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Speaker 1: you Should Read books dot com. Welcome to Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should know a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Speaker 1: Charles w. Chuck Bryan over there. Jerry's around here somewhere.
Speaker 1: So this is stuff you should know everybody. The Wrath
Speaker 1: of God Edition. Hi. Hi, I've been singing that Bob
Speaker 1: Dylan song all day. Oh yeah, you know it's weird.
Speaker 1: I have two and I hadn't realized it until you
Speaker 1: just said that. Really, Yeah, my brain is left. Which
Speaker 1: song hard Rain is Gonna fall? Her? Yeah? Hurricane Hurricane,
Speaker 1: hard Rain is gonna fall? Are you crazy? I guess
Speaker 1: it would. It hadn't even occurred to me. Great song Hurricane.
Speaker 1: Now I'm going to be singing hard Grain is Gonna Fall,
Speaker 1: which is not nearly as good as the Hurricane song.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised. You know any Bob One song that's shocking?
Speaker 1: Those are the two? No more than that? No, that's it. Oh,
Speaker 1: I know that one that goes d what's that one? Oh?
Speaker 1: It's all of them? Gotcha? God bless him. He's got
Speaker 1: a new album ount It's great, dude. How many does
Speaker 1: that make? M hmm. He's got a lot of records. Well,
Speaker 1: God's great song it is. It was a good movie too,
Speaker 1: sad I didn't see that. Yeah, Denzel Washington, I believe
Speaker 1: played him, And yes, it's I mean, if you like Injustice,
Speaker 1: you're gonna love that movie. You mean, if you like
Speaker 1: movies about fighting injustice, just what you mean? Right, Either way,
Speaker 1: you're gonna like the movie. I love Injustice. Sadly, there
Speaker 1: are people who say things like that these days. That's true. So, um, Chuck,
Speaker 1: we're talking about hurricanes, not the Bob Dylan song, but
Speaker 1: about the actual like weather system, weather disaster, and not
Speaker 1: only I guess you mean typhoons. Uh no, I mean hurricanes,
Speaker 1: but that's the same thing, and so is Chuck, you
Speaker 1: mean cyclones? Kind of yes, all three of those are
Speaker 1: this one and the same. Did you know that? You know?
Speaker 1: I think I knew that and just sort of forgot
Speaker 1: because when I read it, I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I knew that, right, So, I mean, it
Speaker 1: just depends on where they occur in the world. Basically
Speaker 1: that there's I mean, aside aside from exactly you know, um,
Speaker 1: where they occur, where they make land, and then the
Speaker 1: way that they turn and move. They are the same thing.
Speaker 1: They start the same way. They're the same uh group
Speaker 1: of of weird you know, weather coincidences that happen to
Speaker 1: assemble into something. And um, hurricanes to me are as
Speaker 1: good as it gets natural disaster wise. I mean, they
Speaker 1: are as interesting as they come. They are so ridiculously
Speaker 1: destructive and then theoretically what they could do if they
Speaker 1: got even worse, which they may. Um, It's it just
Speaker 1: boggles the mind. I'm a hurricane fan in a way,
Speaker 1: but I hate Miami U as far as their university
Speaker 1: is concerned. Uh you hate the you No, not really,
Speaker 1: I'm just teasing. Yeah, And I think the other thing
Speaker 1: about hurricanes is so fascinating is it's, um, it's a
Speaker 1: regular thing. It's not like a volcanic eruption or a tsunami, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, or an earthquake. It's you know, every year
Speaker 1: they're gonna be you know, uh, like a hundred tropical
Speaker 1: storms and you know thirty to fifty of these are
Speaker 1: going to develop into hurricanes. You can count on it,
Speaker 1: right Jack. Yeah. And they actually they have seasons, to
Speaker 1: tell you the truth, They're depending on where you are
Speaker 1: in the world and the um northern hemisphere, especially in
Speaker 1: the Atlantic You've got what's appropriately called the Atlantic hurricane
Speaker 1: season and it runs from about June one to November UM.
Speaker 1: Down Under in the Southern Hemisphere, they have a hurricane
Speaker 1: season that runs from about January to March UM. And again,
Speaker 1: like there's some differences to them, but that's it's essentially
Speaker 1: the same thing. It's just that hurricanes tend to form
Speaker 1: over the North Atlantic and Northeast Pacific um, and then
Speaker 1: cyclones are over the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean,
Speaker 1: and then typhoons tend to hit the northwest Pacific Ocean
Speaker 1: around Asia to the Middle East. That's right. So I
Speaker 1: think the Australians would call them cyclones, is that right? Uh?
Speaker 1: And we call them good old hurricanes, that's right. And
Speaker 1: actually hurricane, which since we're just spouting out facts about
Speaker 1: hurricanes at this point right now, it actually comes from
Speaker 1: an old um Mayan word hurrican, which is the name
Speaker 1: for one of their gods of destruction of thunder and
Speaker 1: lightning and wind. And I believe maybe rain who brought
Speaker 1: the flood that destroyed almost all people and then made
Speaker 1: it recede because humanity out in too wicked. And if
Speaker 1: that sounds familiar, that's because there's a flood story and
Speaker 1: basically every culture in the world, which makes me really wonder, like,
Speaker 1: what happened? What is everybody talking about that actually may
Speaker 1: have happened at some point. I just find that fascinating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and how hurricane forms can get very convoluted, as we
Speaker 1: realized when we UH started diving into this research. And
Speaker 1: we'll describe it in a bit more detail, but you
Speaker 1: know me and my Earth Science for kids websites door UH.
Speaker 1: In the very simplest of terms, hurricanes form over warm
Speaker 1: ocean waters near the equator and the tropics, and that
Speaker 1: warm moist air rises up and then is replaced by
Speaker 1: cooler air, and then that air warms up and starts
Speaker 1: to rise, and that just causess this cycle that starts
Speaker 1: these clouds to form, and they start rotating and they
Speaker 1: get a little more organized, and if there's enough of
Speaker 1: that warm water, eventually that wind is gonna pick up
Speaker 1: and you're gonna get a hurricane, and they move in
Speaker 1: the northern hemisphere, especially in the Atlantic um which we're
Speaker 1: going to kind of focus on Atlantic hurricanes here, but again,
Speaker 1: most of the souf we're talking about applies to cyclones
Speaker 1: and typhoons too, but in the Atlantic in particular, they
Speaker 1: usually start off the west coast of Africa and move
Speaker 1: down towards the equator where they slide over through the
Speaker 1: Caribbean and then up along Florida, the Carolinas, um sometimes
Speaker 1: to New England, but most of the time they'll hit
Speaker 1: the the Gulf Stream and will be carried up to
Speaker 1: England where they peeter out and show up for a
Speaker 1: pine at the pub. Yeah. And you know, hurricanes will
Speaker 1: they eventually will die out. Um. Landfall will make them
Speaker 1: die out, because like that's the worst part for the people,
Speaker 1: you know, living on planet Earth, because that's where it
Speaker 1: hits the land. But that actually means the hurricane is
Speaker 1: dying because there's not that warm water anymore. Um. Or
Speaker 1: the further north they go, the cooler that water gets,
Speaker 1: and that'll just peter her it out as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which I mean, if you really think about it, when
Speaker 1: you take all these factors into consideration, just those two
Speaker 1: that it needs warm water and um that it can't
Speaker 1: be over land like a hurricane. Is a startling series
Speaker 1: of coincidences that happen like again and again repeatedly during
Speaker 1: a certain section of the year in certain sections of
Speaker 1: the world, and they it just takes everything being perfect,
Speaker 1: like a perfect storm, but over and over again for
Speaker 1: these things to happen. And like you said, you know,
Speaker 1: there's so many different storms that form off the west
Speaker 1: coast of Africa or off the uh the yeah, or
Speaker 1: off the west coast of Australia, um, that can form
Speaker 1: into these things, but they don't. They usually don't because
Speaker 1: all of those factors just aren't working just perfectly for
Speaker 1: the thing did not only kind of catch to ignite
Speaker 1: in a way, um, but also to on of developed
Speaker 1: steam and to really pick up and become a problem. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I know what you mean about loving hurricanes in
Speaker 1: a certain weird way. Um. Obviously, the landfall and just
Speaker 1: the destruction is terrible and we don't wish that ever.
Speaker 1: But when you see those images from above of the
Speaker 1: hurricane rotating and how big it is, it's just it's
Speaker 1: humbling and just sort of mind boggling display of nature
Speaker 1: at work. You know. It is that I mean that
Speaker 1: that hits it on the head. It's definitely not all
Speaker 1: the death and property destructs that I'm a fan of. No,
Speaker 1: of course, I'm like, man, I love injustice. I know, man,
Speaker 1: this is what happened to you overnight. So um so,
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about this. Let's talk about how hurricane
Speaker 1: actually forms and then what it forms into. Okay, we're
Speaker 1: gonna do the Earth sign. Okay, I'll take over everybody.
Speaker 1: I hope you like my voice because that's all you're
Speaker 1: gonna hear for a little while. I think it's the
Speaker 1: listening they're probably you to that. Um do you know
Speaker 1: when we first started this, I couldn't stand my voice,
Speaker 1: couldn't stand it. Y. Yeah, I finally reached I reached
Speaker 1: the day tent with it. I just ignore it. Um So, chuck,
Speaker 1: You've got air, right air over the ocean and over
Speaker 1: the land. The stuff that's closest to the surface is
Speaker 1: actually the warmest, which, as you know, like if you've
Speaker 1: ever been skydiving, is really cold up there. I haven't. No,
Speaker 1: it's really cold up there, trust me. Um. And when
Speaker 1: you um or like if you're ever like if you
Speaker 1: climb a mountain or something, it's always cold up there.
Speaker 1: And one reason why is because I've never done it.
Speaker 1: The just trust me, trust me. The upstairs of my
Speaker 1: house is cooler, and it shouldn't be. It should be
Speaker 1: much warmer because heat rises in your house. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: the a C up there, there's fewer rooms. It just
Speaker 1: really Okay, you're making this our science thing way hard.
Speaker 1: So the air at the surface of the Earth is
Speaker 1: warmer because it gets warm by the Earth or by
Speaker 1: the ocean, right open. Ocean temperatures kind of tend to
Speaker 1: warm with the seasons, and so by around June one,
Speaker 1: which was when hurricane season starts, you've got an ocean
Speaker 1: which with surface temperatures hovering around Sevenday nine to eighty
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit. Okay, Yeah, And I think eighty is where
Speaker 1: you've got to be kind of that's the threshold to
Speaker 1: even get if you want to talk about hurricanes, it's
Speaker 1: got to go to eighty degrees exactly, and not just
Speaker 1: at the very surface. I think it needs to be
Speaker 1: that down to about a hundred and fifty feet because
Speaker 1: hurricanes mixes a lot of water together, and if it's
Speaker 1: not warm water that stays available, it's not it's just
Speaker 1: gonna peeter out right. So you need eighty degree at
Speaker 1: a minimum um surface temperature water down to a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty feet and so um, you've got that going
Speaker 1: on in the ocean around certain times a year, and
Speaker 1: if we can travel into the interior of Africa all
Speaker 1: the way to Sudan, a little monarch butterfly will flap
Speaker 1: its wings and that creates an air disturbance, and weeks
Speaker 1: later that develops into an even bigger disturbance, and it
Speaker 1: moves further west across Africa and finally off the coast,
Speaker 1: and it will encounter that warm water and warm air
Speaker 1: that's that's being heated by the water, and that disturbance
Speaker 1: will actually encounter that water that's evaporating and rising. And
Speaker 1: as that water evaporates and rises, um, it's becoming less dense. Right,
Speaker 1: the molecules that make up that air with the water
Speaker 1: vapor are further apart then cold are that's above it. Well,
Speaker 1: nature of abhoors a vacuum, right, and when the air
Speaker 1: leaves that area right above the surface of the ocean,
Speaker 1: cold are starts to move in below it, right, which
Speaker 1: pushes the other air further upward. But then that cold
Speaker 1: air is warmed up too, and that starts to rise.
Speaker 1: And so what you have under this disturbance in the
Speaker 1: air that was created by a butterfly's wings in Sudan
Speaker 1: is this this motion in the ocean. That's all that
Speaker 1: that that is kind of this upward trajectory of air
Speaker 1: constantly moving upward, and it's full of water vapors. So
Speaker 1: it's when it gets high enough up into the cooler
Speaker 1: regions in the atmosphere, it condenses and forms clouds, and
Speaker 1: those clouds eventually start to rain, and as it condenses
Speaker 1: and starts to rain, that actually heats up that area.
Speaker 1: The latent heat of condensation heats up that area. So
Speaker 1: now you have this column of warm moist air rising up,
Speaker 1: moving with coal. They're trying to come in and replace it.
Speaker 1: As the warm air moves, and you have a lot
Speaker 1: of air movement, you have some storm starting, and you
Speaker 1: have all the ingredients now for what could become a hurricane.
Speaker 1: That's right, and uh that that heat exchange is going on,
Speaker 1: and that's going to create a lot of wind and
Speaker 1: that's just gonna make everything worse because those winds converge
Speaker 1: at the surface and they're colliding with each other, and
Speaker 1: that's pushing that warm moist air up and up, and
Speaker 1: that cycle just starts to happen. That rotational cycle that's
Speaker 1: so tied to, like the image of a hurricane, and uh,
Speaker 1: those winds get involved and everything kind of everything kind
Speaker 1: of just synchronizes, right exactly. I mean, like that's what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about with all the different coincidences that have
Speaker 1: to number one, be present, then have to work just right,
Speaker 1: because if that wind that's converging at the surface to
Speaker 1: replace that warm moist air that's rising. Um Man, I've
Speaker 1: never said moist this many times in my life and
Speaker 1: been okay with it, but I'm I'm all right, so far,
Speaker 1: how are you doing? Okay? Um, If the speed of
Speaker 1: that wind that's coming in at the surface is different
Speaker 1: than say, like the speed of that you know higher
Speaker 1: up in that column, you're gonna have what's called wind shear,
Speaker 1: and it's going to keep the storm from being organized
Speaker 1: into a cohesive hole. So just that factor alone that
Speaker 1: somehow the winds at different levels of this storm that's
Speaker 1: starting to organize have to be moving at roughly the
Speaker 1: same speed. That's a big one, right, Um. And then
Speaker 1: because of these these thunderstorms that are are are starting
Speaker 1: and the more condensation that's um that they're heating more
Speaker 1: and more, so they're creating more and more storms. So
Speaker 1: you've got all these storms that are kind of starting
Speaker 1: around this area, and they start to get organized together,
Speaker 1: and then this is this. Eventually, this is called a
Speaker 1: tropical depression. And eventually, if all, if everything that we're
Speaker 1: gonna keep talking about happens just precisely right, is going
Speaker 1: to organize into a tropical storm and then a hurricane.
Speaker 1: And then the hurricane, as we'll see, goes through different
Speaker 1: stages of categorization. And all has to do with the
Speaker 1: speed of those winds that have now kind of organized
Speaker 1: into this rotational monster, which is really a tight or
Speaker 1: sometimes a loose collection of storms that form one big storm.
Speaker 1: That's what a hurricane is, that are all kind of
Speaker 1: moving in the same direction at about the same speed.
Speaker 1: And it all has to do with that that thing
Speaker 1: that started all this, that rising moist air in that
Speaker 1: one spot. Because as these different storms assemble into a larger,
Speaker 1: more cohesive hole, the center, the lowest pressure center, right
Speaker 1: where there's the most the warmest, moistest air is rising up.
Speaker 1: Um it also has the lowest pressure, and because nature
Speaker 1: abhors a vacuum, higher pressure air is trying to come
Speaker 1: in to fill it. But there's something that um we
Speaker 1: have to talk about called the Coriolis effect, and here's
Speaker 1: where things really run off the rails for us ticket chuck. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Coriolis effect is when you see that hurricane rotating,
Speaker 1: that's a byproduct or I guess the product of that
Speaker 1: Coriolis force, which is we've talked about it before, but
Speaker 1: it's the natural phenomenon that makes fluids in any kind
Speaker 1: of free moving object either go to the right of
Speaker 1: their destination if you're in the Northern hemisphere, or to
Speaker 1: the left in the Southern hemisphere. Uh, not toilets in Australia.
Speaker 1: I thought, I thought we said that. Okay, so I
Speaker 1: thought I said it wasn't true, and somebody showed us
Speaker 1: that it was. It was the opposite. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's not true. Well we'll find out again. But at
Speaker 1: any rate, in the Northern hemisphere, your winds deflect to
Speaker 1: the right. In the Southern Hemisphere, they're going to deflect
Speaker 1: to the left. And this that deflection that gets the
Speaker 1: storm spinning. And that's why you get different rotations in
Speaker 1: each hemisphere. They rotate counterclockwise here in the Northern hemisphere
Speaker 1: and clockwise in the Southern hemisphere. Right, But we do
Speaker 1: need to keep going with the Coriolis effect. Sorry, I
Speaker 1: didn't mean to scare everybody, but the Coriolis effect does
Speaker 1: two things. It makes the hurricane rotate like you were saying,
Speaker 1: basically on an axis around that lowest pressure center. And
Speaker 1: then it also moves the hurricane physically itself as it
Speaker 1: kind of travels southward from West Africa towards the equator,
Speaker 1: which is really bizarre because at the equator the Coriolis
Speaker 1: effect is at its absolute weakest. It's strongest at the polls.
Speaker 1: But for some reason, something about the Coriolis effect moves
Speaker 1: the hurricane like a hurricane could theoretically cross the equator
Speaker 1: from the northern hemisphere to the southern. Who knows what
Speaker 1: would happen when it and when it transferred over to
Speaker 1: the other like the opposite Coriolis effect. As far as
Speaker 1: we know, probably as far as we know, it's never happened.
Speaker 1: But we've only been keeping track of this stuff for
Speaker 1: about a hundred years, but it just doesn't ever seem
Speaker 1: to happen. For some reason, the Corioles effect, despite being
Speaker 1: weakest that the equator, moves hurricanes back upward over and
Speaker 1: up back into the left right. So the Coriolis effect
Speaker 1: us two very important things for hurricanes, but probably the
Speaker 1: biggest one, the most important one as far as the
Speaker 1: hurricane itself is concerned, is to keep that thing spinning
Speaker 1: around in the same motion, clockwise or counterclockwise, depending on
Speaker 1: your hemisphere. All right, I think we should take a
Speaker 1: break and we can come back and talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about what these different categories mean right after this, So, so, Chuck,
Speaker 1: before we talk categories, I have to pop one more
Speaker 1: thing in about the coreoles. It's important, you're ready, sure,
Speaker 1: So that lowest pressure center, what's called the eye m
Speaker 1: that is actually um. It's the clearest part of the hurricane.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's clear skies, um beautiful, eerily calm. And the
Speaker 1: reason why is because of the Coriolis effect, the lowest
Speaker 1: pressure center is never overwhelmed by the higher pressure air
Speaker 1: that's trying to get in. The whole reason that hurricane
Speaker 1: spins around the center is because all that wind from
Speaker 1: sometimes hundreds of miles away is traveling to that center
Speaker 1: trying to fill it, but the Coriolis effect deflects it.
Speaker 1: They end up going around that center the winds and
Speaker 1: then up so lifting more warm air up, and they
Speaker 1: never make it to that middle which is what causes that.
Speaker 1: And the stronger the winds, meaning the stronger the pressure
Speaker 1: gradient between the center of the the hurricane and the
Speaker 1: outer bands beyond the eyewall, the stronger the difference between
Speaker 1: that gradient, the stronger the hurricane is going to be
Speaker 1: because the stronger the winds are gonna be trying to
Speaker 1: fill that low pressure void. That's what causes hurricanes to
Speaker 1: spin around clockwise or counterclockwise. That is absolutely fascinating to me.
Speaker 1: It's very cool either storm commest place in the world.
Speaker 1: It really is, although it's counterintuitive. It is. So the
Speaker 1: categories category one and this is all broken down and
Speaker 1: very sort of uh. I mean there's there's really there's.
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty stiff as as far as how they categorize.
Speaker 1: He's saying, right, it's not willy nilly. They don't say
Speaker 1: like this. It's getting pretty bad. I think it's a two.
Speaker 1: Actually measure things and there are demarcation lines by usually
Speaker 1: wind speeds is one of the big parts. Um is
Speaker 1: a category one and that's gonna you know, I could
Speaker 1: blow a tree branch into your roof or or get
Speaker 1: some shingles shuttering. You might have to get out the pruners.
Speaker 1: Category two is ten miles per hour. That's getting pretty
Speaker 1: dangerous and you're gonna get some pretty extensive damage at
Speaker 1: this point. Um Like you know, the siding of your house,
Speaker 1: the frame of your house. Shallow trees can be snapped
Speaker 1: or uprooted. At this point, you're probably gonna get some
Speaker 1: power loss. Number three is a major hurricane. Category three
Speaker 1: is at one eleven hundred twenty nine miles and they
Speaker 1: rank this as devastating damage and you know, lots of
Speaker 1: trees uprooted. You definitely will lose probably power and water
Speaker 1: for a period of time for the category three. And
Speaker 1: then you've got your category four, which is a hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty to a hundred and fifty six. Category five
Speaker 1: is hundred and fifty seven. Are higher. You're probably not
Speaker 1: gonna see many Cat fives, but the Cat four is
Speaker 1: pretty catastrophic, and those are the ones that we've seen
Speaker 1: more and more of in more recent years. Category fives
Speaker 1: are just, yeah, that's extreme catastrophe there monsters monsters. So
Speaker 1: category four and five, there's not a tremendous amount of
Speaker 1: differences of both, like you said, considered catastrophic um damage
Speaker 1: causing hurricanes, But I get the impression that the difference
Speaker 1: between four and five and really like real life is substantial.
Speaker 1: But either way, they're gonna like leave so many trees
Speaker 1: and power lines down that you're this that whatever area
Speaker 1: gets hit substantially by one of those UM category four
Speaker 1: or five are going to basically be isolated both without
Speaker 1: power but also um the roads are going to be
Speaker 1: made impassable. And sometimes you can be stuck in the
Speaker 1: midst of this for weeks before you can can be
Speaker 1: reached again. The destruction can be so bad from them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, if you're are a coastal liver, um,
Speaker 1: this is a part of your life. Every year hurricane
Speaker 1: season is a big deal. You've got your your house
Speaker 1: retrofitted ideally at this point, I think like almost any
Speaker 1: coastal house these days is on stilts. If it's you know,
Speaker 1: built in the last twenty plus years, well, not just that,
Speaker 1: I think after two thousand five, I want to say
Speaker 1: it was Hurricane Andrew um Florida in particular, past new
Speaker 1: building codes that I like, if you put a roof on,
Speaker 1: it has to have like this kind of joist and
Speaker 1: um Like whatever windows are put in have to be
Speaker 1: like wind proof. Up to thirty miles. Probably they've definitely
Speaker 1: like started to take that seriously because so many people
Speaker 1: were dying before, but also because of the billions and
Speaker 1: billions of dollars of property damage that would happen every year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean here in Atlanta, obviously we don't get hurricanes.
Speaker 1: Coastal Georgia, we certainly do, but we do get the
Speaker 1: outer bands of the hurricane, and we can get some
Speaker 1: really bad wind and rain and some flooding and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. But we're obviously far enough inland to where
Speaker 1: the eye of the hurricane is not going to really
Speaker 1: affect us. But if you're in the Gulf or along
Speaker 1: the Florida or South Carolina, North Carolina up into Virginia
Speaker 1: even um, and then you know, like you said, they
Speaker 1: can go higher Maryland and New England, but in even
Speaker 1: New York City. But generally I think like kind of
Speaker 1: from Virginia down is where you're gonna be the most
Speaker 1: worried in hurricane season. So um, you know, you mean,
Speaker 1: And I have a place in Florida, right and we
Speaker 1: were down there once and I think it was Hurricane
Speaker 1: Michael a year or so ago, came through and we
Speaker 1: got out of there and came up to Atlanta, and
Speaker 1: that thing followed us all the way up to Atlanta
Speaker 1: and knocked the power out. We're at our place. There
Speaker 1: was that a shaggy dog story. Do you know what
Speaker 1: a shaggy dog story is? A story that seems um
Speaker 1: uh worthwhile or worth saying to the person saying it,
Speaker 1: but not to anybody else. Oh, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: And why did they call it a shaggy dogs? I
Speaker 1: have no idea. We need to get to the bottom
Speaker 1: of that someday. No, I think it's a great story. Um.
Speaker 1: And I remember when that happened. In fact, you do. Wow.
Speaker 1: I love it when my life is part of your life.
Speaker 1: I know it's like happens to it three times a
Speaker 1: year and every Tuesday, that's right. Uh, yeah, I totally
Speaker 1: remember that. And you've also, um, you know, like any
Speaker 1: good coastal liver, you've got hurricane shutters and stuff like that, right, No, yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, and like the high impact windows and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. Yeah, you just gotta do that stuff these days. Oh,
Speaker 1: you definitely do. And it's like really kind of scary
Speaker 1: if you're out there not like that, you know, because
Speaker 1: there was two thousand five when they passed that building.
Speaker 1: CA There's a lot of places that haven't been retrofit,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's like the whole community kind of
Speaker 1: comes together to take care of everybody who who needs
Speaker 1: help around that time, which is pretty cool. But one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why everybody has, you know, days to
Speaker 1: prepare for this kind of thing and go to the
Speaker 1: store and buy every banana you can get your hands
Speaker 1: on and like five loaves of bread and all that
Speaker 1: um and put up sandbags and stuff is because of
Speaker 1: the modeling and um forecasting that has has been developed
Speaker 1: in the last I don't know, fifty sixty years UM.
Speaker 1: That's really saved a lot of people's lives because we
Speaker 1: didn't have warnings before. It was just the sky started
Speaker 1: to look pretty bad and you know, an hour or
Speaker 1: two later your town was gone. Yeah, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: I rent the beach house on Isle of Palms every
Speaker 1: usually in all those houses are you know, fifteen feet
Speaker 1: off the ground on those on those legs, And it's
Speaker 1: just crazy to me to think about the old days
Speaker 1: when you would just have a house sitting on the
Speaker 1: sand like seventy five ft from the from high time.
Speaker 1: This is such a bad idea. Because such a bad idea.
Speaker 1: One of the things, one of the big problems that
Speaker 1: make hurricanes so destructive, Chuck, is that not only um
Speaker 1: is it the wind that can come through, and you know,
Speaker 1: once it reaches I think like a category three, four
Speaker 1: or five, you're that's when you're gonna start to lose
Speaker 1: your deck. Um not just your decks are your roof
Speaker 1: decking is really what I meant, you'd be like my deck,
Speaker 1: which would suck because decks are kind of expensive. But
Speaker 1: it's your roof decking that you really be worried about.
Speaker 1: And that happens when the wind itself yours is the
Speaker 1: envelope of your house, like it breaks a window or
Speaker 1: something like that, and now all of a sudden, you've
Speaker 1: got a pressure difference inside and outside of your house,
Speaker 1: which can actually pop the roof right off of your house.
Speaker 1: Which once that happens, your your walls start to give way.
Speaker 1: It's a bad jamp. Wind is very destructive too. But
Speaker 1: the reason people started putting houses on stilts is because
Speaker 1: that wind is so strong and the hurricane can be
Speaker 1: so massive that it actually pushes the ocean inland. It's
Speaker 1: it's not like a huge wave. It's a it's here's
Speaker 1: the ocean way further inland than it should be, and
Speaker 1: it's called a storm surge. And it's a huge problem
Speaker 1: with with hurricanes. Yeah. And you know, I've been to
Speaker 1: places before and after, uh, just from year to year
Speaker 1: on vacation, and the it can literally remake the coastline. Um,
Speaker 1: they look vastly different after a hurricane. I think that
Speaker 1: one of the years we went to Isle of Palms,
Speaker 1: it was after a hurricane and instead of uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the walk to the beach from the house, instead of
Speaker 1: you know that sort of gradual uh declined to the
Speaker 1: to the water, it was in some places like a
Speaker 1: fift ft drop of just a sheer wall cliff of
Speaker 1: sand and people had ladders and stuff like that. You
Speaker 1: would literally have to climb down a ladder to get
Speaker 1: down to the to the ocean e beach part. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's not good if your house is built on
Speaker 1: that sand that used to be there. And as we
Speaker 1: saw in our um, we're running on a sand and
Speaker 1: that really matters episode that we need that sand. We
Speaker 1: can't afford the ocean to just come reclaim that that's
Speaker 1: our sand. Yeah, And well, the good thing about Isle
Speaker 1: of Palmzo is those houses are set back a great deal. Uh,
Speaker 1: They're not on that sand. There's that big area of
Speaker 1: sea grass and just do shrubbery and stuff in between. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so it's it's just a safer bet when you're
Speaker 1: trying to book a place because it's not it's not
Speaker 1: a hurricane proof. But by the time the water gets there,
Speaker 1: I mean that would have to be a really really
Speaker 1: big surge. Yeah yeah, um, but it happens. It does happen.
Speaker 1: I mean it definitely like a storm search can be
Speaker 1: pretty bad. I think Hurricane Harvey uh in Houston in
Speaker 1: two thousand seventeen. One of the reasons it was so
Speaker 1: destructive it was, from what I saw, was the second
Speaker 1: most expensive storm UM that's ever hit the US. It
Speaker 1: costs a hundred and twenty dollars that's it. It costs
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty eight billion dollars in UM damages.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why is because of that
Speaker 1: storm search and not just you know, flooding houses and
Speaker 1: causing property damage. That kind of storm search can overwhelm
Speaker 1: your sewer system and mess with your drinking water supply
Speaker 1: and do all sorts of horrible stuff. We can kill
Speaker 1: off tons of wildlife because that's something that gets overlooked
Speaker 1: in hurricanes. You know, the humans are so worried about
Speaker 1: us and then our pets and everything. The wildlife itself
Speaker 1: can really take a hit like fish. Hurricanes can kill fish.
Speaker 1: That's how destruct if they are. They slam them into
Speaker 1: like underwater outcroppings and sandbars and stuff and just kill
Speaker 1: the fish. That's how That's how forceful these things are.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of other problems that arise from
Speaker 1: the hurricane, in particular the storm surge too, that we've
Speaker 1: only really started to kind of grasp in the last
Speaker 1: like a few decades of of examining hurricanes. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you were talking about tracking, it's gotten so much better
Speaker 1: these days. Um. On the ground, there's something called the
Speaker 1: Regional Specialized meter Meteorological Centers, and this is just basically
Speaker 1: a network all around the world of global centers that
Speaker 1: are designated by the World Meteorological Organization, and they are
Speaker 1: the ones who track these things using weather satellites, uh,
Speaker 1: using infrared technology and infrared sensors. They're they're going to
Speaker 1: detect all those all the minutia of the temperature differences, uh,
Speaker 1: cloud heights, all these things. You know how you mentioned
Speaker 1: that all these things have to kind of be perfect.
Speaker 1: They have all these ways of measuring these little bits
Speaker 1: of perfection as they align, and they know pretty well. Now, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, things can change and things can reverse course.
Speaker 1: I know people get frustrated when they keep changing the
Speaker 1: path of the herc and you know, they don't keep
Speaker 1: changing it when they report all changes. But that's I
Speaker 1: think people kind of act that way. Sometimes they do
Speaker 1: for sure, you know, you make me leave my house
Speaker 1: and this thing didn't even make landfall. It's like they're
Speaker 1: they're doing a pretty good job and they're doing the
Speaker 1: best they can. Well, it's problematic too as far as
Speaker 1: forecasting goes, because if you do that to people in
Speaker 1: a coastal area, you know, a couple of times in
Speaker 1: one year, they're gonna stop listening to you, and you know,
Speaker 1: you might be a percent right and and something's gonna
Speaker 1: make landfall right on top of them and they're not
Speaker 1: gonna leave. So there is definitely a fine line, and
Speaker 1: there is kind of a balance between knowing too soon
Speaker 1: and um and not knowing at all. And we're kind
Speaker 1: of working our way toward that sweet spot for sure,
Speaker 1: and it's gotten way better. But very very famously, if
Speaker 1: you ever follow hurricanes um as they start to kind
Speaker 1: of come towards the US, Like there's the famous the
Speaker 1: spaghetti model. Have you ever seen one of those? So
Speaker 1: all of those is just a tangle of tracks of
Speaker 1: the hurricane that have been forecasted. So the European model
Speaker 1: is typically thought of as probably the most accurate, and
Speaker 1: that's put together by an agency in Europe and they say,
Speaker 1: here's what the track that we think. Then there's like
Speaker 1: ten or a dozen or fifteen different agencies and groups
Speaker 1: all forecasting a track. When you put them all together,
Speaker 1: it looks like different colored lines of spaghetti over the map,
Speaker 1: and you get a pretty good idea of just where
Speaker 1: the thing's gonna go based on all of these different
Speaker 1: um predictions, kind of like the wisdom of crowd, do
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Where the more information you
Speaker 1: have and you put together, the more guests as put together,
Speaker 1: probably the closer combined they're going to be too accurate
Speaker 1: than any one of them individually would have a chance
Speaker 1: to be. Yeah, and the cool thing about spaghetti models,
Speaker 1: and this is true of like uh, percentage of rain
Speaker 1: and stuff that you might see every day is a
Speaker 1: lot of it is based on past data, um, like
Speaker 1: what's going on now for sure, But then when you
Speaker 1: plug that into all the past data and behaviors of
Speaker 1: storms in the past and what they've done and how
Speaker 1: they've moved and behaved, you can get a pretty cool model.
Speaker 1: And I've always loved that about whether that they use
Speaker 1: so much historical data to predict what could happen this time, right,
Speaker 1: That's what they used to produce the Cone of Uncertainty,
Speaker 1: which is one of the most confusing meteorological models, maybe
Speaker 1: any kind of model there is on the planet. Um,
Speaker 1: it's a really great useful tool if you know what
Speaker 1: it's talking about. If you don't know exactly what it's
Speaker 1: talking about, it's seriously confused, using, and really misleading in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. But with the Cone of Uncertainty
Speaker 1: is everybody's seen it. It's like kind of like this funnel.
Speaker 1: It looks like a tornado basically that that looks like
Speaker 1: it shows the path and width of the hurricane. It
Speaker 1: goes from kind of small to wider and wider and wider,
Speaker 1: so it looks like what it's showing you is the
Speaker 1: track of a hurricane and how big the hurricane is
Speaker 1: gonna grow over time. That's not at all with the
Speaker 1: cone of uncertainty. Shows what the cone of uncertainty is. Instead,
Speaker 1: it's a plot of like I think about five different
Speaker 1: circles representing the next seventy two onto five days out forecasts,
Speaker 1: and it says, here's all the data we have, and
Speaker 1: we're crunching those numbers, and then we're comparing them to
Speaker 1: how accurate we were in the last five years for
Speaker 1: predicting hurricanes that were five years out. And then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you put that together. That forms the circle.
Speaker 1: And that five day out circle is always the biggest
Speaker 1: because it's hardest to predict weather patterns five days out.
Speaker 1: But what it looks like when you take those increasingly
Speaker 1: larger circles and connect them with the line is that
Speaker 1: it's forming a path. And really what it's showing is
Speaker 1: this is the potential distance between the track of the
Speaker 1: hurricane the center of the hurricane um and it could
Speaker 1: it could land anywhere in here, not the edges of it.
Speaker 1: We're talking just just the center. So every time hurricane
Speaker 1: season rolls around, people go and look up what the
Speaker 1: cone of uncertainty means, because it doesn't mean at all
Speaker 1: what you think it does. Hopefully, I've cleared it up
Speaker 1: for like two people, and I probably just confused the
Speaker 1: other million even further. Uh. The cool thing about those
Speaker 1: two is that they can be changed with a sharpie.
Speaker 1: That's right, it's really neat. Seen it done. All right,
Speaker 1: I think we should take a break maybe and come
Speaker 1: back and talk about these hurricane names history. How about that.
Speaker 1: Let's do it alright, So hurricane names are named after people. Now, Uh,
Speaker 1: this wasn't always the case, and I didn't know this.
Speaker 1: This is kind of cool, but for many hundreds of years,
Speaker 1: if you were in the West Indies, you would hear
Speaker 1: hurricanes named after the Catholic Saints Day on the day
Speaker 1: that that storm made landfall. So it would be like
Speaker 1: Hurricane San Felipe hit Puerto Rico in on September six.
Speaker 1: Another little fun fact is if another hurricane hits on
Speaker 1: that same day, which actually happened in one, they would
Speaker 1: name that the second, So that was Hurricane San Felipe
Speaker 1: the second. During World War two is when we started
Speaker 1: to give human names. Uh, and they were all masculine
Speaker 1: names though. Yeah, I can kind of followed that whole,
Speaker 1: like Bravo, whiskey tango thing. Yeah, how does that? I
Speaker 1: don't understand that. Well, it's like that, what do you mean?
Speaker 1: It's because those aren't names. I don't understand it either
Speaker 1: from what I saw. From what I saw, we didn't
Speaker 1: really start to use names in the West, um until
Speaker 1: I think the fifties or the seventies. So masculine names
Speaker 1: like Bravo and tango is just they're calling that a
Speaker 1: masculine name. I guess so, because I think we started
Speaker 1: using human names in the fifties and then um, we
Speaker 1: started using um, male and female names in the seventies.
Speaker 1: At first, it was first they were they were ladies, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: And they said, well, that's that's not cool to name
Speaker 1: that after woman. And and every time you guys show
Speaker 1: like the weather model, the forecast model, it's it's not
Speaker 1: a hurricane, it's a woman with rollers in her hair
Speaker 1: and a rolling pin yelling. It seems sexist. And everyone
Speaker 1: finally said, you know, you're right, that is sexist. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna start to alternate between men's names and women's names.
Speaker 1: And so at the beginning of every hurricane season, the
Speaker 1: the what is the World Meteorological Association, Yeah organization. Sorry.
Speaker 1: They release a list of all of the names that
Speaker 1: the Atlantic hurricane season could possibly have, and each name
Speaker 1: starts with a different letter A, B, C, D, and
Speaker 1: so on. Can I listen? This year's you got Arthur? Okay,
Speaker 1: Bertha nice crystal ball. Yeah, you got Dolly, you got Edward,
Speaker 1: you have Faye. And we should mention too that they use,
Speaker 1: you know, names from uh places all over the world now,
Speaker 1: which is great because hurricanes affected places all over the world.
Speaker 1: So you have Faith and you have Gunzalo, you have Hannah,
Speaker 1: you have uh. I don't know even know how you
Speaker 1: pronounced this. I S A I A S says no
Speaker 1: I S A I A S should say us, I
Speaker 1: say us. Then you've got Josephine, nice name. You've got Kyle.
Speaker 1: You've got Laura, You've got Marco. You've got Nana, sweet Nana. Uh.
Speaker 1: You've got Omar paul Lette, which I for some reason
Speaker 1: sounds funny to me, Hurricane paul. Uh. You've got Renee, Sally, Teddy,
Speaker 1: Vicky and finishing up because they don't have y or
Speaker 1: Z for some reason. Uh, Wilfred, that's a good one,
Speaker 1: Hurricane Wilfred sounds tough or an ex Yumi's predicted that
Speaker 1: Hurricane Nana is going to be a particularly bad one.
Speaker 1: And there's actually a longstanding myth that was supposedly, um uh,
Speaker 1: found to be correct by some study a few years
Speaker 1: back that people um don't respect the female names of hurricanes.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so there's this whole there's there's okay, I
Speaker 1: don't know what's wrong with me, I'm putting anything so
Speaker 1: terribly a day. But get this, there's this, this this
Speaker 1: urban legend that hurricanes that have women's names are the
Speaker 1: most destructive because people don't take them as seriously and
Speaker 1: they don't leave. So there's more people present to be
Speaker 1: killed when a hurricane lands for a woman named hurricane
Speaker 1: than a man named hurricane. And for a long time,
Speaker 1: for a long time, it was just this kind of
Speaker 1: old wives tale or something, and then this this study
Speaker 1: found in like I think two thousand fourteen or something
Speaker 1: like that that know this actually is true. Somebody sat
Speaker 1: down to crunch the number. And then finally, I think
Speaker 1: two years ago, they're like, this study was terrible, and
Speaker 1: that's absolutely not true. If we looked at the numbers
Speaker 1: two and that's just not the case. All right. Well,
Speaker 1: that's good to know, because that's the dumbest thing I've
Speaker 1: ever heard. It is kind of dumb, but it has
Speaker 1: like this weird kernel of truth to It's like a
Speaker 1: perfect urban legend, you know what I mean, because it's
Speaker 1: believable and who's who's ever gonna sit down and prove
Speaker 1: it one way or another? You know? Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, hold on one more thing, choke. While we're
Speaker 1: on names, Um, there are different names elsewhere in the world.
Speaker 1: So the names you just said those are for Atlantic hurricanes.
Speaker 1: In Australia they have their own set of names that
Speaker 1: they name cyclones, and then elsewhere in the world, there's
Speaker 1: thirteen member nations that name typhoons and some cyclones um
Speaker 1: countries like Bangladesh and India and Thailand. Each one submits
Speaker 1: thirteen names, and each list contains thirteen names from each
Speaker 1: one of those countries, So you have a hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty names to choose from every year. So depending on
Speaker 1: where you are in the world, whether patterns going to
Speaker 1: have a much more localized name than than what you
Speaker 1: would expect. That's right, And if a hurricane is really destructive,
Speaker 1: they will retire that. And I'm using air quotes there
Speaker 1: because they really just put it down for ten years.
Speaker 1: I don't know why they don't just don't do it forever,
Speaker 1: Like there should never be another, Like in eleven years,
Speaker 1: surely they won't have a Hurricane Katrina or an Andrew
Speaker 1: or a Harvey. Right, I don't know why would they.
Speaker 1: There's so many names. I don't know why bring it
Speaker 1: any name back. I have no idea. I think they're like,
Speaker 1: we have better things to do than come up with
Speaker 1: more stupid names, you know. Yeah, I just uh, I
Speaker 1: mean they obviously do that to avoid confusion. Uh. And
Speaker 1: once this storm is sort of this legendary storm, like
Speaker 1: a Katrina. Um, there's just no reason to ever name
Speaker 1: another one that. No, No, I'm with you, I agree, Um,
Speaker 1: if you you don't believe in luck, I just think
Speaker 1: it's not a good idea. It does seem like ten
Speaker 1: years is a little short. I could not see them
Speaker 1: doing another Katrina. That's just not gonna happen, you know. No,
Speaker 1: there's no way. So let's talk about climate change. You
Speaker 1: want to, Yeah, Well, before we talk about climate change,
Speaker 1: just quickly, as far as the historical record goes you know,
Speaker 1: there's always been hurricanes, and this will kind of segue
Speaker 1: nicely into climate change because things are getting worse. But
Speaker 1: there always have been hurricanes, even way back in the day.
Speaker 1: We didn't have great records, but there are um you
Speaker 1: can do research on, uh, like cave wall drawings and
Speaker 1: things like that seemed to indicate stuff like hurricanes. And
Speaker 1: I think there was an L s U team that
Speaker 1: studied thousands of years of lake bed evidence and they
Speaker 1: can tell that over I think like thirty four years,
Speaker 1: there have been about a dozen Category four or higher
Speaker 1: in that area, most of which were in the past
Speaker 1: thousand years. Yeah, it does, but I mean that's just
Speaker 1: for that area. Another one, there was a really big
Speaker 1: hurricane historically speaking, when Um Genghis Khan was going to
Speaker 1: invade Japan in twelve seventy four. The Mongols were invading Japan.
Speaker 1: There's a fleet that had something like a hundred or
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand people on board and they were really
Speaker 1: going to invade Japan, and Hurricane blew in and sunk
Speaker 1: the fleet, and the Japanese had a name for this
Speaker 1: incredible miraculous act of mercy by whatever God was watching
Speaker 1: over them. Uh. They named it divine Wind. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that actually would come into term into use later on
Speaker 1: in World War Two because divine wind in Japanese is
Speaker 1: kamakassi kamakazi. Yeah, and that's a chapter in our book, right.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad I was teeing you up. I was like,
Speaker 1: come on, Chuck, I didn't know if we could reveal that,
Speaker 1: But yeah, we got a book coming out this fall,
Speaker 1: and uh, you can preorder it now, plug plug plug.
Speaker 1: And there's a great, great chapter on kama kazee in there.
Speaker 1: The whole thing is just great from top to bottom. Chuck.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering when will be allowed to do some of
Speaker 1: those chapters as podcast episodes if ever, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it gives us that permission. I
Speaker 1: think we give ourselves that permission, okay, us, okay, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe a couple of years after it's out, we can
Speaker 1: start start doling those out a little bit, harvesting it
Speaker 1: for parts. Sure, that's another way to put it, right.
Speaker 1: They could have another life. So um, well, I mean
Speaker 1: the stuff that we talk about, they're not like necessarily
Speaker 1: entire podcast episodes. Like there there's definitely more to be
Speaker 1: said about it. So I think we can take any
Speaker 1: single one of those chapters and turn it into a
Speaker 1: podcast episode. So climate change, here's a startling statistics. Since
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, the number of Cat five and Cat
Speaker 1: for storms has just about doubled, and to the casual
Speaker 1: observer a couple of things, it seems like they're getting
Speaker 1: were and more frequent. And you don't have to be
Speaker 1: a genius to figure out if you need warm water
Speaker 1: to make a hurricane, and ocean waters are warming due
Speaker 1: to climate change, then you're gonna have more frequent and
Speaker 1: more severe storms, right or now? Yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 1: the that's how logic goes, and they basically think that's
Speaker 1: a given that we're going to have more frequent and
Speaker 1: more powerful storms. But the the at least according to
Speaker 1: Woods Whole Ocean of Graphic Institute, there are plenty of
Speaker 1: X factors left that it's not like we just definitively
Speaker 1: understand how bad hurricanes are gonna be or how many
Speaker 1: more we're gonna have, because remember, the surface water has
Speaker 1: to reach down about a hundred and fifty feet for
Speaker 1: a hurricane to form. And one of the big questions
Speaker 1: is if the if there is global warming going on
Speaker 1: and it's heating the ocean. How deep is it heating
Speaker 1: the ocean? Because if if that water, that warm water,
Speaker 1: went beyond a hundred fifty feet, then hurricanes should ostensibly
Speaker 1: be able to become bigger and bigger. And similarly, if
Speaker 1: that the surface temperature of the ocean is rising, then
Speaker 1: that just means more evaporating water, which is the key
Speaker 1: that's the fuel to any hurricane. Is that moist evaporating
Speaker 1: water that's rising. That the more you have of that,
Speaker 1: the bigger amount more powerful as storm can be. The
Speaker 1: more energy there is for the storm to use too,
Speaker 1: to become big and huge and destructive. The question is
Speaker 1: you know, just how bad is it going to be?
Speaker 1: But there does seem to be just general consensus that yes,
Speaker 1: climate change is happening and it's going to result in
Speaker 1: in worse hurricanes. And it's I mean, already there were
Speaker 1: two named storms this year in the Atlantic before hurricane
Speaker 1: season even started. So they think hurricane season is gonna
Speaker 1: last longer. Uh, it's gonna start earlier and last longer.
Speaker 1: There's going to be more of them, They're probably going
Speaker 1: to be more destructive. There's something else that I thought
Speaker 1: was Really interesting though, too, is that um, the uh,
Speaker 1: this particular year may not be as bad as it
Speaker 1: would have been otherwise. It was supposed to be really
Speaker 1: bad because of the warm sea levels. Um, because it
Speaker 1: started earlier, and because it's a lat Ninja year, which
Speaker 1: actually pushes hurricanes back out to sea eventually. Um. Because
Speaker 1: there's a lat Ninja, those those breezes are kind of stilled,
Speaker 1: comparatively speaking, so that her any hurricanes that do develop
Speaker 1: are just gonna sit on land like it did, like
Speaker 1: Dorian did the Bahamas a year or so ago. It
Speaker 1: just sat on the Bahamas for forty eight hours. That's
Speaker 1: not supposed to happen. And they were worried that that's
Speaker 1: going to happen because this is a lat Ninia year.
Speaker 1: But you know the Saharan dust storms that's going on,
Speaker 1: they think that that's actually drying the air and preventing
Speaker 1: hurricanes from forming. Right now, the question is how long
Speaker 1: that will last. Well, it lasts through the whole hurricane season,
Speaker 1: or will that eventually stall and hurricanes will come raging
Speaker 1: through in August and September? Who knows. Wow, so there's
Speaker 1: hurricanes everybody, that's right. I think we're going to release
Speaker 1: a bonus add on someday into our feed where I
Speaker 1: try again to explain hurricanes and the cone of uncertainty.
Speaker 1: This stuff drives me nuts. Man, Yeah, you're ready, I'm ready. Well, obviously,
Speaker 1: since we're done talking about hurricanes, that means it's time
Speaker 1: for listener mail. I'm gonna call this the other side
Speaker 1: of the coin. We always like to keep things fair
Speaker 1: and balance here, right, right, Hey, guys discovered your show
Speaker 1: about two years ago and wondered, where have you been
Speaker 1: on my life? I love the show. Don't change a
Speaker 1: thing and the Robber Barons episode. He said that conservatives,
Speaker 1: Josh said, Conservatives say people aren't perfect. We can never
Speaker 1: have a perfect society, so let people do whatever they want.
Speaker 1: That's kind of right, but it's oper simplified in their
Speaker 1: for misleading. Uh in our view, Uh, and I take it.
Speaker 1: Tim is a conservative. He says, since humans are all corrupt,
Speaker 1: obviously some more than others, no government can be uncorrupt
Speaker 1: since it's run by people. Therefore, we should limit the
Speaker 1: power of government and give people more freedom. Since people
Speaker 1: will generally act in their own best interests, let them
Speaker 1: decide how they want to spend their money. Who they
Speaker 1: work for, and who they hire and fire. As long
Speaker 1: as the government protects people's basic rights from others, we
Speaker 1: will have a pretty good society. I've always been conflicted
Speaker 1: about anti monopoly laws, but the longer I live, the
Speaker 1: more I think they're a good thing, because we should
Speaker 1: limit the power of large companies, just as we limit
Speaker 1: the power of the government, since those companies are also
Speaker 1: run by corrupt people. Capitalism says, of course you're selfish,
Speaker 1: and so am I, So if you want my money,
Speaker 1: you have to give me some kind of product or
Speaker 1: service that makes my life better. Again, we can never
Speaker 1: have a perfect society, but it would be far worse
Speaker 1: if the government has too much power to decide how
Speaker 1: we spend our money, because again, they are corrupt. Also,
Speaker 1: thanks for all the great research and the super fun
Speaker 1: way you in it. Keep it up. That is Tim
Speaker 1: in Minnesota. That's pretty awesome. Thanks a lot, Tim, that
Speaker 1: was a really great email. Um well, I'm a conservative
Speaker 1: now Wow. All right, I'm pretty weak willed as it is.
Speaker 1: Um No, but Tim, that was great. Thank you for
Speaker 1: explaining it further because I definitely knew I was oversimplifying
Speaker 1: things and to just kind of have the tea's crossing
Speaker 1: the eyes dotted. That's very helpful. We're gonna have to
Speaker 1: bring you on to explain hurricanes one day. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that was a better email than a lot of the
Speaker 1: blowback we got, which wasn't so instructive and more just like, uh,
Speaker 1: you guys just reduced that and it's not true blame.
Speaker 1: I guess you can put in uh. Well, if you
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with this, like Tim didn't
Speaker 1: just be a champion hero, you can do that. You
Speaker 1: can send us an email to Stuff podcast and i
Speaker 1: heart radio dot com. Stuff you should know it is
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