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Plate Tectonics Are What Makes Earth Inhabitable · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Q Josh Trumpet. But you know what that means, everybody.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: We are going back on tour again. We are hitting
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  Speaker 1: the road next year in January for our annual Pacific
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  Speaker 1: Northwest and Northern California Swing, and we will be at
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: the Paramount Theater in Seattle on January twenty fourth, Revolution
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  Speaker 1: Hall and Portland on the twenty fifth, and our home
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  Speaker 1: away from home at San Francisco's Sketch Fest on January
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: twenty six.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll be at the Sydney Goldstein Theater again. Everybody
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: a great place, that's right. If you want tickets and information,
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  Speaker 2: you can go to linktree slash sysk and it's got
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: all that jam. You can go to our website stuff
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: youshould do dot com. It's got all that jam. And
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: we will see all of you guys in January with
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: bells on.
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and fucking
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Jerry's here too, and we're just moving slowly against one another,
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: starting static in the slowest possible way.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Perhaps one day will be a mountain.
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  Speaker 2: Range yeah, or a deep deep drench hmm.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: All right, you get down there. I'll be up in
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: the mountains, all right.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: When I'm down there, I'll be like, Hello, how's the
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: weather up there?
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Jerry'll be uh, you know her nickname will sea level
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  Speaker 1: Roland sea level.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but we need to spell it with just the
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  Speaker 2: letter C. Right, that's more nickname me.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Oh no, that sounds mean all of a sudden seed level.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: Oh I didn't mean it like that.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, like Jerry's the sea level producer.
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  Speaker 2: Right, Wow, that was just subconscious, Sorry, Jerry. So since
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: Jerry said that was okay, I say we just go
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: ahead and move on because we're making all these plate
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: tectonic jokes for a good reason. Chuck. We're going to
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: talk today in part about plate tectonics, that's.
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  Speaker 1: Right, But first we're going to go back before that.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I included this. I coupled this together from
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  Speaker 2: a bunch of different stuff, including our old Vulnerable House
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  Speaker 2: Stuff work site, net Geo, Live Science, I go wrong there,
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Heritage Daily, Good Stuff, Great You of Calgary. Yeah, the
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: U stands for Upwardly Mobile Mob of Calgary. Uh huh.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: And then Wonderum Daily, which I hadn't heard of before,
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: but it's a cool little site.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Is it a wondrium on the daily, on the daily.
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  Speaker 2: So yeah, I coupled this together and I wanted to
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  Speaker 2: put this in there about the idea of what people
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: used to think of I guess I'm fascinated with that
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  Speaker 2: lately because I just did a whole episode on on
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: what people used to think before the scientific method. I
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: feel like we talked about something similar in another episode,
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: and then now we've got this. But this, to me
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: is like we're right on the precipice of essentially folklore
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  Speaker 2: and then scientific understanding. This is essentially like the dividing
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  Speaker 2: line what we're looking at right here in this first
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  Speaker 2: little anecdote. And then the other reason I thought it
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  Speaker 2: was really significant is because I think Madam Blovotsky, who
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: kind of comes up in a second, she would play
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  Speaker 2: really well today, everybody'd be like, what kind of bs
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  Speaker 2: are you selling? I want to give you some of
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  Speaker 2: my money, Like she would be a featured like Goop contributor.
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  Speaker 1: Basically, yeah, yes, you're talking about Helena Blavatsky aka Madam Blovotsky,
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  Speaker 1: the Russian occultist from the eighteen hundreds who was a
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  Speaker 1: member and co founder in fact of the Theosophical society
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  Speaker 1: that sounds like it would play these days for sure,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: for sure. And something that keep wanting sleep Blatovsky. Blavatsky
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  Speaker 1: was going on about back then was something called Lemuria.
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  Speaker 1: And we'll get to how that came about in a
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  Speaker 1: second as well. But this is the idea that a
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  Speaker 1: lot of theosophists, huh thought that, Hey listen, Religion has tried,
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  Speaker 1: science has tried, but nobody still here in the nineteenth
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  Speaker 1: century has fully explained how we got here and what's
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  Speaker 1: going on on planet Earth. But I am able to
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  Speaker 1: because I am the great Blavatsky, and I have talent
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  Speaker 1: and insight into the times that came before.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, through psychic gifts, right, So just drop.
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  Speaker 1: Your rubles in a bucket and I'll tell you exactly.
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  Speaker 2: So. She had I think, multiple books, but in one
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  Speaker 2: in particular that came out in nineteen eighty eight, called
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: The Secret Doctrine, she talked about how there were seven
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: root races. This is another thing people were very preoccupied with. Oh, yeah,
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  Speaker 2: where we came from? Yeah, And the reason why is
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  Speaker 2: because just a couple decades before, Darwin had published on
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: the origin of the species. And it's really difficult to
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: get across like the revolution and understanding that book brought right,
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: and that made people fascinated like, wait, okay, well where
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  Speaker 2: did we come from? If God just didn't go boop
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  Speaker 2: seven thousand years ago, where did we come from? Let's
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  Speaker 2: figure that out. And again, this was at a time
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  Speaker 2: when science was very much mishmashed with the superstition, I guess,
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  Speaker 2: so you could really get some play with the superstitious stuff.
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  Speaker 2: And that's exactly what Blovotski was doing. She was saying,
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  Speaker 2: check this out, this place called Lemuria. It's a lost continent.
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  Speaker 2: Everybody loves those, and it's where one of the three
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  Speaker 2: of seven root races came from.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, the third root race, in which giant hermaphroditic egg
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  Speaker 1: laying humans pre sex organ humans lived along with the dinosaurs.
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  Speaker 1: And everyone was like, hey, sounds pretty good to me.
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  Speaker 2: Sounds good. Take my money.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. So it made me wonder too if some of
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  Speaker 1: this obsession with where we came from too, because you know,
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  Speaker 1: we'll learn later. Other people talked about, you know, some
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  Speaker 1: of the original races, like with some of that rooted
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  Speaker 1: in things like you know, horrors to come like, we're
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  Speaker 1: the original people, so we're the ones who count.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it definitely was finds its roots in
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  Speaker 2: that era, that whole fascination at this time.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, okay, I thought so.
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  Speaker 2: And also there's something that comes up in another episode.
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  Speaker 2: We're going to talk about scientific romanticism, which I guess
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  Speaker 2: this is probably kind of an example of. But that's like, yeah,
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  Speaker 2: not only are we uncovering like this history in the
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  Speaker 2: deep past, we're uncovering my ethnicity's history in the deep past.
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  Speaker 2: And all we're gonna find is the most splendorous, spectacular
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  Speaker 2: examples of how we're actually the survivors of a lost
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  Speaker 2: civilization that was even grander than anything we can understand. Now,
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  Speaker 2: that's another thing that people were at the same time.
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  Speaker 2: So it's pop culture, but again it's kind of dressed
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  Speaker 2: up like it's following the same lines as science, but
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  Speaker 2: it's not really science. Fortunately, at the same time, there
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  Speaker 2: were like legitimate scientists working. It's just they were still
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  Speaker 2: following blind alleys to some way, which I just I
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  Speaker 2: want to press the pause button right here. I am
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  Speaker 2: in no way suggesting that science is done, like we've reached.
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  Speaker 2: Science is exactly perfect the way it is now. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: there's still plenty of problems with it, There's still lots
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  Speaker 2: left to discover, and so by casting dispersions or shade
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: at this kind of situation back in the mid to
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  Speaker 2: late nineteenth century, I'm not insinuating that our current reality
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  Speaker 2: is vastly superior and perfect. I'm just saying at this
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  Speaker 2: time there were big problems with science and pop culture meshing.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm glad you said that, But you've been
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  Speaker 1: clear where you are on that through the years.
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  Speaker 2: I think, hey, we get new listeners every episode.
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  Speaker 1: Now, that's a good point, and that's a lot easier
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  Speaker 1: to say that than to say, go back and listen
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  Speaker 1: to sixteen years worth of.
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  Speaker 2: Stuff, right, or feel a bunch of angry emails?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, we will never get those. After you said that
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  Speaker 1: so Lemiria was not something that Blovotsky created, Lomia has
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  Speaker 1: a well this will all tie into tectonic plates, believe
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  Speaker 1: it or not. Yeah, just wait, just wait. It really
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: does in a very neat way spectacular. I love how
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  Speaker 1: you did this. But there was a British zoologist named Philip.
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  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Philip. Philip is not a name that I
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: know of.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: Phallic is in there, but who would name their kid Fallic.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: Not Phyllis or Gary Goldman, the Great Comedian has a
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: great bit on Phyllis and that name being retired in
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  Speaker 1: nineteen thirty three by the government.
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  Speaker 2: Gary Goldman The Rock and Roll Part two, Guy.
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  Speaker 1: Gary Golman g U. L. M. A. N. The Great
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  Speaker 1: stand up Comedian, I got you anyway. Philip not Phyllis
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  Speaker 1: or Philic Sclatter or Sclater wrote an essay in eighteen
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  Speaker 1: sixty four called the Mammals of Madagascar. And this one
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  Speaker 1: is sort of kind of funny when you think about
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  Speaker 1: how Madagascar so clearly fits off of where it broke
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  Speaker 1: off from Africa. But Slater didn't see that at the time.
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  Speaker 1: He really wondered, like, hey, I'm looking at Madagascar. It's
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  Speaker 1: right off the just right off the coast of Africa there,
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  Speaker 1: and they have all these dozens of species of lemurs.
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  Speaker 1: Yet Africa and India don't only have a few species
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  Speaker 1: of lemur. He was wrong about that, even which isn't
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  Speaker 1: the point. They didn't have any true lemurs. But he
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  Speaker 1: was like, why is Madagascar just loaded with all these
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  Speaker 1: lemurs and Africa so close has none. And he says,
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  Speaker 1: here's what happened. There was a land bridge there and
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  Speaker 1: it was once, you know, all connected, and I'm going
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  Speaker 1: to call that big, you know, great continent lee Muria
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  Speaker 1: after the lemur.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, he really liked leamers a lot. So this is
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  Speaker 2: a lost continent. It includes a land bridge. And what
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  Speaker 2: Sclater's doing here is what was kind of all the
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  Speaker 2: scientific rage. It was like, okay, again, like we came
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  Speaker 2: from apes, animals evolved from other animals. Let's take that
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  Speaker 2: new worldview and figure out how that works. And he
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  Speaker 2: couldn't figure out like how like similar species got it
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  Speaker 2: out there eventually mm hmm could be separated by hundreds
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  Speaker 2: of miles of water. The best explanation that he thought
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  Speaker 2: was a land bridge that's just currently inundated with water.
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  Speaker 2: And so, like you said, he came up with Lemuria
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  Speaker 2: and that got very quickly deposited into the pop culture,
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  Speaker 2: and people like Blovatsky and others were like, yep, Lamuria,
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  Speaker 2: and then let's add to it so we can get
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: that goop money.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, And land bridges were just land bridges were the thing,
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: and here's the thing, and we'll, you know, we'll get
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  Speaker 1: to some more of this in a minute. But like
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: they weren't totally off and all of this stuff. Like
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  Speaker 1: they were on the right track for some of it,
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  Speaker 1: some a little bit more than others. There was I
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  Speaker 1: think a German biologist that you track down named Ernst
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  Speaker 1: Heckel or Heckel, and he was like, hey, listen, Lemyria
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  Speaker 1: was not only a thing, but that's where we all
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  Speaker 1: came from. That was a cradle of humanity. There were
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: twelve varieties of men. Here we go with that stuff again. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: and we evolved from these ancient primates right there at
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  Speaker 1: this place that is now you know, partially underwater.
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  Speaker 2: Right. What's nuts about the whole thing, though, is that
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  Speaker 2: that actually has happened before. There actually is at least
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  Speaker 2: one and I'm sure there's plenty. It's not a lost continent,
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  Speaker 2: but a lost pretty decent sized bit of land, yeah,
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  Speaker 2: that is now covered by water that once held people
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  Speaker 2: who lived there, and it's called Doggerland. And it's just
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  Speaker 2: so nuts that, like these guys were off in their
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  Speaker 2: interpretation of what they were seeing to explain species divergence.
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  Speaker 2: And as we'll see, like fossil beds separated by an ocean,
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  Speaker 2: but they still kind of match up on one coast
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  Speaker 2: of Africa and one coast of South America, all these
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  Speaker 2: things are trying to put together. They were on the
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  Speaker 2: right track trying to explain it, but they were just
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  Speaker 2: awful little bit and yet at the same time they
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: were explaining stuff that they didn't actually know really existed.
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  Speaker 2: But did Does that make sense in a really roundabout way?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And when something like Doggerland happens where
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: you know, this was the land that was around basically
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: what we now know is the UK and it connected
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: to Europe. In nineteen thirty one, a fisherman pulled up
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: a barbed antler point, part of a weapon, basically part
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: of a harpoon that they were using twelve thousand years ago,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: buried in Pete. They're like, well, wait a minute, Pete
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: isn't in the ocean. Pete's in the forest. Why would
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: it be twenty five miles out into the ocean. And
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: then they started poking around more and more in the
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: decades and they're like, oh, well this used to all
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: be land, and beneath the North Sea are canoes and
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: burial sites and all kinds of other things that we
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: can point to. Is like pretty good proof that, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: this happens. There is land that used to be here
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  Speaker 1: that is now beneath the sea at different places on
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  Speaker 1: planet Earth.
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  Speaker 2: And I mean like a lot of land. This land
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: stretched out from all points that surrounded the UK and
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: stretched toward Europe, from southern Scandinavia to Brittany and France.
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  Speaker 2: It was just connected and there were river beds and
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  Speaker 2: all sorts of animals to hunt. It was just really cool.
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  Speaker 2: And then over time, as the sea levels rose, it
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: became inundated, and then there was a landslide and under
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: sea landslide that really inundated it, and it was just
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  Speaker 2: lost to history because the people running around there were
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: running around there, you know, no less than five thousand
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: years ago, maybe seven, so everyone forgot about it. But
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: one of the noteworthy things that I found just completely
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: fascinating is HG. Wells show off that he was set
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: an eighteen ninety seven book called The Story of the
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: Stone Age in exactly that place. He didn't call it
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: daughter Land, but he set his story in this land
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  Speaker 2: that was now covered by water between the UK and Europe.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: And it turned out about three or so decades later
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: that he was confirmed H. G.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: Wells was a special human.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty cool. So he actually managed to combine the
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: science and the speculation speculativeness of the age. But he
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: was never trying to say like, this is real, this
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: is a real book. He was like, this is fiction.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: It's awesome.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: I like him for that.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: Didn't he write Didn't he write the original Invisible Man book?
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: I think so?
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I watched the I've been trying to watch some
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: scary movies in October and now in a November a bit,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: and I watched that Invisible Man update from a few
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: years ago with Elizabeth Moss that I had never seen before.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: You No, it's good, okay, and it's you know, it's
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: not the same story h. G. Wells put forward, but
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: it's it's you know, it's based sort of adapted from
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: that story. And it's actually really good and quite scary
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: and has a great ending.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: Okay, good to know.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: So I recommend it.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: Did you ever get around to watching the Juwan origins miniseries?
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: Now you gotta email me this stuff. I don't remember
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: anything after I leave the studio. Scary.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: So you know the Grudge that Sarah Michelle Geller was
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: in in the nineties.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: Sure it was based on Well I know the movie
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: and I know it was based on an original Japanese
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: film right.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: Right called Juwan, and so somebody went back and made
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: a prequel to the Japanese version. Oh okay, that explains
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: how everything got that way. Yes, it is so scary that, like,
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: I will leave the light on from you know, the
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: family room to the bedroom as I'm going to bed
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: and then turn it off remotely. I just won't turn
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: it off and walk through the dark. It is that scary.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: It's awesome.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't watch as many this year because the
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: movie crushesn't around. I used to like really heavily watch
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: a lot of horror movies in October, but only caught
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: a few this year. And uh, I still I enjoy
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: being scared like that and being in another part of
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: your house and having to navigate your way back in
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: the dark, Even in my fifties, it's always scary and
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: kind of funny. Like, of course, I know that the
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: supernatural being from the movie I just watched isn't in
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: this all way, but but do I.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: Really could be exactly? I know?
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: All right, Uh, off topic, let's take a break a sure,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: let's and we'll be right back.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: Definitely should large holds.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: Of chucking r y s k.
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: I want to learn about a terror's hortan college, horrid actyle,
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: how to take a berg, all about fractal think is gone,
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: that's a little hunt, the Lizzie Border murders, and all right, everything,
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: and jo should.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Now word up Jerry. All right. So when we broke
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: actually we were talking about horror movies. But a little
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: bit before that, I was talking some about how it's
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: a little frust not frustrating, but maybe kind of funny
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: that they didn't put together that Madagascar so clearly broke
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: off from Africa and fits very nicely if you just
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: shove it back together right there in its spot. And
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: as I was studying today, I have my light up
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: globe on my desk, and you know, when you look
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: at that thing, my my medium smart eight year old
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: daughter can say, hey, Daddy, you know, it looks like
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: Africa could fit into South America, and it looks like
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: all of these things sort of could be puzzled together
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: to form a larger super continents. A medium smart but
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: she knows the word super continent.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: That's pretty smart.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: But it's pretty it seems pretty obvious to us now.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: But it was all about land bridges back then and
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: sort of this idea of super continent came about a
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: little slower.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because if you stand on any continent and just
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: stand around and wait, you will not perceive that you're
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: moving even though you are moving. So they were not
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: aware of the fact that the continents moved, and so
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: of course that wasn't what they went with. They went
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: with land bridges. Again, it's a very sensible explanation. How
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: did one thing get to another when it's covered by oceans. Well,
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: that there was land that used to be above the
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: ocean and they just migrated across. It's happened before. There's
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: dogger land, there's the bearing land bridge, all that stuff.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: But the idea that the continents moved, that just was
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: not around until another guy came along, who will talk
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: about in a second. But there was like little inklings
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: of this idea that that just weren't There was like
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: a light bulb that was just about to come on,
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: but it just burns out right before, right before it
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: fully comes on. That's kind of what was happening with
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: the idea that the continent's moved. And again, just to
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: reiterate the whole reason people are thinking about this stuff
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: is because fossil beds suddenly take on new meaning. If
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: evolution and natural selection exists, climatological evidence suddenly takes on
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: new meaning. Why species are similar but separated from one
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: continent to another, it takes on significance. And so they're
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: looking around their world with brand new fresh eyes and
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: trying to answer these questions. And they were coming up
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: with all these different meta narratives and on the way
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: to the idea that we have now that the continents
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: actually move and they actually formed one large super continent
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: in the past. Like I was saying, there were a
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: few people who came along and almost had it.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the idea of continental contraction was one pretty good
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: idea and an alternate theory, you know, pre tectonic plate shifts,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: and that is that the Earth was a huge magma ball,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: which is true, and that as that thing cooled down
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: over time, the land that it formed trunk basically as
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: things might do when they cool, and the continents broke apart.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: So that was that was really headed toward the right
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: idea until the end, basically for sure. Another thing that
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: they had trouble kind of explaining were things like mountains,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Like I kind of hitt it around the beginning. One
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: of us will be a mountain range. They did have
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: theories that parts of the Earth were, you know, breaking
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: off from one another and could go underneath other parts,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: but they just hadn't quite arrived there until Alfred Wegner
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: came along in nineteen twelve and published a book called
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: The Origin of Continents and Oceans where he was kind
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: of like, hey, wait a minute, everyone, this looks like
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: a giant puzzle if you stand back and look at
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: a map and you're just not standing back far enough, like,
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: get get over on the other side of the room.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: And then everyone did, and they go, oh wow, and
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: this helps explain things like you were talking about why
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: the coast of Africa and the coast of Brazil might
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: share fossils even though they're separated by such a vast ocean.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, or share species are all sorts of different explanations.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: It would go on to become considered a theory of
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: everything for geology, for earth science, in much the same
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: way that our understanding of the atom is like explains
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: you know, quantum mechanics or vice versa. It was a
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: really big deal that he came up with this, but
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: it was not well received at first, as we'll see,
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: like he was not considered a genius in his time.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: People ridicule them essentially, and his whole idea was very
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: quickly forgotten for several decades until he was pretty much
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: proven right. But in that book, The Origin of the
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: Continents and Oceans, he's saying, not only did the continents
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: move apart, because they used to form this super continent
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: called Pangaea, all the land they're still moving around today.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: All the Victorians and I'm sorry these would be Edwardians.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: Maybe we're like, nah, I've stood still for like an
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: hour at a stretch and I could not tell we
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: were moving, So we're not moving. And he's like, no, really,
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: trust me. The continents are still moving. It explains everything.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: How about earthquakes. They're like, well, it's God putting his
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: finger on Antarctica. He's like, no, it's actually these plates
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: sliding against one another. He's wrong. And they just kind
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: of went back and forth like this until Wegner died
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty in a blizzard.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Wow. Really really shot right to the ending there. So
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: the other thing that was pretty brilliant was he was like, well,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: not only you know, maybe we can't stand back. There's
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: no room big enough to where we can stand back
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: and see how exactly that puzzle might fit. But what
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: we can do because you know, under this theory of
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: continental drift, we can look at the fossil record and
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: look at different speciological phenomenon and that is part of
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: the puzzle as well, Like if we match up this
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: place with that place, maybe in our mind's eye we
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: can envision how they used to fit together. Even though
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: it's not as tidy as Madagascar off the coast of Africa.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: It's so cool. He was so he was a climate
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: or a meteorologist and a geophysicist, right. He was a
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: sharp dude. He took paleoclimatological data. I think there was
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: like a fern species that he was tracking. There was
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: glacier glacier coverage I guess, like evidence of old glacier coverage,
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: and then species and fossils. And he would take all
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: this and basically say, okay, well this fits here, and
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: then this range now connects from you know, India to
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: North Africa. That explains that that would fit. And he
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: figured out not only did the continents fit together exactly
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: how they would fit together, and not by geography, but
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: by all of this evidence, all this data he had
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: and pair it up. And so, I mean, he really
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: did some amazing work. And again like people were just like,
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: we don't believe what you're saying. And then in the
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: fifties and sixties, apparently, as nat Geo puts it, as
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: we got more technologically advanced in warfare, we started to
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: confirm Wegner's theories inadvertently, like when they were trying to
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: detect submarines using magnetometers, or when they used seismographs to
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: detect nuclear testing elsewhere in the world. These things actually
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: inadvertently turned up evidence that, oh, my gosh, the continents
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: actually are moving, and they're moving today, and Wagner was right,
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: let's go dig them up and shake his hand.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And not only that, but now we know that
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Pangaea wasn't even Pangea is just the most recent super continent, right,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: there were super continents before that, because before Pangaea, there
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: were obviously separate continents that came together to form Pangaea,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: and those continents had broken off from the previous super
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: continent that we call Panotia that was about six hundred
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: million years ago, and there was one before that called Rodinia,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: who was that like a billion years ago? And Earth
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: has had lamb ass for about three billion years. So
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: if you're looking at this on that timeline, this is
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: pretty quick movement. It's not to us today. It was
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: it like a half an inch a year or something, or.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: Roughly one and a half centimeter or something like that.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's you know, that's cooking if you look at
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: it on that kind of timeline exactly.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: So what we've arrived to today, Chuck, is called plate tectonics,
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: and it's essentially so Wagner's theory was continental drift, that
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: the continent's drift, and they were like, well, how Wagner,
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: He's like, huh yeah, well, finally with plate tectonics, we've
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: arrived at how we still don't know exactly what the
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: mechanism is, but what we figured out is that below
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: the Earth's crust, below the what's called the Lyssa sphere.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: It's the crust in the uppermost mantle, the really thick
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: hard stuff. Yeah, that's about sixty miles or one hundred
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: kilometers thick, take your choice. There's something called the isthenosphere,
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: and it's like molten it's viscous, it's liquidish, and it's
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: separated from the lithosphere so that the lithosphere can move
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: about on it.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Right, it's like the oil yes, sort of, hm.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly, oil all bearings WD forty all mixed together. That's
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: what the lithosphere is moving around on. So now we
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: know how it could happen. We still don't know exactly
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: what creates the motion in the ocean, but we do
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: know that this is what it's based on. One way
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: or another. This is what it's based on. And it's
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: possibly because of the convective currents coming from the center
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: of Earth towards the outer crust and mantle.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And Johns Hopkins University a few years ago in
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: twenty nineteen said this has been going on for about
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: two and a half billion years. Yeah, which tracks with
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: the other you know super continents we were talking about.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: And I guess this was h This is a professor
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: from the University of Florida named Ray Russo, an associate
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: professor that talked about the Earth being what you call
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: it a quote, large scale heat engine and you know,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: like we talked about that just big hot ball of
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: magma and so you know, all this heat coming from
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: all these different things throughout these you know, you know,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands and millions of years, is gonna try.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: Heat's going to try to go from warm to cold.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: It's going to flow from a warm area to a
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: cold area, right, And if the heat is on the
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: interior of the Earth, it's going to try to move outward,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: and in fact does towards the cold surface of the Earth.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what's neat is the Earth still hasn't cooled off
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: from when it was formed almost five billion years ago.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: It may have by now, I don't know if it
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: would have or not. But the thing that keeps it going,
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: that keeps it hot is well left over heat radioactive
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: decay of all of these amazing atoms and elements that
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: are in the core. They are under such intense pressure
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: that they just create more heat, and that creates more
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: pressure and so on and so forth, and you've got
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: more and more radioactive decay. And then also just the compression,
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: the gravitational compression is so great it actually produces temperatures.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: That's some pressure right there, right, And so all this
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: heat is emanating, like you said, outward toward the colder surface,
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: and as it does, it carries the heat energy with it.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: As it gets toward the top, it starts to cool off,
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: and he goes, oh, here, I go back down because
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: the cooler stuff sinks, it's less dense, it's less buoyant
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: than heat. Then the warm stuff that's coming up from
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: the core, and then that stuff gets heated up and
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: comes back up. And what I've just described as a
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: convective current, it's the same thing that you get when
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: you look at one of those awesome see through glass
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: cookware pots from the early eighties. When the water's bubbling.
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: That's a convective current. It's the same thing. Yes, the water,
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: the bubbles of water trying to get away from the
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: heat source. They're rising. As they get toward the top,
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: they cool and they come back down. And that's exactly
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: what they're saying is happening, they being today's scientists, is
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: coming from the core moving like that moves like all
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: the molten junk that's in that four hundred miles of
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: a cenosphere. And as that's moving, they think that that
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: is acting like some sort of maybe conveyor belt or
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: something that moves the plates around. So we know they
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: move on the athenosphere, and they think the convective currents
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: are possibly the mechanism that actually moves them.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's this other theory called slab pool. You
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: were talking about those oceanic plates sinking of the to
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: the less dense plates below them, and you know, just
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: think about when you're pulling a tablecloth off of a table.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: It's basically saying, hey, the tablecloth's coming, but so is
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: that dinner plate that's sitting on the table cloth. You're
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: coming with me, right, And that's what slab poll is
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: basically at point I think now I said point five
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: point six inches per year is the average speed. Although
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: science isn't fully in agreement on if things are going
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: faster now if they're going slower, but they have figured
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: out that things are still moving and as these plates
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: are close to each other, there's going to be three
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: different ways which they're going to interact, and that's going
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: to help cause planet Earth. Basically, divergent boundaries obviously are
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: when they are diverging, when they're moving away from each other,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: and you're going to find earthquakes a lot along these areas.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: We talked about this in earthquakes and volcanoes and super volcanoes.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: So it's a bit of a refresher, sure, but that's
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: a divergent boundary. The other two are convergent. That's obviously
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: when things are going toward one another, and that's where
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: you're going to get those mountain range. Mountain ranges when
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: when two continents are gonna hit one another, they're gonna
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: buckle up and either go up or down, so they
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: you're either going to get a mountain range or something
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: like the Mariana trench on the ocean floor. Right, And
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: then you have transform plate boundaries, and that's when things
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: are not moving away or toward each other. They're just
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: sort of generally happily side by side, going by one
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: another very slowly, saying, hey, how you doing. We might
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: be cracking apart here and there as we touch one another,
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: but we're not smashing against one another very slowly. And
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: you're also going to find earthquakes here along these fault lines.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I say we take a break because I mean
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: you mentioned like volcanoes and earthquakes and all that happening.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of action that happens thanks to plate tectonics,
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: and in fact, it turns out that life actually may
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: not be able to exist on Earth were it not
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: for plate tectonics. They're that important.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: Let's do it, definitely.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: I'm not.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: I want to learn about a terror sort and college verdactyl.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: How to take a perfect.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: Is gone?
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: That's another hunt. The Lizzie.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: Everything word up, Jerry, Okay, Chuck. So one thing I
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: wanted to mention is tectonic is a strange word, and
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: it sounds super futuristic and technological. It is actually a
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: very old medieval word that was used uh as what
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: you would call a builder or a carpenter. So plate
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: tectonics is the actual process of building Earth, and that's
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: a really apt name for it, because that's what's going
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: on with plate tectonics, because when all that magma starts
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: to come up, it doesn't just move the plates. At
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: places where there's a gap between the plates. That magma
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: comes up and comes out, and as it does and cools,
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: it forms new rock, essentially Earth, and over the course
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: of millions and millions and millions of years, that moves
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: up and out and over and does all sorts of
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: other cool things until it's eventually recycled back into magma
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: where it will be heated and eventually brought back up
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: as new magma to form new continental crust. So tectonic
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: is a really great word for this whole process.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. And you were talking about and or I
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: guess I was talking about the fact that we spoke
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: about volcanoes and how they form in volcanoes and super volcanoes, right,
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: But as a refresher, these plates are causing you know,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: they're moving around, and when there's a break in the crust,
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: that's basically like an event for all that hotness underneath
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: and that lava to come out or to erupt. This
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: is what I'm going to recommend my second movie of
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: the day. May have talked about it before, but the
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: documentary Fire of Love is amazing. It's about volcanoes. It's
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: about this couple, these volcano hunters. Okay, and it is
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: one of the most amazing some of the most amazing
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: footage I've ever seen in my life. Is this sixteen
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: millimeter film footage that this couple shot years and years ago,
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: that this current documentarian has put together in the form
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: of Fire of Love. Okay, you even would love it.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: All right, I'll check it out. Yeah, is it even
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: better footage than Joe getting spit out of the volcano
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: that he just jumped in, and Joe versus the volcano,
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: because that was a pretty amazing site.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: It's pretty amazing that Noah pony Woo in this one.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: Okay, So I haven't seen that movie in a while.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: I hope it holds up.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: It does.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: Okay. So, as I was saying, there's a lot of
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: stuff that the plate tectonics do in addition to volcanoes,
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: you're like volcanoes, big woop again, this is how new
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: crust is formed. Like all that magma comes up out
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: of these vents or even on land and forms new
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: land or new undersea crust. Right, Yeah, that also does
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: all sorts of other things too, Like when that magma
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: comes up, it's bringing all sorts of minerals and elements
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: and all sorts of crazy superheated stuff that's really reactive
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: and ready to just party essentially when it comes at
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: shooting out of these magma vents. And it actually I
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: did not realize this. One of the things that under
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: sea volcanoes are responsible for is the balancing the ocean's salinity.
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: I never thought, like, where did the salt come from?
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: It comes from the magma that's spitting out at the
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: bottom of the ocean.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we came from there, and so it's no
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: coincidence that our blood has about the same salinity as seawater.
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Pretty cool. And then on land, those same openings
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: down to the magma chambers below what we typically think
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: of as volcanoes, when they erupt, they create new land too.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: They replenish land, they replenish soil over time. They so, yes,
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: there was a there's a direct connection between the volcanoes
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: that are formed by plate boundaries and life on Earth.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: But it gets even more arcane than that.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. You know we mentioned earthquakes. It's also
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: no coincidence that we're gonna find you know, earthquakes don't
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: happen everywhere. They are clustered around these tectonic plate boundaries
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: and when they press together, when those plates move, and
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: for them, it's a sudden movement. That energy's got to
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: go somewhere, and that is what an earthquake is. We
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: should do one on the fault lines, like the San
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: Andreas fault, maybe the most famous fault line.
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: I feel like the rock did that. It's done.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: That's funny. What else, what about those What about the rocks,
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: the undersea rocks.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: So remember when I said that they used to and
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: probably still do have magnetometers like undersea to detect submarines. Well,
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: this is actually one reason they figured out that that
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: is right, and that it's plate tectonics doing it. They
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: inadvertently detected that if you go along the seafloor on
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: either side of a ridge, you're going to find that
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: your compass goes haywire. Yeah.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: And the reason why is because as that magma comes
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: up from the vent in the middle of the undersea
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: ridge and spills out over there's some minerals in there
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: that actually kind of clock the north pole right, like
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: the minerals are magnet episode is really really interesting. I
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: went back and listened to it again and it's even
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: more difficult than I remember trying to explain it, but
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: just suffice to say that there's minerals that align themselves
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: with the north pole, and in effect, when they become rock,
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: they record where the north pole was. Wow, Earth's magnetic
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: north pole sometimes switches with the South pole. It can
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: wander throughout Earth and end up at the opposite se
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: and depending on when those rocks were formed, from the
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: undersea vent, it will record where that north pole was,
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: and so over the course of millions and millions of years,
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: I think the poles flip every one to three hundred
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: thousand years something like that. Those new ridges that are
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: created are going to get pushed further and further out
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: from the vent, so that if you went over them
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: with a compass, you will see that they just keep
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: flipping back and forth, marking each time that the north
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: pole changed direction.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: Amazing, I think so too.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: And they're like, well, the only the only thing that
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: explains this is that the the the continents are actually
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: pushing apart. They're forming new continents that's coming out of
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: the vent, and as it cools, it's getting pushed apart
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: by new stuff. Hence the plate tectonics theory seems pretty accurate.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, it has an effect on the
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: overall climate too, because we tend to think when we
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: think about plate tectonics, we think about the land masses
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: that are moving, But that's also going to affect the
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: shape of the ocean, and very much did inform the
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: shape of the ocean, you know, two and a half
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: billion years ago whenever all this stuff started because it,
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: you know, used to be what did they call it,
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: not a super ocean, a.
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: Panhosia, I can't remember, but basically super ocean, like all
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: the ocean, yeah, all the ocean.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: But the current shape, Like what I'm about to say
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: might sound silly, like the current shape of the ocean
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: prevents the equator and the poles from having like wildly
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: different temperatures. They have pretty widely different temperatures according to us,
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: like humans walking around on the planet. But if it
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: wasn't for the fact that it was that the oceans
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: ended up shaped in such a way where they are supplying,
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: like always supplying this warm equatorial water toward those polar regions,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: the difference in temperature between the poles and the equator
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: would be I don't even know, it would be. It
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: would be crazy how big that disparity would be.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: It'd be a mess.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It wouldn't be like, oh, it's like hot at
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: the equator and boy it's super cold there. It would
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: be you know, I wish somebody knew what hundreds of degrees.
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: I don't know, but I do know that really weird
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: stuff happens along temperature gradient. So you would not want
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: something like that it would not be hospitable for us.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but all of the ocean currents, and because of
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: the way the oceans are shape, because of the way
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: the continents broke apart, influences climate all over the place.
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it carries water from here to there, and yeah,
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: it's pretty interesting. And again you can trace it all
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: the way back to the movement of the plates. There's
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: also carbon dioxide. The amount of CO two that's in
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: the atmosphere at any given point in time also serves
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: as a global thermostat, right, and that if there's a
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: lot of CO two in the atmosphere, it warms up
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: kind of like what's going on right now. And when
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of CO two in the atmosphere, the
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: water sea levels rise, and as the sea levels rise,
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: rocks are weathered and a lot of the CO two
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: in the atmosphere gets sucked out of it into water
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: to form limestone and essentially gets locked away from the atmosphere.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: And as this happens enough over enough time, the atmosphere cools.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: As the atmosphere cools, sea levels lower again, and the
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: opposite process starts to happen. Those rocks that are exposed
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: now get weathered and that CO two enters the atmosphere again.
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: And then another way that the plate tectonics influence. This
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: is the stuff that gets formed into limestone, settles to
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: the bottom of the ocean and it's just trapped. It's
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: trapped CO two, but as it forms part of a
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: plate that ends up back down into the core, into
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: the stenosphere and gets heated up and turned into magma again.
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: When it comes out of the volcano, it brings all
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: that CO two with it, releasing it in an atmosphere.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: It's a really long it's the carbon cycle, and over
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: really long geological time scales, it keeps the Earth from
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: getting too warm or too cold. It's a thermostat. And again,
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: without plate tectonics, this would not be possible, and we
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: probably would not be here today talking about this.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. If you're wondering where, you know, if things
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: are moving even that slowly, where might we be in
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: a million years from now or something like that. That's
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: a good question. And there are people that are studying
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: exactly that their computer simulations. Obviously that scientists can run
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: to see which way we're going and how fast we're going,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: and what might bump into what at what point, And
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: they have estimated some things they you know, they're they're
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: good enough now to know and say out loud like, hey, listen,
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: this is a guest. Still we have no idea what's
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: going to happen really in a million years or one
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: hundred million years, but they're saying what we think might
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: happen is one day, just as there were previous super
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: continents before Pangaea, we will all be reunited again. And
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: maybe that's when humanity really comes together as one super
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: continent in about two hundred and fifty million years. And
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: they've already pre named it Pangaea proxima, which I guess
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: is just you know, what they're approximating. It will be
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: like there'll be new mountain ranges. And in fact, they
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: think once Africa eventually finishes going north and hits Europe,
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: then that may be like if you think the Himalayas
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: or something, way, do you get a load of like
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: the mountain range that's coming in one hundred million years.
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, The Rock needs to do a movie about that.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's probably in development already, probably waiting on
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: the Sack strike to finish Pangaea proxima. But the Rock's
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: going to get in in the middle and.
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you just sold the movie. Yep, so you
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: got anything else?
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: I got nothing else. This is really fascinating. I mean,
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: point six inches a year doesn't sound like a lot,
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: but when you're talking about plate tectonics, it's it's moving.
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot happens. Well, if you were jazzed by this,
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: you can go search plate tectonics on the website HowStuffWorks
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: dot Com or anywhere on the Internet and it will
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: bring up all sorts of neat little earth science lessons.
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: And since I said that, it's time for listener mail,
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: all right.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this don't listen to us because we're
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: not vets. Because on the White Dog Poop Short Stuff,
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: we talked about cooking your own dog food, which a
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: lot of vets rowed in said, don't do that unless
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: you're really have it dialed in with a pet nutritionist.
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: And we talked about grain free. I mentioned grain free
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: because one of our dogs required it because of an
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: autoimmune issue, Sweet Buckley, and I was under the misinterpretation
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: or the misunderstanding rather that that was just sort of
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: good for all dogs. And they were like, no, grain
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: free can lead to cardiac abnormalities. Du So, we heard
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: from lots of vets. This is from a very frustrated
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: VET and stuff you should know. Fam. Jeez all, it says, Hey, guys,
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: your white dog poop episode Dropy Bonker's pet. Nutrition is
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: a hot topic. Unfortunately. Not only should people not be
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: getting advice from you, but there are a lot of
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: people on the internet, a lot of quacks even that
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: within their own industry, they're saying that you shouldn't listen to.
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: Sure home cooked diets are difficult to do. We see
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: all sorts of medical abnormalities from unbalanced diets. It should
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: be only done under the guidance of the veterinary nutritionists.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: Please do not even look for random recipes online, even
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: if they're written by a VET, because of the quacks
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: in our industry.
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: I want to just stick up for my wife here
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: and be like, yes, she's got that covered. She's not
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: some dummy who just looks up random recipes on the internet.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: Oh are you guys making your own food?
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she cooks for momo quite a bit. Okay, I
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: think that's what they're responding to as I mentioned that.
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you mentioned it. But one of my
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: friends is doing it, and I texted right away and
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: I was like, hey, dude, stop cooking for your dog
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: until you get it down.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and that's right. You should talk to
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: you a nutritionists. There's also like nutrition info sites, like
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: legitimate sites that kind of help you balance what you're
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: cooking for your dog. But yes, random recipes on the
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: internet are not a good idea unless you're cooking like
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: chicken Diane or something.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: I think he was under the impression like, hey, give
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: him some fruits and veggies and protein and like you're
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: done right, And that's just not the case. And in fact,
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: we're not one to buzzmarket too much. But this vet
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: said balance dot it is a great option if you're
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: looking for legitimate recipes and formulations and supplements.
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: I think that's the one that you me went and
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: found initially.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: Oh sure, it is right. Grain free is also dangerous,
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: has been linked to dilated cardiomyopathy, still a developing area
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: of research, but grain sensitivity is super rare in dogs.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: Grain is fine for the vast majority of dogs. So
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: when you recommend a food, look for a food that
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: is compliant with w SAVA guidelines. I think we can
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: all agree These are pretty reasonable things to want in
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: a pet food company. Most of the food on the
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: shelf does not meet these standards, though, so people should
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: talk to their vets. I'm thankful you didn't touch on
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: raw food, which is trash, or the idea that vets
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: are paid by big pet food because we're not. That
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: is from a frustrated vet. I'm not even gonna say
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: stuff you should know fan anymore.
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: I have to say, yeah, you me went online and
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: got her WSVA certification over the course of many years.
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: Heck yeah, so yeah, she got it all covered everybody.
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: Of course you do in your house?
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: Do I sign defense? Who was that for? They didn't
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: even sign their name, and then they didn't sign their name.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: They signed it as a frustrated vet, So I took
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: that to mean that's how they wanted to addressed.
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: I see, well, what was their email.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: Address, doctor quack at dot com.
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: Okay, thank you doctor quack, I mean frustrated vet. We
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: appreciate that we know that you are looking out for
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: all the animal babies out there. Hats off to you
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: for that, and we would never accuse you of being
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: owned by big PetFood. No, that's just crazy talk. If
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: you want to get in touch with us, anonymously or
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: otherwise and say, you, guys, stink is stink to high Heaven.
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: We'd love to hear that kind of thing. You can
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.