Speaker 1: Hello friends, We will see you live in person somewhere
Speaker 1: in the United States this year.
Speaker 2: That's right to May twenty ninth. We're going to be
Speaker 2: in Medford, mass. On the thirtieth, we're going to be
Speaker 2: in Washington, DC, and then on May thirty first, right
Speaker 2: there in New York City. In August, we're going to
Speaker 2: hit Chicago, Minneapolis, and Indianapolis on August seventh, eighth, and ninth,
Speaker 2: and then we're going to wind out the year in
Speaker 2: Durham and Atlanta on September fifth and seventh.
Speaker 1: You can get all the info and ticket links that
Speaker 1: you need by going to linktree slash sysk Live or
Speaker 1: going to our website Stuff youshould Know dot com and
Speaker 1: clicking on the tour button.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 1: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
Speaker 1: shouldn't So.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: Do people still say that?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 1: I mean I just did so. I guess somebody does.
Speaker 2: I think of that every time I see one of those,
Speaker 2: you know, pharma commercials are the worst.
Speaker 1: Did they say Nizzo on that? A lot?
Speaker 3: Well, sky Rizzy is Oh, yeah, I can't even remember
Speaker 3: what it is.
Speaker 1: I think it's for rheumatoid arthritis, like everything is for
Speaker 1: rheumatoid arthritis.
Speaker 2: All I know is whenever I see those commercials, I
Speaker 2: just die laughing and think, what a terrible name.
Speaker 1: So I know a lot of those jingles, and I
Speaker 1: think sky Rizzies is nothing is everything?
Speaker 3: And then still Doug comes in at the end.
Speaker 1: Yeah he goes for shizzle with sky Rizzle. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I've had that same thought too, and it is pretty funny.
Speaker 3: All right, So enjoyed the free ad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Novo Nordisk, whoever you might be h. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: not talking talking about pharmaceuticals today, although I'm sure there's
Speaker 1: plenty of pharmaceuticals floating around where in the area we
Speaker 1: are talking about today, Okay, exactly, it's probably screwing the
Speaker 1: frogs up something fierce.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because we're talking.
Speaker 1: Today about the Everglades and I know at least one
Speaker 1: person who has been recently, and I'm sure thought it
Speaker 1: was amazing, but they're in a lot of trouble. It
Speaker 1: turns out there's a we've been monkeying with the Everglades
Speaker 1: in for a century or so, and it is starting
Speaker 1: to be like that is enough. I'm sick of this.
Speaker 1: You guys better restore me or else I'm gone.
Speaker 3: Were you talking about me? Yeah, okay, I didn't know.
Speaker 3: I thought you might have known someone else who recently went.
Speaker 1: You're the only human being I've ever met who's gone
Speaker 1: to the Everglades.
Speaker 3: That's not true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Emily's Emily's parents moved down that way or at
Speaker 2: least yeah, part time.
Speaker 1: Oh cool.
Speaker 2: And we took a boat, an airboat tour of part
Speaker 2: of the Everglades, a very tiny, tiny, tiny part obviously.
Speaker 1: Hey, you sent Jerry and I a little video of
Speaker 1: you on the airboat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, riding Toothless. It's my first airboat experience.
Speaker 1: What'd you think.
Speaker 2: Well, they're super loud, so it's not like a relaxing
Speaker 2: boat ride, not.
Speaker 1: For you, not for the wildlife, not for anybody.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I wondered about all that.
Speaker 2: But I getting in the Everglades, and I had done
Speaker 2: a previous probably one of the most amazing trips I
Speaker 2: ever did was a three nighter in the Okefinocch Swamp.
Speaker 2: So I've always been sort of entranced by swamp land.
Speaker 2: And when I was down there, especially now that I'm older.
Speaker 2: The okey pinoke thing was twenty something years ago. Sure,
Speaker 2: I was like, you know, when you're older, you just
Speaker 2: appreciate things a little more.
Speaker 1: I think like that, Oh definitely, when you're a kid,
Speaker 1: you don't know what the heck's going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I just marveled at the mainly the bird life, honestly,
Speaker 2: Like the alligators were fine, but the birds is what
Speaker 2: really are what really knocked me out. And you know,
Speaker 2: like this is how we learn stuff. As we see stuff,
Speaker 2: we think, oh, well, think I got a job where
Speaker 2: I can actually learn that for you know, as part
Speaker 2: of my weekly pay right. And so here we are,
Speaker 2: and so here we are, and it was amazing and
Speaker 2: I'm super excited about it.
Speaker 1: Well, what questions did you have that made you want
Speaker 1: to research the Everglades more?
Speaker 2: I mean, just to know more about it. Our airboat
Speaker 2: guy shout out to Kenny, like true interior Florida man.
Speaker 2: But he knew a lot, it seemed like, and he
Speaker 2: was giving us some pretty good information. I feel like
Speaker 2: it wasn't just like driving us around. He was into it,
Speaker 2: working for those tips, you know, sure, but just you know,
Speaker 2: it was just a tip of the.
Speaker 3: Mangrove, so to speak.
Speaker 1: Very nice, thank you, and by the bye. Kenny is
Speaker 1: such an interior Florida man. He once robbed a guest
Speaker 1: with a snake. Has that, Yes, at least once? For sure?
Speaker 3: That's pretty smart.
Speaker 2: Actually, I'd give up the cash register if the one
Speaker 2: put a snake in my base.
Speaker 1: Sure for sure. So okay. So for those of you
Speaker 1: who don't know, and there's probably plenty of you who
Speaker 1: don't know exactly where the Everglades are, although I would
Speaker 1: wager that you've heard of them, but they essentially are
Speaker 1: a well, I wanted to say, a wetlands, but there is.
Speaker 1: It's a patchwork of diverse ecosystems that are extremely unique,
Speaker 1: peculiar to the southern half of Florida. Essentially, if you
Speaker 1: want to talk geography and natural history, they go from
Speaker 1: just below Orlando all the way down to the Florida Keys.
Speaker 1: That's technically the Everglades. And then there's one strip from
Speaker 1: about Palm Beach down to Miami of high ground that
Speaker 1: holds the Everglades in place, and that represents the one
Speaker 1: border aside from the top or the Gulf of Mexico
Speaker 1: or the Florida keys is that bounds the Everglades. Does
Speaker 1: that make sense?
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, And it's a part of what makes the
Speaker 2: Everglades so unique. And you mentioned different ecosystems. There's a
Speaker 2: bunch of overlapping ecosystems that don't normally overlap necessarily elsewhere
Speaker 2: in the world, which is always gonna you know, anytime
Speaker 2: you have brackish or salty watery mixing in in places
Speaker 2: with fresh water, it's just going to create a unique environment.
Speaker 2: And the Everglades are that. It is seminole for well, actually,
Speaker 2: the Seminole name for everglades is pahe oki and it
Speaker 2: means grassy waters. And they have called them grassy waters
Speaker 2: various people or river glades for a long long time
Speaker 2: until finally, in eighteen twenty three the word everglades first
Speaker 2: appeared on a map.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and everglades itself is just one of those words
Speaker 1: you've heard so long you kind of take for granted
Speaker 1: it's its own thing, but it actually has an English
Speaker 1: meaning too. A glade is a big grassy opening in
Speaker 1: a wooded area, and ever is kind of like a
Speaker 1: short for forever, so it's like this endless glade and
Speaker 1: what they're talking about is that river of grass. There's
Speaker 1: actually a couple of what are called sloughs slu sl
Speaker 1: o u g h is how it's pronounced in America,
Speaker 1: or how it's spelled in America. You pronounce it slough
Speaker 1: and you punctuate it with an eagles cry. And the
Speaker 1: slews are kind of what most people probably think about
Speaker 1: when they're thinking of the Everglades. It's it's wet, marshy,
Speaker 1: wetland that's pretty much flooded year round, with a specific
Speaker 1: kind of grass called sawgrass that can grow anywhere. You
Speaker 1: could take some sawgrass to the moon and it'll be like, great, thanks,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna drive here. It'll grow in the water, it'll
Speaker 1: grow on dry land, it'll grow in saltwater, it'll grow
Speaker 1: on rush water. It'll grow under basically any condition. And
Speaker 1: so it's this flooded grassland that are really just a
Speaker 1: couple of specific ecosystems that make up the Everglades. Are
Speaker 1: what most people think of when they think Everglades, but
Speaker 1: it's far from the complete picture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And when we were driving over those grasses and well,
Speaker 2: you couldn't tell because they look like little roads through
Speaker 2: their little wet roads. I was like are these here
Speaker 2: because you drive over them? And he said yes, And
Speaker 2: he said and I think he saw my frownie face,
Speaker 2: but he said, man, this stuff drives up and grows
Speaker 2: right back up and you'd never know any anyone was here. Yeah,
Speaker 2: at least in this part. So you know, I still
Speaker 2: say it was fairly disturbing at least a noise.
Speaker 1: Well, it's less impactful than the other mode of transport
Speaker 1: they use in very swampy areas called swamp buggies, which
Speaker 1: are just have these huge tires that you can't possibly
Speaker 1: get stuck in. Those definitely are more disruptive to the
Speaker 1: ecosystem than an airboat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I was, I mean, every time he stopped
Speaker 2: and turned that engine off, I would look down and
Speaker 2: I was like, Kenny, brother, we're in three inches of water. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And he said, it doesn't take much. Man, he just
Speaker 2: goosed this thing and it'll get you going.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And also every time he stopped it and then would
Speaker 2: re crank that you know, it sounds like an airplane motor.
Speaker 2: It kind of is. I guess I was. All I
Speaker 2: could think of was please start.
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, for sure, because it's a little.
Speaker 2: Like there's something about swamps when I was in the
Speaker 2: Oke Pinoki. It's the same thing, and it's not just alligators.
Speaker 2: But I think it's just not being able to see
Speaker 2: into the water, you know, because that water looks like,
Speaker 2: you know, brood iced tea. There's just something scary. Like
Speaker 2: when I was a kid, I remember thinking there was
Speaker 2: nothing scarier than because I'd seen a lot of movies
Speaker 2: like set in swamps and stuff. I was like, there's
Speaker 2: nothing scarier. If you go into a swamp, you're gonna die. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and that's just not true.
Speaker 1: That was the clear lesson from swamp thing and swamp
Speaker 1: thing too totally.
Speaker 2: Olivia helped us with this, But it's also important that
Speaker 2: we point out that there's Everglades National Park, and then
Speaker 2: the Florida Everglades and Everglades National Park encompasses a lot
Speaker 2: of areas that aren't what we think of as Everglades,
Speaker 2: and the Everglades extend well beyond the boundaries of the
Speaker 2: park itself as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds a lot more confusing than it is.
Speaker 1: We'll line it all up into neat, little tidy packages
Speaker 1: for everybody. How about that?
Speaker 2: How about this Everglade very large National park, smaller area
Speaker 2: within and beyond.
Speaker 1: You did it. We can end the podcast right here,
Speaker 1: essentially because you already mentioned alligators, birds, and iced tea
Speaker 1: swamp water. So we're good.
Speaker 2: Well, I think we should talk history because you dug
Speaker 2: up some it looks like sort of the quintessential rundown
Speaker 2: of how we got there?
Speaker 1: Right, my friend, Yes, I wrote.
Speaker 3: That that was good stuff.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. I appreciate that. I for some reason,
Speaker 1: when I started to research a little more and more
Speaker 1: of the natural history of the Everglades, they just got
Speaker 1: more and more fascinated. So's so the Florida Florida is
Speaker 1: a peninsula for those of you who don't know, and
Speaker 1: it's on top of some very very solid bedrock part
Speaker 1: of the continental plate that it's on, but a top
Speaker 1: that is a layer of limestone bedrock, and it's formed
Speaker 1: from old like corals and shells. Because for a very
Speaker 1: long time what's now Florida was under a sea or
Speaker 1: an ocean.
Speaker 2: Right yeah, and potentially might be again one day.
Speaker 1: Right. So over time there's like sea level changes and
Speaker 1: rises because you know, the Earth likes to go through
Speaker 1: glacial and interglacial periods, and the during the last period
Speaker 1: where the ocean covered Florida. A new layer of really
Speaker 1: poorous limestone was laid down a top of the limestone bedrock,
Speaker 1: and that forms what's called the Biscayne Aquifer. And that
Speaker 1: aquifer is a holding tank essentially for drinking water for
Speaker 1: the nine million people who live on along the Atlantic
Speaker 1: coast of Florida. And it's just super flat. I think
Speaker 1: there's a difference in elevation chuck from the bottom of
Speaker 1: Lake Okachobee, which is essentially the northern boundary now of
Speaker 1: the Everglades, all the way down to the Florida Keys,
Speaker 1: it just drops by like twelve to fifteen feet I
Speaker 1: think in elevation all those hundreds of miles.
Speaker 2: And that is one thing I love about Florida, especially
Speaker 2: when I was a kid too, is you know, it's
Speaker 2: hot and stuff, but walking and jogging and riding bikes
Speaker 2: and stuff, they don't have any of those hills. So
Speaker 2: it's just much more palatable for a dude like me. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it is very flats, the hills or the killers, you
Speaker 2: know exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everybody knows that for sure. It doesn't matter whether
Speaker 1: you're walking, whether you're biking, whether you're rolling uphill. It sucks.
Speaker 2: The important part that you mentioned though, is that there's
Speaker 2: there's not much elevation rise and change, but Florida does
Speaker 2: slope just ever so slightly, I guess what southeast, and
Speaker 2: so all the water in Florida wants to go southeast.
Speaker 1: It does, but it runs into that Atlantic Coastal Ridge,
Speaker 1: which sounds tall, but at its tallest point it's like
Speaker 1: twenty feet above sea level.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a ridge, but Florida.
Speaker 1: Is so flat that that actually contains the water in
Speaker 1: the Everglades from going and spilling off into the Atlantic,
Speaker 1: So it funnels it down toward that southern southwestern part
Speaker 1: of Florida. And over time, as sea levels rose and
Speaker 1: declined to rose in decline. When we went through glacial
Speaker 1: periods the last time at the end of the Last
Speaker 1: Ice Age, which is about twelve thousand years ago, sea
Speaker 1: level started to kind of stabilize. And the current climate
Speaker 1: that Florida has this subtropical monsoonal climate where there's a
Speaker 1: dry season in a rainy season, and they're in the
Speaker 1: rainy season, it really rains. There's hurricanes, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: That started around the end of the Last Ice Age, right,
Speaker 1: and so over that last twelve thousand years, that big
Speaker 1: old Lake Okeechobee that forms the northern boundary of the
Speaker 1: Everglades would periodically flood, and it would send a ton
Speaker 1: of water down toward the bottom of Florida, the southern
Speaker 1: southwestern tip. Simultaneously, all of that sea level rise and
Speaker 1: decline deposited things like shells and mud and all sorts
Speaker 1: of stuff, and that formed a natural dam, a barrier
Speaker 1: that keeps a lot of the water from flowing out
Speaker 1: of the southwestern part of Florida. And it forms the Everglades,
Speaker 1: which is essentially an extremely slow moving body of water.
Speaker 1: That is, it moves so slowly that the water has
Speaker 1: time to percolate downward through the soil into the aquifer,
Speaker 1: become purified and be held. So during times of the
Speaker 1: wet season, it's a big repository for storm water. During
Speaker 1: the dry season, it's a source of drinking water for
Speaker 1: the people who live in Florida.
Speaker 2: And some say that a drop of water, some meaning you,
Speaker 2: and I imagine you got this from somewhere.
Speaker 1: Right, I didn't make that reputable.
Speaker 2: That a drop of water takes about a year or
Speaker 2: to go from Lake Okachobee to the Florida Bay, which
Speaker 2: you know all of this talk sounds like Florida is
Speaker 2: a very scary place. It sounds like it's held together
Speaker 2: by you know, reedy roots and duct tape.
Speaker 1: It essentially is, for sure, But it's so flat that
Speaker 1: you're really not in any danger. And it's also very shallow.
Speaker 1: I think that Florida Bay that extends between the Florida
Speaker 1: Keys and the southernmost tip of the Florida Mainland, that's
Speaker 1: like five feet an average of five feet deep.
Speaker 3: Could you walk to the Florida Keys?
Speaker 1: I believe so. Yeah, because from what I saw, the
Speaker 1: average the average depth is three water. Yes, that it
Speaker 1: is five feet.
Speaker 3: That's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: We should, It's pretty cool. I never thought about that,
Speaker 1: but yeah, you could from what I from what I
Speaker 1: can tell.
Speaker 3: If it can be done, it has been done.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you'd think so for sure.
Speaker 2: I mean, I imagine Jimmy Buffett walked Traverse that many times.
Speaker 1: Probably in his life. Uh.
Speaker 3: Is that good? On natural history? Should we take a break?
Speaker 1: I think so? Did? Do we cover everything? I don't remember?
Speaker 3: I think so. I think that spells it up very nicely.
Speaker 2: All Right, So we're gonna take a break, and we're
Speaker 2: gonna come back and talk about what Livia calls America's
Speaker 2: greatest swamp. All right, so we covered natural history, we
Speaker 2: should talk about the people of Florida. Southern Florida was
Speaker 2: it was really as far as you know, settling the
Speaker 2: America's it was one of the last pieces of the
Speaker 2: Americas to be settled by human beings.
Speaker 3: But there's still.
Speaker 2: Like I think twelve hundred BCE is where the indigenous
Speaker 2: population started out there, so still nothing to sneeze at.
Speaker 2: H And you know, you still see that that indigenous uh,
Speaker 2: I guess representation sort of everywhere. It's just it feels
Speaker 2: thick just from the names and just kind of everywhere
Speaker 2: you go. It's it's it's a it's as parent almost
Speaker 2: as if you were I feel like out west of
Speaker 2: the unit in the United States, like you get a
Speaker 2: little bit of that in Georgia and the Carolinas, but
Speaker 2: it just feels heavier in Florida.
Speaker 1: For sure. Yeah, there's a lot of Native American words
Speaker 1: that are used as place names still for sure. Is
Speaker 1: that what you're mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean more than that, but it feels like
Speaker 2: a clunky way to say what I probably didn't even
Speaker 2: get across.
Speaker 1: Well, the thing about the Everglades is it's how's people for,
Speaker 1: like you said, a very long time, thousands of years.
Speaker 1: And I think what blew my mind is the Everglades
Speaker 1: is we know them today, whereas I guess we would
Speaker 1: have known them if we came upon them in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty or something like that. They were only like three thousand,
Speaker 1: thirty two hundred years old from what I saw. I
Speaker 1: saw some places five thousand, but I think the National
Speaker 1: Park Service said they're only about three thousand years old.
Speaker 1: So people and the Everglades kind of came around that
Speaker 1: area around the same time, and they've been inhabited in
Speaker 1: some way, shape or form ever since. Because as Europeans
Speaker 1: pushed further and further west and further and further south,
Speaker 1: the Everglade you couldn't do anything with them. When Florida
Speaker 1: first was settled by European people of European ancestry, they
Speaker 1: were like, this is just a completely valueless expanse of swamp.
Speaker 1: We can't do anything with this.
Speaker 2: You go live there, yeah, for sure, and you know
Speaker 2: in a sec we'll get to like, you know, kind
Speaker 2: of what the United States started doing once they acquired
Speaker 2: Florida from Spain in eighteen nineteen with the Adams Was
Speaker 2: it onus treaty? That's probably not pronouncing it right.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I didn't see that one.
Speaker 2: Well, that was the treaty where the United States got Florida.
Speaker 2: But as far as original inhabitants, we're talking about the Tequesta,
Speaker 2: the Yaga, and I don't know. I tried to find
Speaker 2: the pronunciation for the Ais tribe.
Speaker 3: Do you know what that is?
Speaker 1: Yeah? It was Ais. It was an abbreviation.
Speaker 3: That's pretty good.
Speaker 1: I thighs.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe I tried to find as it's hard to
Speaker 2: dig up pronunciation sometimes for some of this stuff. But
Speaker 2: they lived on the East coast, and then you had
Speaker 2: the Caloosa in the Southwest, and then you know, they're
Speaker 2: all over the Everglades. They're living there and they're in
Speaker 2: they're raised huts. What were those called chickie huts?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and those were seminole, I believe a seminole invention,
Speaker 1: which is just like a platform like the one you
Speaker 1: stayed on in the Okefinoki swamp.
Speaker 3: Well keeps even better, right, but it has.
Speaker 1: Like sides and a roof and stuff like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's a house. It's a platform house that was
Speaker 1: designed to be to be lived in in the Everglades.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in the Everglades. You mentioned Seminole. They were formed
Speaker 2: from a lot of displaced Creek Indians, some other indigenous groups,
Speaker 2: and then there were some Africans who were, you know,
Speaker 2: fleeing the slave trade, and a lot of these people
Speaker 2: ended up just sort of hiding in the Everglades because
Speaker 2: it is a great place to hide.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so still there there's Seminole tribe. The Seminole
Speaker 1: tribe has a reservation in Big Cyprus, one of their
Speaker 1: reservations in Florida, and the Mikosuk tribe apparently is made
Speaker 1: up of like former Creek members that rather than be
Speaker 1: moved westward to Oklahoma during Indian removal, they said nope,
Speaker 1: I'm staying down here, and they ended up forming basically
Speaker 1: their own tribe over time that's still around today.
Speaker 2: I kind of like the idea of we're going to
Speaker 2: be in the middle of the Everglades, come and find.
Speaker 1: Us, That's exactly what they did.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were like, well we'll go brave this. You. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you come after us if you want to see what
Speaker 1: happens malaria boy.
Speaker 3: And then I'm there going don't go in there.
Speaker 2: You die if you go into a swamp exact, you
Speaker 2: don't know what's under that water.
Speaker 1: It's the lesson of swamp thing and.
Speaker 3: Where they're like, uh, you know what's under this water? Food?
Speaker 1: Yeah, bedrock.
Speaker 3: So you mentioned the land being valueless.
Speaker 2: That was literally what the first state legislature said that
Speaker 2: it is quote holy valueless and said, we got to
Speaker 2: figure out how to get this water out of here
Speaker 2: and make this into land we can use.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's like some people are actually adapting to living there.
Speaker 1: Can you believe that we will obtain this thing? And
Speaker 1: so they did very quickly. They started digging canals and
Speaker 1: ditches to drain water from Lake Okeachobee, which again has
Speaker 1: traditionally flooded its banks and sent water into the Everglades.
Speaker 1: That's where the Everglades gets most of its water. It
Speaker 1: has over time, and then it takes so long to
Speaker 1: slash out that it stays generally wet throughout the year.
Speaker 1: If you dig canals to divert water to other places,
Speaker 1: like say an existing river or the Atlantic Ocean, you're
Speaker 1: not going to have those banks flood anymore, and the
Speaker 1: people that live along those banks are not gonna die
Speaker 1: being covered in a mud slide or a flood, or
Speaker 1: your crops aren't going to be ruined. And so that
Speaker 1: was like the first attempt to really kind of the Everglades.
Speaker 1: It was by cutting off its water supply from the north,
Speaker 1: from Lake Okechobee.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that happened up through the first couple of
Speaker 2: decades at least of the twentieth century, until in the
Speaker 2: nineteen twenties some people, not too many, but some people
Speaker 2: started standing up and saying, you know what, we're wrecking
Speaker 2: an ecosystem here. Yeah, it's kind of heartening. I guess
Speaker 2: to think that this was happening all the way back
Speaker 2: in the nineteen twenties. But in nineteen twenty eight there
Speaker 2: was a land developer named Ernest f Co, a land
Speaker 2: developer who actually developed a campaign to protect part of
Speaker 2: that area as a national park, which eventually bore fruit
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty seven.
Speaker 1: Can you believe it? He was a unicorn?
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: Another champion of the Everglades who came along about twenty
Speaker 1: or so years later was a journalist named Marjorie Stoneman Douglas,
Speaker 1: whose name sadly has become synonymous with a school shooting
Speaker 1: as well. And I didn't know anything about her, but
Speaker 1: she was this amazing champion of civil rights, of women's rights,
Speaker 1: of protecting the environment. And we're talking in the forties,
Speaker 1: you know, and she was a really good writer, and
Speaker 1: she wrote a book called The Everglades River of Grass,
Speaker 1: which is a great title or whatever, but it was
Speaker 1: apparently a very popular book that changed people's attitudes towards
Speaker 1: the Everglades. It wasn't like, this isn't something to be
Speaker 1: tamed for industry and real estate. This is something to
Speaker 1: be preserved and protected. And because she helped kind of
Speaker 1: point out just how unique the Everglades was as an ecosystem,
Speaker 1: it became protected not because it's incredibly beautiful. It's actually not.
Speaker 1: In some ways, it's not ugly, but it's featureless. And
Speaker 1: in a lot of places it was protected because of
Speaker 1: the life that it housed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I get that it's not you know,
Speaker 2: the Rocky Mountain National Park and like all the amazing
Speaker 2: things you get out west, but I was blown away
Speaker 2: by the way it looked. And I know that swamp
Speaker 2: just has a connotation, as you know, like when we
Speaker 2: first you know, when the US first got ahold of it.
Speaker 2: They were like, this is this place is gross. Let's
Speaker 2: get all this water out of here. Youw But like
Speaker 2: I was knocked out and I the same thing happened
Speaker 2: in the oke Finocchi. I just think it's an amazing,
Speaker 2: like visually amazing place as well.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. Well you would have been a great early
Speaker 1: proponent of protecting the Everglades totally.
Speaker 3: Just don't. I don't want to walk around in there, right,
Speaker 3: because you'll die.
Speaker 1: I wanted to exist over there.
Speaker 2: And again I talked about the birding, but apparently there
Speaker 2: was a conservative governor named spesciod Holland who was like, well, hey,
Speaker 2: you know, there's tons of birds here. We could probably
Speaker 2: bring in some money as a tourism hot spot with
Speaker 2: the Everglades.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those nerds are loaded. They usually I don't have
Speaker 1: kids or anything else to do, really well paying job.
Speaker 1: Bring them in.
Speaker 3: Oh God, bless the murders.
Speaker 1: So the park started out at four hundred something thousand
Speaker 1: acres and eventually just started ballooning very quickly. I think
Speaker 1: it's about one and a half million acres now, about
Speaker 1: twenty three hundred square miles. It's big, a god gigantic,
Speaker 1: amount of kilometers and it's it is, it's giant, and
Speaker 1: you're like, wow, twenty three hundred square miles. It's a huge,
Speaker 1: staggering size. But compared to the actual historical natural boundaries,
Speaker 1: and I'm talking like the taking anything anyone's ever said,
Speaker 1: this is the Everglades into account, naturally speaking, it's about
Speaker 1: an eighth of what the actual Everglades are meant to be.
Speaker 1: There's supposed to be something like eighteen thousand square miles,
Speaker 1: or about twice the size of New Jersey.
Speaker 2: So like basically the entire lower half of Florida.
Speaker 1: Yeah, up up, well into central Florida.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: So it might even be closer to the bottom two thirds.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but it's it's a significant, huge amount
Speaker 1: of land. And the idea that the park is just
Speaker 1: protecting it, that it's like an eighth of its size,
Speaker 1: it's misleading in one way because there's actually a patchwork
Speaker 1: of Native American reservations that are protected and state parks
Speaker 1: and areas that also enjoy.
Speaker 3: Some wildlife refuges.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's actually bigger than just the National Park.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, it's still a shadow of
Speaker 1: its former South and there are two things that cause
Speaker 1: the Everglades to become a shadow of its former self.
Speaker 1: One is real estate development. So Florida's amazingly beautiful and sunny.
Speaker 1: There's yeah, there's a rainy season, but it's still worth
Speaker 1: hanging around during to make it through to the dry
Speaker 1: because it's so nice. And then number two agriculture, because
Speaker 1: the Okachobe traditionally like overflowed its banks to the south.
Speaker 1: It deposited tons of like nutrient rich silt. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: just to the south of Lake Okachobe with some of
Speaker 1: the most fertile land in the United States, and they're like,
Speaker 1: this is wasted. We need to damn this thing. We
Speaker 1: need to build levies and dykes and everything to keep
Speaker 1: this thing from overflowing and plant there. And that's what
Speaker 1: they did. So the Everglades were drained for real estate
Speaker 1: in this patchwork way and then cut off again, like
Speaker 1: I said, from its source of new water, Lake Okachobe.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And one of the main projects that kind of got
Speaker 2: that going in more recent history was in nineteen forty eight.
Speaker 2: The Hurricane George came through in nineteen forty seven, aka
Speaker 2: the Fort Lauderdale Hurricane, did a lot of damage, and
Speaker 2: then Congress said, all right, we got to do something
Speaker 2: about this for real, so they authorized the Central and
Speaker 2: Southern Florida Project for Flood Control and Other Purposes, otherwise
Speaker 2: known as the Sea and Sea ampor sand SF CNSF.
Speaker 2: And that's what basically got it going in nineteen forty eight,
Speaker 2: Like you were talking about, when you know, just more
Speaker 2: and more canals, more levees, creating more farmland and urban areas,
Speaker 2: just swelling outward.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because if you weren't on board with the idea
Speaker 1: of real estate development or agriculture and you wanted to
Speaker 1: protect the Everglades, every once in a while, an enormous
Speaker 1: hurricane would come through and kill a couple thousand people,
Speaker 1: it'd be like, we got to do something about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it would bring everybody else into the fold. And
Speaker 1: that's how that happened. So over time, these projects became
Speaker 1: so successful that still today, the canals and the ditches
Speaker 1: and all of that stuff that diverts water away from
Speaker 1: the Everglades outward so that we can live and farm
Speaker 1: in Florida carries about one point seven billion gallons of
Speaker 1: water a day to the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf
Speaker 1: of Mexico.
Speaker 3: That's incredible still today.
Speaker 1: So, yes, the Everglades is essentially you would hope it's
Speaker 1: in this holding pattern, it's not. It's been cut off
Speaker 1: from its natural source of fresh water coming from the
Speaker 1: north and Lake Okechobee, and it's slowly dying. Essentially, it's
Speaker 1: still huge, but it's still being carved up. Agriculture is
Speaker 1: still being carried out, it's still being drained, and it's
Speaker 1: it's in a little bit of trouble. So we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that, but I say we take a break and
Speaker 1: then come back and talk about some of the stars
Speaker 1: of the Everglades.
Speaker 3: You know who else agrees with you on these points?
Speaker 1: Who?
Speaker 3: Kenny? All right, we'll be right back, all.
Speaker 1: Right, Chuck. So, the National Park Service carves the Everglades
Speaker 1: up into nine habitats because I think we said at
Speaker 1: the outset, the Everglades is actually this amazing patchwork of
Speaker 1: different kinds of ecosystems, nine to be exact. And the
Speaker 1: reason that there are so many different ecosystems is because again,
Speaker 1: Florida is so flat, the Everglades are so shallow that
Speaker 1: just in a rise of a few inches can create
Speaker 1: a completely different ecosystem. Than one that's a few inches
Speaker 1: shorter than it, because it can be dry, and so
Speaker 1: then there can be hardwood trees and then all sorts
Speaker 1: of different life comes in flocks to these little islands
Speaker 1: that form over time as the tree roots capture dirt
Speaker 1: and the round rises slowly but surely over time. Those
Speaker 1: are called hardwood hammocks, and they're just one of the
Speaker 1: ecosystems found in the Everglades.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and people should understand every time we say the
Speaker 2: word dry, that's heavily quoted, right, dry meaning you know,
Speaker 2: it can sustain birds walking around on it and like
Speaker 2: a tree to grow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it'll get flooded periodically, but it's not constantly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wet, And imagine if you jump up and down
Speaker 2: and stand in place, you'll sink a little bit.
Speaker 1: You will be very sorry.
Speaker 2: You've also got the pine rocklands. These are just beautiful areas.
Speaker 3: These are.
Speaker 2: Areas of forest and it has and it's very unique.
Speaker 2: It's only found in South Florida and the Bahamas and
Speaker 2: mostly in Florida. But it's got this pine canopy. You know,
Speaker 2: Florida's got these beautiful pine trees. I know people often
Speaker 2: think of like, you know, just coastal Florida with palm
Speaker 2: trees and things like that and sand. But you know,
Speaker 2: you get interior, get into interior Florida a little bit,
Speaker 2: you've got these beautiful pine forests, and that forest canopy
Speaker 2: means that stuff grows there that doesn't grow anywhere else
Speaker 2: on planet Earth.
Speaker 1: Right. And one of the things that's really important to
Speaker 1: the pine rocklands is they can sustain fire, and so
Speaker 1: fire periodically comes along these days. The National Park Rangers
Speaker 1: set fire on purpose for prescribed burns to mimic natural fires,
Speaker 1: and that keeps those hardwoods from coming in and establishing
Speaker 1: dominance and turning those places into a hardwood hammock. So
Speaker 1: it stays of pine rockland, which is cool. It's its
Speaker 1: own thing, and it's probably always going to be its
Speaker 1: own thing as long as everything stays exactly the same.
Speaker 2: Freshwater sloughs they are the Shark River slough that goes
Speaker 2: to the Gulf of Mexico and the Tailor Slew that
Speaker 2: goes into Florida Bay. They're basically two giant marshy sawgrass rivers.
Speaker 3: Moving very slow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's again, that's what people think of typically
Speaker 1: when they think of.
Speaker 3: Everglades, right, yeah, the rafting not so good.
Speaker 1: There's Marl prairies, and Marl is like the opposite of Pete.
Speaker 1: It needs aerobic conditions to form. Did you just Pete
Speaker 1: because it has to do with Scotch now.
Speaker 2: Just because we talk about Pete later, and I think
Speaker 2: Pete is just sort of amazing.
Speaker 1: I do too.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Plus also it makes Scotch pretty great.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Sure, and that's part of it.
Speaker 1: But the maral is made up of a bunch of
Speaker 1: different weird stuff like algae and microbes and calcium carbonate,
Speaker 1: and it's a very specific kind of mud or dirt
Speaker 1: basically that feeds a lot of very diverse wildlife.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, So those are the Marl prairies.
Speaker 1: Yes, Yeah. What about the cypress trees. They kind of
Speaker 1: have their own system allotted to them. But they seem
Speaker 1: to grow in various places too.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean they can grow in water like the standing water.
Speaker 2: They do really well in the wet areas. They're beautiful.
Speaker 2: They also grow in dry areas that don't have great soil,
Speaker 2: so they're pretty hardy species.
Speaker 1: Okay, And I think I would be the jerk of
Speaker 1: the year if I took mangrove forests.
Speaker 3: You know. I love my mangroves.
Speaker 2: I asked Kenny. I was like, are those mangroves? He said, no,
Speaker 2: but there are some. So what I was seeing was
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what I was seeing or exactly which
Speaker 2: area I was in now that I'm looking at them all,
Speaker 2: I mean it.
Speaker 3: Was it's.
Speaker 2: It's north west of Fort Myers is where I was,
Speaker 2: and we were driving around through the marshy section. But
Speaker 2: there was a very large lake there that I think
Speaker 2: he said was the second largest lake.
Speaker 1: I don't no, I'm not familiar with that area, but
Speaker 1: it sounds like you're talking about Cape Coral area.
Speaker 2: Maybe I tried to find that lake on the map,
Speaker 2: but I couldn't. I couldn't find anything today.
Speaker 1: Does Kenny exist? Is anything real?
Speaker 3: He does? I took his selfie and he jumped in
Speaker 3: the back of it. He photo bombed us.
Speaker 1: Nice.
Speaker 2: But anyway, mangrove forests, there are mangroves there. They're in
Speaker 2: the coastal channels around the southern tip of Florida in
Speaker 2: that brackish water. So I wouldn't have seen him where
Speaker 2: we were. And you know, listen to our Mangroves episode
Speaker 2: to learn all the great things they.
Speaker 1: Do, Yeah, for sure, and they are really great trees.
Speaker 1: The Everglades apparently has the largest contiguous mangrove ecosystem in
Speaker 1: the entire Western hemisphere, and I read that some of
Speaker 1: them are like four stories tall. Chuck, can you imnagine
Speaker 1: seeing a four story tall mangrove tree?
Speaker 3: Man, that's amazing.
Speaker 2: And you know, I did say, listen to that episode,
Speaker 2: but we should say at the very least that one
Speaker 2: of the big things because this will come up later,
Speaker 2: that mangroves do is protect against high water and storms.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. And so there's areas that get such high
Speaker 1: waters and get such high winds during hurricanes that the
Speaker 1: mangroves are like nuts to this, I'm moving elsewhere. And
Speaker 1: those areas where they move away from or where they
Speaker 1: just can't exist are called coastal lowlands. And these are
Speaker 1: the antithesis of what people think of when they think
Speaker 1: of the Everglades, because it's essentially a scrub desert. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in that nuts, there's scrub desert ecosystems in the Everglades.
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's it's incredible, like all the ecosystems are so varied,
Speaker 2: it's really amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So it's populated by low growing, salt tolerant plants
Speaker 1: that can handle being blown around in one hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty one hundred and ninety mile an hour winds like succulents.
Speaker 1: And then there's Florida Bay and this is again the
Speaker 1: very very shallow coastal area that's bounded at the south
Speaker 1: by the Key, at the north by the Florida Mainland,
Speaker 1: and there's amazing fishing there and it's most people would
Speaker 1: think like, that's not the Everglades, but it's technically included
Speaker 1: in Everglades in particular Everglades National Park.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, we got to talk about some animals here. We're
Speaker 2: not going to go into too much detail, but we
Speaker 2: got to talk about alligators and crocodiles because, as you know,
Speaker 2: if you've listened to the show, that's the only place
Speaker 2: on planet Earth that has both, which is pretty remarkable. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it is a lot more alligators and crocodiles. Of course,
Speaker 2: I think about two hundred thousand gators compared to two
Speaker 2: thousand crocs.
Speaker 1: Yes, but the crocs numbered two hundred back in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five. That's pretty good comeback, yeah, because they were
Speaker 1: never gone. Same with the panthers, there's a they're still
Speaker 1: in a very precariously low population density of about two hundred. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's up from twenty to thirty in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 3: It's crazy.
Speaker 1: So this is like these are the year or the
Speaker 1: dividends that protection yielded, Like the Florida panthers should not
Speaker 1: exist any longer were it not for people like E. F.
Speaker 1: Co and Marjorie Stone in Douglas, like they would just
Speaker 1: be long gone. And now they're starting to slowly come back.
Speaker 1: And those things are beautiful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they are gorgeous, big kitty cats.
Speaker 1: Yeah, six to seven feet long.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you don't saw a wild cow?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Kenny said, they're not wild cows, But what.
Speaker 1: Do you call them, like a feral cows?
Speaker 2: Maybe he did say wild cows, but wild just meaning
Speaker 2: they're not anyone's cows.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool.
Speaker 3: There's a word for that. I just can't think of it.
Speaker 2: Unowned cows, no possess they were least cows.
Speaker 1: I think, so, yeah, that's pretty neat. Though then I
Speaker 1: don't understand how those things survive because they're just an
Speaker 1: alligator could take them down so easy.
Speaker 3: This cow was fifty feet from an alligator.
Speaker 1: It's so weird. I don't understand nature sometimes, even though
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 2: You've got your you've got your water mammals. Everyone loves
Speaker 2: to see a manatee or an otter or a dolphin.
Speaker 2: The manatee. There was a I feel like a push
Speaker 2: to save the manatee started in like the nineties or
Speaker 2: maybe even earlier.
Speaker 1: Something like that, because they were in trouble and they've
Speaker 1: kind of come back too.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think they went from endanger to threatened in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: But just a few years ago they had what's called
Speaker 2: an unusual mortality event, which looks like it is because
Speaker 2: of a loss of sea grass and water quality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a huge one. So Lake Okachobee, as we'll
Speaker 1: see as a toxic dump of farm runoff in nutrients,
Speaker 1: and because it's diverted that water's diverted now to the
Speaker 1: eastern coast and the western coast, they're very frequently algae
Speaker 1: die offs or algae that lead to fish kills and
Speaker 1: die offs, including the sea grass. So it's a huge,
Speaker 1: huge problem. Not only is it not providing the Everglades
Speaker 1: with water right now, that's actually kind of good because
Speaker 1: if it were, the Everglades would be even more poison
Speaker 1: than they are. So instead, the coastal areas are getting poisoned,
Speaker 1: and that's where the manatees live. And when the sea
Speaker 1: grass goes away, the mandes go away. So now they've
Speaker 1: taken up programs of like feeding the manades expired heads
Speaker 1: of cabbage and lettuce and stuff from grocery stores around
Speaker 1: the state, and it seems to be sustaining them. But
Speaker 1: the key here is to is to figure out how
Speaker 1: to treat Lake Okachobe. That's the key. If you can
Speaker 1: treat Lake Okachobe, you can start moving water from Lake
Speaker 1: Okachobe down into the Everglades. You're taking an enormous first
Speaker 1: step toward restoration, and you're also saving coastal areas that
Speaker 1: are now just completely trashed by algae blooms and agricultural runoff.
Speaker 3: Do it turn the water on?
Speaker 1: Well, that's what they're doing there. So are we onto
Speaker 1: conservation and climate change? Well?
Speaker 2: I want to shout out our bird friends real quick, because,
Speaker 2: like I said, early on, the alligators were neat, although
Speaker 2: we did see baby gaiters, very very cute, all piling
Speaker 2: on one another trying to I guess get out of
Speaker 2: the water. There's like ten of them. They were just
Speaker 2: climbing all over each other.
Speaker 1: They don't get either.
Speaker 2: Like five feet from us is very cute, But the
Speaker 2: birds is what really knocked me out. And Emily and
Speaker 2: I have gotten much more into I wouldn't even say birding,
Speaker 2: but just appreciating birds enthusiasm. Like we got a bunch
Speaker 2: of feeders now and cameras and we're looking them up more.
Speaker 2: And she puts out her phone and then the Cornell
Speaker 2: app you know, listens and records. So we've gotten more
Speaker 2: into it. We don't actually go out with the binoculars yet.
Speaker 1: I have a magazine you got me a subscription to
Speaker 1: that I hadn't heard of before that I love that.
Speaker 1: I think you'll like too. It's called Birds and Blooms.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and essentially it's almost ad free. I don't
Speaker 1: know how they publish. I guess just sudden subscribe. And
Speaker 1: it's all about birds and how great birds are and
Speaker 1: oh check out this plant and this plant beautiful. It's
Speaker 1: almost like just appreciating this stuff for ap preaching it.
Speaker 1: It's not just shoving conservation down your throat. It's not
Speaker 1: there's agenda. There's no agenda, aside from appreciating birds and plants,
Speaker 1: it's a really great magazine.
Speaker 2: Oh, my friend, I appreciate that that is going to
Speaker 2: be coming Emily's way, and I will tell her that
Speaker 2: you and you me are to think sure, but anyway.
Speaker 1: It'll probably never get back to me if you don't.
Speaker 2: The birds down there were just amazing cranes and herons,
Speaker 2: and the really the showstopper was that pink what's it
Speaker 2: called the rosette spoon bill. We came upon a big
Speaker 2: mess of them, and I was just like, you got it,
Speaker 2: Like it was in the swamp road ahead of us.
Speaker 1: How tall I knew it he was.
Speaker 2: I knew what he was going to do, and he
Speaker 2: cut the engine and we watched them and stuff. But
Speaker 2: then you know, he drives and they fly away, and
Speaker 2: all I could think of was sorry.
Speaker 1: Sorry for disturbing you. Yeah, how tall are they?
Speaker 2: They were about the same size as like a hair
Speaker 2: in her crane, it seemed like. But just the spoon
Speaker 2: bills are cool looking, and then when they take off
Speaker 2: and fly, they're just this like flamingo pink.
Speaker 3: It's amazing.
Speaker 1: That's really cool, man. Yeah, lots of butterflies down there, too,
Speaker 1: which I'm a big fan of as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and hopefully we're going to be doing If you're saying,
Speaker 2: how can you not talk about orchids, I think we're
Speaker 2: going to do maybe a shorty.
Speaker 3: Just on orchids.
Speaker 1: Yes, So, as I was saying, there's some steps that
Speaker 1: need to be taken to restore the Everglades, and there's
Speaker 1: been a huge push to restoring the Everglades for decades now.
Speaker 1: Unesco put it on his World Heritage List in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, and even long before that, people will be like,
Speaker 1: we've got to stop screwing with this stuff. We have
Speaker 1: messed it up so bad with the system of canals
Speaker 1: and ditches and dykes and levees and dams. We've got
Speaker 1: to just undo some of this. And there was a
Speaker 1: huge push to to actually do that, and in two thousand,
Speaker 1: back when Congress was capable of being bipartisan, they passed
Speaker 1: the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan SERP, and SERP essentially said
Speaker 1: we're going to undo as much of that C and
Speaker 1: SF project work as possible and just let the Everglades
Speaker 1: be what the Everglades are. And had anyone been on
Speaker 1: the ball and funding come through early, it would be
Speaker 1: done by now. It was projected to cost eight billion
Speaker 1: dollars in twenty years, and that is not at all
Speaker 1: how it worked out at all. They're actually just now
Speaker 1: starting a lot of the projects, and by a lot
Speaker 1: of the projects, I mean a tiny fraction of what's
Speaker 1: needed to be done.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, Kenny said the same thing that
Speaker 2: you know, there's still real estate encroaching and developers encroaching,
Speaker 2: so it seems like a one step forward.
Speaker 3: To steps back situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that they're still draining more wetlands to expand you know,
Speaker 2: living space and grocery stores and everything else that people
Speaker 2: use further and further into it. So it's fairly discouraging.
Speaker 2: I know that was at one point a deal to
Speaker 2: buy back a bunch of land from US Sugar, but
Speaker 2: thanks to the two thousand and eight financial crisis that
Speaker 2: went belly up, right.
Speaker 1: Didn't that just anger you? So this would have been
Speaker 1: a huge, huge step because this was prime agricultural land
Speaker 1: that was below Lake Okeachobean. If they could basically flood
Speaker 1: that again, it would it would restore water back to
Speaker 1: the Everglades. Would have been huge and US Sugar who
Speaker 1: up until you said it, I've been pronouncing in my head.
Speaker 1: US Sugar. They were on board, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people were critical that Florida was going to spend one
Speaker 1: point seven five billion dollars to buy like one hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty thousand acres from US Sugar because it was
Speaker 1: a struggling company to begin with, and YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: But all of those political obstacles and it was basically
Speaker 1: a done deal. And then the financial crisis happened and
Speaker 1: all those stupid banks that screwed up the entire global
Speaker 1: economy also prevented the Everglades Restoration Room taking that enormous
Speaker 1: step forward because Floor is like, oh, we don't have
Speaker 1: any money all of a sudden, and we really need
Speaker 1: every penny we can get.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a real thumb in the eye.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, we promised a little bit more talk of
Speaker 2: Pete and I'm glad Lyvia found this because I'm just
Speaker 2: I think both it was pretty knocked out by Pete.
Speaker 2: Maybe we should do a Pete cast one day. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but there's a lot of that Pete rich soil underneath
Speaker 2: the marshes there. And you talked earlier about what was
Speaker 2: it that was the opposite of pete.
Speaker 1: Marl.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Marl was the opposite of pete. Pete forms from
Speaker 2: organic materials that don't have oxygen. They're shielded from oxygen
Speaker 2: so they don't break down. And that's why you can
Speaker 2: find like amazing discoveries and peat bogs. The wetland dries up, though,
Speaker 2: and that stuff can all of a sudden burn that's
Speaker 2: going to release a bunch of carbon into the atmosphere,
Speaker 2: and it's you know, all of a sudden, the peat
Speaker 2: is threatened as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So yeah, there's a lot of problems with climate
Speaker 1: change that climate change is going to bring to the Everglades,
Speaker 1: and one of them is that restoration. The restoration plan
Speaker 1: that was adopted in two thousand did not plan for
Speaker 1: climate change. So they're having to figure out how to
Speaker 1: implement these these things now, the projects now, without going
Speaker 1: back to the drawing board and starting over and losing
Speaker 1: tons of ground and time, but also without spending billions
Speaker 1: of dollars on things that aren't going to work because
Speaker 1: the Everglades are going to change with the climate. So
Speaker 1: that's currently where they're what they're trying to figure out.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, and I recommend two different articles that
Speaker 1: have two really different views of what's going on for
Speaker 1: a really really sunny view that I almost found suspicious,
Speaker 1: as if as if some AI wrote it, knew what
Speaker 1: I was researching, and wrote it and served it up
Speaker 1: to me just in time for me to report on
Speaker 1: it to you guys. I don't think that's a thing yet,
Speaker 1: but it made me think like that's coming in the future. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it's called like a bypass surgery for the Everglades.
Speaker 1: It's on fizz org and it's pretty good. It's very interesting,
Speaker 1: but again it's got a really sunny outlook for the
Speaker 1: opposite outlook. There is a up first public radio interview
Speaker 1: with Jenny Stilettovich, who's a public radio reporter who reports
Speaker 1: on the Everglades and has forever, and that's called how
Speaker 1: to Save the Everglades. Would strongly recommend listening or reading
Speaker 1: to that as well as that fizz org article, and
Speaker 1: I'll give you a pretty clear perspective on what's going on.
Speaker 2: Phyzorg sounds like Snoop Dogg named that what a perfect
Speaker 2: way to end.
Speaker 1: Very nice well. Chuck made another Snoop Dogg reference to
Speaker 1: circle things up again, and of course that has just
Speaker 1: triggered listener mail.
Speaker 3: Whether we like it or not, we're gonna shout out.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you did you see that flood
Speaker 2: of emails come in from those high school kids.
Speaker 3: No, okay, you will.
Speaker 2: It was sort of right in the last hour before
Speaker 2: we recorded, we got like ten or twelve emails all
Speaker 2: at the same time from a high school class. So
Speaker 2: I was like, somebody had an assignment, nice, and I'm
Speaker 2: going to read one of them and shout out the rest.
Speaker 2: This was called subject line. My teacher forced me to
Speaker 2: do this. I'm not gonna say which student Ms Tiak
Speaker 2: wrote this one, but I bet you could probably figure
Speaker 2: it out. Hey, guys, really enjoy listening to your podcast.
Speaker 2: I've been listening for the past month or so. So
Speaker 2: far I've learned a lot from it. One of my
Speaker 2: favorite topics was the origin of math symbols, since I'm
Speaker 2: a big math person. I'm an ap English language student
Speaker 2: at Wasco High School. My teacher is a huge fan
Speaker 2: of both of you guys, and it's been making us
Speaker 2: listen to a podcast episode every week.
Speaker 1: Nice.
Speaker 2: So we gained general knowledge for our argument essay in
Speaker 2: the ape exam. She is now forcing us to send
Speaker 2: a listener mail for a grade.
Speaker 3: If you happen to see this, can I get a
Speaker 3: thank you to Ms Tiak?
Speaker 1: How do you spell it?
Speaker 3: T y A c K.
Speaker 1: Great name?
Speaker 3: Unless the ta is silent, then it's just yak or
Speaker 3: unless the why silent? In this tech? Sure, what if
Speaker 3: the A silent then it'd be tyke. What if the
Speaker 3: c K is silent, it'd be tia?
Speaker 1: Very nice?
Speaker 3: Anything else?
Speaker 1: I think we've covered the big ones.
Speaker 2: I would actually like to thank you for giving our
Speaker 2: class more knowledge in order to hopefully use it in
Speaker 2: the exam. Again, thank you keep educating the world in
Speaker 2: an entertaining way. Actually, that was a nice email, so
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go ahead and say that was from a
Speaker 2: Neil Neil and big shout out to Jessica, Damien, Elijah, Abel, Dalen, Marianna, Yeah,
Speaker 2: an Angel.
Speaker 1: Great lineup of names or in hell, I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: and it's a great lineup of people too, I'm sure.
Speaker 2: And hey, this just in We don't normally do this,
Speaker 2: but we got a bunch of more emails from kids
Speaker 2: from this class, and you can't just read a third
Speaker 2: of the kids' names and be done with it.
Speaker 1: You know, Chuck, what day is it? What's going on?
Speaker 2: I mean, this is much later, but like, you got
Speaker 2: to read all these kids' names, so we're gonna do
Speaker 2: that right now. This must be many classes, there's no
Speaker 2: way all these kids are one class. But in addition
Speaker 2: to the ones we read, can we also shout out
Speaker 2: from that ap class? Ian and Brie and Megan and
Speaker 2: Eileen and Jocelyn and Marisol and Amanda and Alexis and
Speaker 2: Charisma and Celeste and Nicholas and Cecilia and Garelli and
Speaker 2: alex and Inez.
Speaker 3: You think I'm done?
Speaker 2: Yeah, nope, halfway there, my friend. Wow, because we also
Speaker 2: have to thank Paulina and Arturo and Jacqueline and Antonio
Speaker 2: and Lauren and Brittany I see you, Brittany and Victoria
Speaker 2: and Isack what a name Isick? And then finally Juliette, Jasmine, Ava,
Speaker 2: Sebastian and of course dearest Kiardon all wrote in and
Speaker 2: there was one student that was.
Speaker 3: Like, don't read my name, hooper humperdink.
Speaker 2: So we're not going to, but uh just wanted to
Speaker 2: give everyone in the class a shout out.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. Sounds like a great bunch.
Speaker 2: Chuck, Yeah, so uh, Miss Tiack give everyone a great
Speaker 2: grade and a big shout out to the ap English
Speaker 2: class at Wasco High.
Speaker 1: Yeah, huge shout out. And if you want to be
Speaker 1: like Miss txx class and get in touch with us
Speaker 1: for whatever reason we want to hear from you, you
Speaker 1: can send it via email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: dot com.
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