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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, welcome this Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 3: My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick,

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Speaker 3: and we are back with the second part in our

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Speaker 3: series on the Prairie, the temperate grassland ecosystem of North America.

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Speaker 3: This subject was inspired Robbed by your recent family visit

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Speaker 3: to Colorado, spending some time in the western Prairie. I

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Speaker 3: guess this is in the region just before the landscape

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Speaker 3: turns into the rocky mountains. I couldn't remember if you

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Speaker 3: mentioned last time. Did you see bison on your trip?

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Speaker 2: We did. Yeah, at the Arsenal, we saw some bison.

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Speaker 2: Like I say that, that area has a number of

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Speaker 2: bison and there's a lot of bison conservation that is

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Speaker 2: focused there, and so we got to drive through that

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Speaker 2: area and we got to see the bison, not super

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Speaker 2: close because they're going to do exactly what they want

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Speaker 2: to do, but we still got to see them at

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Speaker 2: a distance, which was pretty cool.

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Speaker 3: It's not a petting zoo there, right right.

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Speaker 2: This is not one of those places where you hold

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Speaker 2: potatoes out your window the livestock comes over. No, No, they

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Speaker 2: do what they want and if you are close enough

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Speaker 2: to see them, and then you're lucky.

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Speaker 3: So in the previous episode of this series, we talked

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Speaker 3: about the definition of our prairie and its similarity to

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Speaker 3: other ecosystems like the step. Prairies are relatively flat or

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Speaker 3: rolling landscapes that are dominated not by trees and shrubs

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Speaker 3: but by grasses and flowering herbaceous plants called forbes, and

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Speaker 3: so one of the questions that we talked about in

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Speaker 3: the last episode somewhat extensively was why are prairies filled

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Speaker 3: with grasses and forbes instead of trees? What historically has

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Speaker 3: kept the trees out. The answer to this question turned

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Speaker 3: out to be kind of complicated, involving, but possibly not

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Speaker 3: being limited to factors of climate and rainfall, pressure from herbivores,

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Speaker 3: and very importantly, frequent fires, fires to which native grasses

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Speaker 3: and forbes are very resilient, while young trees and shrubs

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Speaker 3: are typically not. Of course, human behavior in recent centuries

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Speaker 3: has altered basically all of the factors that are upstream

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Speaker 3: of the natural plant balance, and as a result, North

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Speaker 3: America's prairies are seriously endangered. The vast majority of the

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Speaker 3: original Eastern tall grass prairie is already gone, as we

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Speaker 3: talked about last time. There are different ways of calculating

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Speaker 3: how much of it remains, but some estimates say like

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Speaker 3: four percent, others say less than one percent. It's mostly gone,

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Speaker 3: and so this is a very precious, endangered type of

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Speaker 3: landscape and there are ongoing conservation efforts to try to

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Speaker 3: return some of this landscape more to its original plant

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Speaker 3: balance and original ecosystem characteristics. After that, we went on

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Speaker 3: too a fascinating sort of historical niche subject about the prairie,

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Speaker 3: which was about grizzly bears, grizzly bears of the plains.

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Speaker 3: Today most people think of grizzlies as animals that live

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Speaker 3: exclusively in like remote mountain forests, but grizzlies used to

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Speaker 3: be apex predators of the prairie as well. And we

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Speaker 3: talked extensively about the journals of the Lewis and Clark

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Speaker 3: expedition in the early nineteenth century, which had lots of

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Speaker 3: encounters with prairie bears, and we analyzed at least one

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Speaker 3: of those encounters at length. We are back today to

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Speaker 3: talk some more. Now, Rob, I understand for today's episode

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Speaker 3: you got somewhat obsessed with prairie madness.

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Speaker 2: That's right. The other topics have had quite an effect,

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Speaker 2: but this one will drive you absolutely mad.

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Speaker 4: I'd never heard of this, you know.

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Speaker 2: I wasn't really familiar with it either, though it certainly

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Speaker 2: makes sense considering some of the things we talked about

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Speaker 2: in the last episode. On one hand, you discussed your

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Speaker 2: own personal response to the treeless openness of the prairie,

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Speaker 2: that it had maybe a sort of uncanny or even

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Speaker 2: threatening feeling to it, like, you know, too much space,

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Speaker 2: not enough trees.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, as I said in the last episode, I don't

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Speaker 3: like that I feel this way. I feel like I

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Speaker 3: want to I should be able to appreciate, you know,

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Speaker 3: the beauty of all different types of landscapes equally. But

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Speaker 3: for some reason, maybe just the environment I grew up with,

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Speaker 3: I do have a kind of bias or preference for

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Speaker 3: forested landscapes. And when there is not anything taller than

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Speaker 3: me vertically in an area and it's just you know,

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Speaker 3: vast open space all around, that does feel kind of

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Speaker 3: exposed and vulnerable and uncomfortable to me. I need tall

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Speaker 3: things around me, I think, And I don't know, maybe

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Speaker 3: this is something I could get over one day, spending

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Speaker 3: more time in the prairie.

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Speaker 4: But I do have that tree bias.

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Speaker 2: I think, well, this, I think this is going to

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Speaker 2: arguably play the scenario here. But another thing that I

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Speaker 2: think plays into the scenario that we touched on last

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Speaker 2: time is how we have a lot, a great deal

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Speaker 2: of writing and poetry about the about about the planes

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Speaker 2: the great American prairies. Particularly, we talked about the words

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Speaker 2: of William Cullen Bryant, the poet who described this sense

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Speaker 2: of awe at beholding the prairies. And yeah, I think

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Speaker 2: both of these examples steer us naturally into discussion of

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Speaker 2: prairie madness, sometimes called prairie sickness, and so forth. And

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Speaker 2: I do want to stress at the outset here. This

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Speaker 2: is not a scientific term. This is not a medical term,

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Speaker 2: and it is primarily reported as a phenomenon of the

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Speaker 2: nineteenth century, and specifically in cases where you had European

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Speaker 2: and American homesteaders, American homesteaders from the East who ventured

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Speaker 2: out onto the prairies, you know, trying to you know,

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Speaker 2: creating a new life, grabbing some land, you know, trying

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Speaker 2: to make a lot life out there, who then experienced

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Speaker 2: an array of psychological symptoms such as depression, withdrawal, behavioral changes,

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Speaker 2: and in the extremes, even violence in response to the crushing, vastness,

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Speaker 2: the open landscape and the howling wind of the prairie.

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Speaker 3: Now, based on what you were reading, would you say

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Speaker 3: that this is something that is probably culturally contingent. You

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Speaker 3: mentioned it's among like European American homesteaders, European colonizers basically

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Speaker 3: in the prairie landscape. It's not something typically reported by

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Speaker 3: like indigenous peoples of the prairies.

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Speaker 2: Correct, And that is very important to note, Like there's

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Speaker 2: been indigenous people living on the prairies for more than

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Speaker 2: ten thousand years, so this is not something that they experienced.

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Speaker 3: And so probably also not something that's like an objective

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Speaker 3: human body response to the prairie landscape. It's probably more

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Speaker 3: like a conditioned cultural type of response.

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Speaker 2: Right, if you fly into Denver, people will warn you

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Speaker 2: about the altitude difference, but nobody's going to warn you

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Speaker 2: about prairie madness because it's not really a thing in

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Speaker 2: terms of it's not something that is going to just

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Speaker 2: objectively be a factor in anyone's life. And again, it's

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Speaker 2: really mostly talked about within this particular historic context and

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Speaker 2: among particular people who were venturing out into this landscape.

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Speaker 2: And there are a number of other factors that are

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Speaker 2: involved here. So the explanation for what's going on or

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Speaker 2: allegedly went on here have more on that in a minute,

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Speaker 2: and is that you could basically underline by two examples

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Speaker 2: that we've already touched on. First, the poetic awe of

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Speaker 2: the prairie, of which there are many examples, and this

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Speaker 2: awe kind of finds its dark reflection in the fiction

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Speaker 2: and nonfiction of the time that cast the prairie is

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Speaker 2: something ominous and unnatural. Part of that is just sort

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Speaker 2: of the power of poetry and literature. If you're going

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Speaker 2: to describe a landscape, you know you're going to lean

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Speaker 2: into one direction or the other. Is it awesome and

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Speaker 2: does it make you feel like a god? Or is

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Speaker 2: there something creepy about it? It makes you feel less than

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Speaker 2: you know? Both There are you know, potentially rewarding directions

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Speaker 2: to go in in definite choices in any given work

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Speaker 2: of fiction or nonfiction.

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Speaker 3: Well, I think every landscape on earth has this this

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Speaker 3: dual quality. I mean, is the forest a soothing, calming,

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Speaker 3: shady landscape, where you are, you know, covered nicely in

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Speaker 3: these calming greens, or is it a spooky place where

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Speaker 3: you hear sounds that echo between the trees and maybe

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Speaker 3: spirits are trying to lead you off the path.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and kind of going into something we talked about

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Speaker 2: last time. I feel like, and this is highly subjective,

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Speaker 2: but I feel like the desert environments they tend to

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Speaker 2: speak more clearly on this way, and it's like, oh,

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Speaker 2: it's a land of death, but it's alive, you know.

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Speaker 2: It seems like the back and forth there's a lot

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Speaker 2: more balanced. Prairies can maybe I'm just making them the

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Speaker 2: personal argument here that they can maybe be a bit

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Speaker 2: harder to wrap your head around because they're not barren.

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Speaker 2: They are full of life. But then there is the

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Speaker 2: more or less flat topography and some other factors environmentally

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Speaker 2: that we're going to get into here. And then the

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Speaker 2: other factor is there was this frequent observation that these

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Speaker 2: lands were fundamentally different compared to the lands that homesteaders

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Speaker 2: called home, either in the eastern United States or elsewhere

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Speaker 2: in Europe and on the literary front, some of the

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Speaker 2: some really famous examples of this, and some of the

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Speaker 2: most famous examples stem from Oliovog's nineteen twenty seven novel

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Speaker 2: Giants in the Earth. This is a book that concerns

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Speaker 2: pioneer Norwegian immigrants in the Dakota territory, with the character

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Speaker 2: Barrett Hansa particularly experiencing literary, very prairie madness. Joe, have

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Speaker 2: you ever read this book?

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Speaker 4: No, I haven't.

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Speaker 2: I had to read it in junior high or high school,

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Speaker 2: and this is one of those books that was assigned

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Speaker 2: to me, and I do not think I give it

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Speaker 2: a very dedicated reading. I remember virtually nothing of it

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Speaker 2: except for the you know, the the obvious that it

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Speaker 2: concerned no actual giants in the earth or no actual

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Speaker 2: FLM crawling out and attacking anyone.

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Speaker 4: So I really false advertising.

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Speaker 2: One star false advertising, I guess if you're in you know,

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Speaker 2: junior high or high school, well whatever age I was.

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Speaker 2: But looking back on it, and you can find the

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Speaker 2: full text online and you can, you know, find it

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Speaker 2: in print very easily to get a copy of this book.

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Speaker 2: But there are some beautiful passages that deal with this, again,

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Speaker 2: particularly concerning the character Barrett, and it's it is telling

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Speaker 2: that she's the one that experiences it because a lot

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Speaker 2: of the alleged cases of prairie madness are very gendered

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Speaker 2: in their general focusing on the housewife in a given scenario.

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Speaker 2: So I'm going to read a few passages from giants

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Speaker 2: in the earth. After they had bustled about for a

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Speaker 2: little while, the others left her. The moment they had gone,

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Speaker 2: she jumped up and crossed the tent to look out

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Speaker 2: the door. How will human beings be able to endure

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Speaker 2: this place? She thought? Why? There isn't even a thing

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Speaker 2: that one can hide behind. Her sensitive, rather beautiful face

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Speaker 2: was full of blank dismay. She turned away from the

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Speaker 2: door and began to loosen her dress. Then her eyes

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Speaker 2: fell on the center pole, with its cross piece hung

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Speaker 2: with clothes, and she stood a moment irresolute, gazing at

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Speaker 2: it in startled fright. It looked like the giants she

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Speaker 2: had read about as a child. For a long while

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Speaker 2: she was unable to banish the picture from her mind.

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Speaker 2: And then here's some more that gets I think, gets

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Speaker 2: back to the landscape. The broad expanse, stretching away endlessly

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Speaker 2: in every direction, seemed almost like the ocean, especially now

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Speaker 2: when darkness was It reminded her strongly of the sea.

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Speaker 2: And yet it was very different. The formless prairie had

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Speaker 2: no heart that beat, no waves that's sang, no soul

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Speaker 2: that could be touched or cared. And then one more here,

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Speaker 2: but more to be dreaded than this tribulation was the

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Speaker 2: strange spell of sadness which the unbroken solitude cast upon

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Speaker 2: the minds of some. Many took their own lives asylum.

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Speaker 2: After asylum was filled with disordered beings who had once

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Speaker 2: been human. It is hard for the eye to wander

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Speaker 2: from skyline to skyline year in and year out without

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Speaker 2: finding a resting place.

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Speaker 3: Well, that sounds pretty extreme.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think we'll come back to this, but

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Speaker 2: I think everyone can. Certainly, if you have any familiarity

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Speaker 2: with the literature, you can definitely pick up on Gothic

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Speaker 2: tendencies in this writing. Really latching onto this idea. I

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Speaker 2: referenced our recent Weird House cinema selection in the Mouth

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Speaker 2: of Madness earlier, and these passages could very easily be

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Speaker 2: passages that Sutter Kane has written about. You know, the

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Speaker 2: void opening up in Monsters, spilling out of it. You know,

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Speaker 2: it's that level of darkness.

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Speaker 3: I don't know what the author's intention here is, whether

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Speaker 3: it's to actually project these characteristics onto the landscape, or

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Speaker 3: to do what sometimes happens in fiction, which is to

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Speaker 3: show what are really characteristics of the human character of

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Speaker 3: the character, and they are reading their own psyche onto

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Speaker 3: the landscape. It might not actually be something that is

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Speaker 3: the landscape's fault, if that makes any sense. It's the

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Speaker 3: person is having feelings and they're looking at the world

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Speaker 3: around them, and they see their feelings in the world.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Again, it's been too long since I read it

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Speaker 2: to provide full context here, but it's my understanding that

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Speaker 2: most of these ideas are centered in this particular character,

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Speaker 2: and that it's not present in other characters. So I

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Speaker 2: think it is very character focused here.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: So there are other examples from this book. I might

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Speaker 2: come back and read another line from it. But all

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Speaker 2: of this effectively underlies the idea that there was something

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Speaker 2: about the landscape or the contrast of landscape, combined with

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Speaker 2: isolation and the severity of frontier life that could lead

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Speaker 2: to mental breakdown in some and the topic seems to

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Speaker 2: have entered the larger American consciousness in eighteen ninety three

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Speaker 2: three via the paper or the publication The Isolation of

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Speaker 2: Life on Prairie Farms by E. V. Smaali sm A L. L. E.

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Speaker 2: Y published in the Atlantic and still available on the

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Speaker 2: Atlantic's website. You can pull it up. I think there's

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Speaker 2: a paywall if you want to read it in full,

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Speaker 2: but you can also click and look at a scanned

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Speaker 2: version of it as it printed. And that's how I

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Speaker 2: read it.

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Speaker 4: Read it in full.

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Speaker 2: This individual, EV Smally was an American journalist, editor, and

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Speaker 2: Republican political writer, closely tied at the time to US

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Speaker 2: President James A. I'm going to read a few samples

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Speaker 2: from this just to give everyone the vibe. Okay. It

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Speaker 2: more or less begins with the following In no civilized

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Speaker 2: country have the cultivators of the soil adapted their home

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Speaker 2: life so badly to the conditions of nature as have

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Speaker 2: the people of our great northwestern prairies. Okay, Yeah, And

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Speaker 2: from there he goes on to argue that the like

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Speaker 2: there are some there's some arguments here that I don't

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Speaker 2: think really stand up to close scrutiny, including the idea

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Speaker 2: that the European peasant. He refers to the quote European

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Speaker 2: peasant as a type of person who lived a life

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Speaker 2: of joy and social interaction and that on the and

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Speaker 2: that prairie dwellers essentially had none of this and were

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Speaker 2: basically doomed. Here's another passage. An alarming amount of insanity

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Speaker 2: occurs in the New Prairie States among farmers and their wives.

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Speaker 2: In proportion to their numbers, the Scandinavian settlers furnished the

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Speaker 2: largest contingent to the The reason is not far to seek.

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Speaker 2: These people came from cheery, little farm villages. Life in

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Speaker 2: the Fatherland was hard and toilsome, but it was not lonesome.

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Speaker 3: Oh well, I don't know if there's like actual experiment

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Speaker 3: to back this up, but it seems plausible to me

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Speaker 3: that loneliness and isolation could be a major contributor to

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Speaker 3: people having psychological problems.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and that is certainly a possibility here. Like, one

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Speaker 2: of the realities is that you did have these homesteaders

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Speaker 2: going out living in very isolated circumstances and living a

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Speaker 2: hard life in an environment that they were not accustomed

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Speaker 2: to different environmental factors that we'll get into here. So yeah,

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Speaker 2: I want to stress that, even though I'm having some

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Speaker 2: fun with the way that this is written, and also

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Speaker 2: certainly singling out that this is a paper that made

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Speaker 2: a big impact on how people thought about prairie madness. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: not everything in here should just be dismissed. Like there

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Speaker 2: are some possible connections to be made here.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, like it even strikes me as possible

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Speaker 3: to pick up on something I was saying about the

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Speaker 3: characters in that novel that one could easily read psychological

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Speaker 3: difficulty stemming from, say, loneliness and isolation. Could you know,

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Speaker 3: take those problems and interpret them as problems related to

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Speaker 3: the landscape, when really maybe the landscape doesn't have that

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Speaker 3: much do with it. It's just like what you're looking

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Speaker 3: at while you're feeling the fact that you don't have

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Speaker 3: any friends and haven't seen anybody but your husband and years.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. You're a few more quotes though,

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Speaker 2: from this paper quote the silence of death rests on

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Speaker 2: the vast landscape, save when it is swept by cruel winds.

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Speaker 2: And then here's one more. There is but one remedy

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Speaker 2: for the dreariness of farm life on the prairies. The

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Speaker 2: isolated farmhouse must be abandoned, and the people must drawl

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Speaker 2: together in villages. The peasants of the Russian steps did

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Speaker 2: this century years ago, and so did the dwellers of

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Speaker 2: the Great Danubian Plane. And so he ultimately positions isolated

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Speaker 2: life on the frontier plane as standing in just stark

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Speaker 2: opposition to sanity, to intellectual development, and just the rational

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Speaker 2: progression of society. So he's not the final word on

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Speaker 2: all of this. And there have been some papers that

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Speaker 2: have really gone into this and looked at it in

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Speaker 2: different ways, looking at it as a literary trope, looking

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Speaker 2: at it and as it may connect to sensory deprivation

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Speaker 2: and so forth. I was looking at a particular paper,

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Speaker 2: This is Unsettling Landscapes, Prairie Madness and Eco Gothic Themes

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Speaker 2: in US Plains Literature, published in Great Planes Quarterly from

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Speaker 2: twenty nineteen by Vanessa stein Rotter, And in this she

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Speaker 2: points out that prairie madness is of course a recurring

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Speaker 2: theme in the fiction and poetry of the US Great Plains,

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Speaker 2: and the author stressed various ways that the feature of

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Speaker 2: the plain's environment stabilized non native settlers sense of place

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Speaker 2: and control. So she points out that this was of course,

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Speaker 2: again not a medical phenomenon, This was not a scientific term,

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Speaker 2: and she also citing the work of Sarah Brooks. Sundberg

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Speaker 2: points out the cases of white female settler mental and

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Speaker 2: or emotional decline in the prairie might not have actually

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Speaker 2: been that widespread. But even though we see this all

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Speaker 2: the time with things, even though there may not have

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Speaker 2: been as many cases of it, it became an idea

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Speaker 2: that was difficult to dispel. It became a popular way

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Speaker 2: of thinking about life on the prairies because again, outside

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Speaker 2: of the actual environments of people living out there, you

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Speaker 2: had people, say, reading that article in the Atlantic or

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Speaker 2: reading poetry and fiction that drove home this Gothic idea,

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Speaker 2: and therefore it becomes very difficult to shake, and it

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Speaker 2: just becomes a staple of fiction and nonfiction writings of

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Speaker 2: the time about the Prairies.

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Speaker 3: How prevalent we think a problem is often has little

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Speaker 3: to do with the raw numbers of how often it's occurring.

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Speaker 3: Often it has more to do with like how sticky

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Speaker 3: the idea is? Is it like really interesting or scary

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Speaker 3: or captivating to the imagination.

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Speaker 4: In some way? Right?

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Speaker 2: And of course we see a more pronounced version of

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Speaker 2: that when things become actual social panics, you know, so

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Speaker 2: for instance, satanic panic, the idea there's the satanic forces

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Speaker 2: at work in the world today. We've we've done episodes

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Speaker 2: about this before. In this case, I don't think that

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Speaker 2: prairie madness ever reached a level of true social panic,

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Speaker 2: but it just becomes this sort of sticky idea.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: So, the author here points out that fiction writers were

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Speaker 2: especially drawn to the idea because of those terrific Gothic undertones,

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Speaker 2: as well as quote its potential to engage larger, often

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Speaker 2: gendered anxieties or feelings of powerlessness within restrictive social and

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Speaker 2: cultural roles.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: So, and I think there's a case to be made

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Speaker 2: that that's maybe what we see in and Giants in

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Speaker 2: the Earth. You know, it's not just about spooky landscape

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Speaker 2: making people feel spooky, but maybe getting into some of

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Speaker 2: these deeper concepts. Steinroder focuses on the landscape's role in

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Speaker 2: the scenario, but points out that other scholars have examined

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Speaker 2: the importance of gender and family relationships, domestic violence, and

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Speaker 2: cultural and physical isolation that are often bound up in

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Speaker 2: the scenario. So again, any as we've been alluding to

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Speaker 2: any given potential case of prairie madness, any individual experience

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Speaker 2: that could be chalked up as being prairie madness. They're

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Speaker 2: going to be, They're potentially all these other factors as well,

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Speaker 2: and again just potentially a hard life as well. I

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Speaker 2: was reading some of the settler accounts of how frightening

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Speaker 2: prairie fires could be. You know, we touched on that already,

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Speaker 2: just the idea that like a fast moving fire could

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Speaker 2: just rip across the prairie.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, totally.

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Speaker 3: And as we talked about in the last episode, fear

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Speaker 3: of these prairie fires and what they would bring the

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Speaker 3: led to attempts by European American settlers of the planes

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Speaker 3: to suppress naturally occurring prairie fires to stop them from spreading,

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Speaker 3: which actually ended up being very harmful to the prairie ecosystem.

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Speaker 3: You know, the indigenous peoples of the Great Plains more

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Speaker 3: often intentionally both used intentionally set prairie fires in some

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Speaker 3: cases for like the management of bison prey and things

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Speaker 3: like that, and also allowed them to occur more, which

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Speaker 3: was much healthier for the prairie because, as we know,

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Speaker 3: the natural plant balance depends on the fires.

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Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely.

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Speaker 1: So.

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Speaker 2: Steinroder again focuses on the landscape's role, and I'm just

393
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Speaker 2: going to boil like our key findings down here are

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Speaker 2: key arguments, and that is that the features of the

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Speaker 2: landscape can destabilize one sense of control. It can make

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Speaker 2: it feel like you are not a complete autonomous agent

397
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Speaker 2: in this kind of humanless wilderness. That and that also

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Speaker 2: it can just be very difficult to just comprehend the

399
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Speaker 2: landscape around you, that there's something ineffable about it, and

400
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Speaker 2: that that can can also feel kind of crushing.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, totally.

402
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Speaker 2: Now, I think the same could probably be argued about

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Speaker 2: various other landscapes, and you know, you could probably apply

404
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Speaker 2: this to things that we might think of as the

405
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Speaker 2: opposite of the prairie, like the mountains. But still, I

406
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Speaker 2: think it's an interesting argument.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 2: I think she's acknowledging all these other factors and also

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Speaker 2: the idea that there may have been far fewer cases

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Speaker 2: of this than we actually think. But the landscape definitely

411
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Speaker 2: plays a role either in the cases or our idea

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Speaker 2: about these cases. I want to turn to another paper

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Speaker 2: I was looking at here. This one's by Alex d. Veles,

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Speaker 2: titled The Wind Cries The Effect of Soundscape on the

415
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Speaker 2: Prairie Madness Phenomenon. This is from twenty twenty two in

416
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Speaker 2: historical archaeology, and this one basically talks about the possibility

417
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Speaker 2: that you could have specific details of the sounds of

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Speaker 2: the prairie that could have been like a catalyst for

419
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Speaker 2: prairie madness, so something in those howling winds, for example.

420
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Speaker 2: There's a paywall in this particular paper, but James Gaines

421
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Speaker 2: wrote a good piece about it for Atlas Obscura the

422
00:24:37,400 --> 00:24:41,040
Speaker 2: same year, and I recommend that as well. Okay, so

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Speaker 2: veils examined human hearing patterns and spectral data on Great

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Speaker 2: Planes soundscapes. Now, to be clear, these are like contemporary soundscapes,

425
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Speaker 2: and one of the things that is outlined in that

426
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Speaker 2: Alice Obscure article is that you know, it would have

427
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Speaker 2: been different back in these days. We changed the environment

428
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Speaker 2: quite a bit. So it's possible that, you know, what

429
00:25:04,560 --> 00:25:07,159
Speaker 2: he's studying here, wouldn't you know, one hundred percent be

430
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Speaker 2: the environment that the settlers found themselves in. But any

431
00:25:10,640 --> 00:25:15,199
Speaker 2: rate examines these things, ultimately proposing that affected settlers might

432
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Speaker 2: have suffered from misophonia or hyperacusis, thus making them more

433
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Speaker 2: sensitive to environmental sounds and with both conditions worsened by stress. Again,

434
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Speaker 2: stressful environment potentially in and of itself, not counting social factors,

435
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Speaker 2: and you know in the author also links some of

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Speaker 2: this to some of the symptoms described in the literature

437
00:25:36,119 --> 00:25:40,280
Speaker 2: on prairie madness, such as in the extreme's depression, insomnia,

438
00:25:40,680 --> 00:25:45,399
Speaker 2: irrational behavior, and so forth. So the focus here was

439
00:25:45,440 --> 00:25:50,480
Speaker 2: on low frequency environmental noise, which can potentially overstimulate the

440
00:25:50,560 --> 00:25:54,679
Speaker 2: nervous system in certain individuals, as well as those continuous

441
00:25:54,800 --> 00:25:58,840
Speaker 2: or supposed to continuous roaring winds out across the prairie.

442
00:25:59,359 --> 00:26:03,320
Speaker 2: And as points out that every landscape that humans live

443
00:26:03,359 --> 00:26:06,040
Speaker 2: in has plenty of sounds for us to hear, but

444
00:26:06,200 --> 00:26:09,560
Speaker 2: that in cities these sounds are more diverse and essentially

445
00:26:09,640 --> 00:26:11,840
Speaker 2: become a kind of white noise. I think a lot

446
00:26:11,880 --> 00:26:14,639
Speaker 2: of us that live in cities we can speak to this.

447
00:26:14,800 --> 00:26:14,960
Speaker 4: You know.

448
00:26:15,080 --> 00:26:17,480
Speaker 2: You just get used to the sort of bustle of

449
00:26:18,680 --> 00:26:20,639
Speaker 2: say a large urban environment, and a lot of it

450
00:26:20,720 --> 00:26:23,240
Speaker 2: fades into the background. Yeah, I mean you still there'll

451
00:26:23,240 --> 00:26:26,240
Speaker 2: be things like horns and so forth. It still can

452
00:26:27,359 --> 00:26:29,240
Speaker 2: get your attention and throw you off, but for the

453
00:26:29,280 --> 00:26:33,680
Speaker 2: most part, it all just kind of becomes the background noise. Meanwhile,

454
00:26:33,760 --> 00:26:38,359
Speaker 2: on the planes, especially in these historic settings, there's less

455
00:26:38,520 --> 00:26:42,760
Speaker 2: background then, and the sounds that do exist. They coincide

456
00:26:42,800 --> 00:26:45,000
Speaker 2: with a sensitive range of human hearing that the brain

457
00:26:45,080 --> 00:26:49,879
Speaker 2: pays more attention to interesting, so gains in that Atlas

458
00:26:49,920 --> 00:26:53,040
Speaker 2: obscure piece on This also cites Adrian K. C Lee

459
00:26:53,160 --> 00:26:56,320
Speaker 2: and auditory brain scientists at the University of Washington who

460
00:26:56,359 --> 00:27:00,639
Speaker 2: said that the sound environment reminded them of since redeprivation

461
00:27:00,880 --> 00:27:06,440
Speaker 2: chambers as well as anechoic chambers zero echo chambers. And

462
00:27:06,560 --> 00:27:09,399
Speaker 2: these are cases where we have sonic environments that have

463
00:27:09,520 --> 00:27:11,520
Speaker 2: been engineered in a way that they can cause the

464
00:27:11,560 --> 00:27:16,040
Speaker 2: brain to quote naturally adapt to its environment, essentially turning

465
00:27:16,160 --> 00:27:19,840
Speaker 2: up or down the volume to better distinguish what's going on.

466
00:27:20,960 --> 00:27:23,920
Speaker 3: I don't know how well validated this is, but I

467
00:27:24,000 --> 00:27:28,120
Speaker 3: at least recall reading anecdotal reports that anichoic chambers can

468
00:27:28,240 --> 00:27:32,000
Speaker 3: make people feel very uncomfortable. Yeah, like going in them

469
00:27:32,160 --> 00:27:35,560
Speaker 3: after a while, Like the sound environment is literally unnerving.

470
00:27:35,640 --> 00:27:38,119
Speaker 3: People don't like it, and it makes them feel weird

471
00:27:38,160 --> 00:27:38,480
Speaker 3: and they.

472
00:27:38,480 --> 00:27:39,040
Speaker 4: Need to leave.

473
00:27:39,760 --> 00:27:39,960
Speaker 1: Yeah.

474
00:27:40,240 --> 00:27:43,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this level of weirdness could potentially creep in.

475
00:27:43,840 --> 00:27:45,960
Speaker 2: You start hearing all sorts of things that interfere with

476
00:27:46,040 --> 00:27:51,080
Speaker 2: your slumber. Really almoso kind of induced misophonia. So you know,

477
00:27:51,160 --> 00:27:54,400
Speaker 2: you might be hearing the sound of like, you know, insects,

478
00:27:54,520 --> 00:27:57,359
Speaker 2: or the wind you know outside, like you know, hitting

479
00:27:57,480 --> 00:28:00,480
Speaker 2: parts of the external structure of the house, that sort

480
00:28:00,480 --> 00:28:04,840
Speaker 2: of thing. So, you know, I think it is it's

481
00:28:04,880 --> 00:28:06,840
Speaker 2: an interesting idea. I think, you know, that we do

482
00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:09,000
Speaker 2: have to remind ourselves not that we shouldn't place too

483
00:28:09,080 --> 00:28:12,680
Speaker 2: much emphasis on a singular type of stimuli. And I

484
00:28:12,760 --> 00:28:15,080
Speaker 2: don't think that's ultimately what the author, the original author

485
00:28:15,200 --> 00:28:17,200
Speaker 2: was arguing here, but they were just saying, look, here's

486
00:28:17,359 --> 00:28:21,040
Speaker 2: just one potential piece of the puzzle that could have

487
00:28:21,160 --> 00:28:25,720
Speaker 2: played such a factor. And the winds, you know, absolutely

488
00:28:26,200 --> 00:28:28,159
Speaker 2: could have been a factor. We touched on the prairie

489
00:28:28,200 --> 00:28:32,120
Speaker 2: winds already in this series. The winds can be seasonally

490
00:28:32,200 --> 00:28:35,800
Speaker 2: quite intense, especially in March and April, but also anytime

491
00:28:35,880 --> 00:28:39,400
Speaker 2: you have temperature contrasts driving large scale weather systems across

492
00:28:39,440 --> 00:28:43,760
Speaker 2: the plains, and the natural habitat again offers virtually nothing

493
00:28:43,800 --> 00:28:47,120
Speaker 2: in the way of wind breaks. So you'll find localized

494
00:28:47,160 --> 00:28:49,720
Speaker 2: areas of higher wind in the United States and Canada

495
00:28:49,760 --> 00:28:52,720
Speaker 2: and certainly during pronounced storms, but on a statewide level,

496
00:28:53,080 --> 00:28:58,440
Speaker 2: the Great Planes represent the largest continuous windy environment due

497
00:28:58,440 --> 00:29:01,360
Speaker 2: to these just vast, unobstruct did flat terrains, and that

498
00:29:01,400 --> 00:29:06,320
Speaker 2: would have especially been the case historically before these landscapes

499
00:29:06,360 --> 00:29:09,720
Speaker 2: were reduced. Though again we have to remind ourself of

500
00:29:09,800 --> 00:29:14,360
Speaker 2: the subjective nature of such things. So turning back to poetry,

501
00:29:14,400 --> 00:29:18,080
Speaker 2: I just want to present two examples of authors describing

502
00:29:18,240 --> 00:29:21,920
Speaker 2: prairie wind. The first is from Giants in the Earth

503
00:29:22,680 --> 00:29:23,880
Speaker 2: that I already referenced.

504
00:29:25,000 --> 00:29:27,280
Speaker 3: Barrett, can I guess this passage is going to be

505
00:29:27,360 --> 00:29:29,360
Speaker 3: not a fan of the prairie wind.

506
00:29:30,840 --> 00:29:33,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially since it concerns the same character. That's a

507
00:29:33,200 --> 00:29:33,560
Speaker 2: good bet.

508
00:29:33,680 --> 00:29:34,360
Speaker 4: Okay.

509
00:29:34,760 --> 00:29:36,760
Speaker 2: Barrett could not go to sleep for a long time

510
00:29:36,880 --> 00:29:40,320
Speaker 2: that night. At last, she grew thoroughly angry with herself.

511
00:29:40,920 --> 00:29:44,560
Speaker 2: Her nerves were taught as bowstrings. Her head kept rising

512
00:29:44,720 --> 00:29:47,160
Speaker 2: up from the pillow to listen, but there was nothing

513
00:29:47,200 --> 00:29:50,320
Speaker 2: to hear, nothing except the night wind, which now had

514
00:29:50,360 --> 00:29:53,959
Speaker 2: begun to stir. It stirred with so many unknown things.

515
00:29:55,200 --> 00:29:56,600
Speaker 4: Okay, so not.

516
00:29:57,360 --> 00:30:01,320
Speaker 2: An endorsement of the prairie wind. But then I want

517
00:30:01,360 --> 00:30:04,880
Speaker 2: to read just a couple of stanzas here from Prairie Winds,

518
00:30:05,080 --> 00:30:08,040
Speaker 2: a poem by Helena Coleman, who lived eighteen sixty nine

519
00:30:08,080 --> 00:30:11,760
Speaker 2: through nineteen fifty three, a Canadian poet, and you can

520
00:30:11,840 --> 00:30:14,360
Speaker 2: look this up online. This poem is available in full

521
00:30:14,440 --> 00:30:18,160
Speaker 2: at all poetry dot com. I love all things that

522
00:30:18,280 --> 00:30:21,200
Speaker 2: God has made that show his ordered care and might,

523
00:30:21,680 --> 00:30:24,720
Speaker 2: But most I think I love the wind that blows

524
00:30:24,760 --> 00:30:28,640
Speaker 2: at night. It holds so much mystery, like that in

525
00:30:28,800 --> 00:30:32,480
Speaker 2: mine own restless heart, brother to me and well beloved,

526
00:30:33,000 --> 00:30:38,760
Speaker 2: O wind thou art, So here we is a divine

527
00:30:39,600 --> 00:30:43,840
Speaker 2: wind on the prairie, inspiring wind on the prairie, as

528
00:30:43,880 --> 00:30:48,400
Speaker 2: opposed to the night wind that contains unknown threats. So again,

529
00:30:48,480 --> 00:30:52,640
Speaker 2: it's also very subjective and then can be tweaked. It

530
00:30:52,720 --> 00:30:54,920
Speaker 2: e's a direction with the language, with the poetry.

531
00:30:55,520 --> 00:30:58,200
Speaker 3: I like how both of them appeal to the mystery

532
00:30:58,320 --> 00:31:00,960
Speaker 3: in the wind, except in one case the mystery seems

533
00:31:01,000 --> 00:31:03,680
Speaker 3: threatening and the other case the mystery is I don't know,

534
00:31:03,840 --> 00:31:05,920
Speaker 3: so the divine possibilities unknown.

535
00:31:06,400 --> 00:31:08,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I do want a flag too that in

536
00:31:09,080 --> 00:31:11,520
Speaker 2: these various discussions of prairie madness that you find, sometimes

537
00:31:11,560 --> 00:31:14,000
Speaker 2: they're talking about the roar of the wind, the sound

538
00:31:14,080 --> 00:31:15,480
Speaker 2: of the wind, and other times you're talking about the

539
00:31:15,520 --> 00:31:18,760
Speaker 2: silence of the great plains. So I don't know. I

540
00:31:18,800 --> 00:31:20,800
Speaker 2: guess there is kind of a maybe it's both of

541
00:31:20,880 --> 00:31:23,440
Speaker 2: those working together, you know, where you're maybe having these

542
00:31:23,560 --> 00:31:25,960
Speaker 2: contrasts where you're like, how can this place be so

543
00:31:26,120 --> 00:31:29,719
Speaker 2: empty and so loud, and then later it feels silent

544
00:31:29,800 --> 00:31:32,000
Speaker 2: as well. So I think all of this is fascinating.

545
00:31:32,040 --> 00:31:34,120
Speaker 2: I don't think any of it suggests like an equation

546
00:31:34,760 --> 00:31:37,920
Speaker 2: for prairie madness that you know holds one hundred percent true.

547
00:31:38,440 --> 00:31:42,040
Speaker 2: But we can identify these various the various themes that

548
00:31:42,120 --> 00:31:47,240
Speaker 2: become popular about it, and these infectious thoughts regarding prairie madness,

549
00:31:47,360 --> 00:31:49,520
Speaker 2: and we can identify some of the factors that may

550
00:31:49,560 --> 00:31:55,200
Speaker 2: have played a role in any actual historic examples where

551
00:31:55,440 --> 00:32:00,360
Speaker 2: people's mental state was pushed in a negative direction, maybe

552
00:32:00,440 --> 00:32:03,240
Speaker 2: in part because of the landscape or because of the

553
00:32:03,720 --> 00:32:07,280
Speaker 2: other details of the environment. Yeah, I know that we

554
00:32:07,480 --> 00:32:11,040
Speaker 2: have no we have We probably don't have anything like

555
00:32:11,120 --> 00:32:14,120
Speaker 2: a true pioneer of the of the of the frontier

556
00:32:14,200 --> 00:32:16,560
Speaker 2: prairie out out there listening that can chime in here.

557
00:32:16,640 --> 00:32:20,000
Speaker 2: But I'm sure we have some listeners who moved to

558
00:32:20,280 --> 00:32:24,920
Speaker 2: the Great Plains from other areas, maybe lived in more

559
00:32:25,000 --> 00:32:28,280
Speaker 2: isolated locations, who can maybe speak to a little of

560
00:32:28,360 --> 00:32:32,160
Speaker 2: this or certainly can apply their own experiences to these

561
00:32:32,240 --> 00:32:34,640
Speaker 2: examples of prairie madness, and you can give us a

562
00:32:34,680 --> 00:32:39,120
Speaker 2: little field report. Yeah, I did not experience anything like

563
00:32:39,240 --> 00:32:42,080
Speaker 2: prairie madness when I in my very brief experience as

564
00:32:42,080 --> 00:32:45,920
Speaker 2: a tourist checking out the prairies. I just I found

565
00:32:45,960 --> 00:32:48,880
Speaker 2: it all fascinating. Maybe a little hot at times, it's

566
00:32:49,000 --> 00:32:53,360
Speaker 2: very sunny out there, but yeah, I didn't feel anything

567
00:32:53,440 --> 00:32:54,400
Speaker 2: like prairie madness.

568
00:32:54,960 --> 00:33:08,240
Speaker 3: Well, I'm glad to hear that. Are you ready to

569
00:33:08,520 --> 00:33:11,080
Speaker 3: talk about the tangent I went on for this episode?

570
00:33:11,960 --> 00:33:13,400
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, what have you got for us?

571
00:33:13,800 --> 00:33:14,120
Speaker 4: Okay?

572
00:33:14,240 --> 00:33:18,520
Speaker 3: So I got sucked into a little geological or you

573
00:33:18,600 --> 00:33:22,920
Speaker 3: might even call it a topographical mystery related to specific

574
00:33:23,040 --> 00:33:26,720
Speaker 3: prairie landscapes, and that is the mystery of the so

575
00:33:26,960 --> 00:33:32,360
Speaker 3: called Mima Mounds, named after the Mima Prairie in southwest

576
00:33:32,520 --> 00:33:36,240
Speaker 3: Washington State, which is now a protected area at US

577
00:33:36,360 --> 00:33:42,840
Speaker 3: National Natural Landmark. So the word Mima Spelledma originally comes

578
00:33:42,920 --> 00:33:46,800
Speaker 3: from the language of the Shahalis tribe, in which mima

579
00:33:47,040 --> 00:33:50,880
Speaker 3: means newness, as in something that is new and is

580
00:33:51,080 --> 00:33:53,800
Speaker 3: related to or at least sounds like a word in

581
00:33:53,880 --> 00:33:54,800
Speaker 3: the same language that.

582
00:33:54,920 --> 00:33:56,360
Speaker 4: Means to be surprised.

583
00:33:57,520 --> 00:33:59,720
Speaker 3: I was reading about this in multiple sources, but I

584
00:34:00,400 --> 00:34:02,840
Speaker 3: especially want to shout out. So I was looking at

585
00:34:02,880 --> 00:34:04,920
Speaker 3: some like technical papers and stuff, but I want to

586
00:34:04,920 --> 00:34:08,520
Speaker 3: shout out a short informational booklet I think, mostly geared

587
00:34:08,560 --> 00:34:12,520
Speaker 3: towards students, put together by the Washington Geological Survey, which

588
00:34:12,600 --> 00:34:14,279
Speaker 3: is great to look up if you want to see

589
00:34:14,360 --> 00:34:17,719
Speaker 3: illustrations and you want easy to understand explanations of the

590
00:34:17,800 --> 00:34:23,360
Speaker 3: main theories behind these formations. So what are the Mima mounds?

591
00:34:24,080 --> 00:34:27,200
Speaker 3: A mundane way of putting it is that they are

592
00:34:27,560 --> 00:34:32,840
Speaker 3: little hills, lots of little hills crowded together. Now, initially

593
00:34:33,200 --> 00:34:36,600
Speaker 3: that probably doesn't sound very intriguing or mysterious, but I

594
00:34:36,680 --> 00:34:40,360
Speaker 3: think you will immediately grasp what is interesting if you

595
00:34:40,480 --> 00:34:43,080
Speaker 3: look at a picture of them. So, Rob, I've got

596
00:34:43,120 --> 00:34:45,160
Speaker 3: some pictures for you to look at in the outline.

597
00:34:45,200 --> 00:34:48,960
Speaker 3: Here this first one. In the outline, you can see

598
00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:52,160
Speaker 3: the nice green landscape, but all of these hills. This

599
00:34:52,320 --> 00:34:54,720
Speaker 3: is a photo from one of the sites in Washington State,

600
00:34:55,320 --> 00:34:58,240
Speaker 3: and what we see is a vast field of several

601
00:34:58,320 --> 00:35:03,400
Speaker 3: square miles full of little hills, each between two and

602
00:35:03,560 --> 00:35:07,280
Speaker 3: seven feet tall and between eight and forty feet wide,

603
00:35:07,719 --> 00:35:11,719
Speaker 3: covered in prairie grass and flowering herbs, and occasionally with

604
00:35:11,840 --> 00:35:14,680
Speaker 3: little trees or shrubs growing on them, but mostly not

605
00:35:14,880 --> 00:35:20,080
Speaker 3: mostly just this grassy landscape with these basically evenly spaced

606
00:35:20,200 --> 00:35:26,440
Speaker 3: little hills. These hills sometimes get called soil pimples or

607
00:35:26,600 --> 00:35:30,080
Speaker 3: even goose bumps on the earth, and that comparison makes

608
00:35:30,200 --> 00:35:33,120
Speaker 3: even more sense if you look at them from above

609
00:35:34,080 --> 00:35:39,080
Speaker 3: from imagery that's created using aerial photography or other top

610
00:35:39,160 --> 00:35:42,839
Speaker 3: down imaging methods like lidar from above and rob I've

611
00:35:42,880 --> 00:35:44,960
Speaker 3: got a couple of images of this that you can

612
00:35:45,040 --> 00:35:47,480
Speaker 3: look at in the outline as well. We'll describe these

613
00:35:47,560 --> 00:35:50,320
Speaker 3: for people listening at home. So the first one is

614
00:35:50,360 --> 00:35:53,040
Speaker 3: a photograph taken from above, and then the second one

615
00:35:53,200 --> 00:35:54,520
Speaker 3: is a lidar image.

616
00:35:55,480 --> 00:35:57,120
Speaker 4: And looking from above when.

617
00:35:57,040 --> 00:36:01,320
Speaker 3: You're not distracted by other surface features like plants or buildings,

618
00:36:01,880 --> 00:36:04,000
Speaker 3: you know what it looks like To me? It looks

619
00:36:04,160 --> 00:36:08,080
Speaker 3: like the skin of a beaded lizard. It really does, yes,

620
00:36:09,440 --> 00:36:13,319
Speaker 3: So the mima mounds are squeezed together into the landscape

621
00:36:13,800 --> 00:36:18,600
Speaker 3: in a way that feels both regular and irregular. Irregular

622
00:36:18,680 --> 00:36:21,719
Speaker 3: in the sense that they are not in rows that

623
00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:25,240
Speaker 3: line up or anything like that. It's not a repeating pattern,

624
00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:28,400
Speaker 3: but they feel regular in the sense that they are

625
00:36:28,600 --> 00:36:32,680
Speaker 3: crowded together without significant gaps, and the spaces between them

626
00:36:33,360 --> 00:36:37,680
Speaker 3: feel like they are confined to a regular, very small size.

627
00:36:38,640 --> 00:36:40,319
Speaker 3: It looks kind I was trying to think of an

628
00:36:40,320 --> 00:36:42,919
Speaker 3: analogy to picture. It looks kind of like what would

629
00:36:42,960 --> 00:36:47,360
Speaker 3: happen if you got a bunch of different but similarly

630
00:36:47,600 --> 00:36:50,120
Speaker 3: sized coins and you put them all down on a

631
00:36:50,239 --> 00:36:53,400
Speaker 3: table lying flat, and then you push the mass of

632
00:36:53,480 --> 00:36:56,720
Speaker 3: coins together from the outside of the of the mass,

633
00:36:57,200 --> 00:37:00,440
Speaker 3: so that this pile of coins has like or no

634
00:37:00,600 --> 00:37:03,200
Speaker 3: space in between the coins, but they're not overlapping.

635
00:37:04,760 --> 00:37:08,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I get what you're laying down here. Yeah,

636
00:37:08,280 --> 00:37:12,080
Speaker 2: something about just you know, how tightly compact everything is,

637
00:37:12,600 --> 00:37:16,960
Speaker 2: like the bumps or mounds or not uniform in their

638
00:37:17,120 --> 00:37:20,520
Speaker 2: size exactly, but yeah, they seem to there is this

639
00:37:20,600 --> 00:37:21,759
Speaker 2: feeling that they are bunched together.

640
00:37:23,000 --> 00:37:23,200
Speaker 4: Yeah.

641
00:37:23,440 --> 00:37:25,880
Speaker 3: Now another thing is if you're thinking hills, you might

642
00:37:25,960 --> 00:37:27,960
Speaker 3: be getting the wrong idea because these do not have

643
00:37:28,160 --> 00:37:32,320
Speaker 3: the long, rolling, natural feeling of hills in the traditional

644
00:37:32,440 --> 00:37:34,239
Speaker 3: sense like you would see in the you know, the

645
00:37:34,320 --> 00:37:38,920
Speaker 3: foothills of a mountain range or you know, most naturally

646
00:37:39,000 --> 00:37:43,040
Speaker 3: occurring hills. Something about them, maybe the way that they're

647
00:37:43,080 --> 00:37:44,400
Speaker 3: relatively small and.

648
00:37:44,560 --> 00:37:45,920
Speaker 4: Tightly packed together.

649
00:37:46,280 --> 00:37:49,680
Speaker 3: It feels unique, unique from most hills. And yet they

650
00:37:49,680 --> 00:37:54,879
Speaker 3: are not totally unique as features or geological formations. If

651
00:37:54,920 --> 00:37:57,920
Speaker 3: you dig them up and look inside them, they are

652
00:37:58,120 --> 00:38:03,840
Speaker 3: these small piles of silt, sand, and pebbles, and similar

653
00:38:03,960 --> 00:38:08,960
Speaker 3: patterns of small hills and mounds, sometimes with similar constituents

654
00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:12,960
Speaker 3: inside them, also called Mima mounds. Even when they're not

655
00:38:13,360 --> 00:38:17,240
Speaker 3: inside the Mama Prairie region, or called Mima like mounds,

656
00:38:17,360 --> 00:38:20,320
Speaker 3: these similar mounds can be found in other places in

657
00:38:20,440 --> 00:38:24,319
Speaker 3: North America and even on other continents. So there are

658
00:38:24,320 --> 00:38:27,560
Speaker 3: a bunch of different places beyond the Mama Prairie where

659
00:38:27,640 --> 00:38:31,440
Speaker 3: you will find Mima like mounds. And there's still debate

660
00:38:31,680 --> 00:38:36,040
Speaker 3: about some of these formations. We actually don't know if

661
00:38:36,080 --> 00:38:38,960
Speaker 3: they are all truly the same type of feature with

662
00:38:39,040 --> 00:38:43,520
Speaker 3: the same underlying cause, or if they're only superficially similar

663
00:38:43,719 --> 00:38:47,280
Speaker 3: goosebumps in the earth with different causes. Now that brings

664
00:38:47,360 --> 00:38:49,879
Speaker 3: us to the question of what is the cause? How

665
00:38:50,040 --> 00:38:53,560
Speaker 3: were these hundreds of little mounds formed? And we still

666
00:38:53,600 --> 00:38:57,160
Speaker 3: don't know. This is an open scientific question. And I

667
00:38:57,200 --> 00:38:59,640
Speaker 3: thought it might be interesting to do a brief look

668
00:38:59,719 --> 00:39:03,399
Speaker 3: at few of the competing hypotheses. I can't promise I've

669
00:39:03,480 --> 00:39:07,239
Speaker 3: captured all of the hypotheses in circulation today, but I

670
00:39:07,320 --> 00:39:09,879
Speaker 3: think I've got the main ones that are out there

671
00:39:09,960 --> 00:39:11,520
Speaker 3: now and have been out there in the past.

672
00:39:11,800 --> 00:39:15,240
Speaker 2: But to be clear, UFOs write out non ufis.

673
00:39:15,640 --> 00:39:17,759
Speaker 3: Obviously, some people are going to say that anything that

674
00:39:17,960 --> 00:39:21,240
Speaker 3: looks weird or interesting, and these do look weird and interesting.

675
00:39:21,680 --> 00:39:25,200
Speaker 3: Somebody's going to say, yeah, that's the that's crop circle type.

676
00:39:25,040 --> 00:39:27,360
Speaker 4: Thing, landing zone. I don't know.

677
00:39:27,400 --> 00:39:29,160
Speaker 3: Maybe this is where the Aliens they were going to

678
00:39:29,239 --> 00:39:31,560
Speaker 3: build some pyramids, but they gave up early.

679
00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:32,600
Speaker 4: I don't know that.

680
00:39:32,880 --> 00:39:35,600
Speaker 3: But yes, the ufologists are going to be on this,

681
00:39:36,000 --> 00:39:37,879
Speaker 3: But no, that is not That is not a good

682
00:39:37,920 --> 00:39:39,000
Speaker 3: theory in my opinion.

683
00:39:39,280 --> 00:39:42,080
Speaker 2: And then at the same time, we shouldn't, like surface level,

684
00:39:42,160 --> 00:39:45,759
Speaker 2: confuse these with nouns and like the mound builders and

685
00:39:45,960 --> 00:39:49,000
Speaker 2: mounds elsewhere in the America, is that it seemed to

686
00:39:49,000 --> 00:39:53,600
Speaker 2: have definitely had an origin in human construction by indigenous peoples.

687
00:39:54,520 --> 00:39:56,880
Speaker 3: No, from what I was reading that they do not

688
00:39:57,120 --> 00:40:00,000
Speaker 3: seem to have major characteristics of mounds built by human

689
00:40:00,400 --> 00:40:04,160
Speaker 3: and so human construction is not one of the leading theories,

690
00:40:04,200 --> 00:40:06,240
Speaker 3: at least in any of the sources I was finding.

691
00:40:06,880 --> 00:40:09,080
Speaker 3: People may have thought that a long time ago, but

692
00:40:09,920 --> 00:40:13,040
Speaker 3: not in modern science. So let's go through some of

693
00:40:13,080 --> 00:40:16,279
Speaker 3: these hypotheses about how they were formed. One is the

694
00:40:16,520 --> 00:40:21,080
Speaker 3: so called sun cup hypothesis. This was originally proposed by

695
00:40:21,120 --> 00:40:25,000
Speaker 3: a geologist named J. Harlan Bretts in the year nineteen thirteen.

696
00:40:25,560 --> 00:40:29,360
Speaker 3: Bretts specialized in the geological history of the Pacific Northwest,

697
00:40:29,440 --> 00:40:32,640
Speaker 3: and he studied how the landscape had been shaped by

698
00:40:32,719 --> 00:40:38,440
Speaker 3: glaciers and by glacial outburst floods. A glacial outburst flood

699
00:40:39,120 --> 00:40:43,120
Speaker 3: is a flood caused when a glacier lake suddenly breaks

700
00:40:43,200 --> 00:40:46,560
Speaker 3: free of its containing structure. Essentially, there's a natural dam

701
00:40:46,719 --> 00:40:49,040
Speaker 3: of some kind, maybe made of ice or of earth,

702
00:40:49,480 --> 00:40:52,960
Speaker 3: that gives way, and then this huge lake of glacial

703
00:40:53,160 --> 00:40:57,320
Speaker 3: meltwater is released onto the lands below. And so the

704
00:40:57,440 --> 00:41:01,640
Speaker 3: sun cup hypothesis goes like this. Thousands of years ago,

705
00:41:02,719 --> 00:41:07,040
Speaker 3: the surrounding area, especially this big vast landscape just north

706
00:41:07,280 --> 00:41:11,480
Speaker 3: of the Mima Prairie, was covered in a glacier, and

707
00:41:11,680 --> 00:41:15,960
Speaker 3: the Mima Prairie itself became blanketed in a thin sheet

708
00:41:16,120 --> 00:41:20,360
Speaker 3: of ice and snow, and the sun shined down on

709
00:41:20,680 --> 00:41:23,600
Speaker 3: these thin sheets of ice and snow in the relevant

710
00:41:23,680 --> 00:41:29,440
Speaker 3: areas and melted them in irregular patterns called sun cups.

711
00:41:30,000 --> 00:41:33,560
Speaker 3: You can actually watch sun cups form on patches of

712
00:41:33,680 --> 00:41:37,320
Speaker 3: snow melting in the sun today. There are these irregular

713
00:41:37,400 --> 00:41:41,440
Speaker 3: patterns of differential melting that look kind of like inverse goosebumps,

714
00:41:41,520 --> 00:41:46,760
Speaker 3: little depressions or cups crowded together like a random honeycomb pattern.

715
00:41:47,400 --> 00:41:48,960
Speaker 3: So Rob, I've got a picture for you to look

716
00:41:49,000 --> 00:41:50,880
Speaker 3: at in the outline here. But folks at home, you

717
00:41:50,960 --> 00:41:53,080
Speaker 3: can google sun cups in snow if you want to

718
00:41:53,120 --> 00:41:56,480
Speaker 3: see it. You've probably seen something like this yourself before.

719
00:41:56,600 --> 00:42:00,000
Speaker 3: Maybe a little of shaded patch of snow or something

720
00:42:00,080 --> 00:42:03,880
Speaker 3: thing lingers for a while, it gets beamed on by

721
00:42:03,920 --> 00:42:07,000
Speaker 3: the sun over and over, partially melts and then refreezes,

722
00:42:07,160 --> 00:42:09,600
Speaker 3: that kind of thing, and you get these these little

723
00:42:10,200 --> 00:42:12,919
Speaker 3: these patterns of cups and depressions in the ice.

724
00:42:13,239 --> 00:42:17,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you live in areas that gets received snowfall,

725
00:42:17,719 --> 00:42:19,719
Speaker 2: then you've probably seen this before. You just didn't know

726
00:42:19,760 --> 00:42:20,319
Speaker 2: what it was called.

727
00:42:20,640 --> 00:42:24,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Brett's argued you had something like this happening.

728
00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:27,399
Speaker 3: This big layer of snow and ice over the top

729
00:42:27,480 --> 00:42:32,080
Speaker 3: of this prairie. And then water flowed over the top

730
00:42:32,239 --> 00:42:35,200
Speaker 3: of this ice that had had these sun cups forming

731
00:42:35,280 --> 00:42:37,880
Speaker 3: in it. So maybe this is from a you know,

732
00:42:38,239 --> 00:42:40,799
Speaker 3: maybe a glacial outburst, flood or something. You know, water

733
00:42:40,920 --> 00:42:43,560
Speaker 3: flows over the top, and as it flows over the

734
00:42:43,600 --> 00:42:48,000
Speaker 3: top of this ice, it deposits sediment such as silt, sand,

735
00:42:48,120 --> 00:42:52,960
Speaker 3: and pebbles or gravel in the cups, and this keeps happening.

736
00:42:53,040 --> 00:42:56,440
Speaker 3: Over time, the deposits in the sun cups build up

737
00:42:56,560 --> 00:43:01,880
Speaker 3: and become quite large. Then the landscape the ice melts away,

738
00:43:02,080 --> 00:43:06,120
Speaker 3: so the cups are now gone, leaving only the deposits behind.

739
00:43:06,360 --> 00:43:10,040
Speaker 3: So what had once been piles of sediment accumulating in

740
00:43:10,120 --> 00:43:13,640
Speaker 3: the bottom of these ice cups now become little hills

741
00:43:13,760 --> 00:43:17,439
Speaker 3: with no ice cups. One that I want to mention

742
00:43:17,600 --> 00:43:19,879
Speaker 3: that from what I can tell, is not really still

743
00:43:19,880 --> 00:43:23,080
Speaker 3: in the mix anymore, but it was historically important was

744
00:43:23,239 --> 00:43:27,800
Speaker 3: the frost polygon hypothesis. Apparently in the mid twentieth century,

745
00:43:27,840 --> 00:43:31,480
Speaker 3: it was a popular explanation to say that frost polygons

746
00:43:31,520 --> 00:43:34,759
Speaker 3: had formed the mounds, and the idea goes like this,

747
00:43:35,200 --> 00:43:39,600
Speaker 3: you have frozen soil that cracks in a polygon pattern.

748
00:43:40,400 --> 00:43:44,360
Speaker 3: You've again you've probably seen something like this yourself. Actually,

749
00:43:44,880 --> 00:43:48,239
Speaker 3: you may have seen images of polygonal cracking in dry

750
00:43:48,480 --> 00:43:51,960
Speaker 3: or frozen soil. You think about like soil that gets

751
00:43:52,000 --> 00:43:54,600
Speaker 3: wet and then gets parched and dries out, it cracks

752
00:43:54,640 --> 00:43:57,680
Speaker 3: in these kind of weird again, kind of honeycomb like pattern.

753
00:43:58,200 --> 00:44:01,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, this reminds me their actual There are these texture

754
00:44:01,480 --> 00:44:04,640
Speaker 2: paints you can get. These are used in the miniature

755
00:44:04,640 --> 00:44:08,480
Speaker 2: painting and all, where you lay this sort of thick

756
00:44:08,640 --> 00:44:12,520
Speaker 2: paint with like little grains in it. You lay this

757
00:44:12,640 --> 00:44:15,440
Speaker 2: out over like the base that a miniature like human

758
00:44:15,560 --> 00:44:17,880
Speaker 2: soldier is going to be standing on, and then as

759
00:44:17,920 --> 00:44:21,239
Speaker 2: it dries, it actually like breaks up like this. And

760
00:44:21,360 --> 00:44:24,680
Speaker 2: it's not necessarily like completely you know, you're not just

761
00:44:24,840 --> 00:44:27,759
Speaker 2: saying polygons necessarily, but the way it breaks up, you

762
00:44:27,800 --> 00:44:31,280
Speaker 2: get these little gaps and it creates this wonderful effect

763
00:44:31,400 --> 00:44:33,080
Speaker 2: where it looks like dried earth.

764
00:44:33,400 --> 00:44:34,960
Speaker 4: Yeah, cool, cracked landscape.

765
00:44:35,080 --> 00:44:35,239
Speaker 1: Yeah.

766
00:44:35,600 --> 00:44:35,839
Speaker 4: Yeah.

767
00:44:35,960 --> 00:44:38,160
Speaker 3: So you can actually have a similar thing to that

768
00:44:38,480 --> 00:44:42,280
Speaker 3: happening with icy soil ice that you know, it freezes

769
00:44:42,880 --> 00:44:47,280
Speaker 3: and then it cracks and inside these cracks. The idea

770
00:44:47,440 --> 00:44:50,840
Speaker 3: wind with the frost polygon hypothesis. Inside these cracks they

771
00:44:50,840 --> 00:44:54,200
Speaker 3: would fill with rain water or maybe floodwater. They'd fill

772
00:44:54,320 --> 00:44:57,560
Speaker 3: up with water and then freeze again, and so the

773
00:44:57,760 --> 00:45:00,920
Speaker 3: freezing would cause the water track in the cracks to

774
00:45:01,120 --> 00:45:04,480
Speaker 3: expand each time, because water expands when it freezes, and

775
00:45:04,600 --> 00:45:07,440
Speaker 3: this would widen the cracks. So it freezes pushes the

776
00:45:07,520 --> 00:45:11,239
Speaker 3: soil away to the sides, and as a result of

777
00:45:11,320 --> 00:45:15,320
Speaker 3: this process you get like freezing and then warming, and

778
00:45:15,360 --> 00:45:17,840
Speaker 3: then the warming conditions would melt away the ice and

779
00:45:17,960 --> 00:45:21,000
Speaker 3: when it flowed away, it would leave these large spaces

780
00:45:21,080 --> 00:45:24,359
Speaker 3: in between rounded mounds that had been pushed up by

781
00:45:24,440 --> 00:45:28,400
Speaker 3: the expanding frost. Apparently, there was a big geological conference

782
00:45:28,440 --> 00:45:32,120
Speaker 3: in the eighties which examined this hypothesis and concluded that

783
00:45:32,280 --> 00:45:35,160
Speaker 3: it could not adequately explain at least some of the mounds.

784
00:45:35,200 --> 00:45:38,040
Speaker 3: So I think this is not a major contender for

785
00:45:38,120 --> 00:45:54,439
Speaker 3: the explanation anymore. Another idea is the vegetation anchoring hypothesis.

786
00:45:55,280 --> 00:45:59,600
Speaker 3: The Washington Geological Survey booklet calls this the runoff erosion

787
00:45:59,760 --> 00:46:04,200
Speaker 3: roof anchor hypothesis. But the common feature of these explanations

788
00:46:04,480 --> 00:46:08,160
Speaker 3: is that there are plants growing on the prairie and

789
00:46:08,360 --> 00:46:11,600
Speaker 3: the roots of these plants grip the soil and help

790
00:46:11,680 --> 00:46:16,480
Speaker 3: protect it from erosion, and the mounds in this hypothesis

791
00:46:16,520 --> 00:46:20,680
Speaker 3: would represent places where plant roots once held the soil together,

792
00:46:21,239 --> 00:46:27,080
Speaker 3: while channels were carved around the mounds by surrounding soil erosion. Okay,

793
00:46:28,239 --> 00:46:33,040
Speaker 3: then we get another hypothesis. This one's interesting gophers. So

794
00:46:33,400 --> 00:46:36,760
Speaker 3: in nineteen forty two, a couple of biologists named Walter

795
00:46:36,920 --> 00:46:40,879
Speaker 3: Dohlquest and Victor Scheffer proposed that it could have been

796
00:46:41,239 --> 00:46:46,640
Speaker 3: bioturbation by gophers. So how would gophers have built these mounds?

797
00:46:46,680 --> 00:46:51,560
Speaker 3: Don't they dig tunnels underground? How would that result in mounds? Well,

798
00:46:51,760 --> 00:46:55,160
Speaker 3: the idea goes like this. When gophers dig tunnels, they

799
00:46:55,239 --> 00:46:58,880
Speaker 3: displace soil. That soil has to go somewhere, so they

800
00:46:58,960 --> 00:47:01,399
Speaker 3: dig out cavities in the earth, and then they throw

801
00:47:01,560 --> 00:47:05,239
Speaker 3: the displaced soil into a pile behind them, and this

802
00:47:05,440 --> 00:47:08,920
Speaker 3: excavated soil gets packed into a big mound. And these

803
00:47:08,960 --> 00:47:12,160
Speaker 3: piles can actually they're not just waste. They can be

804
00:47:12,360 --> 00:47:16,160
Speaker 3: useful to the gophers because then when a rainstorm comes,

805
00:47:16,480 --> 00:47:19,520
Speaker 3: the gophers now have high ground they can retreat to

806
00:47:19,760 --> 00:47:22,840
Speaker 3: to get away from the flood. And if you study

807
00:47:22,960 --> 00:47:27,320
Speaker 3: gopher behavior. This hypothesis says gophers actually tend to space

808
00:47:27,440 --> 00:47:31,880
Speaker 3: their burrows a fairly reliable distance apart from one another,

809
00:47:32,680 --> 00:47:36,440
Speaker 3: though not in exactly like regular patterns or rows. And

810
00:47:36,560 --> 00:47:39,440
Speaker 3: this spacing could match up roughly with the spacing and

811
00:47:39,560 --> 00:47:41,920
Speaker 3: irregular arrangement of the Mima Mounds.

812
00:47:42,640 --> 00:47:45,240
Speaker 2: Okay, so the idea here being yeah, that the Mima

813
00:47:45,280 --> 00:47:49,520
Speaker 2: mount spacing is a visual representation of gopher territories.

814
00:47:49,960 --> 00:47:52,800
Speaker 3: Yes, and I believe this hypothesis is still in the

815
00:47:52,840 --> 00:47:57,520
Speaker 3: mix as well, could be gopher related. Another hypothesis is

816
00:47:57,800 --> 00:48:02,560
Speaker 3: glacial outburst flooding. So it's worth mentioning. I think I

817
00:48:02,640 --> 00:48:04,760
Speaker 3: said this a little while ago, but the Myma Prairie

818
00:48:05,000 --> 00:48:08,400
Speaker 3: is right at the southern edge of where a giant

819
00:48:08,680 --> 00:48:12,640
Speaker 3: glacier reached down to about sixteen thousand years ago, and

820
00:48:13,120 --> 00:48:16,759
Speaker 3: some researchers think that the Mima Mounds could have been

821
00:48:16,960 --> 00:48:20,360
Speaker 3: formed by here. This concept is coming back a glacial

822
00:48:20,480 --> 00:48:25,840
Speaker 3: outburst flood from the glacially damned lake known as Lake Carbon.

823
00:48:26,280 --> 00:48:30,279
Speaker 3: So around this time this Lake Carbon somehow spilled out

824
00:48:30,320 --> 00:48:34,560
Speaker 3: of its containment, it flooded the landscape, and as it

825
00:48:34,680 --> 00:48:37,440
Speaker 3: did so, it picked up tons of volcanic rocks and

826
00:48:37,600 --> 00:48:42,200
Speaker 3: sediment from the Cascade Mountains and washed them downstream, leaving

827
00:48:42,280 --> 00:48:45,359
Speaker 3: them in piles along the path of the flood. Now,

828
00:48:45,480 --> 00:48:48,040
Speaker 3: what would be the evidence that the mounds could come

829
00:48:48,080 --> 00:48:52,120
Speaker 3: from this event? One thing cited by that Washington Geological

830
00:48:52,200 --> 00:48:54,560
Speaker 3: Survey booklet is that you've got mounds in a place

831
00:48:54,600 --> 00:48:58,480
Speaker 3: called Rocky Prairie upstream from the area of the Mima

832
00:48:58,560 --> 00:49:01,319
Speaker 3: Prairie upstream in the what this flood zone would have been.

833
00:49:02,320 --> 00:49:06,280
Speaker 3: And these mounds have more volcanic rocks and bigger rocks,

834
00:49:07,000 --> 00:49:10,640
Speaker 3: and then the Mama Prairie mounds downstream have smaller rocks

835
00:49:10,760 --> 00:49:15,239
Speaker 3: and smaller, finer sediment. And that pattern, you know, the

836
00:49:15,280 --> 00:49:19,160
Speaker 3: bigger rocks upstream, more volcanic rocks, and the smaller sediment downstream,

837
00:49:19,440 --> 00:49:23,000
Speaker 3: that would fit with a flood formation mechanism. Also, the

838
00:49:23,120 --> 00:49:27,080
Speaker 3: mounds tend to be stretched or elongated parallel to the

839
00:49:27,200 --> 00:49:30,560
Speaker 3: direction that this water from the flood would have been flowing.

840
00:49:31,400 --> 00:49:33,480
Speaker 3: Though from what I'm reading, I think it's possible that

841
00:49:33,600 --> 00:49:37,279
Speaker 3: a glacial flood like this could have shaped mounds, even

842
00:49:37,320 --> 00:49:40,000
Speaker 3: if it wasn't the thing that originally formed them.

843
00:49:40,400 --> 00:49:41,800
Speaker 2: Okay, one more.

844
00:49:41,719 --> 00:49:45,440
Speaker 3: Idea, this is the earthquake hypothesis. This one appeared more recently.

845
00:49:45,560 --> 00:49:48,040
Speaker 3: It was put forward by a geologist named Andrew Berg

846
00:49:48,160 --> 00:49:51,880
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety and to illustrate the idea behind it,

847
00:49:52,400 --> 00:49:56,120
Speaker 3: you can start with an experiment. If you take a

848
00:49:56,239 --> 00:49:59,560
Speaker 3: flat surface like a table or a drumhead or anything

849
00:49:59,680 --> 00:50:02,759
Speaker 3: like that, and you spread out an even layer of

850
00:50:03,040 --> 00:50:06,799
Speaker 3: fine silt or sand on top of that surface, then

851
00:50:06,880 --> 00:50:09,520
Speaker 3: you make the surface vibrate. So maybe you hit the

852
00:50:09,760 --> 00:50:14,040
Speaker 3: table or the drumhead repeatedly with a mallet. Causing the

853
00:50:14,160 --> 00:50:18,600
Speaker 3: surface to vibrate, will tend to make loose sediment lying

854
00:50:18,719 --> 00:50:23,160
Speaker 3: on top of it arrange itself into interesting geometrical patterns.

855
00:50:23,880 --> 00:50:25,759
Speaker 3: You might have seen something like this if you've ever

856
00:50:25,840 --> 00:50:29,440
Speaker 3: watched these demonstrations of like a sound from a speaker

857
00:50:30,000 --> 00:50:32,880
Speaker 3: acting on sand on a flat surface, Like you can

858
00:50:32,920 --> 00:50:37,239
Speaker 3: play different frequency tones through a loudspeaker over a drumhead

859
00:50:37,360 --> 00:50:40,680
Speaker 3: like surface, and it will make the sand sort itself

860
00:50:40,760 --> 00:50:44,800
Speaker 3: into these fascinating geometrical patterns driven by the sound waves.

861
00:50:45,640 --> 00:50:48,239
Speaker 3: These arrangements tend to be caused by the interactions the

862
00:50:48,320 --> 00:50:51,160
Speaker 3: kind of resonance of different waves going back and forth,

863
00:50:51,280 --> 00:50:55,200
Speaker 3: and you get these places where the waves, you know,

864
00:50:55,320 --> 00:50:58,240
Speaker 3: they sort of line up and they form these standing peaks,

865
00:50:58,360 --> 00:51:02,120
Speaker 3: and then also place is where they cancel each other

866
00:51:02,239 --> 00:51:07,080
Speaker 3: out and create these valleys. Anyway, Berg proposed that earthquakes

867
00:51:07,239 --> 00:51:10,200
Speaker 3: in the past had caused a similar thing to happen

868
00:51:10,600 --> 00:51:15,160
Speaker 3: with loose soil on top of the Mima Prairie. So

869
00:51:15,600 --> 00:51:18,879
Speaker 3: interesting idea there too, And ultimately, from what I can tell,

870
00:51:19,000 --> 00:51:21,600
Speaker 3: this really is still genuinely a mystery.

871
00:51:21,880 --> 00:51:22,680
Speaker 4: It is not solved.

872
00:51:22,760 --> 00:51:26,600
Speaker 3: Each hypothesis I think has its own defenders and advocates,

873
00:51:27,440 --> 00:51:31,000
Speaker 3: but there is not agreement within the scientific community or

874
00:51:31,080 --> 00:51:35,279
Speaker 3: the communities involved that like which one is the best explanation.

875
00:51:35,880 --> 00:51:38,279
Speaker 3: So this made me curious, like, if you're out there

876
00:51:38,320 --> 00:51:40,960
Speaker 3: listening right now, you're a geologist or somebody with some

877
00:51:41,120 --> 00:51:43,479
Speaker 3: other relevant expertise, and you want to write in about

878
00:51:43,520 --> 00:51:46,920
Speaker 3: which hypothesis seems strongest to you and why, please do

879
00:51:47,040 --> 00:51:49,480
Speaker 3: get in touch. Our email is contact at stuff to

880
00:51:49,520 --> 00:51:50,520
Speaker 3: Blow your Mind dot com.

881
00:51:51,120 --> 00:51:53,719
Speaker 2: You know, I was looking at this booklet you referenced earlier,

882
00:51:53,800 --> 00:51:56,719
Speaker 2: the one for students, and I really enjoyed that the

883
00:51:57,280 --> 00:52:01,960
Speaker 2: different hypotheses are presented by a talking gopher name Goodwin,

884
00:52:02,840 --> 00:52:06,000
Speaker 2: and good one is very very clear that these are

885
00:52:06,040 --> 00:52:09,080
Speaker 2: presented in no particular order of likelihood, so that you

886
00:52:09,200 --> 00:52:12,640
Speaker 2: can decide this is a very balanced gopher. And I

887
00:52:12,719 --> 00:52:16,040
Speaker 2: appreciate even though one of the ideas concerns gophers, and

888
00:52:16,200 --> 00:52:18,839
Speaker 2: you know, you would otherwise be led to think, well, good,

889
00:52:18,880 --> 00:52:21,440
Speaker 2: one's going to want to really push the the one

890
00:52:21,520 --> 00:52:25,479
Speaker 2: that champions his own species abilities. But no, he's calling

891
00:52:25,520 --> 00:52:26,319
Speaker 2: it right down the middle.

892
00:52:26,520 --> 00:52:27,880
Speaker 4: I was thinking that exact thing.

893
00:52:28,120 --> 00:52:30,360
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, we want to have a talking gopher,

894
00:52:30,600 --> 00:52:32,960
Speaker 3: but that's going to make it seem like the gopher

895
00:52:33,040 --> 00:52:35,000
Speaker 3: hypothesis is the real winner, and we.

896
00:52:35,040 --> 00:52:37,279
Speaker 4: Don't want to imply that. So we've got to say,

897
00:52:37,560 --> 00:52:39,920
Speaker 4: you know, we're not favoring any one of these.

898
00:52:40,360 --> 00:52:44,240
Speaker 2: But which one illustrates the easiest, which one potentially speaks

899
00:52:44,320 --> 00:52:47,880
Speaker 2: to children better? You know this is this is the

900
00:52:47,920 --> 00:52:50,800
Speaker 2: one to go in. So yeah, totally the right direction

901
00:52:50,920 --> 00:52:53,640
Speaker 2: for the booklet. Well, that's fascinating. Yet I was not

902
00:52:53,880 --> 00:52:57,080
Speaker 2: familiar with these these particular mounds. I've not traveled to

903
00:52:57,160 --> 00:53:00,080
Speaker 2: this part of the country before. But if I if

904
00:53:00,080 --> 00:53:01,399
Speaker 2: I make it out that way, I'll have to check

905
00:53:01,440 --> 00:53:01,839
Speaker 2: these out.

906
00:53:02,200 --> 00:53:02,359
Speaker 4: Well.

907
00:53:02,400 --> 00:53:06,200
Speaker 3: As I said, they're not only in southwestern Washington. There

908
00:53:06,239 --> 00:53:10,160
Speaker 3: are Mama like mounds actually in many places throughout North America,

909
00:53:10,360 --> 00:53:13,839
Speaker 3: and there are similar formations on other continents as well.

910
00:53:14,320 --> 00:53:17,080
Speaker 3: So you can look up maps of Mama like mounds,

911
00:53:17,160 --> 00:53:19,120
Speaker 3: you know. There there are places you can see them

912
00:53:19,160 --> 00:53:21,640
Speaker 3: all over different regions of the prairie. There's some like

913
00:53:21,760 --> 00:53:25,480
Speaker 3: in Texas and other places farther in the Northwest Prairie.

914
00:53:26,640 --> 00:53:29,440
Speaker 3: So yeah, there you can look for things like this

915
00:53:29,640 --> 00:53:30,600
Speaker 3: in lots of places.

916
00:53:31,320 --> 00:53:31,520
Speaker 2: Huh.

917
00:53:31,719 --> 00:53:31,880
Speaker 4: You know.

918
00:53:31,920 --> 00:53:35,280
Speaker 2: I just pulled up a map of where one finds

919
00:53:35,880 --> 00:53:40,480
Speaker 2: Mima mounds throughout North America, and there are there. They

920
00:53:40,520 --> 00:53:42,360
Speaker 2: are in place that you can find them in California.

921
00:53:42,360 --> 00:53:47,359
Speaker 2: You can find them in Arizona, various other states, including Arkansas, Louisiana.

922
00:53:47,880 --> 00:53:49,719
Speaker 2: So yeah, they're they're out there. I just need a

923
00:53:49,960 --> 00:53:52,920
Speaker 2: I need a I need to put them on the itinerary.

924
00:53:52,440 --> 00:53:55,359
Speaker 4: I guess. Yeah. I'd like to see some too. Yeah.

925
00:53:56,560 --> 00:53:59,080
Speaker 2: All right, Well, I think that's all for this episode

926
00:53:59,400 --> 00:54:02,520
Speaker 2: on Prayer. We're going to gohea and close out this

927
00:54:03,160 --> 00:54:05,279
Speaker 2: this episode, but we'd love to hear from everyone out

928
00:54:05,320 --> 00:54:08,840
Speaker 2: there again. Anything you have to contribute regarding these topics,

929
00:54:08,840 --> 00:54:14,280
Speaker 2: any field reports, be it mound based or prairie vibe based.

930
00:54:14,760 --> 00:54:16,520
Speaker 2: You know, certainly write in and we would love to

931
00:54:16,600 --> 00:54:19,399
Speaker 2: hear from you, and you know, we'd like to use

932
00:54:19,600 --> 00:54:22,480
Speaker 2: at least some of our listener mails in future listener

933
00:54:22,560 --> 00:54:25,080
Speaker 2: mail episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. You generally

934
00:54:25,120 --> 00:54:27,439
Speaker 2: do about one of those a month, maybe sometimes two,

935
00:54:27,719 --> 00:54:30,600
Speaker 2: depending on how much, how much is coming in and

936
00:54:30,960 --> 00:54:33,160
Speaker 2: what sort of buffers they need to put into the schedule.

937
00:54:33,800 --> 00:54:35,759
Speaker 2: Let's see. As always, we would just remind everyone out there,

938
00:54:35,800 --> 00:54:37,680
Speaker 2: the Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science

939
00:54:37,719 --> 00:54:40,160
Speaker 2: and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,

940
00:54:40,200 --> 00:54:43,279
Speaker 2: short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set

941
00:54:43,320 --> 00:54:45,239
Speaker 2: aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird

942
00:54:45,320 --> 00:54:47,000
Speaker 2: film on Weird House Cinema.

943
00:54:47,719 --> 00:54:51,160
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

944
00:54:51,280 --> 00:54:52,719
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

945
00:54:52,760 --> 00:54:55,240
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

946
00:54:55,320 --> 00:54:57,160
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

947
00:54:57,360 --> 00:54:59,719
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact that Stuff to Blow

948
00:54:59,719 --> 00:55:00,719
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.

949
00:55:08,120 --> 00:55:11,040
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

950
00:55:11,200 --> 00:55:13,919
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951
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952
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