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What is mountaintop removal mining? · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should Know?
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Speaker 1: From House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant,
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Speaker 1: and that makes this stuff you should know? Right, that's right.
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Speaker 1: How are you doing? I am well, sir, How are you?
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Speaker 1: I'm pretty good. It's lovely here in Atlanta. It is.
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Speaker 1: It's like seventy five degrees beautiful. It's like San Diego
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Speaker 1: moved here. Hey. You hear that music? Josh? Yeah, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: that's Ben Sully, who will meet later. Right, that's right.
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Speaker 1: I could listen to that stuff all day. Man, that
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Speaker 1: chilling music. Macleagen awesome. Yeah, let's get into this one,
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Speaker 1: all right, let's do it. This is the shortest intro
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Speaker 1: how ever. Okay, okay, but it's it's it's telling. It's
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Speaker 1: a good one. And you would think that I would
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Speaker 1: have had it ready since it's the intro, you know.
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Speaker 1: But I like to play things fast and loose, kind
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Speaker 1: of by the seat of my pants. And I also
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Speaker 1: like to see how much time I can fill up
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Speaker 1: all I look for things, right, like I've done you,
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Speaker 1: But Chuck, I'm gonna give you a shocking statistic. There's
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Speaker 1: gonna be a lot of those in this one. In
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Speaker 1: the great state of West Virginia, which is next to
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Speaker 1: Virginia just west of it, though, UM since nineteen seventy nine,
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Speaker 1: the number of employed miners in that state, and mining
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Speaker 1: is the number one industry in West Virginia. It's coal
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Speaker 1: mine country. The number of miners um in since nineteen
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Speaker 1: seventy nine in that state has declined from sixty thousand
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Speaker 1: to twenty two thousand, according to the state's Senator Robert Bird,
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Speaker 1: but coal mining itself has dramatically increased over that time.
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Speaker 1: So how do you explain that Well, as a matter
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Speaker 1: of fact, the whole podcast that we're about to do
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Speaker 1: explains it very clearly. A tie of mining process called
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Speaker 1: mountaintop removal mining or strip mining. What's a type of
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Speaker 1: strip mining? Yeah, apparently one person called it strip mining
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Speaker 1: on steroids. UM is very much responsible for the UM
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Speaker 1: the ability for coal mining to just go through the
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Speaker 1: roof in Appalachia while requiring fear and fear people. So
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Speaker 1: while coal has has increased, unemployment has increased as well.
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Speaker 1: And I guess let's just get right into it, because
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Speaker 1: this one is chock full of stats and stories and
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Speaker 1: this is an unusual podcast for us. And by the way,
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Speaker 1: this one is officially yours, given this one to me.
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Speaker 1: This you did the you did the legwork for this one. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and we should add at the end of this podcast,
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Speaker 1: we're gonna have a interview with uh in our first
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Speaker 1: musical guest ever, with singer, songwriter and cello player Ben Soley,
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Speaker 1: who was an activist for against mountaintop removal coal mining
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Speaker 1: and uh it's on you know, the subpop label with
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Speaker 1: his music, and he's gonna interview with us and play
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Speaker 1: a song and it's gonna be pretty cool to stick around. Yes,
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Speaker 1: don't go anywhere in the middle of the podcast, all right,
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Speaker 1: So let's get into it. So, um, chuck. Traditionally, when
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Speaker 1: you think of mining, you think of basically a hole
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Speaker 1: in the side of the mountain held up with timbers
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Speaker 1: that UM men covered in coal dust are going into
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Speaker 1: with pick axes and headlamps. Extremely dangerous, um job, but
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Speaker 1: a job that's traditionally um been able to support families. Yes,
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Speaker 1: long has its roots in Appalachia, right, Um, this is
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Speaker 1: a totally different kind of mining. Mountaintop removal mining is
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Speaker 1: where traditional mining you bore into the mountain. With mountain
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Speaker 1: top removal mining, you blow the top off of the
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Speaker 1: mountain to expose the coal steam rather than digging in
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Speaker 1: to get it. Yeah, coal steams run horizontally through a mountain.
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Speaker 1: So what happens is and this is the how it
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Speaker 1: works portion. Yeah, and it's pretty amazing how they do this.
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Speaker 1: And even Ben has told me it's pretty amazing, even
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Speaker 1: though he thinks it's an awful practice, it's pretty amazing.
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Speaker 1: On the last they clear cut the forest. They scrape
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Speaker 1: away the top, soil, lumber, herbs, all that stuff, herbs, herbs, wildlife,
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Speaker 1: and habitat. The wildlife habitat is destroyed. Vegetation is destroyed.
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Speaker 1: And in their defense they usually customarily they send a
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Speaker 1: guy in with a machine gun who just fires into
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Speaker 1: the air like a full day and then he comes
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Speaker 1: down the mountain. Then they start clear cutting, so they
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Speaker 1: do all this. Once they've done all that, they blow
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Speaker 1: up the top of the mountain as much as eight
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Speaker 1: hundred to a thousand feet I've seen. The mountain is
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Speaker 1: just gone. That's why they call it removal. Yeah, and
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Speaker 1: it's flattened out and it looks like a barren moonscape
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Speaker 1: instead of a forest in a mountain. Yeah, that's the
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Speaker 1: that's the term that's used by just about anybody who
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Speaker 1: has anything to do with either um uh it's supporting
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Speaker 1: or opposing coal mining mountaintop coal mining. Moonscape is the
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Speaker 1: word that everyone always uses. That's what I was trying
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Speaker 1: to get out from that point. Um, they have these
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Speaker 1: big shovels that come and dig into the soil. U
5:16
Speaker 1: haul that stuff away into the valleys nearby. Yeah, because
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Speaker 1: it's not like the stuff that s integrates this this um,
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Speaker 1: this thing that's called overburdened by the mining industry, which
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Speaker 1: is you know, rock, soil, dirt, trees. Yeah. Um, Like
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Speaker 1: it doesn't just evaporate. You have to get rid of it. Yeah,
5:33
Speaker 1: you gotta put it somewhere. And then something called a
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Speaker 1: drag line, which is one of the more impressive machines
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Speaker 1: I've ever seen. Huge. How big are these things? They
5:41
Speaker 1: said somewhere stories Yeah, um, and they way up to
5:45
Speaker 1: eight million pounds and apparently they're they're um. Yeah, so
5:49
Speaker 1: you saw that picture. It looks like an oil rig
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Speaker 1: on like tracks. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, So the drag
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Speaker 1: line comes in to expose the coil, digs into the rock. Um,
6:00
Speaker 1: these machines scoop out the coal. The machines that scoop
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Speaker 1: are the coal. Their buckets can hold up to twenty
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Speaker 1: compact sized cars. Wow, that's large. Is there are massive
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Speaker 1: operations and the result of this is, uh, the narrow
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Speaker 1: valleys have been filled. It's called valley fill. And one.
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Speaker 1: We got a bunch of stats. Here's one. Coal companies
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Speaker 1: have buried more than twelve miles of headwaters and streams,
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Speaker 1: rivers and streams buried underneath the stuff gone forever. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: with the overburn, remember the stuff that they blew the
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Speaker 1: top of the mountain off of may have to get
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Speaker 1: rid of it. There's two ways to do it. When
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Speaker 1: you truck it off of the mountain and dump trucks,
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Speaker 1: which is done, but it's also extremely expensive and time consuming.
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Speaker 1: Or you move bulldozers up there and you push the
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Speaker 1: overburden into the valley below in the in typically in
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Speaker 1: a valley there's going to be some sort of stream
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Speaker 1: water supply. Yeah. And um, if you have a per mint,
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Speaker 1: if you apply for a valley filled permit, um, you
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Speaker 1: you can you're usually granted one and you just push
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Speaker 1: that stuff into the valley and then start getting to
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Speaker 1: the coal. Right, And so that's um. There's a lot
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Speaker 1: of problems with this and we're going to try and
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Speaker 1: hit on all of them, the myriad issues. It's not
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Speaker 1: what you think you can just stop right here's probably could.
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Speaker 1: Another one of the issues is something when they wash
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Speaker 1: the coal. It's called the result of of the wash
7:27
Speaker 1: is what they end up was called coal slurry. Right,
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Speaker 1: And you wash coal because UM coal comes with a
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Speaker 1: lot of other organic and inorganic toxins metals compounds UM
7:38
Speaker 1: like nickel, cadmium, mercury that keep it from burning as well. Right, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and there's chemicals added to the wash as well which
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Speaker 1: end up in the coal slurry ponds. Right. So you're
7:50
Speaker 1: you're you're washing it for market, but this water has
7:52
Speaker 1: got to go somewhere, and it's extremely toxic. UM mercury
7:56
Speaker 1: alone would make it extremely toxic. All those other heavy
7:59
Speaker 1: metals just make it been worse. So you either inject
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Speaker 1: them into old minds all abandoned minds is one one
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Speaker 1: thing that we do with cole slurry, or you wash
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Speaker 1: them into holding ponds, which are basically earthen damns built
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Speaker 1: into the side of the mountain, which can be precarious,
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Speaker 1: as we'll find out. Yeah, and if you've seen cole slurry,
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Speaker 1: I mean, just type it into Google images, it looks like,
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Speaker 1: uh like soupy um black sludge is about the best
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Speaker 1: comparison I can make. So these ponds um. One of
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Speaker 1: these actually busted. The dam broken in nineteen seventy two
8:37
Speaker 1: in West Virginia a Buffalo Creek and a hundred and
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Speaker 1: thirty two million gallons of this stuff rushed through the valley,
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Speaker 1: killed a hundred and twenty five people injured, eleven hundred
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Speaker 1: and four thousand people were left homeless. And these by
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Speaker 1: and large are very poor people, which is one of
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Speaker 1: the keys here that we're gonna keep hitting on. Yeah,
8:57
Speaker 1: I think Wise County, West Virginia. The um the average
9:01
Speaker 1: income is like eighteen thousand for a family something like that. Yeah,
9:04
Speaker 1: graduation rate is about six and the poverty level is
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Speaker 1: exactly what it was during the was it Eisenhower I
9:13
Speaker 1: think so Eisenhower administration when he went there and said
9:16
Speaker 1: we have to end poverty in West Virginia. It's the
9:19
Speaker 1: same lb J. Yeah, Johnson, Sorry, UM. So once this
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Speaker 1: whole operation is done, there may be more than one seam,
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Speaker 1: and there's different ways to get into it. UM, Like
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Speaker 1: you can dig in from the side high wall mining,
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Speaker 1: or you can blow the top off the mountain where
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Speaker 1: you can do both. But once the mountains exhausted, and
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Speaker 1: these are massive sites. There's one in Virginia, I believe
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Speaker 1: that's like thirty five thousand acres, which that's one site
9:46
Speaker 1: that Yeah, that's just one mining operation, or you could
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Speaker 1: also call it one former mountain. UM. When when the
9:54
Speaker 1: time was when you left, that was that you got
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Speaker 1: your coal and you got out of there in the
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Speaker 1: mining oper oration was abandoned. UM. Nowadays you were supposed
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Speaker 1: to most most mountaintop removal permits UH come with UH
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Speaker 1: an addendum that you have to do some sort of reclamation.
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Speaker 1: And the reclamation process typically is supposed to involve basically
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Speaker 1: piling rock and stuff back up, UM, regrowing this area
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Speaker 1: and UM trying to basically simulate a mountain again. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and then was when that was first introduced, the Surface
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Speaker 1: Mining Control and Reclamation Act established standards. UH. They said
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Speaker 1: back then that the goal was just to get grass
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Speaker 1: to grow, anything to grow, and reclamation is a good
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Speaker 1: thing in theory, but one of the knocks that activists
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Speaker 1: like to point out is that what happens on paper
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Speaker 1: isn't always what happens in reality. And there's been studies
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Speaker 1: that show that the soil is still not the same
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Speaker 1: decades later. It's just not the same. You can't make
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Speaker 1: it what it was right. Um. There is one sterling
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Speaker 1: example of what can be done. It's called the Powell
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Speaker 1: River Project. So the Powell River Project is um in Virginia,
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Speaker 1: I believe, and it's acres. It's a former um mining site.
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Speaker 1: UM that was. It's just a leveled mountaintop and some
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Speaker 1: care was given to it and now it is basically
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Speaker 1: a wildlife preserve. UM. It has strawberries and blueberries growing
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Speaker 1: on it and sugar maples and cattle is grazing on
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Speaker 1: the turf. UM. The wildlife that's come back are screech
11:41
Speaker 1: and bard owl's, coyote, bear, turkey. UM. They're basically this
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Speaker 1: this mountain is getting back to nature, right. Yeah. Primarily
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Speaker 1: financed by the coal industry. Must say to say that, UM,
11:53
Speaker 1: And I think the deal is if everything went down
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Speaker 1: like it's going down at Powell River, there would be
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Speaker 1: fewer is shoes. But that's not the case. Unfortunately, that's
12:03
Speaker 1: just a sterling example of what could be done. Well,
12:05
Speaker 1: this is what happens when you spend like decades and
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Speaker 1: lots of money on this one particular site for the
12:13
Speaker 1: most case. I think you told me that they just
12:15
Speaker 1: like throw some grass seed down over the old site.
12:18
Speaker 1: And that's that, right, And UM, I guess well we
12:23
Speaker 1: should probably start now talking about the environmental impact. There's
12:26
Speaker 1: basically two ways, um, you can you can classify the
12:31
Speaker 1: impacts that this has three ways. One economic which looks
12:36
Speaker 1: like it should be good, right, but if you look
12:39
Speaker 1: at the rates of unemployment in the continuous poverty in Appalachia, UM,
12:45
Speaker 1: you'll actually see that it's not so great. The economic impact, Um,
12:49
Speaker 1: the environmental impact, and then the human impact. So let's
12:53
Speaker 1: talk about environment We're talking about cold slurry, right, you
12:57
Speaker 1: have to put that cold slurry somewhere the earthen damn
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Speaker 1: like you said, UM, at Buffalo Creek in nine collapsed,
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Speaker 1: spilled a hundred and thirty two million gallons and killed
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Speaker 1: a hundred people, right, that's right, and two thousand in
13:11
Speaker 1: Kentucky there was another damn break two hundred and fifty
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Speaker 1: million gallons of sludge flowed into the Tug Fork of
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Speaker 1: the Big Sandy River and affected streams and rivers up
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Speaker 1: to a hundred miles away. More than a million fish
13:27
Speaker 1: and other wildlife died. One of the biggest environmental disasters
13:30
Speaker 1: in this country's history, and a lot of people probably
13:33
Speaker 1: never heard of it. Yeah, it's apparently the areas of
13:36
Speaker 1: exposure was twenty times that of the ex m Valdi's disaster. Yeah,
13:43
Speaker 1: and I believe it was either this one or the
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Speaker 1: other one. Um. One of the coal company heads called
13:48
Speaker 1: it because heavy rains is what eventually calls the damn
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Speaker 1: to break on top of the slurry. Called it an
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Speaker 1: act of God. Yeah, and I believe that's how it
13:57
Speaker 1: was left so sort of washing our hands of it.
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Speaker 1: It was because the heavy rains, and you know, that's
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Speaker 1: what happened. So you also mentioned Valley phil Um where
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Speaker 1: streams have been affected just by being buried, which means
14:09
Speaker 1: no more stream stat for you. There sixty seven hundred
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Speaker 1: Valley Phill permits in the United States, six thousand, seven
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Speaker 1: hundred times this has happened. Actually, I think it's more
14:22
Speaker 1: than I think it's um. Like in the seventy two
14:24
Speaker 1: hundreds because it was between eighty five and two thousand one.
14:28
Speaker 1: And we found another one. Chuck, that's um, there's been
14:31
Speaker 1: about five hundred or so from two thousand one to
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Speaker 1: two thousand and eight. Yeah, things have really ramped up
14:35
Speaker 1: here in the last decade. Stars so UM the back
14:40
Speaker 1: to the streams as well. Apparently there was this um
14:43
Speaker 1: this uh study in Science where UM twelve environmental science
14:48
Speaker 1: sciencests got in Science magazine. Yes, you know, in Science
14:52
Speaker 1: in January last this past you know, January twelve environmental
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Speaker 1: sciences got together and did a survey of the literature
15:01
Speaker 1: of on the environmental impact of mountaintop removal mining and UM,
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Speaker 1: the valleys you said, I think something like twelve hundred
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Speaker 1: miles of valley valley streams and headwaters have been affected. Um.
15:15
Speaker 1: These these guys sampled water and seventy three of seventy
15:19
Speaker 1: eight streams. Um or, they did a study on this
15:23
Speaker 1: and found that UM, seventy three of the seventy eight
15:26
Speaker 1: streams they sampled had deformed fish carrying toxic levels of selenium,
15:32
Speaker 1: which is a heavy metal, which is not good. UM.
15:35
Speaker 1: And if your fish is deformed, that's not good. In general. Yeah,
15:38
Speaker 1: the Simpsons, uh episode of Flanky how Many Eyes was three?
15:45
Speaker 1: Almost sit four, we would have heard it about that. Um.
15:48
Speaker 1: Drinking water is another problem because the cold slurry. These
15:51
Speaker 1: earthen dams are temporary solution to begin with, um, but
15:56
Speaker 1: they can leak and that cold slurry can enter drinking water. Yeah.
16:02
Speaker 1: And you know, just to recap real quick though on
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Speaker 1: the reclamation that I did find that study from earlier.
16:08
Speaker 1: The study said that fifteen years after a mountaintop was
16:11
Speaker 1: leveled at this one site, trees had still not regrown
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Speaker 1: because they just can't make the soil like it used
16:17
Speaker 1: to be. And the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers
16:20
Speaker 1: and that's for the land. When it comes to the streams,
16:22
Speaker 1: the Army Corps of Engineers said under oath in their
16:25
Speaker 1: testimony um that there is not a successful stream creation
16:28
Speaker 1: project in junction with this. Yeah, or they don't know
16:31
Speaker 1: of one. Yeah. Like basically, all right, we can try
16:33
Speaker 1: and reform the mountains to a rough assemblance of what
16:36
Speaker 1: it once was, but you can't just make new streams
16:39
Speaker 1: and we haven't found out a way to do that.
16:40
Speaker 1: It's kind of like um, taking a sword and severing
16:43
Speaker 1: someone's head and it just kind of balancing it back
16:45
Speaker 1: on the neck again. It's there, but it's not really
16:49
Speaker 1: working any longer. Right, Yeah, So that's some of the
16:52
Speaker 1: environment and where you're also talking about, Uh, it's in
16:54
Speaker 1: the drinking water. It is um, which kind of is
16:57
Speaker 1: it's straddles um the environmental and the human impacts. Um.
17:02
Speaker 1: There are people in this literature that we've been um
17:06
Speaker 1: researching for this podcast whose families have lived in these
17:10
Speaker 1: areas for like two hundred and thirty years or so, right,
17:14
Speaker 1: Like these are straight up Appalachian folk, right, hillbilies they
17:17
Speaker 1: call them, And um, the Hillbillies have been there for
17:21
Speaker 1: a while and before I guess it was probably a
17:24
Speaker 1: very quiet place. But as we've mentioned, with mountaintop removal, mining,
17:28
Speaker 1: explosives are a major part of it. So when you
17:32
Speaker 1: blow the top off of a mountain, first of all,
17:34
Speaker 1: it takes a lot of explosives, but it's very loud. Um. Apparently,
17:39
Speaker 1: in two thousand three, sixty seven percent of all explosives
17:42
Speaker 1: produced in the US were consumed by the coal industry,
17:44
Speaker 1: and in West Virginia alone, that figure led to an
17:47
Speaker 1: estimated three million pounds of explosives being used a day.
17:52
Speaker 1: A day to blow up mountains. People live on these
17:55
Speaker 1: mountains still, the same mountains that they're blowing up, so
17:58
Speaker 1: you've got the noise. Have a very dangerous condition called
18:02
Speaker 1: fly rock, yeah, which is exactly what it sounds like.
18:05
Speaker 1: When you blow a mountain top up. Rock flies everywhere,
18:09
Speaker 1: and if somebody's living there, it um can go into
18:12
Speaker 1: their house and kill them. Yeah, And that was the
18:14
Speaker 1: case in uh two thousand four at two thirty in
18:17
Speaker 1: the morning, bulldoz are operating without a permit. At two
18:21
Speaker 1: again to thirty in the morning, because bulldozer was working
18:24
Speaker 1: on mine site without a permit, it dislodged a thousand
18:27
Speaker 1: pound boulder, rolled two hundred feet down and crushed three
18:31
Speaker 1: year old Jeremy Davidson in his bed, who was sleeping
18:33
Speaker 1: at the time. Yet and the company was fined fifteen
18:36
Speaker 1: tho dollars for that, yeah, for gross negligence. Yeah. So
18:40
Speaker 1: I don't even have a comment on that. We'll just
18:42
Speaker 1: leave that to the listeners. Um. The have some more
18:46
Speaker 1: deaths here if you want to be dark for another moment.
18:49
Speaker 1: In West Virginia, fourteen people drowned in the last three
18:52
Speaker 1: years because of floods and mud slides, in Kentucky, fifty
18:55
Speaker 1: people have been killed and five injured over the last
18:58
Speaker 1: five years by cold trucks that were illegally overloaded. And
19:04
Speaker 1: on the flooding thing, I think they said that in
19:07
Speaker 1: this one spot in West Virginia that there were three
19:10
Speaker 1: what they call a thousand year flood or a hundred
19:13
Speaker 1: year flood in ten days, three year floods in ten
19:17
Speaker 1: days in this one region. That's not supposed to happen. UM.
19:21
Speaker 1: And you know you're talking about death's that's just directly
19:24
Speaker 1: from drownings, UM injury, that kind of thing. If you
19:28
Speaker 1: take all of the public health hazards into account, UM
19:32
Speaker 1: as a public Health reports UM Journal study did UH
19:37
Speaker 1: this year I think last year, I'm sorry, UM. Anywhere
19:41
Speaker 1: between sevent hundred and thirty six and hundred and eighty
19:46
Speaker 1: nine people die in Appalachia each year as a result
19:49
Speaker 1: of the coal mining industry there, right, So there is
19:51
Speaker 1: a lot of death, but there's also a lot of
19:53
Speaker 1: potential death too. We talked about Buffalo Creek where the
19:57
Speaker 1: slurry uh damn, a slurry pond damn broke and killed
20:01
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty people. That was a hundred and
20:05
Speaker 1: thirty million gallons of coal slurry, right killed the people.
20:10
Speaker 1: There is a place UM called marsh Fork, march Fork
20:15
Speaker 1: Elementary School. I saw a documentary on the school. So
20:18
Speaker 1: march Fork has UM I believe two hundred something students
20:23
Speaker 1: going there every day. And just above the elementary school
20:27
Speaker 1: there is a coal slurry pond above it on the
20:31
Speaker 1: mountain side that holds three billion gallons of coal sludge. Yeah,
20:36
Speaker 1: and there's a whole operation. There's a silo three hundred
20:38
Speaker 1: feet from the school. Right, So rather than the hundred
20:42
Speaker 1: and thirty two million gallons, we're talking about three billion
20:44
Speaker 1: gallons poised behind an earthen dam right above an elementary school.
20:49
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of potential for a disaster as well. Right. Yeah,
20:53
Speaker 1: that's a Massy Energy that's one of the bigger coal
20:55
Speaker 1: companies in the United States. And you might remember Massey's
20:58
Speaker 1: name by UM the up for Big Branch mine explosion
21:02
Speaker 1: that happened about a year ago from two days ago.
21:05
Speaker 1: It was April five, UM that that explosion killed twenty
21:10
Speaker 1: nine miners and leaving three others trapped. UM. So Massy is,
21:15
Speaker 1: like you said, big in a traditional mining uh surface
21:19
Speaker 1: mining and regulation. Actually one of their former executives was
21:24
Speaker 1: named a Deputy Energy Secretary for fossil fuels a couple
21:30
Speaker 1: of years back. That's right, President Bush named appointed uh
21:34
Speaker 1: what was his name? His name was Stanley sue Bileski.
21:37
Speaker 1: He was appointed in UM two seven December two thousand
21:41
Speaker 1: seven to the Department of Energy. Yeah, okay, Uh. Back
21:44
Speaker 1: to March Fork Elementary School. That that actually one of
21:48
Speaker 1: the documentaries I saw yesterday was on that school specifically,
21:52
Speaker 1: and uh, West Virginia activists Bo Webb, he's one of
21:55
Speaker 1: the leading activists on this cause. Found of the parents
21:59
Speaker 1: are saying that they're chill. Dren are coming home from
22:00
Speaker 1: school with a variety of illnesses like nausea, diarrhea, vomiting,
22:06
Speaker 1: shortness of breath, wheezing, asthma, um long term effects, kidney damage.
22:12
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of kidney damage in that area,
22:14
Speaker 1: liver damage, spleen failure, bone damage, and cancer of the
22:18
Speaker 1: digestive digestive track. And um Bo has uh Actually it
22:25
Speaker 1: wasn't Bo, but one of the other activists there. They
22:27
Speaker 1: were trying to raise money in this documentary to build
22:29
Speaker 1: a new school not near you know, not threeet away
22:32
Speaker 1: from a coal mining corporation. And they were trying to
22:35
Speaker 1: raise it by donating pennies, and they in the documentary
22:38
Speaker 1: they marched and had a rally at the governor's office
22:42
Speaker 1: in West Virginia and it was hardcore. Man, it was
22:45
Speaker 1: hard to watch. Like literally, the governor gave him a
22:48
Speaker 1: minute and he's glad handing and talking to people, and
22:50
Speaker 1: you know, they bring out this little girl from the
22:52
Speaker 1: school and he's like, well, what are you interested in?
22:54
Speaker 1: And you sure are cute and what do you want
22:56
Speaker 1: to be when you grow up? And basically the kids
22:59
Speaker 1: just like, I don't want to live under a coal
23:01
Speaker 1: mine and I don't want to be sick anymore. And
23:04
Speaker 1: they called this guy out, the governor out big time.
23:07
Speaker 1: And it was really one of those uncomfortable scenes to
23:09
Speaker 1: watch when politics gets when it's clear that this guy
23:14
Speaker 1: has no answer and the big coal has their lobbyists
23:18
Speaker 1: that are you know, on the on the side of
23:21
Speaker 1: you know, big coal mining, and it was it was
23:23
Speaker 1: just very uncomfortable and disturbing to watch, but you should
23:28
Speaker 1: watch it nonetheless. And that was that was marsh Creek
23:31
Speaker 1: Elementaries in West Virginia, right, yeah, okay, so um, yeah,
23:35
Speaker 1: it's in Rock Creek. I see um chuck. One of
23:38
Speaker 1: the reasons why the governor would have been embarrassed or
23:41
Speaker 1: um felt awkward is because there is a ton of
23:44
Speaker 1: money at stake here. That one UM Public Health Reports
23:48
Speaker 1: Journal study. Yeah that that said you know, between um
23:54
Speaker 1: people die each year from coal mining. Um. It was
23:57
Speaker 1: an economics paper really, and it said that, um, the
24:02
Speaker 1: coal industry generates about eight billion dollars in economic contribution
24:06
Speaker 1: to Appalachia every year, right, yeah, which is a lot.
24:11
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, you can't that's a lot of
24:14
Speaker 1: money spent on that area. The problem is this same paper,
24:17
Speaker 1: using the same model, figured out that um, it costs
24:22
Speaker 1: about forty two billion dollars in healthcare costs and the
24:27
Speaker 1: cost of life. So that's a big picture. Yeah. Yeah,
24:30
Speaker 1: so you're actually losing. And you can just look at
24:32
Speaker 1: you know, the poverty in Appalachia and see, oh, well,
24:34
Speaker 1: these people who are literally next to these mines are
24:36
Speaker 1: not benefiting from this at all. Right, and the uh
24:40
Speaker 1: there's another stat. Activists will point out that only about
24:42
Speaker 1: four or five percent of our of our nation's coal
24:45
Speaker 1: energy comes from mountaintop removal mining. So it's not like, oh,
24:50
Speaker 1: you know, like of the coal that we use comes
24:52
Speaker 1: from this practice, so we really really need it. Uh.
24:55
Speaker 1: They will tell you that conservation alone, we could save
24:57
Speaker 1: an average of our energy to man's which far outweighs
25:02
Speaker 1: you know, by what four or five times the five
25:04
Speaker 1: percent that we're using. Right, I've seen up the ten
25:07
Speaker 1: percent um comes from strip mining or from mountaintop removable mining.
25:12
Speaker 1: But that's being used pretty grievingly because we um, the
25:17
Speaker 1: United States gets about fifty of its electricity. I think
25:21
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine, I got forty percent of it's
25:23
Speaker 1: electricity from coal. So usually it's around Yeah, and we're
25:27
Speaker 1: exporting coal too. It's coal is an important part of
25:29
Speaker 1: our energy plan. I can't ignore that. So where does
25:32
Speaker 1: that leave us, Chuck, Well, there's a couple of things, uh, Josh.
25:38
Speaker 1: One reason that I wanted to do this show, and
25:41
Speaker 1: that you've got on board and we're way behind it too,
25:43
Speaker 1: is because oh no, I'm I'm just doing this. Is
25:47
Speaker 1: because this is a problem that affects poor rural people,
25:52
Speaker 1: for the most part, people in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, uh,
25:58
Speaker 1: Tennessee now, and and that they don't have the same
26:01
Speaker 1: voice that other folks do. UM. One of the leading,
26:06
Speaker 1: but I think it was bow Webb again said if
26:08
Speaker 1: this this wouldn't happen in New England. Um that biggest
26:11
Speaker 1: environmental disaster west of the or east of the Mississippi
26:13
Speaker 1: River happened in The New York Times didn't report about
26:16
Speaker 1: it for like four months. So it's and I guess
26:20
Speaker 1: a lot of the listeners out there probably looked at
26:22
Speaker 1: the title what is Mountaintop removable coal mining and said, yeah,
26:25
Speaker 1: what is that? I've never heard of it. But we've
26:27
Speaker 1: all heard of the Valdez, we heard about the you know,
26:30
Speaker 1: all these disasters obviously need attention. I'm not saying that
26:33
Speaker 1: we shouldn't pay attention to things like oil spills, but
26:36
Speaker 1: it gets a lot more at tension when it's on
26:38
Speaker 1: the Gulf of Florida with Destin and seaside right there
26:42
Speaker 1: than it does in the rural mountains of West Virginia.
26:45
Speaker 1: So somebody needs to be talking about this, and a
26:46
Speaker 1: lot of people are. And another problem is the coal
26:51
Speaker 1: lobby and the fact that companies can donate money to
26:57
Speaker 1: uh political campaigns and getting a pockets of politicians and
27:02
Speaker 1: favors are paid back. And it's the same old story
27:04
Speaker 1: with you know, big industry like this. It's just sad
27:07
Speaker 1: to see it happening. Well, it is. It's a big
27:10
Speaker 1: it's a there's a big debate going on right now
27:13
Speaker 1: about just how much the e p A should have
27:16
Speaker 1: teeth in regards to mountaintop removal mining, right. Yeah, And
27:21
Speaker 1: the e p as new chief is pretty progressive and
27:24
Speaker 1: pretty hardcore and not a friend of big business, and
27:28
Speaker 1: she is making some waves. Um. Coal miners are against
27:34
Speaker 1: these actions. You're talking about Lisa Jackson. Yeah, and she's
27:38
Speaker 1: a bulldog. That read that Rolling Stone interview on her,
27:41
Speaker 1: and she's she said her job is just to look
27:45
Speaker 1: out for the environment, that that's the only thing she
27:48
Speaker 1: wants to do. And you know, if you're in her way,
27:51
Speaker 1: she's gonna try and knock you down. Well, we'll see.
27:53
Speaker 1: But that's still not enough um for a lot of people.
27:56
Speaker 1: I think they're the general consensus among activists and probably
28:00
Speaker 1: people who live in school buses on the side of
28:02
Speaker 1: a mountain nearby a mountaintop removal UM operation is that
28:07
Speaker 1: it should be banned outright, Yeah, That that process is
28:12
Speaker 1: not mining those particular sites, but that that um type
28:16
Speaker 1: of mining, that method of mining should just be completely outlawed. Yeah.
28:19
Speaker 1: I mean most of these permits were issued during the
28:21
Speaker 1: Clinton and Bush administrations UH second Bush obviously, and there
28:25
Speaker 1: were certain key provisions to the Clean Water Act that
28:28
Speaker 1: were rewritten UH to reclassify waste associated with strip mining
28:33
Speaker 1: as benign film material. Federal judge rejected that UM, but
28:39
Speaker 1: then that change was upheld in two thousand three by
28:41
Speaker 1: UH fourth Circuit Court judge. And then Obama comes in
28:47
Speaker 1: and people said, all right, dude, you're you're the environmental guy.
28:51
Speaker 1: Get rid of this altogether. In the first one days
28:54
Speaker 1: didn't happen. But Obama has introduced UM stricter guidelines now
29:00
Speaker 1: and the e p A has onto curtail mountain top
29:02
Speaker 1: mining hailed by certain environmentalists. But if you talk to
29:06
Speaker 1: bow Webb, they'll say that ain't enough. Brother. He's like,
29:08
Speaker 1: you gotta outlaw mountaintop removal mining, period, and anything less
29:12
Speaker 1: than that is just playing into the hands a big
29:14
Speaker 1: coal It's it's surprising that it has been allowed to
29:17
Speaker 1: go on. I mean, the idea of blowing the top
29:19
Speaker 1: of a mountain and then pushing it into the valley below,
29:22
Speaker 1: covering up the stream, and then introducing coal slurry to
29:25
Speaker 1: this local environment. UM in an age where we you know,
29:29
Speaker 1: where there's such a thing as Earth Day and people
29:32
Speaker 1: are like, I will never use a paper or a
29:35
Speaker 1: plastic bag. I used my own that I bought and
29:38
Speaker 1: brought from home. That this is going on, is UM.
29:42
Speaker 1: It's it's startling. Yeah. Well, UM, last and you know,
29:46
Speaker 1: I said that there were some efforts by the Obama
29:48
Speaker 1: administration to curtail this UM last Thursday. This is just
29:53
Speaker 1: over the wire today, UM. Two senators from Kentucky, Mitch
29:56
Speaker 1: McConnell and Ran Paul, introduced the bill trying to restrict
29:59
Speaker 1: that p A from clamping down on it, giving the
30:02
Speaker 1: e p A a a sixty day deadline to veto Clean
30:05
Speaker 1: Water Act permits issued by the Corps of Engineers, and
30:09
Speaker 1: UM activists are saying, and this is tricky, so they
30:11
Speaker 1: put in that sixty eight thing. Everyone knows nothing in
30:14
Speaker 1: the government can happen in sixty days, so it's sort
30:17
Speaker 1: of a a facade, red herring or red herring. Uh.
30:22
Speaker 1: The bill would also prevent the e p A from
30:24
Speaker 1: retroactively vetoing permits. So UM. That was Mitch mcconollin, Ran
30:29
Speaker 1: Paul and Ran Paul from Kentucky. If you're from Kentucky.
30:33
Speaker 1: You know all about your senators two thousand ten, said like,
30:37
Speaker 1: you don't need me to tell you about this guy.
30:39
Speaker 1: In two thousand ten, he said in an interview quote,
30:42
Speaker 1: I think they should name it something better. The top
30:44
Speaker 1: ends up flatter. But we're not talking about Mount Everest.
30:47
Speaker 1: We're talking about these knobby little hills that are everywhere
30:50
Speaker 1: out here. I don't think anyone's gonna be missing a
30:52
Speaker 1: hill or two here and there. And that was ran Paul,
30:57
Speaker 1: straight from the horse's mouth, and Chuck, I think that
30:59
Speaker 1: you know as well as eye, people are going to
31:00
Speaker 1: be like you guys are getting political. Stop being political.
31:03
Speaker 1: And I just I'm trying to figure out how to
31:06
Speaker 1: frame a response to that, because this is Paul, this
31:10
Speaker 1: is UM super political. It's above politics. It's basically incredibly
31:18
Speaker 1: well financed UM industrial interests and average people who have
31:24
Speaker 1: no money. That kind of UM dying, dying and getting sick.
31:29
Speaker 1: That's not political. That's not the right or the left.
31:31
Speaker 1: That's right or wrong. Basically, well said sir, we're talking
31:35
Speaker 1: about UM an e P. A study estimated four hundred
31:39
Speaker 1: thousand acres have been wiped out, and like we said,
31:43
Speaker 1: between seven hundred and a thousand miles of stream and
31:45
Speaker 1: that was that those are the two thousand one number,
31:48
Speaker 1: so it's a lot higher by then, Well, do you
31:50
Speaker 1: want to talk to Ben slowly? I do. I'm looking
31:53
Speaker 1: to see if I have anything else. Oh you know what,
31:55
Speaker 1: we should plug a couple of things, Um, Jonathan Franzen's
31:59
Speaker 1: new novel Freedom. It's a big subplot mountaintop removal mining. Yeah,
32:02
Speaker 1: I heard the TV show Justified. Have you ever seen it?
32:07
Speaker 1: It's awesome. Timothy Oliphant season two has a big subplot
32:10
Speaker 1: on mountaintop removal mining and all these things, you know,
32:14
Speaker 1: raise awareness on certain levels. The wild wonderful Whites of
32:17
Speaker 1: West Virginia. What's that? It's a documentary you know, the
32:20
Speaker 1: Dancing Outlaw. Oh yeah, yeah, so it's a follow up
32:23
Speaker 1: that it's his family and they are crazy. It's actually
32:27
Speaker 1: produced by Johnny Knoxville's production company. Really it's worth seeing.
32:31
Speaker 1: So um. Ben will be in here in a second
32:33
Speaker 1: to give us some more organizations. But if you want
32:36
Speaker 1: to just look into this little more, there are three
32:39
Speaker 1: places that can recommend you go. One is I Love
32:42
Speaker 1: Mountains dot org. Great place to start. There's a group
32:46
Speaker 1: called the Mountain Justice Summer. There they are well organized.
32:49
Speaker 1: I think they're the oldest one. Yeah, that's Mountain Justice
32:52
Speaker 1: Summer dot org. And then um Appalachian Voices app Voices
32:56
Speaker 1: dot org. Go to any of those websites, look up
32:59
Speaker 1: some pictures, do your own research, see if it matters
33:02
Speaker 1: to you or summer's coming up. And if you want
33:05
Speaker 1: to go join the protest, they have them all over Appalachia.
33:08
Speaker 1: If you've ever wanted to see a person with dreadlocks
33:12
Speaker 1: in working in conjunction with the hillbilly, this is the
33:15
Speaker 1: place to go. It's a good point. So chuck um,
33:18
Speaker 1: let's let's pause a second here while we bring Ben
33:22
Speaker 1: sol Okay, so we're back. It seemed like a brief
33:36
Speaker 1: second to you, but it was about ten minutes thoughts
33:39
Speaker 1: at least something like that. And in the studio for
33:41
Speaker 1: our first ever musical guests, we have Mr Ben so Ley.
33:45
Speaker 1: Welcome Ben, Hello, fellas. Ben is a singer, a songwriter,
33:48
Speaker 1: and a cellist. Check he is a Kentucky native right
33:52
Speaker 1: and he is a coal a mountaintop removal coal mining activists.
33:56
Speaker 1: And in two thousand ten, Ben, you put out an
33:59
Speaker 1: album Them on Subpop label, produced by Mr Jim James
34:02
Speaker 1: of My Morning Jacket. It's true with Daniel Martin Moore
34:06
Speaker 1: called Deer Companion, and it was a you call a
34:08
Speaker 1: concept album or just a theme album. M that's a
34:11
Speaker 1: good question. Um. Some folks referred to as a protest album. O.
34:14
Speaker 1: Some folks referred to it as a album of of
34:19
Speaker 1: umn issues based album. And we just kind of looked
34:23
Speaker 1: at it as a tribute album to a really beautiful
34:26
Speaker 1: part of the country and bringing that part of the
34:30
Speaker 1: country and that sound and kind of our heritages Kentucky
34:32
Speaker 1: musicians into like the urban context and mixing all that stuff. Well,
34:37
Speaker 1: since that was one of my questions anyway, just tell
34:39
Speaker 1: us a little bit more about that project. I now
34:40
Speaker 1: did of the proceeds went to I Love Mountains dot org. Yeah, well,
34:45
Speaker 1: I mean all of the proceeds that we would have
34:47
Speaker 1: gotten as artists. Yeah, and in the record world, you know,
34:50
Speaker 1: there's you get a portion of it from record sales
34:54
Speaker 1: album went to dot org. No. Actually it was like
34:58
Speaker 1: I mean, to be specific, it was thirteen point something
35:00
Speaker 1: per cent the portion that we would have gotten his artists.
35:03
Speaker 1: So we just donated that to Act Voices, Um. And
35:07
Speaker 1: mostly because they run an amazing website and called I
35:11
Speaker 1: Love Mountains dot org. And the goal of the record
35:13
Speaker 1: was not to like protest anything or you know, necessarily
35:17
Speaker 1: pick aside. It was more to like raise awareness being
35:20
Speaker 1: catalysts for conversation exactly. So UM, in that way, we
35:26
Speaker 1: wanted to support the thing that was we felt like
35:27
Speaker 1: was one of the best things for a national conversation,
35:30
Speaker 1: which was the website where people can go and find
35:32
Speaker 1: out how they're involved and what to do. How did
35:35
Speaker 1: you get into UM Where did your desire to raise
35:39
Speaker 1: awareness about MTR come from? UM? It's a good question.
35:45
Speaker 1: I think I think it all started with UMH an
35:48
Speaker 1: author that read a story. And this guy's name is
35:50
Speaker 1: Silas House. It's a well known author there in the
35:53
Speaker 1: Kentucky Central part of America region. He's amazing writer. And
35:58
Speaker 1: he came and read on a show that I was
36:00
Speaker 1: doing this beautiful entry about a lady who had posted
36:04
Speaker 1: herself up on this mountain side and she was not
36:06
Speaker 1: going to allow the machines to kind of rip up
36:09
Speaker 1: the land which had been in her family for years
36:11
Speaker 1: and years, and that you know, it was a you know,
36:15
Speaker 1: I had a lot of emotion and energy and the
36:17
Speaker 1: writing that kind of spawned the thought of it, and
36:19
Speaker 1: then more and more research. I was like, Wow, how
36:21
Speaker 1: can this actually be going on America? How can people
36:24
Speaker 1: actually I have to live without Basically there's a lot
36:29
Speaker 1: of their civil rights to have like clean water, to
36:32
Speaker 1: be protected by their police, you know, all these things,
36:34
Speaker 1: and so I wanted to help raise awareness for it.
36:37
Speaker 1: But I'm a musician. What do you do? Like how
36:40
Speaker 1: much can a song really change anything? Is always one
36:43
Speaker 1: of these big dilemmas, especially a song of protest. Have
36:47
Speaker 1: you heard Europe's Final Countdown? That changed everything for me?
36:53
Speaker 1: You know the song I Do for You? I'm Gonna
36:57
Speaker 1: Buy You That MP three is a better thing. Oh
36:59
Speaker 1: that's sweet. Uh So tell us a little bit more
37:02
Speaker 1: about Deer Companion and your work with Daniel Martin Moore
37:05
Speaker 1: and Jim James and Subpop and how that was packaged.
37:08
Speaker 1: I know that was very unique. It is unique. And
37:10
Speaker 1: Subpop is a really amazing record label for even taking
37:14
Speaker 1: the time to like look at putting this thing out.
37:17
Speaker 1: And I think a big, big part of that is
37:19
Speaker 1: because they started as a label that was based in
37:23
Speaker 1: a community, like they started, you know, putting out the
37:25
Speaker 1: punk rock music of Seattle, and they grew big and
37:29
Speaker 1: they put out music and everything. Now, but this is
37:33
Speaker 1: the way of reaching into a different community and being
37:35
Speaker 1: part of a conversation. And in a lot of ways,
37:38
Speaker 1: folk music kind of has that punk like against the
37:43
Speaker 1: you know, against the common thing, the establishment, against the establishment,
37:46
Speaker 1: the man, the man, whatever, the industry, and so I
37:52
Speaker 1: think this really resonated with them, so they took the
37:55
Speaker 1: time and energy put it out. Working with Daniel Martin
37:57
Speaker 1: Moore was, um, he's a tall, all handsome crooner sort
38:01
Speaker 1: of fella. He is, and he also lives in Kentucky
38:06
Speaker 1: And before we even met, he was very active in
38:09
Speaker 1: raising when it's been mountintop removal with a song called
38:11
Speaker 1: fly Rock Blues, and fly rock kind of describes the
38:15
Speaker 1: materials that fly off into the air when they mountain that, Yeah,
38:20
Speaker 1: it's amazing stuff. I mean sometimes boulders as big as
38:22
Speaker 1: houses go flying hundreds of yards. I mean it's amazing,
38:27
Speaker 1: powerful explosive force and land in places way outside the
38:32
Speaker 1: digging zone. So um, that and song inspired me to
38:36
Speaker 1: work with him on this project. And then Jim James
38:40
Speaker 1: came on board, also Kentucky native. Also Kentucky native, I
38:44
Speaker 1: mean he had done a lot of work with Kentucky
38:45
Speaker 1: for the Commonwealth, an organization there in Kentucky, and he
38:50
Speaker 1: just was a great voice for being able to take
38:53
Speaker 1: these influences of Appalachia, take our own songwriting, and also
38:57
Speaker 1: bring him in with kind of the relevant indie rock,
39:00
Speaker 1: this kind of sound that is associated with him and
39:02
Speaker 1: My Morning Jacket. And quickly on the packaging to um
39:06
Speaker 1: that was was there a map that was included or
39:09
Speaker 1: there's a there's a beautiful picture of Appalachia. And what's
39:15
Speaker 1: unique about the picture and the reason that we chose
39:17
Speaker 1: it is not it's not some you know, long shot
39:20
Speaker 1: landscape of the rolling mountains, old Appalachian fog. It's it's
39:25
Speaker 1: not this idealized thing. It's simply a valley. It's this beautiful,
39:30
Speaker 1: pristine valley. And that's really what the whole contention behind
39:34
Speaker 1: this is. It's not really the absence of the mountaintops
39:37
Speaker 1: that causes so much destruction. It's the filling in the
39:41
Speaker 1: destruction of the valleys. These are the places that collect
39:44
Speaker 1: our water, the headwaters that come down not only to
39:46
Speaker 1: these Appalachian communities but also some of our major cities
39:49
Speaker 1: on the East coast, and those waters are being polluted,
39:52
Speaker 1: and the idea that we all live downstream from those
39:54
Speaker 1: UM is a really provocative and and an idea that
39:59
Speaker 1: we're all in this together. This is one big community,
40:02
Speaker 1: from the groundwater being polluted to the electricity that runs
40:06
Speaker 1: these light bulbs. Like, we're all kind of participating in
40:08
Speaker 1: this thing. And it's very easy when we're participating in it,
40:11
Speaker 1: turning on a light switch or charging our phone. Two
40:16
Speaker 1: miss the idea, not that a mountain is blowing up.
40:18
Speaker 1: That's too abstract. That's two out there. The idea that
40:21
Speaker 1: people have to live with UM, that people make this power.
40:26
Speaker 1: But people have to deal with the cold trucks, you know,
40:28
Speaker 1: tearing up the roads. People have to deal with the
40:29
Speaker 1: dust in the air and the shaking ground. People have
40:32
Speaker 1: to deal with the loss of land values. Like there
40:35
Speaker 1: are people that are living UM very hard lives to
40:39
Speaker 1: make sure that we have these things. And I think
40:43
Speaker 1: from a positive standpoint, we need to appreciate that more.
40:46
Speaker 1: Not just protest them, not point our fingers and look
40:49
Speaker 1: at them and say look at those poor people. Let's
40:52
Speaker 1: say thank you in a lot of ways. And that's
40:54
Speaker 1: what we try to do with your companion, was to
40:56
Speaker 1: say thank you celebrate Appalachia as a landscape as part
41:01
Speaker 1: of our American heritage. You know, everything from the fiddler chopped,
41:06
Speaker 1: you know, the man beside his cabin chopping wood, or
41:08
Speaker 1: the fiddler playing, by the guys dancing, like these American
41:11
Speaker 1: things that have been turned into musicals and shows. They
41:14
Speaker 1: all stem from these those pioneers that settled in these
41:17
Speaker 1: mountains and and I just think it's such a huge
41:19
Speaker 1: part of our heritage Americans, and it's just disappearing as
41:24
Speaker 1: these communities they just they struggled to survive underneath the
41:28
Speaker 1: climate of things being exploded and land being devalued and
41:31
Speaker 1: water being polluted. It's hard for them to survive. It's
41:36
Speaker 1: hard for communities two to even keep their footing when
41:40
Speaker 1: all that's happening. So we're losing part of our American heritage.
41:43
Speaker 1: And that's how it ties in with me as a musician.
41:45
Speaker 1: That's how I found it tied in with me as
41:46
Speaker 1: a musician. Awesome. And I want to point out Ben
41:50
Speaker 1: as a guy who walks the walk. He did a
41:52
Speaker 1: an entire tour, was it last year? On your bicycle? Well, yeah,
41:55
Speaker 1: we've done three tours by bicycle. Man. I don't know
41:57
Speaker 1: how many people are there ever tried to carry the
41:59
Speaker 1: cello and bicycle, But this guy does it from town
42:02
Speaker 1: to town. Believe it or not, there's four or five
42:04
Speaker 1: cellist out there in the world that are that are
42:05
Speaker 1: carrying their cellos on bicycle. It's something about you know,
42:09
Speaker 1: people say cellist are extreme people. I don't think that.
42:14
Speaker 1: But I just really got into this idea of not
42:18
Speaker 1: being sustainable or being green, slowing down right, the idea
42:23
Speaker 1: that I wanted to be more involved in these communities.
42:25
Speaker 1: I felt this this unsettling feeling that I was coming
42:30
Speaker 1: through these places, putting on a show, asking people about
42:32
Speaker 1: the music, and then moving on to the next driving
42:34
Speaker 1: eight to ten hours the next day sometimes to get
42:37
Speaker 1: to some distant community where a promoter is willing to
42:39
Speaker 1: put on put out money to put on a show.
42:41
Speaker 1: It felt like a little bit of a fleecing thing
42:43
Speaker 1: and somewhat dishonest in a lot of ways. It wasn't real,
42:47
Speaker 1: and people romanticized it, but it wasn't really real. So
42:50
Speaker 1: the idea of getting on a bicycle, slowing down, not
42:53
Speaker 1: being able to roll up our windows or just stay
42:55
Speaker 1: on the interstate and zoom pass the place. We had
42:58
Speaker 1: to really ride through each community and be a part
43:01
Speaker 1: of their town for at least a little bit. Yeah,
43:03
Speaker 1: you notice, I've been riding my bike lately just for exercise,
43:05
Speaker 1: and it's amazing how much more you notice just by
43:08
Speaker 1: walking or riding a bike than when you're zipping past
43:11
Speaker 1: in the car. The smells, the condition of the road
43:13
Speaker 1: is a big one. Um the habits and nature of
43:18
Speaker 1: other drivers out there. You notice how amazing it is
43:22
Speaker 1: that we have thousands and thousands of pounds of machinery
43:25
Speaker 1: that we can just hurtle down the highway. I mean,
43:27
Speaker 1: for for better or worse. You just kind of notice
43:30
Speaker 1: what what an extreme action that is. It feels we're
43:32
Speaker 1: so used to it. But the idea that we can
43:35
Speaker 1: hop on a highway and just push this machine, very heavy,
43:38
Speaker 1: big machine, float it down the highway. You know, it's
43:42
Speaker 1: kind of like you know, Arthur C. Clark or something.
43:44
Speaker 1: It's just right out there. You don't take things for granted.
43:47
Speaker 1: My friend, all right, Well, before we get involved with
43:51
Speaker 1: the music, sticking around and playing as a song, I
43:54
Speaker 1: would love to we we plug. I love mountains dot Org.
43:57
Speaker 1: Is that a good place for people to start. It's
43:59
Speaker 1: a great place for people will start especially because you can.
44:01
Speaker 1: They have a tool on there where you can plug
44:03
Speaker 1: in your zip code and see what portion of your
44:07
Speaker 1: power is coming from coalts and not only that, you
44:10
Speaker 1: can see where that coal is coming from. Yeah, it's
44:13
Speaker 1: a great website. I love mountains that are it's cool,
44:15
Speaker 1: not cold, that's cold. So the song we're gonna hear
44:19
Speaker 1: just called electrified, and it is from Mr. Soli's forthcoming album,
44:23
Speaker 1: which should be dropping right now, and it's called Inclusions.
44:27
Speaker 1: So it's here. The trees far electrified, the streets are electrified,
44:45
Speaker 1: your eats are electrified. My voice was electriffive. Your heart
44:55
Speaker 1: is unsteady. They can make a feat in time. Your
44:58
Speaker 1: mind is confused, it will be clarified, your own fashioned.
45:03
Speaker 1: You will be modernized. Every Thing is electrified. If the
45:09
Speaker 1: thing is electrified. If you lost in the jungle, used
45:21
Speaker 1: the satellite, you're broke in the city, sneak on the
45:25
Speaker 1: bus line, you lost your job because it was mechanized.
45:30
Speaker 1: They said we have to compete when the markets gooblized.
45:34
Speaker 1: Every thing is electrified. Every thing is electrified. Every thing
45:41
Speaker 1: is electrified. Lie with my bare hand touched the base
45:54
Speaker 1: of your spine. Feel you shuddering glow moved like a
46:00
Speaker 1: swallow and I'm hypnotop. Every things electric file. Everything's aled
46:09
Speaker 1: to file. Things electrify. Some folks are heroes, others maybe vilified.
46:44
Speaker 1: Assess your lawsuit has learned to diversify. Find your higher
46:49
Speaker 1: callings than evangelize, build your congregation. Now you're televised. Every
46:56
Speaker 1: thing's electrified. Everything is a ACTU five. Yeah, and the
47:02
Speaker 1: things electrified, the thing electure five. Man, that was awesome.
47:38
Speaker 1: That was very cool, so cool. And those you know
47:40
Speaker 1: you heard clapping. We have people all over the office
47:42
Speaker 1: here that wanted to come in and here. Yeah, I
47:44
Speaker 1: have something else. Uh. So you can see Ben Solely
47:47
Speaker 1: on tour. He's on tour right now, and he is
47:50
Speaker 1: all over the place. I'm looking Boston, New York, Philly, Chicago, St. Louis,
47:55
Speaker 1: I mean, back through Kentucky, down through the South. Go
47:59
Speaker 1: see Ben so Lee on tour through the end of June.
48:03
Speaker 1: You can find that at his website. Yeah. You can
48:05
Speaker 1: also learn all about mining and energy by typing either
48:08
Speaker 1: one of those words in the search part. How stuff
48:10
Speaker 1: works dot com, which is not sure your listener mail
48:13
Speaker 1: this time. Instead, you shoot us an email if you
48:16
Speaker 1: want to drop us a line. Yeah, and hey, if
48:18
Speaker 1: you go see Benslely onto work, go up to him
48:20
Speaker 1: and talk to him. He's a very nice guy and
48:21
Speaker 1: tell him that your buddies with us. He's a very
48:23
Speaker 1: good guy. Anyway. If you want to get in touch
48:25
Speaker 1: with us, send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
48:29
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com for more on this and
48:38
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. VI is it how stuff works
48:40
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48:43
Speaker 1: the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage.
48:47
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