: the dust came in so thinly that it could not
Speaker 1: be seen in the air, and it settled like pollen
Speaker 1: on the chairs and tables, on the dishes. The people
Speaker 1: brushed it from their shoulders. Little lines of dust lay
Speaker 1: at the door sills, and it goes on like that.
Speaker 1: But but I B it is a bleak existence, and
Speaker 1: Steinbeck captures it so so beautifully on the page. And uh.
Speaker 1: And since we are in this podcast discussing uh, some
Speaker 1: of the science behind the dust bowl of the Great
Speaker 1: Depression and the measures that were used then and now
Speaker 1: to counter these traumatic ecological effects, it seemed fitting to
Speaker 1: kick it off with that, yeah, which was, of course
Speaker 1: the dust bowls that the backdrop for the Grapes of
Speaker 1: Wrath and or talking about is a time period between
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one and nineteen thirty nine, so a good
Speaker 1: eight years of this sort of existence of drought and
Speaker 1: winds and clouds of dust that just plagued people, and
Speaker 1: it just must have seemed like the end of the
Speaker 1: world for many people it was well and of course,
Speaker 1: and the other part of this is that the Great
Speaker 1: Depression was going on. So, um, those are a good
Speaker 1: field times, healthy lands, not at all. Yeah, Now the
Speaker 1: roots of it kind of stretched back. Of course, the
Speaker 1: roots of any bad time are always always go back
Speaker 1: into a more prosperous eras um. So you you go
Speaker 1: back to the to the late nineteenth century of pioneers
Speaker 1: that moved into the semi aread midwestern southern plains of
Speaker 1: the United States. Um. And they're enjoying some prosperous years
Speaker 1: and they're they're they're planning, they're harvesting. It's going well. Um.
Speaker 1: But then a recession set's in following the First World War.
Speaker 1: Farmers need up their profits, right, staying up their reduction.
Speaker 1: So they turned to the machines, the machine machines um,
Speaker 1: and not so much robot overlords or anything, but rather
Speaker 1: mechanized farming techniques. They bought plows and other farming equipment.
Speaker 1: In between nineteen thirty more than five million acres of
Speaker 1: previously unfarmed land went under the plow. And so they
Speaker 1: were getting record crops in Yeah, which was great, but
Speaker 1: we also lead to overproduction, right, So that supply and
Speaker 1: demand was way off, and uh you know, as a
Speaker 1: as a result, you had a bunch of wheat um
Speaker 1: that was overproduced with a great depression, and that leads
Speaker 1: to severely reduced market prices. Yeah, there's too much wheat
Speaker 1: and there's not as much money to buy it with anymore.
Speaker 1: So so whatater farmers gonna do. They're gonna try and
Speaker 1: earn back their production cost by planning more wheat, expanding
Speaker 1: their their fields even more in an effort to get
Speaker 1: blood out of that stone. Yeah, but the problem here
Speaker 1: is that wheat is not so great um in in
Speaker 1: a drought. In fact, the natural drought resistant grasses are best.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately a lot of those were peeled away with
Speaker 1: the plowing and the wheat again was placed in there,
Speaker 1: and also on any unused fields were also left bare.
Speaker 1: So what do you see happening here? You see a
Speaker 1: lot of dust, right, and plus it uh, plow based farming,
Speaker 1: it kills the soil. So the fertile top soil that's
Speaker 1: so essential to anything growing out there, it gets uh
Speaker 1: it's it's it's literally turned up into the wind. The wind.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's it's turned up by the plow, the
Speaker 1: wind catches it and it blows away. So and without it,
Speaker 1: so the ground becomes less nurturing to anything you're trying
Speaker 1: to grow in it, and it becomes even more susceptible
Speaker 1: to drought. Right, And then of course in two what
Speaker 1: they saw happen again this beginning nine that that's really
Speaker 1: when the drought set in and the pain stop. High temperatures,
Speaker 1: the sun's just bacon everything. Yeah, and just one year
Speaker 1: there were fourteen dust storms report of course he's were
Speaker 1: known as the black blizzards, and the number actually increased
Speaker 1: to nearly forty. Right, and you should I'll make sure
Speaker 1: that includes some sort of a historic photograph on the
Speaker 1: blog posted accompanies this, uh, this what this episode. But
Speaker 1: if you do like just a Google image search for
Speaker 1: photos dust bowl, you will see some of these just
Speaker 1: just really apocalyptic looking images of just i mean just
Speaker 1: stuff right out of the grapes of wrath. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: these these thin farmers and their their families standing there
Speaker 1: and on the horizon, just dark, billowing dust clouds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because we're talking about but just by the end of right,
Speaker 1: just just a couple of years into this, thirty five
Speaker 1: million acres of farmland ruined and the top soil covering
Speaker 1: one million acres blown away. Yeah. And you know the
Speaker 1: region again, as you've talked about, was that the Southern
Speaker 1: Grape Plains, but um in in really in particular Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas,
Speaker 1: New Mexico, and Colorado were affected pretty greatly. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: what happens, I mean, the ramifications of this. You have
Speaker 1: farmers losing their land, they can't stay, they can't they
Speaker 1: can't pay for it. Uh, they're having to flee elsewhere
Speaker 1: to find work. They're going to California and try and
Speaker 1: find migrant labor jobs. Um. Yeah, if you've ever heard
Speaker 1: the term okay, that's what it is. That's abejorative term,
Speaker 1: you know, referring to people who you know, you could
Speaker 1: have come from Kansas, but you might have been called
Speaker 1: in Oki after Oklahoma if you showed up in California.
Speaker 1: Mainly because there were only so many jobs available in
Speaker 1: um in California, and of course all the people coming
Speaker 1: in from the Great Plains really just made all the
Speaker 1: the people in California pretty upset. Yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of animosity between the native California's and the the the
Speaker 1: foreign workers in their midst exacerbated again by the economic conditions.
Speaker 1: So what so what really fascinates about me about all
Speaker 1: this is that, I mean, you have this, uh, this
Speaker 1: ecological disaster that occurs due to um in large part
Speaker 1: to reagonized agriculture. Humans remake their world an attempt to
Speaker 1: uh better feed themselves and to uh to better um
Speaker 1: supply these standard of living they become accustomed to, and
Speaker 1: in doing so, they almost create a desert in the
Speaker 1: middle of the United States, um and uh. And luckily
Speaker 1: people realize what was happening, you know, and then they
Speaker 1: were like, well, let's let's fight this. Let's let's solve
Speaker 1: this problem before it gets any worse, because it was
Speaker 1: already pretty bad. So it's it's interesting to look at
Speaker 1: these at some of the steps that they took to
Speaker 1: to fight the dust bowl, to fix what had been broken.
Speaker 1: And that's what I think it's so fascinating about this,
Speaker 1: because it really is this large scaled effort by the
Speaker 1: government to to come in and uh, you know, try
Speaker 1: to reverse nature. Well, actually we shouldn't. The anti nature,
Speaker 1: I suppose you could say, well to to sort of
Speaker 1: take a more modern and futurist way of looking at
Speaker 1: It's It's kind of like when when you look at
Speaker 1: examples of climate change and people looking at the way
Speaker 1: that that humans have remade the climate of the planet
Speaker 1: and then trying to to fix it, sometimes with crazy
Speaker 1: schemes that also tinker with the environment, like the idea
Speaker 1: of of putting hole munch of mirrors in orbit or
Speaker 1: essentially setting off all I mean, they're their whole list
Speaker 1: of different crazy seed clouding, various uh geo engineering techniques
Speaker 1: that have been proposed over the years where you know,
Speaker 1: it comes off like the water and the tub is
Speaker 1: too cold, so let's add some hot and then and
Speaker 1: then you can imagine a situation where the water in
Speaker 1: the in the tub is too hot, so let's add
Speaker 1: some cold. Eventually does the tub overflow? I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And when we talk about see cloudy, we're talking actually
Speaker 1: about munitions shot up in the air, particularly during or
Speaker 1: right before the Olympics in Beijing, and they were doing
Speaker 1: that because they were trying to get actual rainfall to
Speaker 1: come down to clear some of the pollutants in that city.
Speaker 1: So that's what one of the things we're talking about.
Speaker 1: We're talking about engineering your environment. Um, let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about how Fdr Franklin Deleanor Roosevelt actually created
Speaker 1: something called the shelter belt project. But of course there
Speaker 1: were other steps that were taken on a more economic
Speaker 1: level of various stuff with the new deal um civil
Speaker 1: conservation core that came into and created all these new jobs,
Speaker 1: and people are going around planting trees and digging ditches
Speaker 1: and the like reservoirs. But the part that, you know,
Speaker 1: the part that really interested us, was some of these
Speaker 1: things such as the shelter belts, which again, imagine the
Speaker 1: situation here. You've tinkered with the natural environment. You've taken
Speaker 1: the landscape and changed it into wheat fields. And your
Speaker 1: problem here is the wind is just sweeping across with
Speaker 1: all this dust. So you want to somehow break that wind,
Speaker 1: break it with trees. Yes, exactly, you want to break
Speaker 1: up the wind. You want to you want to build
Speaker 1: a wall against the wind. And what is nature's wall
Speaker 1: against the wind? Um in many cases, it is trees.
Speaker 1: So the idea of these shelter belts is to is
Speaker 1: to plant rows of trees besides fields to slow the
Speaker 1: wind and reduce wind to roach uh. And and of
Speaker 1: course that wouldn't be the only thing. And also there
Speaker 1: was also this push for no till farming, UH, so
Speaker 1: that you're not turned taking your precious top soil and
Speaker 1: turning it up and letting the wind take it. Um. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's UH. And then there's also strip cropping. There was
Speaker 1: another technique which was you've seen pictures of this. I
Speaker 1: had seen pictures of this and didn't really realize what
Speaker 1: I was looking at un til now. And uh. And
Speaker 1: this is where you have a strip of crops planet
Speaker 1: and there's a strip of dirt and some crops planet
Speaker 1: and strip of dirt. And from an aerial view especially,
Speaker 1: it looks very it's very beautiful. It's like and there's
Speaker 1: a pattern there across the fields. You've probably seen it
Speaker 1: if you've had any kind of you know, flights across
Speaker 1: the states. But the idea here is you're gonna use
Speaker 1: this section and you're gonna let this section of soil
Speaker 1: replenish itself and then the next year the parts of
Speaker 1: the parts, the strips that are crops will be dirt
Speaker 1: and the strips that are dirt will be crops. But
Speaker 1: the shelter belt, how did this play out? What was
Speaker 1: the original idea? Well, I mean this this idea it
Speaker 1: was pretty huge. It was a project that was estimated
Speaker 1: to cost seventy five million dollars over a period of
Speaker 1: twelve years UM. And you know, of course funding disputes arose.
Speaker 1: FDR had to transfer the program from the Civilian Conservation
Speaker 1: Core to the w p A, where the project was
Speaker 1: a little bit more hamstrung. Um. So what they were
Speaker 1: talking about is replacing farmland with forest, and that of
Speaker 1: course did not go over well with all the farmers, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were talking about forest like structures that mimic natural conditions,
Speaker 1: basically walls made out of forest. And then yeah, this
Speaker 1: side argues about it. This side brings up some concerns
Speaker 1: and the the uh, the finished product is somewhat diminished
Speaker 1: from the original design. Yeah. And in fact, you know,
Speaker 1: on a lot of the land that was supposed to
Speaker 1: be used kind of got um attenuated to the point where,
Speaker 1: you know, some some of the original plan was like
Speaker 1: have to the amount of plan that was actually able
Speaker 1: to be planted. Also, what was planted um was very
Speaker 1: different from the original plan. You know, Conifers were something
Speaker 1: that they thought would do well in some areas um,
Speaker 1: but politics and economics force them to instead rely on
Speaker 1: cotton woods. And the reason why they planted cotton woods
Speaker 1: is because they grew pretty quickly and they were a
Speaker 1: much more flashy, obvious sign that there was a plan
Speaker 1: in place and being cultivated. And people were really kind
Speaker 1: of anty about this. Again, remember it's the Great Depression. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, people are in dire circumstances. They don't want
Speaker 1: to wait twelve years to see this plan come to fruition, right,
Speaker 1: And you have politicians involved in this that are very
Speaker 1: concerned with not only the the act of helping, but
Speaker 1: the perceived act of helping, right, right. And but it's
Speaker 1: a huge effort, right because you have to get everybody
Speaker 1: on board with You have to get the farmers, you
Speaker 1: have to get the politicians, you have to get the
Speaker 1: public um. And of course it's just always a problem
Speaker 1: when you try to get a bunch of people in
Speaker 1: the room to agree on something. So was it successful, um? Well,
Speaker 1: on on on one hand, no, they I mean they
Speaker 1: were able to completely um reverse the effects about the
Speaker 1: four d fifty million hectares of arid land in North
Speaker 1: America still suffers from moderate to severe desert desertification. But um,
Speaker 1: they did say that it reduced it by sixty from
Speaker 1: the amount of soil blowing around. So definitely definitely a
Speaker 1: success when you look at it in that view. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and of course this is one of those things when
Speaker 1: you step back historically, it looks like much more of
Speaker 1: a success than at the time. And you know, some
Speaker 1: forming practices came out of it that we're really beneficial
Speaker 1: that are still being used today. Right, all right, we
Speaker 1: are going to talk about Stalin and why he let
Speaker 1: a quack biologist create his own sort of Great Stalin
Speaker 1: Plan for the Transformation of Nature. That's the actual name
Speaker 1: of that, the Great Stalin Plan for the Transformation of Nature.
Speaker 1: I love that. It's it's so beautifully Um Soviet you
Speaker 1: know it is as well, we will bend nature to
Speaker 1: our will beginning now. Yeah, it was. It takes us
Speaker 1: back to October eighth. Soviet government announces that, uh, what
Speaker 1: was actually the world's first state centered program to reverse
Speaker 1: human induced climate change. Uh. They were going to construct
Speaker 1: five point seven million hectares of forest in the Russian South. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, they were gonna irrigation canals, were gonna be built.
Speaker 1: It was a crazy gigantic project. They were gonna be
Speaker 1: shelter belts like we were talking about these these treat
Speaker 1: forest strips to break up the wind and uh, and
Speaker 1: they were gonna create like that. The idea was to
Speaker 1: sort of recreate this imagined prehistoric state of the land. Yes,
Speaker 1: they were going to try to change the topography of
Speaker 1: this land, which I think is so ambitious and so
Speaker 1: sort of wonderful. But of course the problem is that
Speaker 1: Stalin had been taken by the ideas of this quack biologist,
Speaker 1: Trophim Dashenko. And this guy was given carte blanche over
Speaker 1: Soviet agriculture science um. And he had no solid scientific
Speaker 1: theory on how to properly cultivate for shelter beds. And
Speaker 1: he actually understood plant and trees is coexistence in terms
Speaker 1: of class warfare. Yeah, and I mean seriously, this is
Speaker 1: this is sort of what his um, the whole plan
Speaker 1: was predicated on. Okay, and here's a little excerpt about
Speaker 1: what he actually had to say about it. And I
Speaker 1: will try my my Russian accent, although I'm gonna apologize
Speaker 1: in advance for these are mortally afraid of step grasses,
Speaker 1: particularly colch grass and catchweed. Okay, I'm gonna stop doing that.
Speaker 1: The first attachment of step vegetation in the struggle between
Speaker 1: the step and the forest. And then he goes on
Speaker 1: to say planting oaks and dense clusters, however, could give
Speaker 1: them an upper hand in this battle. Wild plants, particularly
Speaker 1: various species of forest trees, possessed the biologically useful property
Speaker 1: of self thinning. At this point that someone would want
Speaker 1: to interrupt and be like, dude, are we still talking
Speaker 1: about forests? What are you What are you really getting at?
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, it gets better, It gets better. He says.
Speaker 1: Dense sprouts of wild plants be these oaks in this case,
Speaker 1: so regulate their number by means of self thinning. But
Speaker 1: it's individual members cannot interfere or oppress each other. And
Speaker 1: at the same time, the entire area is occupied by
Speaker 1: this particular species. Other species competitors of a given species
Speaker 1: are not admitted to this area. And so I love
Speaker 1: this um. And this is according to Malcolm McGrath. He's
Speaker 1: the author of Stalin and Modernity UM. He says the
Speaker 1: fittest oak trees survive and pass their genetic material to
Speaker 1: their offspring right while the less fit trees do not
Speaker 1: survive or reproduce. Leshenko suggestion that oak trees banded together
Speaker 1: and regulate their own growth, so it's not to oppress
Speaker 1: or interfere with each other. Violated this most basic notion
Speaker 1: of Darwin's theory. Leshenko had a misunderstanding basically of genetics
Speaker 1: and biology, and he couldn't help really to to antimori
Speaker 1: fize vegetation and imbue it with human traits. Like I
Speaker 1: can't help but imagine him like throwing a meeting together
Speaker 1: at work and doing this thing where like the proper
Speaker 1: trees to be planted will be the ones that do
Speaker 1: not steal other people's lunch from the refrigerator, and you know,
Speaker 1: we're just taking out some of the kind yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: and those oh those shrubs, Oh how they hate those
Speaker 1: trees and those trees and shrubs. Um. But it would
Speaker 1: mean it was kind of a big deal because this
Speaker 1: was a huge project, and in fact, in celebration of
Speaker 1: the plan, they had symphonies and stories were written. In
Speaker 1: a painting showed Stalin unfurling maps of his agriculture schemes.
Speaker 1: But as so often happens with with schemes that are
Speaker 1: so attached to an individual, yeah, the individual dies, stal
Speaker 1: ends up dying. Uh in the and then it's kind
Speaker 1: of falls apart. Yeah. See, that's that's that's the problem
Speaker 1: of a dictatorship in this uh well in many cases,
Speaker 1: but particularly here, because there's not a lot of voices
Speaker 1: that were being heard, a lot of voices of dissent, right.
Speaker 1: There weren't a committee of members brought in to say, hey,
Speaker 1: let's talk about this plan and how best to execute it.
Speaker 1: It was basically the brain child of this one guy
Speaker 1: who um who just thought it all had to do
Speaker 1: with with these different socio economic classes of plants. Now
Speaker 1: throughout the world, I mean, we continue this, this struggle
Speaker 1: with and against nature. Um, you know, obviously continues to
Speaker 1: play out anywhere there's desertification or climate change taking place.
Speaker 1: I mean just in the same areas, the same regions
Speaker 1: that were affected by the dust bowl. I mean, people
Speaker 1: still make it there. It's still their job, in their
Speaker 1: their their passion to figure out how best to balance
Speaker 1: agricultural practices and the natural environment. Um. And then in
Speaker 1: other areas, for instance, there's the Green Wall Sahara initiative,
Speaker 1: which called for the planning of three hundred million trees
Speaker 1: and three million hectares of of of land stretching across
Speaker 1: the African continent and the whole idea here of of course,
Speaker 1: to to keep the Sahara from advancing, to keep desertrification
Speaker 1: from taking hold in in in crucial land areas uh
Speaker 1: and then in in China there is there's likewise this
Speaker 1: uh this green wall project there to prevent the Gobi
Speaker 1: Desert from expanding, and so that they've been projecting this
Speaker 1: uh D miles stretch that goes from outer Beijing through
Speaker 1: inner Mongolia. And this is again the forest belt, right,
Speaker 1: the forest belt to service that natural wall against the
Speaker 1: winds and the desert that it carries. And this is
Speaker 1: actually that the dust that's carried over is called the
Speaker 1: yellow Dragon. And each spring, the dust from from this
Speaker 1: northern deserts is swept up and it just whips eastward,
Speaker 1: blasting to Beijing. And in fact, in the Sierra Nevadas
Speaker 1: in California, they've found evidence of that dust from China,
Speaker 1: you know, spreading over to the United States and actually
Speaker 1: changing they think there's some um, some somewhat definitive results
Speaker 1: coming back from studies now actually changing the climate there
Speaker 1: in the Sierra Nevada. Well yeah, so these yeah, these
Speaker 1: dust storms, they can pose quite the problem from human civilization, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, and for for agricultural practices especially. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: in a lot of cases, this is a life or
Speaker 1: death matter, right, um, and trying to control it just
Speaker 1: sort of makes sense. I mean, it's unfortunate that there
Speaker 1: are ways that we have, um sort of screwed up
Speaker 1: the land man has. And then of course there's you know,
Speaker 1: obvious weather patterns that we can't do anything about. But
Speaker 1: as much as we can go in and ameliorate this,
Speaker 1: you know, the better, And it actually gives me hope
Speaker 1: for terraforming in the future sometime. Yeah. You know, if
Speaker 1: we know what we're doing when we go into go
Speaker 1: into these these foreign worlds an attempt to recreate earthlike conditions,
Speaker 1: we'll have a better understanding of what earthlike conditions actually are. Right.
Speaker 1: I think the more manipulation we can uh you know,
Speaker 1: do here on the Earth, positive manipulation, the better our
Speaker 1: chances are understanding other atmospheres and environments and sort of
Speaker 1: adapting to them. So, you know, we talked about the
Speaker 1: Dicen sphere, we talked about all these other um sort
Speaker 1: of what seemed pine the sky projects in the future,
Speaker 1: but really mean this is this is um sort of
Speaker 1: like where the Rubbert meets the road in terms of
Speaker 1: trying to carry that out at a different level. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that's it's one of the things that
Speaker 1: makes the desk bowl so fascinating and and and FDR
Speaker 1: SO and the US government's approach to dealing with it.
Speaker 1: It serves as an interesting, interesting model and an interesting,
Speaker 1: uh you know example. Well, all right, let's uh, let's
Speaker 1: ask the robot to bring us some mail. All right,
Speaker 1: thank you. Let's see what we have here. We heard
Speaker 1: from a listener by the name of inc No co Sorry,
Speaker 1: the email confused me. Their ink and the email and
Speaker 1: then they're coal at the bottom. Uh. Cole's points out
Speaker 1: that HSW we were talking about using the saying hs
Speaker 1: dow here at work instead of how stuff works h
Speaker 1: And he says, HSW has five syllables because of W
Speaker 1: has three syllables. How stuff works has three syllables total.
Speaker 1: So I just clarifying there because I think I might
Speaker 1: as the said something about how it has the same
Speaker 1: number of syllables if you actually speak the abbreviation. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you're actually using more syllables, so hs W how stuff works.
Speaker 1: I still think that it's still more economic to to
Speaker 1: you say H S W H S double U. That's five.
Speaker 1: How stuff works, that's three. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: break it down into syllables HS dow is just silly.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but I'm not going to draw out the W.
Speaker 1: Yeah wekay, all right, I'll let you have that one. Um,
Speaker 1: let's see who else did we hear from here? We've
Speaker 1: heard from a listener by the name of Carlin, Uh
Speaker 1: writes in and says you failed them talking about our
Speaker 1: protest episodes with a couple of them. If you fail
Speaker 1: to mention one of the most successful protest movements of
Speaker 1: our time, the Tea Party protests he started across the
Speaker 1: country after the announcement announcement of Obamacare. They resulted in
Speaker 1: the election of Scott Brown h the change of control
Speaker 1: of Congress, and a takeover of the Republican Party. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I think that's valid. Uh. No matter what you
Speaker 1: think of the Key Party, it uh certainly is a
Speaker 1: caress roots movement that yeah, certainly involved protests. Do you
Speaker 1: making a face that me though? Okay, well, this is
Speaker 1: not a face, it's just a hey, that's a that's
Speaker 1: a piece of meal right there. All right, So anyway,
Speaker 1: Colin brings up a good point, so I thought, yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree, and uh, who else do we hear from? Here?
Speaker 1: We heard from listener Sarah. Sarah writes in and she
Speaker 1: shared some interesting links with us that we'll we'll have
Speaker 1: to look at in uh in more detail later. But
Speaker 1: she also added during the summer's I either work at
Speaker 1: summer camps in Colorado or participate in medical camps in Africa.
Speaker 1: This gives me a lot of travel time to sit
Speaker 1: and think and brood. Is for this reason that when
Speaker 1: I'm traveling or just left to my own devices, I
Speaker 1: like to tune into hs de WU because it keeps
Speaker 1: my self abusive brain occupied and less likely to ruin
Speaker 1: my good mood. I'm not sure if that is just
Speaker 1: masking a deeper societal issue, but it is a good
Speaker 1: enough reason for me to keep my podcast as handy.
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of the HSB podcast, and I
Speaker 1: am happy to blame you guys for my healthy state
Speaker 1: of mind. Keep up the brilliant work. I like that
Speaker 1: self abusive brain. I have to say that I think
Speaker 1: we all started with that sometimes. Definitely definitely, so yeah,
Speaker 1: to any extent that we can, we can help you
Speaker 1: guys out and occupy your mind and getting it, get
Speaker 1: your mind rolling u around some issues outside yourself, and
Speaker 1: then that's great. And to hire your mind. Now that's
Speaker 1: a protest. There you go, occupy your mind and uh.
Speaker 1: And also sounds like Sarah's up to some really good
Speaker 1: uh stuff. You're participating medical cancer in Africa. All so
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