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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's

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Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you

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Speaker 2: should know. It's a little bit of a jazzy Orth

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Speaker 2: Science edition.

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Speaker 1: I think, yeah, And I mean, we might as well

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Speaker 1: get into it because I just told Jerry the name

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Speaker 1: of this was Sultan Lake. And even though it's called

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Speaker 1: the Salton Sea, right, which is a it's an inland

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Speaker 1: lake in Imperial and Coachella Valleys and Riverside and Imperial

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Speaker 1: County in California, southern California. But and I said, it's

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Speaker 1: not really a sea, and you said it's an endless sea.

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Speaker 1: Then he said save it.

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Speaker 2: And said this is gold. I didn't say save it

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Speaker 2: like that.

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Speaker 1: Well, no, I mean, I'm not gonna do my Josh impression.

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Speaker 2: You just did a really mean Josh impression.

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Speaker 1: Save it? No, no, no, I guess we need to

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Speaker 1: determine this. Why do they call it a sea?

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Speaker 2: I mean it's an inland sea. I don't know. I

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Speaker 2: just know that most people call it that. I failed

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Speaker 2: to go look up whether it is a sea or lake.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think it has any outlet to

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Speaker 1: the ocean anymore.

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Speaker 2: Right, No, not anymore. We're going to talk about that.

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Speaker 1: Well, that makes it a lake, save it. I think

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Speaker 1: that's see, I nailed it. I think that's the difference

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Speaker 1: between a sea and a lake. I think a lake

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Speaker 1: has no outlet to the ocean and a sea does. Oh,

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Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken, I might be wrong about that.

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Speaker 1: I didn't look it up.

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Speaker 2: But I think California has a lot of work to do.

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Speaker 2: They need to go rewrite all their pamphlets and update

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Speaker 2: their websites and all that stuff. It's now the Saltan Lake.

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Speaker 1: Well, now all their pamphlets just say don't even bother

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Speaker 1: coming here, right to the Sultan Sea. That is not

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Speaker 1: a California.

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Speaker 2: I love California exactly. And the reason that they would

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Speaker 2: have pamphlets that say don't come here is because the

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Speaker 2: Salt and Sea is a genuine an ecological disaster. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: human made it every step of the way. And it's

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Speaker 2: got a really interesting history too. It's just a good

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Speaker 2: all around topic if you ask me. Plus, it was

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Speaker 2: a Soso movie starring Val Kilmer back in the you know,

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Speaker 2: late nineties or early two thousands.

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Speaker 1: I think it was early two thousands. It was okay,

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Speaker 1: I saw it.

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Speaker 2: The extra supporting character was meth.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it was very messy. Yeah, I've been here, by

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Speaker 1: the way, I was wondering that. Yeah. On on my

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Speaker 1: big out West trip many years ago after college, where

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Speaker 1: I spent several months driving around with my best friend Brett,

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Speaker 1: we went through the Salt and Sea and it wasn't

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Speaker 1: great back then. Imagine it's well, it sounds like it's

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Speaker 1: even worse now. But when did we talk about this before?

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Speaker 1: Was it desertification?

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Speaker 2: Oh? Maybe, because I know we've talked about that doesn't

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Speaker 2: ring a bell, but I mean so much.

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Speaker 1: So that I was convinced we did a whole upisode.

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Speaker 1: But it could have been one of our ill can

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Speaker 1: see videos that we used to do.

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Speaker 2: That's possible too, because I think I could see us

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Speaker 2: taking the angle that there were ghost towns there.

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Speaker 1: Oh, okay, you know ghost towns there are.

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Speaker 2: There's a lot of ghost towns there is. We'll see

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Speaker 2: the area was once quite developed, and for good reasons. Again,

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Speaker 2: as we'll see, people largely abandoned this area. But let's

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Speaker 2: talk about how the Salt and Sea even came to be,

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Speaker 2: because that is an interesting story in and of itself.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it totally is. It's in the Salton Basin and

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Speaker 1: that's Sa L t O N by the way, right,

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Speaker 1: and that is a very large trough, just sort of

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Speaker 1: a natural geological trough that led into at one point

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Speaker 1: the Gulf of California. But it was there were other

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Speaker 1: seas before this sea or lakes, if you want to

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Speaker 1: go that route.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. From the oldest I saw is that we have

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Speaker 2: geological evidence of inland seas or lakes depending on your definition,

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Speaker 2: going back at least forty thousand years, and that it

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Speaker 2: was almost cyclical. There'd be a lake that was there

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Speaker 2: for a few hundred years and it would dry up

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Speaker 2: or flow out to the Gulf of California, and then

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Speaker 2: it would happen again a couple centuries later. And the

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Speaker 2: thing that made it happen was the Colorado River, which

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Speaker 2: flows to the east along the border of California, Nevada

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Speaker 2: and California and Arizona down into I guess the Gulf

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Speaker 2: of California, right.

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Speaker 1: Are you asking me?

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Speaker 2: I think so.

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Speaker 1: So.

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Speaker 2: That would make the Colorado River a sea, but it

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Speaker 2: flows into there and every once in a while there's

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Speaker 2: a lot of snow melt, there's a lot of rain,

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Speaker 2: and the Colorado River will flood its bank so much

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Speaker 2: that a bunch of it gets diverted into the Saltan basin,

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Speaker 2: forming one of the salt and seas.

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Speaker 1: Over time, Yeah, for a while, Like you said, you know,

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Speaker 1: it could be there for a while, and eventually it's

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Speaker 1: on the middle of the desert, so eventually it's going

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Speaker 1: to evaporate, right. But as the river flowed in there,

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Speaker 1: it carried a lot of silts with it, and eventually

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Speaker 1: that silt gummed up the outlet so it couldn't get anywhere,

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Speaker 1: So there was a natural dam that was formed. And

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Speaker 1: you know, it was, like you said, it was a

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Speaker 1: lake for a long time. Sometimes it was a saltwater lake.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes the heat would dry it out and evaporate it

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Speaker 1: and it would just become a dry bed once again.

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Speaker 1: And it was just kind of weird geological cyclelog I mean,

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Speaker 1: I'm sure this has happened elsewhere, but it seems particularly

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Speaker 1: noteworthy for this area.

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Speaker 2: It does. It seems kind of unique, you know, yeah,

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Speaker 2: I think so. There's also one of these lakes or seas.

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Speaker 2: You'll like this one because they call it a lake

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Speaker 2: Lake Kahuila, which formed about thirteen hundred years ago as

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Speaker 2: well as geologists can tell, and it stuck around for

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Speaker 2: hundreds of years, possibly up into the fifteen hundreds, and

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Speaker 2: at one point in the fifteen hundreds it flooded, so

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Speaker 2: it was already there, and it grew to about twenty

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Speaker 2: six times the size of the Sultan Sea. Oh wow,

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Speaker 2: which in and of itself that sounds pretty impressive. But

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Speaker 2: I came up with a few comparisons for some of

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Speaker 2: our listeners around the world. If I may sure, for

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Speaker 2: our Northern listeners, that is larger than the size of

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Speaker 2: Lake Erie.

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Speaker 1: Okay.

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Speaker 2: For our Canadian listeners, it's four times larger than the

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Speaker 2: capital city of Ottawa. For European listeners, that's larger than Belgium.

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Speaker 1: Okay.

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Speaker 2: In the UK, that's bigger than Wales. In Australia, that's

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Speaker 2: two times the greater Sydney metro area. And for our

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Speaker 2: friends in California, that's twenty six times the size of

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Speaker 2: the Sultan Sea.

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Speaker 1: Wow, you did your homework, I did. Is there a

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Speaker 1: program to use, like just like Josh converts dot com?

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Speaker 2: There there are?

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: I make like twelve dollars a month on webed that's great. No,

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Speaker 2: there's there's websites that says like they're called like the

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Speaker 2: size of or something like that. So usually it's type

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Speaker 2: it's been what's the size of ten thousand square miles?

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Speaker 2: Which is what that would be?

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Speaker 1: Is a landing page? Just a banana? Yeah, it starts

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Speaker 1: from there.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Well where did that come from? Using a banana

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Speaker 2: for scale?

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Speaker 1: Do you know?

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Speaker 2: Oh?

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I never I mean, who starts any

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Speaker 1: of these things?

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Speaker 2: Okay, I didn't know if it was something that you

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Speaker 2: had kind of brought up or something. Because I know

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Speaker 2: this stuff. You should know. Army is crazy for that.

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Speaker 1: No, it's just an internet thing, you know. Okay, So

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Speaker 1: Ron's doing all of that stuff.

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Speaker 2: Get all Ron. He comes up with the best memes.

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Speaker 1: All right. So that was the cycle for thousands of years.

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Speaker 1: Depositing that silt. One of the byproducts of that is

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Speaker 1: it made that soil very rich and stuff could really

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Speaker 1: grow on it if it rained ever, which it doesn't.

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Speaker 1: So that was a problem, and irrigation's going to solve

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Speaker 1: that problem. So in the early nineteen hundreds, the Imperial

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Speaker 1: Canal was built to say, hey, let's divert some of

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Speaker 1: that Colorado River to so we can have drinking water,

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Speaker 1: and so we can irrigate this rich, rich soil that

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Speaker 1: lies beneath our feet. And they completed it, and you know,

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Speaker 1: it was pretty good, but that same silt is going

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Speaker 1: to keep clogging up even you know, kind of any

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Speaker 1: moving body of water, and that eventually happened to the canal,

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Speaker 1: like in a bad way, not too long after they opened.

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Speaker 2: It, No, just in a couple of years, and this

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Speaker 2: one clog was so bad that they were like, we're

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Speaker 2: not going to get rid of this anytime soon. So

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Speaker 2: they dug a bypass around it, you know, yeah, which

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Speaker 2: makes sense, it's smart, and they just expected it to

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Speaker 2: last like a couple of months until they cleaned that

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Speaker 2: silt deposit out and could go back to the original canal.

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Speaker 2: The problem was, because they thought it was going to

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Speaker 2: be temporary, they didn't install the proper headgates. Headgates control

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Speaker 2: the flow of water in a canal, so that means

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Speaker 2: that the water in that bypass was literally out of control.

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Speaker 2: Which was fine. They dug it well enough that under

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Speaker 2: normal circumstances, as the water was flowing normally, But the

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Speaker 2: year after they dug that bypass, it stayed around longer

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Speaker 2: than expected, and the year after there were some genuinely

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Speaker 2: abnormal circumstances that caused a huge problem for everybody.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it rained a lot, a big rainy season and

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Speaker 1: then you know, snow melt and the rockies can always

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Speaker 1: be a problem if it was extra, and that year

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Speaker 1: it was extra. Coinciding with those rains, the Colorado River

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Speaker 1: swoll up again and it, you know, did what water does.

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Speaker 1: It goes down river in a pretty impactful way and

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Speaker 1: really overwhelmed that temporary channel that they were using to

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Speaker 1: divert around the cloud Canal. It carved it. It just

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Speaker 1: made it bigger and deeper, and eventually it started overflowing

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Speaker 1: into that salt and sink and just became one big

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Speaker 1: body of water.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So essentially Colorado River decided I'll go this way instead,

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Speaker 2: So it actually changed its course from the the way

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Speaker 2: that it had been going for millennia to this way

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Speaker 2: directly into the salt and sea, and it started flowing

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Speaker 2: so fast that ninety thousand cubic feet of water per

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Speaker 2: second was flowing into the salt and sea. Right That

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Speaker 2: is the size of an Olympic sized pool. That much

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Speaker 2: water flowing in every second.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and for our friends in the north, that's an

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Speaker 1: Olympic size pool, right, and I'm not going to keep.

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Speaker 2: Going, Well, what about our friends who like McDonald's.

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Speaker 1: Oh, I mean, if you did a big mac conversion,

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Speaker 1: that's really going the extra mile.

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Speaker 2: It is exactly two million, two hundred and ninety five thousand,

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Speaker 2: nine hundred and eighteen big macs all flowing into the

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Speaker 2: salt and sea per second.

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Speaker 1: So delicious.

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Speaker 2: It does seem delicious, But imagine them all kind of

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Speaker 2: flowing at once and smacking into another probably get kind

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Speaker 2: of gross.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty gross. So, I mean that happened for a

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Speaker 1: couple of years, and they tried to redirect the river.

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Speaker 1: It was a pretty expensive proposition. It was a pretty

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Speaker 1: frantic thing. The US government got involved, the Southern Pacific

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Speaker 1: Railroad got involved. They fully sealed it in nineteen oh seven.

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Speaker 1: But that's like what three years later, and you know,

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Speaker 1: by that point it's too late. They're like, all, right, now,

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Speaker 1: we got a four hundred square mile inland sea or lake,

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Speaker 1: depending on who's podcasting many years from now, right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. The way that they sealed it, the Union Pacific

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Speaker 2: Railroad because their lines were threatened. They're like, we better

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Speaker 2: do something because these government yokels have no idea what

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Speaker 2: to do, and so apparently it took two They built

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Speaker 2: a trestle across the river to install a dam made

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Speaker 2: of twenty fifty seven car loads of rock, two hundred

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Speaker 2: and twenty one car loads of gravel, and two hundred

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Speaker 2: and three carloads of clay, all dumped into one spot

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Speaker 2: to finally fill that breach. That's what it took. That's

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Speaker 2: how big of a breach it was?

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Speaker 1: How many big banks A lot?

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Speaker 2: I didn't do that one. Sorry, it's okayoud we take

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Speaker 2: a break now?

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Speaker 1: Or is that a should we? It seems like a

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Speaker 1: good time for a break.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, the Sultan Sea is now there, the breach has

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Speaker 2: been sealed, and people are saying, what the heck are

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Speaker 2: we gonna do with this?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we're gonna water ski eventually. So we'll come back

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Speaker 1: and talk about that right after.

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Speaker 2: This learning stuff from Josh stuff you shoult No.

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Speaker 1: Lately I've been learning some stop about insomnia or aluminia.

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Speaker 1: How about the one on border like disorder?

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Speaker 2: That are your order?

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Speaker 1: That one before?

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Speaker 2: But it was so nice, honest, Why except everybody listen.

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Speaker 1: Up shot, stop stop.

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Speaker 2: Stop.

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Speaker 1: All right. So when we last left you, human experimentation

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Speaker 1: and sort of error and rain and snow melt caused

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Speaker 1: a four hundred square mile almost thirty five mile long

257
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Speaker 1: and fifteen mile wide, about thirty foot deep on average

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Speaker 1: lake to form in the middle of the California Desert

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Speaker 1: because it's where it was. Eventually, if humankind had not

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Speaker 1: intruded once again, it probably would have eventually just completely

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Speaker 1: evaporate like it had been doing for millennia. But like

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Speaker 1: we mentioned, that, soil is good stuff. So they started

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Speaker 1: to build, you know, farmland out there and irrigate that land.

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Speaker 1: And what do you do when you irrigate stuff, You

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Speaker 1: got to have runoff. And so they're running this irrigation

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Speaker 1: water off into the lake, which basically it's like, hey,

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Speaker 1: we're putting at least as much water as you're evaporating,

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Speaker 1: so you're not going anywhere.

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Speaker 2: No, Yeah, that's right. So it stabilized the lake in Deafen,

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Speaker 2: just the agricultural run off. One of the other things

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Speaker 2: that the other impacts that this had because they started

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Speaker 2: doing that in the twenties, is that agricultural runoff as

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Speaker 2: chalk full of salt, which I didn't realize, but this

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Speaker 2: irrigation produces a lot of salt, and that stuff was

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Speaker 2: flowing right into the Saltan and it turned it salty. Today,

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Speaker 2: I saw anywhere between one third or fifty percent more

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Speaker 2: salty than the Pacific Ocean. The salt and Sea has

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Speaker 2: become because of all that introduction. So it started freshwater,

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Speaker 2: and then because of agricultural runoff, it turned into a

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Speaker 2: salt water inland sea slash lake.

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Speaker 1: That's right. And because it's located along the Pacific Flyway,

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Speaker 1: which is a great migratory bird route, the birds are like, hey,

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Speaker 1: this is great. Now there's water here. The locals were like,

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Speaker 1: we should put some fish in here, so they stocked

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Speaker 1: it with tilapia, a lot of tilapia and sportfish for

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Speaker 1: sport fishing, and of course that the birds love that

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Speaker 1: even more. So, all of a sudden, by the nineteen thirties,

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Speaker 1: you have a sort of a brand new wildlife refuge forming,

289
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Speaker 1: such that the US Fish and Wildlife Service even created

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Speaker 1: the Saltan Sea Wildlife Refuge to protect all the stuff

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Speaker 1: that was there. Now.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so when the Sultan Sea first formed, everybody's like,

293
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Speaker 2: this is actually kind of great. This is a mistake

294
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Speaker 2: that turned really wonderful for everybody. We turned river water

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Speaker 2: into lemonade. In other words, that's right. So there are

296
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Speaker 2: some other weird things that didn't make it, but that

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Speaker 2: were introduced flamingos, which I guess aren't that weird. But

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Speaker 2: a guy introduced sea lions too at one point, and

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Speaker 2: they were accused of stealing pigs in the area. But

300
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Speaker 2: the guy who introduced sea lions in flamingos, he had

301
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Speaker 2: a legendary restaurant out on an island in the middle

302
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Speaker 2: of the Salton Sea called Mullet Island, which is actually

303
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Speaker 2: just sitting atop a dormant volcano. It's very important to

304
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Speaker 2: remember this for later. It's a dormant but not extinct volcano.

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Speaker 2: It's just kind of sitting there, chilling, waiting to go up.

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Speaker 1: That's right. And you know, once you have flamingos, you're

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Speaker 1: going to have people because people want to go see

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Speaker 1: this flamingos. So by the nineteen fifties, developers had come

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Speaker 1: along and turned it into what they called the California

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Speaker 1: Riviera or the Saltan Riviera or Palm Springs by the Sea,

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Speaker 1: and it's exactly what you think. It's tiki bars, it's

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Speaker 1: restaurants had a very Palm springsy vibe, like you know,

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Speaker 1: Elvis performed there, Frank Sinatra performed there. They had you know,

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Speaker 1: I wasn't kidding about the water skiing. They people yachted,

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Speaker 1: people swam. It was just a big recreation area out

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Speaker 1: there in the middle of the desert in you know,

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Speaker 1: southern California. They were like, yeah, we'll take another one

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Speaker 1: of these. We got plenty of people around, right, and

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Speaker 1: Palm Springs gets a little crowded, So now we have

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Speaker 1: this beautiful Inland Sea Lake. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: People started building vacation homes there. There were very famous

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Speaker 2: speedboat races that were held there every year. At one

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Speaker 2: point point, some developers sunk two million dollars in nineteen

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Speaker 2: sixty money into building the North Shore Beach and Yacht Club,

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Speaker 2: which became basically the crown jewel of the Salton Sea area.

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Speaker 2: There were postcards that said greetings from the Salton Sea.

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Speaker 2: There was a Bombay Beach resident, Who's.

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Speaker 1: Going to get postcards?

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Speaker 2: They had postcards?

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Speaker 1: Swear they did. They sell shotglasses.

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Speaker 2: I yes, there was a Spencer's Gifts on the Sultan

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Speaker 2: Sea in the sixties. All right, you could also get

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Speaker 2: a Bitch and Grateful Dead poster and a LaToya Jackson

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Speaker 2: and Lingerie poster.

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Speaker 1: Right is Shenna Lambeau.

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Speaker 2: I know that's Garfield.

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Speaker 1: Okay.

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Speaker 2: So there was this Bombay Beach resident, which is one

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Speaker 2: of the little party towns on the Saltan Sea, and

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Speaker 2: it's still there. There's something like three hundred and fifty

341
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Speaker 2: people that lived there. But he said, back in the

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Speaker 2: day it was like a spring Break party all the time.

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Speaker 2: The problem was the Salton Sea. As much fun as

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Speaker 2: people were having on it, it was this ticking environmental

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00:18:02,800 --> 00:18:06,640
Speaker 2: time bomb just growing underneath their water skis essentially day

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Speaker 2: by day. And so finally in around the seventies it

347
00:18:09,880 --> 00:18:13,280
Speaker 2: became clear that the salt and seas glitz was starting

348
00:18:13,280 --> 00:18:17,600
Speaker 2: to weih off and there was rotten big max underneath.

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Speaker 1: Do you know I thought you were going to lead

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Speaker 1: it in with when you said the problem is I

351
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Speaker 1: thought you were going to say, is it spring break

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Speaker 1: is not meant to last forever?

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Speaker 2: Oh, that's a great one. Let's go back and edit

354
00:18:28,280 --> 00:18:31,680
Speaker 2: that in just a note. Okay, there'll be no context,

355
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Speaker 2: You'll just add it in and then we'll leave the

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Speaker 2: part where you suggested into I agree.

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Speaker 1: Uh yeah, so yeah, things will go downhill pretty quickly.

358
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Speaker 1: You know. I hope we've hammered home enough that this

359
00:18:41,920 --> 00:18:44,400
Speaker 1: thing just sort of appeared because of people, and it's

360
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Speaker 1: out in the middle of the desert and it's not

361
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Speaker 1: supposed it wasn't supposed to be there really, so obviously

362
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Speaker 1: it's not going to rain, so that's not going to

363
00:18:52,320 --> 00:18:54,840
Speaker 1: fill that thing back up. They had that agricultural runoff

364
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Speaker 1: for many years, but as we'll see, that would end

365
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Speaker 1: up being a big part of the problem. Yeahments would flood,

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Speaker 1: you know, because they were building, you know, lakeside properties

367
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Speaker 1: and stuff like that. So you know, whenever you try

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00:19:09,640 --> 00:19:11,920
Speaker 1: to intrude I feel like and build a big natural

369
00:19:11,960 --> 00:19:14,360
Speaker 1: thing out where there probably wasn't supposed to be one.

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Speaker 1: I feel like, it usually goes south like this in

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Speaker 1: some way.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it hubris. Yeah, So yeah, that runoff would sometimes

373
00:19:21,800 --> 00:19:23,840
Speaker 2: flood the lake. There'd be so much of it, and

374
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Speaker 2: those developments would flood. Like you were saying, the other

375
00:19:27,080 --> 00:19:29,480
Speaker 2: problem with the runoff is that it not just salt.

376
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Speaker 2: It brings lots of pesticides and fertilizers with it. And

377
00:19:33,080 --> 00:19:35,600
Speaker 2: remember that there was no outlet for this lake, which

378
00:19:35,640 --> 00:19:37,680
Speaker 2: made it a lake in the first place, so all

379
00:19:37,720 --> 00:19:41,520
Speaker 2: of this toxic water didn't have anywhere to go, right,

380
00:19:41,600 --> 00:19:45,159
Speaker 2: it just stayed in the lake. Yeah, And anytime you

381
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Speaker 2: have a lot of fertilizers introduced into a body of water,

382
00:19:49,480 --> 00:19:52,840
Speaker 2: especially a warm one, you get algae blooms. You also

383
00:19:52,840 --> 00:19:57,840
Speaker 2: get bacteria blooms. And when the algae decays, the microbes

384
00:19:57,840 --> 00:20:00,320
Speaker 2: that eat it also suck up a lot of the

385
00:20:00,359 --> 00:20:03,119
Speaker 2: oxygen in the water, and that kills off all the

386
00:20:03,119 --> 00:20:06,320
Speaker 2: stuff that needs that oxygen, So it creates dead zones.

387
00:20:07,200 --> 00:20:11,399
Speaker 2: And then even worse that bacteria that blooms, some kinds

388
00:20:11,440 --> 00:20:15,000
Speaker 2: of it actually produce toxins that can do things like

389
00:20:15,160 --> 00:20:20,320
Speaker 2: damage humans livers or their DNA or cause respiratory failure.

390
00:20:20,720 --> 00:20:23,720
Speaker 2: So all this stuff is starting to like happen in

391
00:20:23,800 --> 00:20:27,399
Speaker 2: the Sultan Sea starting in the seventies and eighties, and

392
00:20:27,560 --> 00:20:30,720
Speaker 2: it's it's just becoming clear that there's problems that are

393
00:20:30,760 --> 00:20:34,080
Speaker 2: starting to brew, like literally brewing within the salt and sea.

394
00:20:34,640 --> 00:20:38,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's called utrification. And there are some pretty staggering

395
00:20:38,880 --> 00:20:41,119
Speaker 1: and very sad statistics that we're going to kind of

396
00:20:41,200 --> 00:20:43,440
Speaker 1: run through here as far as the die off, because

397
00:20:45,080 --> 00:20:47,240
Speaker 1: you know, the fish die off, and then eventually because

398
00:20:47,240 --> 00:20:49,600
Speaker 1: of the fish die off, the bird die off was

399
00:20:49,640 --> 00:20:54,040
Speaker 1: really massive. This one is fairly staggering. Just over a

400
00:20:54,080 --> 00:20:57,280
Speaker 1: five month period from December ninety one to April ninety two,

401
00:20:57,359 --> 00:21:01,760
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty thousand little small waterbirds are called

402
00:21:01,880 --> 00:21:03,200
Speaker 1: what are those eared grebs?

403
00:21:04,119 --> 00:21:05,399
Speaker 2: Yeah?

404
00:21:05,480 --> 00:21:07,400
Speaker 1: Is that? What was that? How we're pronouncing that?

405
00:21:07,440 --> 00:21:10,000
Speaker 2: I was gonna say grevi's, but I think you nailed it.

406
00:21:10,560 --> 00:21:12,520
Speaker 1: I'm not really sure, but they're little small waterbirds. And

407
00:21:12,560 --> 00:21:14,959
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty thousand them died over five months.

408
00:21:15,040 --> 00:21:15,280
Speaker 2: Wow.

409
00:21:15,320 --> 00:21:19,480
Speaker 1: On the Saltan Sea. Another twenty thousand and ninety four

410
00:21:21,080 --> 00:21:25,200
Speaker 1: ten thousand white and brown pelicans died out in nineteen

411
00:21:25,280 --> 00:21:29,120
Speaker 1: ninety six, about ten thousand other fish eating birds. And

412
00:21:29,240 --> 00:21:31,199
Speaker 1: this is the really sad one. Even though it was

413
00:21:31,280 --> 00:21:33,560
Speaker 1: I say, only a thousand, that's a lot, but they

414
00:21:33,560 --> 00:21:37,080
Speaker 1: were endangered brown pelicans and apparently that was the largest

415
00:21:37,119 --> 00:21:41,080
Speaker 1: sort of single die off of an endangered species to

416
00:21:41,119 --> 00:21:41,680
Speaker 1: ever happen.

417
00:21:41,880 --> 00:21:44,359
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and all this is going down on the

418
00:21:44,359 --> 00:21:45,280
Speaker 2: Saltan Sea.

419
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Speaker 1: Or the Telapia. Man, how about that stat?

420
00:21:47,600 --> 00:21:50,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, the most eye popping stat that I've found is

421
00:21:50,800 --> 00:21:56,399
Speaker 2: that eight million, eight million tilapia died in one single

422
00:21:56,520 --> 00:21:59,720
Speaker 2: day in August of nineteen ninety nine.

423
00:22:00,440 --> 00:22:03,199
Speaker 1: How did they figure that, you know, I don't know.

424
00:22:03,240 --> 00:22:05,560
Speaker 2: They must have counted one in like a square foot

425
00:22:05,560 --> 00:22:08,359
Speaker 2: and then multiplied it by a big mash or something.

426
00:22:08,800 --> 00:22:15,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, by this case fish tacos. Maybe that was probably insensitive.

427
00:22:16,320 --> 00:22:17,400
Speaker 2: What fish tacos?

428
00:22:17,680 --> 00:22:19,719
Speaker 1: Well, I mean this is good for I don't eat

429
00:22:19,760 --> 00:22:21,560
Speaker 1: telapia much, but it's pretty good for a fish taco.

430
00:22:21,640 --> 00:22:23,160
Speaker 2: Aren't they the rats of the sea?

431
00:22:23,720 --> 00:22:26,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so. I used to eat it more.

432
00:22:26,800 --> 00:22:31,720
Speaker 2: I'll eat tilapia. I'm not that fancy. Oh oh yeah, yeah,

433
00:22:31,960 --> 00:22:33,640
Speaker 2: I'll eat tilapia right in front of you.

434
00:22:34,760 --> 00:22:38,840
Speaker 1: Well, I'll be dining on my Chilean sea bass or

435
00:22:38,880 --> 00:22:40,920
Speaker 1: what was that something toothfish? Right?

436
00:22:40,960 --> 00:22:46,159
Speaker 2: Did I forgot Patagonia? That's the real name for sea bass,

437
00:22:46,640 --> 00:22:50,080
Speaker 2: that's right, suckers. So yes, again, I think it's worth

438
00:22:50,359 --> 00:22:53,439
Speaker 2: restating eight million tilapia died in a single day in

439
00:22:53,520 --> 00:22:57,080
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine. The previous record before that had been

440
00:22:57,160 --> 00:23:00,800
Speaker 2: set the summer prior, and that was five hundred thousand

441
00:23:00,880 --> 00:23:03,200
Speaker 2: that died on a single day. So clearly things are

442
00:23:03,240 --> 00:23:06,960
Speaker 2: getting worse by the year. At the Sultan's Sea by

443
00:23:07,000 --> 00:23:09,000
Speaker 2: the time the nineties roll around.

444
00:23:09,400 --> 00:23:12,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so I mean they were running incinerators around

445
00:23:12,520 --> 00:23:15,399
Speaker 1: the clock around town because you know, the smell of

446
00:23:15,400 --> 00:23:18,960
Speaker 1: fish carcass was everywhere, and you had all these very

447
00:23:19,000 --> 00:23:23,080
Speaker 1: sadly all these animal bodies all over the place. I

448
00:23:23,080 --> 00:23:25,880
Speaker 1: guess you could call them carcasses, but I'm gonna say bodies.

449
00:23:28,000 --> 00:23:30,639
Speaker 2: So there's another there's an explanation for this too, and

450
00:23:30,680 --> 00:23:35,160
Speaker 2: it's actually pretty simple. In addition to those the eutrophication

451
00:23:35,880 --> 00:23:39,199
Speaker 2: dead zones that are produced by those algae blooms, just

452
00:23:39,320 --> 00:23:44,040
Speaker 2: simple summertime heat and a really saline body of water

453
00:23:44,440 --> 00:23:47,560
Speaker 2: can kill fish on mass. And that's exactly what was

454
00:23:47,600 --> 00:23:50,520
Speaker 2: going on as the salt and sea warmed, as summer

455
00:23:50,840 --> 00:23:53,199
Speaker 2: started to kind of get going. And there's like one

456
00:23:53,280 --> 00:23:59,040
Speaker 2: hundred and five degree August temperatures hot water. Warm water

457
00:23:59,720 --> 00:24:03,960
Speaker 2: carry less oxygen than cooler water, and salt water carries

458
00:24:04,040 --> 00:24:07,280
Speaker 2: less oxygen than fresh water. So when you have warm,

459
00:24:07,400 --> 00:24:11,360
Speaker 2: briny water, fish can suffocate. And that's what was happening.

460
00:24:11,720 --> 00:24:14,680
Speaker 2: And so fish die offs are just an annual part

461
00:24:14,760 --> 00:24:17,120
Speaker 2: of life around the salt and sea.

462
00:24:17,920 --> 00:24:20,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean not only that, it's just losing

463
00:24:20,560 --> 00:24:24,600
Speaker 1: surface area. It's shrinking, so ten percent has been lost

464
00:24:24,640 --> 00:24:27,520
Speaker 1: in recent years. They're projecting forty percent by twenty thirty.

465
00:24:27,920 --> 00:24:31,399
Speaker 1: And when that's happening in a really salty area, and

466
00:24:31,440 --> 00:24:34,040
Speaker 1: all those pesticides and metals and everything that have been

467
00:24:34,440 --> 00:24:37,000
Speaker 1: you know, deposited over the years due to the agriculture

468
00:24:37,040 --> 00:24:40,439
Speaker 1: all around, it just makes it more concentrated, and it's just,

469
00:24:41,040 --> 00:24:43,840
Speaker 1: you know, it's a bad scene. It's getting just salty

470
00:24:43,840 --> 00:24:46,440
Speaker 1: air over the years, it's getting more you know, chalk

471
00:24:46,480 --> 00:24:50,000
Speaker 1: full of more densely packed pesticides and things. And they're

472
00:24:50,040 --> 00:24:52,840
Speaker 1: saying that the salinity is probably going to increase another

473
00:24:53,359 --> 00:24:56,399
Speaker 1: maybe three times in the next ten years, basically kind

474
00:24:56,440 --> 00:24:58,639
Speaker 1: of taking care of anything else that might still be

475
00:24:58,680 --> 00:24:59,160
Speaker 1: living there.

476
00:24:59,320 --> 00:25:02,960
Speaker 2: Right, And just from the fact that it's shrinking too.

477
00:25:04,160 --> 00:25:06,960
Speaker 2: I saw that there's houses that were built along the

478
00:25:06,960 --> 00:25:09,600
Speaker 2: shoreline back in the heyday that are now like a

479
00:25:09,640 --> 00:25:14,160
Speaker 2: football field away from the shoreline. Now, that's how much

480
00:25:14,200 --> 00:25:16,639
Speaker 2: it's shrunk, and they expect it's going to shrink another

481
00:25:16,760 --> 00:25:21,440
Speaker 2: forty percent by twenty thirty. So things are getting dire here, right,

482
00:25:21,680 --> 00:25:24,240
Speaker 2: And you can kind of imagine that as things started

483
00:25:24,520 --> 00:25:28,080
Speaker 2: to go downhill, tourism dropped off, and that happened exactly

484
00:25:28,160 --> 00:25:30,720
Speaker 2: as you'd think. That north Shore Beach and Yacht Club

485
00:25:30,760 --> 00:25:33,480
Speaker 2: that was the Crown Jewel it closed down in nineteen

486
00:25:33,520 --> 00:25:37,480
Speaker 2: eighty four because there was a flood from agricultural runoff.

487
00:25:38,040 --> 00:25:41,760
Speaker 2: And then I saw a really cool, eerie picture, Chuck.

488
00:25:42,560 --> 00:25:45,440
Speaker 2: There's a drive in movie theater again from back in

489
00:25:45,480 --> 00:25:49,600
Speaker 2: the day. It's in Bombay Beach and for some reason,

490
00:25:49,680 --> 00:25:53,040
Speaker 2: the cars are all parked like they're there to see

491
00:25:53,040 --> 00:25:56,800
Speaker 2: the movie, but they're all junked and abandoned, mostly missing wheels,

492
00:25:57,520 --> 00:26:00,800
Speaker 2: and they're just they just got put like that, and

493
00:26:00,840 --> 00:26:04,800
Speaker 2: it looks like everybody kind of left the Saltan Sea

494
00:26:04,960 --> 00:26:09,000
Speaker 2: mid movie. It's really cool to see. I would strongly

495
00:26:09,040 --> 00:26:11,040
Speaker 2: suggest looking up that picture. I don't remember where I

496
00:26:11,040 --> 00:26:11,399
Speaker 2: saw it.

497
00:26:12,119 --> 00:26:15,439
Speaker 1: Well, I'll do you even better. There's a video on YouTube,

498
00:26:15,480 --> 00:26:19,399
Speaker 1: because that's a very I mean, people aren't tourism wise,

499
00:26:19,440 --> 00:26:23,159
Speaker 1: they're not flocking there, but people like me and people

500
00:26:23,200 --> 00:26:25,240
Speaker 1: that are the same kind of people go to like

501
00:26:25,320 --> 00:26:31,359
Speaker 1: abandoned roller coaster parks, amusement parks. We'll still go to

502
00:26:31,400 --> 00:26:34,240
Speaker 1: the Sultan Sea to kind of check things out. And

503
00:26:34,720 --> 00:26:39,080
Speaker 1: one of these videos it's from the Gnarly Speed Shop,

504
00:26:39,680 --> 00:26:41,520
Speaker 1: and I think if you just look up abandoned cars

505
00:26:41,520 --> 00:26:44,679
Speaker 1: that drive in on YouTube Gnarly speed Shop, they do

506
00:26:44,760 --> 00:26:47,240
Speaker 1: a cool video sort of walk through of the drive

507
00:26:47,280 --> 00:26:51,040
Speaker 1: in and the surrounding area. There's this very like every

508
00:26:51,080 --> 00:26:53,359
Speaker 1: picture you see of this, there's a very kind of

509
00:26:53,400 --> 00:26:57,040
Speaker 1: striking old orange Maverick car sitting in the front of

510
00:26:57,080 --> 00:26:59,440
Speaker 1: frame because I guess it's kind of closest to the road,

511
00:27:00,280 --> 00:27:02,359
Speaker 1: and there was graffiti on it and I could never

512
00:27:02,440 --> 00:27:03,960
Speaker 1: tell what it said from the pictures, but on the

513
00:27:04,040 --> 00:27:06,479
Speaker 1: video I was able to pause it and it says

514
00:27:06,920 --> 00:27:08,920
Speaker 1: you infected me in a way I didn't know what

515
00:27:09,000 --> 00:27:11,879
Speaker 1: was possible, which is very creepy. I don't know if

516
00:27:11,920 --> 00:27:14,520
Speaker 1: that was like a message to a long lost love

517
00:27:14,680 --> 00:27:17,080
Speaker 1: or if it was, you know, relating to the Saltan

518
00:27:17,119 --> 00:27:19,720
Speaker 1: Sea and what happened there. But it's pretty cool video.

519
00:27:19,920 --> 00:27:22,280
Speaker 1: And there were boats in the parking lot too, so

520
00:27:22,320 --> 00:27:24,560
Speaker 1: I don't think like it just looks like everyone got

521
00:27:24,640 --> 00:27:26,000
Speaker 1: up in the middle of a movie. I think people

522
00:27:26,080 --> 00:27:28,520
Speaker 1: just like went and like park their cars in this

523
00:27:28,560 --> 00:27:29,600
Speaker 1: abandoned lot, is what happened?

524
00:27:29,640 --> 00:27:31,520
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, yeah, I know that they didn't do that.

525
00:27:31,720 --> 00:27:34,439
Speaker 2: It didn't happen that rapidly, but that's what it looks like.

526
00:27:34,520 --> 00:27:35,560
Speaker 2: I think it's so cool.

527
00:27:36,080 --> 00:27:38,320
Speaker 1: You know, think you thought I didn't think you thought that.

528
00:27:38,400 --> 00:27:40,960
Speaker 2: So I remembered where I saw it, Chuck. I saw

529
00:27:41,000 --> 00:27:45,879
Speaker 2: it on a slide show on all that's interesting. Great, Okay,

530
00:27:46,080 --> 00:27:48,280
Speaker 2: So do you want to take a second break and

531
00:27:48,320 --> 00:27:50,840
Speaker 2: come back and talk about how it has gotten even

532
00:27:50,880 --> 00:27:52,400
Speaker 2: worse than what we've said so far?

533
00:27:52,960 --> 00:27:53,679
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's do it.

534
00:27:53,760 --> 00:28:01,760
Speaker 2: Okay, stuff you shout.

535
00:28:04,480 --> 00:28:11,800
Speaker 1: Lately, I've been learning some stop about in Saunia or Aluminia.

536
00:28:11,840 --> 00:28:16,320
Speaker 1: How about the one on border like sorder that or

537
00:28:16,480 --> 00:28:22,639
Speaker 1: yacht border? Heard that one before, but it was so nice, Arnes,

538
00:28:23,040 --> 00:28:34,000
Speaker 1: Why except nobody listen up? Stop stop stop?

539
00:28:37,880 --> 00:28:41,920
Speaker 2: Okay, Chuck. So the Sultan Sea has really gone downhill,

540
00:28:42,040 --> 00:28:44,640
Speaker 2: there's no denying it. People have decamped from there, not

541
00:28:44,840 --> 00:28:47,720
Speaker 2: just vacationers, but people who lived there too, just moved

542
00:28:47,720 --> 00:28:51,600
Speaker 2: away because it's gotten so gross. We didn't mention it.

543
00:28:51,720 --> 00:28:54,520
Speaker 2: But one of the things that happened, I think I

544
00:28:54,640 --> 00:28:58,600
Speaker 2: don't remember what year it was, there was a sulfur

545
00:28:58,680 --> 00:29:04,120
Speaker 2: dioxide cloud that wafted basically all across southern California all

546
00:29:04,160 --> 00:29:08,640
Speaker 2: the way to Los Angeles and it stunk like rotten eggs,

547
00:29:08,840 --> 00:29:10,760
Speaker 2: and they traced it back to the Saltan Sea. It

548
00:29:10,840 --> 00:29:13,160
Speaker 2: was all of the decomposition of all the muck, all

549
00:29:13,200 --> 00:29:16,360
Speaker 2: the dead fish, all the everything. It was so bad

550
00:29:16,440 --> 00:29:19,520
Speaker 2: that you could smell it all over southern California. So

551
00:29:19,760 --> 00:29:22,480
Speaker 2: this is the state of the Salton seasons. People are like,

552
00:29:22,560 --> 00:29:25,440
Speaker 2: we need to do something about this. And for years

553
00:29:25,480 --> 00:29:29,600
Speaker 2: and years, starting in the early late nineties early two thousands,

554
00:29:30,200 --> 00:29:34,480
Speaker 2: the idea was, let's just restore it to its former glory.

555
00:29:35,280 --> 00:29:40,200
Speaker 2: And that idea became a non starter essentially for the

556
00:29:40,320 --> 00:29:43,400
Speaker 2: next couple decades because it's just a bad idea. You

557
00:29:43,560 --> 00:29:46,200
Speaker 2: can't do it now, it's too late. But it took

558
00:29:46,240 --> 00:29:50,080
Speaker 2: a while for the California government to figure that out.

559
00:29:50,760 --> 00:29:52,960
Speaker 1: Yeah there, we'll talk about a bunch of the stops

560
00:29:53,000 --> 00:29:55,280
Speaker 1: and starts over the years. In two thousand and three,

561
00:29:56,720 --> 00:30:01,120
Speaker 1: the water Districts of Southern California signed off That was

562
00:30:01,160 --> 00:30:03,520
Speaker 1: this deal that they had been negotiating for years called

563
00:30:03,560 --> 00:30:07,760
Speaker 1: the Quantification Settlement Agreement of QSA, And basically what they

564
00:30:07,800 --> 00:30:11,160
Speaker 1: were trying to get done was say, hey, let's once

565
00:30:11,160 --> 00:30:16,080
Speaker 1: again take some of that Colorado River water and the

566
00:30:16,160 --> 00:30:18,880
Speaker 1: stuff that they had been using for irrigation is now

567
00:30:19,040 --> 00:30:21,240
Speaker 1: being redirected to like, you know, a lot of the

568
00:30:21,320 --> 00:30:23,480
Speaker 1: area was then built up into more urban areas in

569
00:30:23,520 --> 00:30:26,320
Speaker 1: the Coachella Valley and like San Diego, and they're like, well,

570
00:30:26,400 --> 00:30:30,600
Speaker 1: we want that water now, and in exchange, those areas

571
00:30:30,720 --> 00:30:33,520
Speaker 1: would say, all right, now, what we're gonna do is

572
00:30:33,680 --> 00:30:36,760
Speaker 1: pay the farmers there a lot of money to upgrade

573
00:30:36,800 --> 00:30:40,840
Speaker 1: their old equipment. It was really inefficient irrigation equipment. The

574
00:30:40,920 --> 00:30:45,680
Speaker 1: newer versions won't have nearly as much waste water, and

575
00:30:45,920 --> 00:30:49,160
Speaker 1: so they're like, let's do a trade off here. We'll

576
00:30:49,200 --> 00:30:51,360
Speaker 1: pay you to upgrade your stuff and in return, you

577
00:30:51,480 --> 00:30:53,080
Speaker 1: give us a lot of the water that we need.

578
00:30:53,560 --> 00:30:56,640
Speaker 2: Right. So, the problem as far as the Salton Sea

579
00:30:56,760 --> 00:31:01,600
Speaker 2: is concerned that agricultural runoff, remember was keeping it going. Yeah,

580
00:31:01,760 --> 00:31:05,600
Speaker 2: So since there's less irrigation runoff, because these irrigation techniques

581
00:31:05,640 --> 00:31:10,800
Speaker 2: have been vastly updated, there's no not really any agricultural

582
00:31:10,840 --> 00:31:13,560
Speaker 2: runoff coming and feeding the salt and sea any longer.

583
00:31:14,240 --> 00:31:18,560
Speaker 2: And part of that quantification settlement agreement was we need

584
00:31:18,680 --> 00:31:22,160
Speaker 2: to take some of this water that the Imperial Valley

585
00:31:22,240 --> 00:31:24,960
Speaker 2: farmers used to use and feed it into the salt

586
00:31:25,000 --> 00:31:27,040
Speaker 2: and sea for fifteen years.

587
00:31:27,520 --> 00:31:27,720
Speaker 1: Yeah.

588
00:31:27,960 --> 00:31:29,719
Speaker 2: They even paid the farmers to leave some of their

589
00:31:29,800 --> 00:31:32,320
Speaker 2: land fallow so they could direct that water to the

590
00:31:32,400 --> 00:31:37,680
Speaker 2: Sultan Sea. In retrospect, that seems like total madness. They

591
00:31:37,760 --> 00:31:41,440
Speaker 2: were essentially wasting all of that water, but it actually

592
00:31:41,520 --> 00:31:43,360
Speaker 2: turned out to be pressy, and even though they didn't

593
00:31:43,400 --> 00:31:45,840
Speaker 2: quite realize that it was a good thing for there

594
00:31:45,920 --> 00:31:48,040
Speaker 2: to be water there until we figure out what to do.

595
00:31:50,040 --> 00:31:52,040
Speaker 1: It's sort of like leaving the water on in your

596
00:31:52,080 --> 00:31:55,840
Speaker 1: tub with the drain slightly open, yeah, and just being like,

597
00:31:56,120 --> 00:31:57,960
Speaker 1: we're just going to leave the tub water on for

598
00:31:58,040 --> 00:31:59,960
Speaker 1: fifteen years so we can keep this body of water.

599
00:32:00,360 --> 00:32:05,000
Speaker 2: Yes, but your tub you got from an abandoned house, right,

600
00:32:05,120 --> 00:32:08,240
Speaker 2: and it had it has bath water that's one hundred

601
00:32:08,320 --> 00:32:11,600
Speaker 2: years old and full of pollutants and algae, and you're

602
00:32:11,640 --> 00:32:13,040
Speaker 2: just running your water into it.

603
00:32:13,480 --> 00:32:14,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's a horror movie tub.

604
00:32:14,920 --> 00:32:17,320
Speaker 2: It's a yes, exactly, that's exactly what it is.

605
00:32:17,840 --> 00:32:21,480
Speaker 1: Yeah. So you might be asking, like, hey, if this

606
00:32:21,640 --> 00:32:23,760
Speaker 1: thing wasn't supposed to be there to begin with, if

607
00:32:23,800 --> 00:32:25,480
Speaker 1: the whole idea of a body of water out in

608
00:32:25,480 --> 00:32:27,360
Speaker 1: the middle of the desert like that is just going

609
00:32:27,440 --> 00:32:30,600
Speaker 1: to dry up naturally, Like, just let it dry up naturally,

610
00:32:30,760 --> 00:32:33,400
Speaker 1: and like, what's the big deal. One of the big

611
00:32:33,480 --> 00:32:36,960
Speaker 1: deals is is that there's still a lot of biodiversity there.

612
00:32:37,440 --> 00:32:39,720
Speaker 1: It's not like it killed everything. It seems like that

613
00:32:39,840 --> 00:32:43,360
Speaker 1: eventually might happen, But it's still a habitat. It's still

614
00:32:43,360 --> 00:32:47,320
Speaker 1: a migratory stop for birds on that fly route, right,

615
00:32:48,800 --> 00:32:51,640
Speaker 1: And it's because you know, southern California has been developed

616
00:32:51,680 --> 00:32:54,440
Speaker 1: so much, a lot of the other natural habitats for

617
00:32:54,520 --> 00:32:56,440
Speaker 1: them have gone away. So the Salt and Sea was

618
00:32:57,080 --> 00:32:59,600
Speaker 1: as sad as it was was like an oasis for

619
00:32:59,640 --> 00:33:00,600
Speaker 1: them on right.

620
00:33:00,800 --> 00:33:04,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is sad because if the salt and Sea

621
00:33:04,240 --> 00:33:06,560
Speaker 2: is the more attractive option, because that's all that's left,

622
00:33:07,280 --> 00:33:10,640
Speaker 2: those poor birds are in trouble. It's not just the

623
00:33:10,680 --> 00:33:12,720
Speaker 2: birds that are in trouble. There are people that still

624
00:33:12,800 --> 00:33:16,000
Speaker 2: live around there. In fact, I was really surprised to

625
00:33:16,120 --> 00:33:18,600
Speaker 2: find the Salt and City, which I believe is the

626
00:33:18,640 --> 00:33:21,200
Speaker 2: biggest town along the Salt and Sea. It's on the

627
00:33:21,280 --> 00:33:25,280
Speaker 2: northwest shore. Their population actually increased since the twenty twenty

628
00:33:25,400 --> 00:33:28,120
Speaker 2: census by almost one thousand people, which are like wow,

629
00:33:28,160 --> 00:33:31,040
Speaker 2: a thousand people who cares well, They were less than

630
00:33:31,120 --> 00:33:34,560
Speaker 2: six thousand in population at the time of the twenty

631
00:33:34,640 --> 00:33:37,320
Speaker 2: twenty census, So people are moving there because the housing

632
00:33:37,440 --> 00:33:42,720
Speaker 2: is so affordable it's insane. So there's people. There's in

633
00:33:42,840 --> 00:33:45,920
Speaker 2: the whole region, there's something like six hundred and fifty

634
00:33:46,000 --> 00:33:49,280
Speaker 2: thousand people, and all of those people are at tremendous

635
00:33:49,400 --> 00:33:54,200
Speaker 2: risk right now of a cornucopia of health hazards that

636
00:33:54,280 --> 00:33:57,000
Speaker 2: are starting to develop because of the salt and sea

637
00:33:57,560 --> 00:34:01,080
Speaker 2: evaporates more and more and more because off isn't sustaining

638
00:34:01,120 --> 00:34:05,560
Speaker 2: it anymore, and it's so hot that exposed sea bed

639
00:34:05,680 --> 00:34:09,120
Speaker 2: or lake bed that's so chock full of toxins that

640
00:34:09,239 --> 00:34:12,320
Speaker 2: you can barely look at it is turning to dust

641
00:34:12,880 --> 00:34:17,000
Speaker 2: that's getting blown off into the surrounding areas and causing

642
00:34:17,160 --> 00:34:18,440
Speaker 2: all sorts of problems.

643
00:34:19,160 --> 00:34:23,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, asthma. They've already found an uptick in asthma. There's

644
00:34:23,960 --> 00:34:27,520
Speaker 1: a doctor named Jill Johnson, a PhD who's an assistant

645
00:34:27,640 --> 00:34:32,399
Speaker 1: professor of preventative medicine at Southern cal and she's working

646
00:34:32,440 --> 00:34:34,840
Speaker 1: on a research project called the Saltan Sea in Children's

647
00:34:34,880 --> 00:34:39,279
Speaker 1: Health colon assessing Imperial Valley respiratory health and environment. In

648
00:34:39,360 --> 00:34:44,640
Speaker 1: the environment along with partner show Rey Farzan and other PhD.

649
00:34:45,320 --> 00:34:48,760
Speaker 1: And they're basically following elementary school children in that area

650
00:34:49,360 --> 00:34:53,480
Speaker 1: and are seeing how their health is advancing and right

651
00:34:53,600 --> 00:34:58,600
Speaker 1: now pretty bad asthma rates and haven't proved causation yet,

652
00:34:58,640 --> 00:35:00,160
Speaker 1: but it seems like it's probably.

653
00:35:00,640 --> 00:35:04,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, apparently. They just like this month, published an article

654
00:35:04,960 --> 00:35:07,400
Speaker 2: on their findings from this in the American Journal of

655
00:35:07,520 --> 00:35:11,560
Speaker 2: Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. You know that rag. Yeah,

656
00:35:11,600 --> 00:35:14,520
Speaker 2: And it basically is like this is, yes, this is

657
00:35:14,640 --> 00:35:18,600
Speaker 2: causing asthma at the very least in little kids. There's

658
00:35:18,640 --> 00:35:20,919
Speaker 2: all sorts of other stuff to worry about too, because

659
00:35:20,960 --> 00:35:25,719
Speaker 2: there's metals, pesticides, DDT has been found in there. There's

660
00:35:26,000 --> 00:35:28,160
Speaker 2: just so much crud in there that now that it's

661
00:35:28,840 --> 00:35:31,759
Speaker 2: drying up, is turning into dust and getting carried as

662
00:35:31,840 --> 00:35:34,720
Speaker 2: particulate matter that you don't you don't want to breathe

663
00:35:34,800 --> 00:35:38,160
Speaker 2: that stuff in, and yet it's just blowing around because

664
00:35:38,200 --> 00:35:42,560
Speaker 2: again now that's turned into desert, but it's toxic desert.

665
00:35:43,640 --> 00:35:47,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's that's just like health issues. There's also

666
00:35:48,560 --> 00:35:52,080
Speaker 1: like a financial impact. There was a study about eleven

667
00:35:52,160 --> 00:35:55,800
Speaker 1: years ago or so from the Pacific Institute. They're a

668
00:35:56,000 --> 00:35:59,840
Speaker 1: think tank in Oakland that deals with water policy, and

669
00:36:00,000 --> 00:36:01,839
Speaker 1: and they said the financial toll could be as much

670
00:36:01,840 --> 00:36:04,279
Speaker 1: as seventy billion dollars over the next thirty years, right,

671
00:36:04,719 --> 00:36:08,200
Speaker 1: like property values, like you said, going south, public health,

672
00:36:08,280 --> 00:36:12,960
Speaker 1: which we've mentioned, the continued loss of recreational revenue and

673
00:36:13,239 --> 00:36:15,800
Speaker 1: natural habitat. So you know, there's a big financial burden.

674
00:36:16,360 --> 00:36:19,720
Speaker 1: So you know, obviously because of that, California over the past,

675
00:36:19,880 --> 00:36:23,040
Speaker 1: like you know, twenty five years, has had various stops

676
00:36:23,080 --> 00:36:26,200
Speaker 1: and starts with funding for different projects that will get

677
00:36:26,239 --> 00:36:28,920
Speaker 1: approved and then the money just gets diverted or never

678
00:36:29,000 --> 00:36:29,440
Speaker 1: shows up.

679
00:36:29,880 --> 00:36:33,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, and especially before that twenty fourteen study from the

680
00:36:33,560 --> 00:36:38,320
Speaker 2: Pacific Institute, people are like this, eight billion dollars seems

681
00:36:38,400 --> 00:36:42,359
Speaker 2: like a little much to restore the salt and Sea.

682
00:36:42,840 --> 00:36:46,279
Speaker 2: One of the reasons why is because the area that

683
00:36:46,400 --> 00:36:48,880
Speaker 2: the Salton Sea is in, the people who live around

684
00:36:48,920 --> 00:36:53,400
Speaker 2: it are fairly low income. It's a very rural area

685
00:36:53,800 --> 00:36:55,759
Speaker 2: and a lot of the people who are affected live

686
00:36:55,840 --> 00:36:59,719
Speaker 2: in Mexico, so back in Sacramento, the capital of California,

687
00:36:59,719 --> 00:37:02,919
Speaker 2: which is pretty far away from the Sultan Sea. Yeah,

688
00:37:03,000 --> 00:37:06,279
Speaker 2: the political will just hasn't been there. And one of

689
00:37:06,320 --> 00:37:08,400
Speaker 2: the things you could do if you were a senator,

690
00:37:08,440 --> 00:37:12,360
Speaker 2: a congress person, a governor, you could fully go after

691
00:37:12,480 --> 00:37:15,200
Speaker 2: a bunch of funds to save the Sultan Sea and

692
00:37:15,880 --> 00:37:19,080
Speaker 2: remediate the area and get it back to its former glory.

693
00:37:19,480 --> 00:37:23,320
Speaker 2: And then your legislature would say, no, we're not funding that.

694
00:37:23,400 --> 00:37:25,720
Speaker 2: You'd be like, oh, man, I tried. And that seems

695
00:37:25,800 --> 00:37:29,000
Speaker 2: like what the pattern was for the first like about

696
00:37:29,040 --> 00:37:31,520
Speaker 2: twenty ish years, maybe a little more than that that

697
00:37:31,600 --> 00:37:35,200
Speaker 2: people started coming up with ideas to do something about this.

698
00:37:36,000 --> 00:37:38,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, Gray Davis, when he was governor in two thousand

699
00:37:38,320 --> 00:37:41,680
Speaker 1: and three assigned the Saltan Sea Record I'm sorry, Restoration

700
00:37:41,800 --> 00:37:45,359
Speaker 1: Act and the Saltan Sea Restoration Fund, but that didn't

701
00:37:45,400 --> 00:37:47,960
Speaker 1: receive funding. So a fund without funding is not a fund. No,

702
00:37:49,600 --> 00:37:55,520
Speaker 1: just like a sea without an outlet as a lake. Right, yes, absolutely,

703
00:37:56,040 --> 00:37:58,680
Speaker 1: all right. In two thousand and seven, the Corp of Engineers,

704
00:37:59,400 --> 00:38:01,880
Speaker 1: the Army Corps Engineers, got authorization to spend up to

705
00:38:01,960 --> 00:38:06,880
Speaker 1: thirty million on projects. The money was finally appropriated in

706
00:38:06,960 --> 00:38:11,920
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, and the Obama administration spent a couple of

707
00:38:12,040 --> 00:38:14,440
Speaker 1: hundred grand is all on a study, another study.

708
00:38:14,520 --> 00:38:17,080
Speaker 2: Even that was the thirty million, that's what it turned

709
00:38:17,080 --> 00:38:18,799
Speaker 2: out to be from what I can tell, it went

710
00:38:18,840 --> 00:38:21,360
Speaker 2: from thirty million dollars to two hundred thousand dollars and

711
00:38:21,480 --> 00:38:23,640
Speaker 2: it was for another study. Isn't that crazy?

712
00:38:24,160 --> 00:38:26,160
Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean none of this, though, is going to

713
00:38:26,200 --> 00:38:28,920
Speaker 1: make any difference. I mean even a thirty million dollar thing,

714
00:38:29,120 --> 00:38:33,680
Speaker 1: or I think there was one plan. Yeah, a ten

715
00:38:33,719 --> 00:38:36,799
Speaker 1: year Saltan sea plan to cost three hundred and eighty

716
00:38:36,840 --> 00:38:41,040
Speaker 1: three million. But that's not even for restoration, because, like

717
00:38:41,239 --> 00:38:44,440
Speaker 1: you said, that ship is sailed. It is a multi

718
00:38:44,520 --> 00:38:46,440
Speaker 1: multi billion dollar thing if they want to get this

719
00:38:46,760 --> 00:38:49,600
Speaker 1: thing back to the California riviera. So right, it doesn't

720
00:38:49,600 --> 00:38:51,960
Speaker 1: seem like that's just ever going to happen. It's not empossible.

721
00:38:52,120 --> 00:38:54,680
Speaker 2: No, So now they're looking at restoring parts of it

722
00:38:54,960 --> 00:38:58,120
Speaker 2: to turn it back into wetlands for birds. Right, And

723
00:38:58,280 --> 00:39:02,280
Speaker 2: that ten year plan is estimated to cost three hundred

724
00:39:02,280 --> 00:39:04,120
Speaker 2: and eighty three million dollars.

725
00:39:04,000 --> 00:39:04,520
Speaker 1: Just to do that.

726
00:39:05,280 --> 00:39:07,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it looked like it was just going to

727
00:39:07,640 --> 00:39:11,759
Speaker 2: be another pie in the sky, a proposal that would

728
00:39:11,800 --> 00:39:14,960
Speaker 2: never get funding. But California came up with something like

729
00:39:15,000 --> 00:39:18,640
Speaker 2: two hundred million dollars of that. They're under Devin Newsom.

730
00:39:19,520 --> 00:39:21,560
Speaker 2: In the last couple of years. It has been huge,

731
00:39:21,920 --> 00:39:24,440
Speaker 2: crazy movements compared to what had been done in the

732
00:39:24,520 --> 00:39:27,359
Speaker 2: last couple of decades, and California came up with two

733
00:39:27,440 --> 00:39:31,800
Speaker 2: hundred million dollars out of nowhere. Mind bogglingly, the federal

734
00:39:31,880 --> 00:39:35,080
Speaker 2: government chipped in another two hundred and forty million dollars

735
00:39:35,719 --> 00:39:38,160
Speaker 2: two hundred and forty five So now this project that

736
00:39:38,280 --> 00:39:41,480
Speaker 2: needed three hundred and eighty three million has almost half

737
00:39:41,520 --> 00:39:44,680
Speaker 2: a billion. So not only are they now on the

738
00:39:44,800 --> 00:39:47,600
Speaker 2: salt and sea saying like, you know, when are we

739
00:39:47,680 --> 00:39:49,759
Speaker 2: ever going to be able to do anything about this too,

740
00:39:50,239 --> 00:39:52,560
Speaker 2: we can actually do more than we wanted to do

741
00:39:52,719 --> 00:39:55,520
Speaker 2: in our ten year plan. The things are starting to

742
00:39:55,560 --> 00:39:59,000
Speaker 2: pick up, and they're starting to restore wetlands, and it

743
00:39:59,280 --> 00:40:03,400
Speaker 2: actually looks like it's going to not be quite the

744
00:40:03,520 --> 00:40:06,680
Speaker 2: ecological disaster that it would have been California just sat

745
00:40:06,760 --> 00:40:07,360
Speaker 2: on its hands.

746
00:40:08,080 --> 00:40:10,880
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think between twenty and three and twenty sixteen,

747
00:40:12,160 --> 00:40:15,480
Speaker 1: just a few dozen acres of the wetland were restored.

748
00:40:16,600 --> 00:40:21,440
Speaker 1: Since then about two thousand more, and the Species Conservation

749
00:40:21,600 --> 00:40:24,520
Speaker 1: Habitat Project has a plan over the next decade to

750
00:40:24,600 --> 00:40:28,480
Speaker 1: restore another nine thousand acres, so that'd be like roughly

751
00:40:28,560 --> 00:40:33,040
Speaker 1: twelve thousand acres of restoration, which is pretty good. They

752
00:40:33,200 --> 00:40:36,319
Speaker 1: also think that, you know, it's southern California, so it's

753
00:40:36,920 --> 00:40:40,680
Speaker 1: a moneyed area in general, not that exact area, but

754
00:40:40,719 --> 00:40:43,040
Speaker 1: they're saying like, hey, we can like we've got this

755
00:40:43,239 --> 00:40:45,439
Speaker 1: great land there that we can make money off. Still,

756
00:40:45,760 --> 00:40:49,560
Speaker 1: remember that Mullet Island that's on the dormant volcano. That

757
00:40:49,680 --> 00:40:53,759
Speaker 1: means there's some hotspots there, and so some people are saying, hey,

758
00:40:53,840 --> 00:40:59,200
Speaker 1: let's put a few billion dollars toward a geothermal electricity plant. Yeah,

759
00:41:00,280 --> 00:41:01,120
Speaker 1: mine some lithium.

760
00:41:02,080 --> 00:41:05,719
Speaker 2: Yes, I believe they're already building the plants there. And

761
00:41:05,800 --> 00:41:08,000
Speaker 2: then the lithium. I don't know if they've actually started that,

762
00:41:08,120 --> 00:41:10,560
Speaker 2: but there's a lot of lithium there, and that is

763
00:41:10,680 --> 00:41:13,719
Speaker 2: like twenty first century gold because you use that in

764
00:41:13,840 --> 00:41:17,360
Speaker 2: batteries for electric vehicles, for giant batteries to back up

765
00:41:17,440 --> 00:41:21,560
Speaker 2: your power grid. And there's a push and pull over

766
00:41:22,080 --> 00:41:24,080
Speaker 2: whether it's a lithium mine there, And of course they're

767
00:41:24,120 --> 00:41:26,320
Speaker 2: going to end up lithium mining there because it's just

768
00:41:26,400 --> 00:41:30,640
Speaker 2: so valuable. But some people are like, it's already an

769
00:41:30,719 --> 00:41:34,320
Speaker 2: environmental catastrophe. Who cares if lithium mining makes it a

770
00:41:34,400 --> 00:41:36,879
Speaker 2: little bit worse. It's better than mining in a more

771
00:41:36,960 --> 00:41:40,680
Speaker 2: pristine area and really screwing that up. Other people are like, no,

772
00:41:40,800 --> 00:41:43,360
Speaker 2: we're trying to restore it. So lithium mining is gonna

773
00:41:43,640 --> 00:41:46,000
Speaker 2: not only undo that stuff, it's gonna make it even

774
00:41:46,080 --> 00:41:49,160
Speaker 2: worse than it was. But my money is definitely on

775
00:41:49,280 --> 00:41:50,400
Speaker 2: them lithium mining.

776
00:41:51,120 --> 00:41:51,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed.

777
00:41:52,239 --> 00:41:55,640
Speaker 2: There's a couple other things that are noteworthy about the Sultancy.

778
00:41:55,880 --> 00:41:58,480
Speaker 2: I guess we can leave that part that there's actually

779
00:41:58,600 --> 00:42:02,040
Speaker 2: hope for it right now. But along the way, like

780
00:42:02,120 --> 00:42:05,560
Speaker 2: you can imagine, such a bizarre place generated some really

781
00:42:05,680 --> 00:42:10,040
Speaker 2: interesting urban legends over the years, right, Oh yeah, some

782
00:42:10,239 --> 00:42:13,160
Speaker 2: of them are actually true. The Navy used to use

783
00:42:13,239 --> 00:42:16,800
Speaker 2: the salt and sea to drop test bombs or dummy bombs,

784
00:42:17,200 --> 00:42:19,840
Speaker 2: to basically train their bomber pilots how to drop bombs,

785
00:42:20,280 --> 00:42:24,200
Speaker 2: and they actually supposedly practiced for the atomic bomb drops

786
00:42:24,840 --> 00:42:27,919
Speaker 2: and they are so there's dummy bombs under the salt

787
00:42:28,000 --> 00:42:30,399
Speaker 2: and sea still, and of course locals are like, that's

788
00:42:30,520 --> 00:42:33,640
Speaker 2: just a cover story. They actually lost an atomic bomb

789
00:42:33,719 --> 00:42:37,359
Speaker 2: and that's what's hiding there. There's an undetonated atomic bomb

790
00:42:37,480 --> 00:42:40,360
Speaker 2: under there. Now, there are a bunch of Navy planes

791
00:42:40,400 --> 00:42:44,200
Speaker 2: that dig crash. I think eighteen flyers died over the years,

792
00:42:44,400 --> 00:42:47,040
Speaker 2: but there's twenty four planes sunken in the Salt and

793
00:42:47,160 --> 00:42:50,640
Speaker 2: Sea right now. And then there's this one really weird

794
00:42:51,600 --> 00:42:55,520
Speaker 2: legend that predates the Salt and Sea. It's the Lost

795
00:42:55,560 --> 00:42:57,520
Speaker 2: Ship of the Desert. Have you ever heard of that?

796
00:42:58,280 --> 00:42:58,800
Speaker 1: Never heard of it?

797
00:42:59,400 --> 00:43:03,600
Speaker 2: Well, it's a apparently this legendary lower that there was

798
00:43:03,680 --> 00:43:08,400
Speaker 2: anything from a Spanish galleon to a Viking ship that

799
00:43:08,640 --> 00:43:13,080
Speaker 2: sailed up the Gulf of California and eventually got stuck

800
00:43:13,760 --> 00:43:16,640
Speaker 2: and that turned into desert and the ship was swallowed up.

801
00:43:16,719 --> 00:43:19,120
Speaker 2: And some people are saying it was actually in the

802
00:43:19,200 --> 00:43:23,040
Speaker 2: Salt and Basin, which is now underneath the Salt and Sea.

803
00:43:23,600 --> 00:43:25,879
Speaker 2: So there's this whole idea that there's a Viking ship

804
00:43:26,040 --> 00:43:27,239
Speaker 2: potentially under there too.

805
00:43:28,000 --> 00:43:33,520
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, there's a great dive bar the ski In right, Yeah,

806
00:43:34,160 --> 00:43:35,759
Speaker 1: it's in that video they go to ski In and

807
00:43:36,440 --> 00:43:38,759
Speaker 1: play creepy old piano and have some beer. Yeah.

808
00:43:38,760 --> 00:43:41,240
Speaker 2: They call it the lowest dive bar in the Western

809
00:43:41,320 --> 00:43:44,600
Speaker 2: Hemisphere because it is two hundred and thirty seven feet

810
00:43:44,640 --> 00:43:45,439
Speaker 2: below sea level.

811
00:43:45,480 --> 00:43:48,400
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, right there at the I don't know

812
00:43:48,400 --> 00:43:50,000
Speaker 1: if they still call it Bombay Beach or if they

813
00:43:50,800 --> 00:43:54,000
Speaker 1: took that name away. But Bombay non beach because of

814
00:43:54,040 --> 00:43:55,680
Speaker 1: beach without water is not a beach, right.

815
00:43:56,680 --> 00:44:00,120
Speaker 2: There's also it's attracted a lot of artists too, like

816
00:44:00,200 --> 00:44:03,880
Speaker 2: a slab city is essentially a taken over military installation.

817
00:44:04,960 --> 00:44:08,920
Speaker 2: There's a folk art installation called Salvation Mountain. There's another

818
00:44:09,000 --> 00:44:13,520
Speaker 2: whole like outdoor gallery called East Jesus, I believe is

819
00:44:13,560 --> 00:44:16,080
Speaker 2: what it's called. So there's a lot of art that's

820
00:44:16,120 --> 00:44:20,520
Speaker 2: being made there that's kind of turning it into a

821
00:44:20,800 --> 00:44:24,680
Speaker 2: really neat, weird, decrepit art place.

822
00:44:25,400 --> 00:44:25,680
Speaker 1: Cool.

823
00:44:25,920 --> 00:44:28,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got anything else?

824
00:44:29,440 --> 00:44:30,239
Speaker 1: I got nothing else?

825
00:44:30,520 --> 00:44:32,440
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, let's it for the sull and see everybody

826
00:44:32,480 --> 00:44:33,919
Speaker 2: will have to keep an eye on it and see

827
00:44:33,960 --> 00:44:36,680
Speaker 2: what happens. And in the meantime, I think it's time

828
00:44:36,719 --> 00:44:37,520
Speaker 2: for listener mail.

829
00:44:39,680 --> 00:44:42,200
Speaker 1: Well, speaking of art, before I read listener mail, I

830
00:44:42,239 --> 00:44:46,759
Speaker 1: want to give a plug to dear old Ben, our

831
00:44:47,080 --> 00:44:51,160
Speaker 1: comrade here at stuff. You should know our colleague. He

832
00:44:51,400 --> 00:44:55,000
Speaker 1: is a producer along with Jerry, and Ben is a musician,

833
00:44:55,080 --> 00:44:58,759
Speaker 1: Ben Hackett, and he put out a great piece of art.

834
00:44:59,200 --> 00:45:01,640
Speaker 1: He put out a record called Songs for Sleeping Dogs,

835
00:45:02,440 --> 00:45:06,960
Speaker 1: not too long ago. And Ben's awesome songs for Sleeping

836
00:45:07,000 --> 00:45:10,279
Speaker 1: Dogs is great. It's this very vibey instrumental. I think

837
00:45:10,320 --> 00:45:14,040
Speaker 1: you dig it actually, and so yeah, go check it out,

838
00:45:14,880 --> 00:45:16,239
Speaker 1: yeah wherever you get music.

839
00:45:16,400 --> 00:45:20,040
Speaker 2: Basically, yes, Ben is probably our most beloved stuff you

840
00:45:20,080 --> 00:45:23,000
Speaker 2: should remember because he's just so cool and chill and nice.

841
00:45:23,880 --> 00:45:28,360
Speaker 1: Whoa yeah you say that in front of Jerry. Okay,

842
00:45:29,160 --> 00:45:31,759
Speaker 1: all right, listener to mail time. We got a couple

843
00:45:31,800 --> 00:45:35,080
Speaker 1: of in the next couple of episodes on MTV VH

844
00:45:35,160 --> 00:45:38,319
Speaker 1: one because we got great response. And it was also

845
00:45:38,400 --> 00:45:40,319
Speaker 1: another one of those weird things where we did an

846
00:45:40,360 --> 00:45:43,520
Speaker 1: episode and then something in real life happened, and we

847
00:45:43,640 --> 00:45:46,520
Speaker 1: had no idea that when we did our MTV episode

848
00:45:46,560 --> 00:45:49,359
Speaker 1: that like the next week MTV would fold. Basically, yeah,

849
00:45:50,080 --> 00:45:52,480
Speaker 1: it's music channels. It was just one of those strange

850
00:45:52,480 --> 00:45:54,279
Speaker 1: stuff you should know, things that happened sometimes I.

851
00:45:54,320 --> 00:45:58,040
Speaker 2: Didn't quite understand, so like it was just its music channels.

852
00:45:58,480 --> 00:46:00,839
Speaker 2: I didn't know that it had any music channels left.

853
00:46:01,680 --> 00:46:03,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we talked about that, that there was

854
00:46:03,719 --> 00:46:07,399
Speaker 1: still some music happening. Well, Jerry just buzzed in and said,

855
00:46:07,440 --> 00:46:09,480
Speaker 1: it's just in Europe, So I don't know what to believe.

856
00:46:09,320 --> 00:46:12,319
Speaker 2: Now, Well, they definitely did something and it was right

857
00:46:12,440 --> 00:46:14,160
Speaker 2: after our episode for sure.

858
00:46:14,920 --> 00:46:17,839
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, so this is about MTV. Hey, guys,

859
00:46:17,920 --> 00:46:19,719
Speaker 1: hoping that you would touch on this, especially toward the

860
00:46:19,840 --> 00:46:22,600
Speaker 1: end when Josh is talking about the social impacts of MTB.

861
00:46:23,160 --> 00:46:26,360
Speaker 1: But I'm talking about the MTV cut. Before MTV, the

862
00:46:26,440 --> 00:46:29,239
Speaker 1: average shot in a film or television show lasted an

863
00:46:29,239 --> 00:46:33,759
Speaker 1: average of eight seconds, and the MTV cut whittled that

864
00:46:33,880 --> 00:46:37,080
Speaker 1: down to two seconds. In College Circle two thousand, it

865
00:46:37,160 --> 00:46:39,600
Speaker 1: was called the MTB cut. Now the MTV cut is

866
00:46:39,680 --> 00:46:41,759
Speaker 1: the norm. You'd be hard pressed to find a show

867
00:46:41,800 --> 00:46:44,960
Speaker 1: that stays on one shot for eight seconds consistently anymore.

868
00:46:45,400 --> 00:46:47,960
Speaker 1: I wonder if people changed, or if the MTV cut

869
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Speaker 1: changed people and the way we watch.

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Speaker 2: I believe I'll bet that's one of those things where

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Speaker 2: if you saw it now, you'd be like, wow, this

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00:46:56,719 --> 00:46:59,879
Speaker 2: is really weird and not quite put your finger on why.

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Speaker 2: But it'd just be almost unsettling to see a eight

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Speaker 2: second cut.

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Speaker 1: Maybe. I mean, I remember people talking about like quickcut

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Speaker 1: because of music videos, like it was a thing. That

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Speaker 1: is from Chris Singleton, who is an ops manager for

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Speaker 1: Independence Rock Media.

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Speaker 2: Very nice, So Chris knows what they're talking about.

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Speaker 1: I think so well.

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Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Chris. That was very interesting and we

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Speaker 2: want to hear from you too. If you've got anything

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00:47:24,760 --> 00:47:28,719
Speaker 2: interesting to say, you can eat you toob Yeah you can. Yes,

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Speaker 2: we want to hear from Bono and the Edge and

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Speaker 2: the other guys.

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00:47:32,640 --> 00:47:37,320
Speaker 1: No, boy, what Madam and Larry come on, there you go.

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Speaker 2: Thank you. I could have come up with those given

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Speaker 2: a couple of months, for sure.

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Speaker 1: Sure.

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Speaker 2: So yeah, if you want to be like the band,

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Speaker 2: you two, you can email us at stuff Podcasts at

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Speaker 2: iHeartRadio dot com.

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Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For

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00:47:55,960 --> 00:47:59,960
Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.