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How Ice Ages Work · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: website apart. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House
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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast.
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Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and
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Speaker 1: uh guests. Who's over there being quiet as a church mouse.
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Speaker 1: The producer who may or may not exist, Jerry. People
0:50
Speaker 1: still think that. I think a few people do. Yeah,
0:53
Speaker 1: she's real, says you. She's real because I can always
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Speaker 1: smell her me. So from here? Oh man? I um,
1:03
Speaker 1: so I like avocado a lot, right, So I like
1:06
Speaker 1: avocado a lot. Basically an avocado a day. Um, And
1:13
Speaker 1: normally I make guacamole. As you know, I make probably
1:15
Speaker 1: the best guacamole on the planet. Sometimes, okay, we'll have
1:20
Speaker 1: a guac off one day. Well, yeah, but it's personal taste,
1:24
Speaker 1: you know, you know that whole thing. Remember, no taste
1:27
Speaker 1: is absolute. Um. So it's sometimes it's just too much
1:35
Speaker 1: to make guac sure, right, that's where avocado toast comes in. Yeah,
1:40
Speaker 1: it's so easy, but and it's totally different too. So
1:43
Speaker 1: if you start to get sick of guacamole, you like,
1:45
Speaker 1: I'll have some avocado toast. Anyway. The upshot is is
1:49
Speaker 1: I recently took antibiotics, which are disgusting poison, but just
1:53
Speaker 1: had to have them this time because my body would
1:55
Speaker 1: not get rid of whatever had um. And so I've
2:00
Speaker 1: been like repopulating my gut flora with fermented stuff like
2:03
Speaker 1: mis Took some miso, put it in some avocado, whipped
2:07
Speaker 1: it up, spread it on some toasts. It was great.
2:10
Speaker 1: And avocado, being a fibrous vegetable, should be a prebiotic.
2:16
Speaker 1: It will probably provide the conditions for that miso to
2:20
Speaker 1: ripen into some really top notch gut flora. Well I'm
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Speaker 1: grossed out now, are you really? Yeah? I found that
2:28
Speaker 1: stuff fascinating. All that your gut flora. It's a matter
2:32
Speaker 1: of personal taste. I guess. It's like people like the
2:34
Speaker 1: smell of their own poop. That's not two different things.
2:40
Speaker 1: Do you like the smelling your own poop? Great? Really? Yeah?
2:46
Speaker 1: I like all my smells. I got you. Do you
2:50
Speaker 1: like ice? Ay? Just I do? We're in one yeah,
2:56
Speaker 1: well can we be in a noisy age? It's hottest wherever, right,
3:01
Speaker 1: but the climb is not changing. Why this summer has
3:04
Speaker 1: been awful? Yeah, supposedly every year we just keep getting
3:09
Speaker 1: hotter and hotter. Yeah, And I'm like, I have a
3:11
Speaker 1: feeling here and Georgia, it's going to be hot into October.
3:16
Speaker 1: I noticed the change take place to day Oh really?
3:19
Speaker 1: Uh not me. I was out there this morning, but
3:24
Speaker 1: momo out well yeah, and I was like, oh, it's
3:26
Speaker 1: not muggy night. Nights are getting cooler. That's where it
3:30
Speaker 1: starts to change. Yeah, but it's still like up in
3:33
Speaker 1: the nineties during the day. During the day is still
3:35
Speaker 1: kind of nasty. But it feels different to me, like
3:38
Speaker 1: the air feels different. Yeah, not me yet. Yeah, that
3:41
Speaker 1: that first fall blasts I haven't experienced. Maybe it's seeing
3:45
Speaker 1: like cinnamon brooms and Kroger that's put me in the
3:48
Speaker 1: fall mood already. I'm just noticing it where it's not
3:50
Speaker 1: the Christmas decorations, right, yeah, Halloween stuff's been out since August. Man,
3:56
Speaker 1: just ridiculous. So back to ice ages. Um, like you said,
4:00
Speaker 1: we are actually in an ice age. To be specific,
4:03
Speaker 1: we are in the Holocene epoch right, yes, which features
4:10
Speaker 1: the Quaternary ice age, and specifically we're in the flandry
4:16
Speaker 1: and interglacial period. But still, even though it's interglacial, it's
4:21
Speaker 1: still an ice age that we're in. It's a mouthful,
4:24
Speaker 1: it is. Who wrote this? Was this? Molly? Molly Edmonds,
4:27
Speaker 1: our dear old friend. Yes, she she put out quality
4:30
Speaker 1: she did. Um. Yeah, Molly points out quite astutely that, uh,
4:35
Speaker 1: you know, if you look at Antarctica in Greenland, you
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Speaker 1: still see ice sheets and um ice ages. Though are
4:42
Speaker 1: it's not you know, we don't have to have the
4:44
Speaker 1: entire or a third of the earth covered in ice
4:47
Speaker 1: to be in an ice age, because within an ice
4:49
Speaker 1: age there's periods of cooler weather and warmer weather, and
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Speaker 1: right now that you know, glacials and interglacials respectively, and
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Speaker 1: right now we're in an interglacial. That's all it is.
5:01
Speaker 1: But like I said, when people look around, they don't
5:03
Speaker 1: think of as being in an ice age, because we're
5:04
Speaker 1: just during one of those warmer periods, right. But I
5:08
Speaker 1: think so. I was reading this New Scientist article about
5:11
Speaker 1: I think it's called the History of Ice on Earth,
5:13
Speaker 1: and they said that there are basically three settings that
5:17
Speaker 1: the Earth has. UM greenhouse, which is basically there's no
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Speaker 1: ice anywhere on Earth. UH. Ice house which is like
5:26
Speaker 1: an ice age glacial period where there is ice even
5:30
Speaker 1: like today there's ice on the Arctic and Antarctic caps
5:33
Speaker 1: right um. And then there's a snowball um setting the
5:37
Speaker 1: most fun of all, which is like the entire planet
5:40
Speaker 1: is frozen over the least fun of all. There have
5:44
Speaker 1: been periods of Earth's history where the whole thing was
5:46
Speaker 1: just a giant ball of ice. Yeah, if we want
5:50
Speaker 1: to talk about the you know, the I don't know
5:52
Speaker 1: if you want to call it the Big Ice Age.
5:54
Speaker 1: But when we think of the term ice age, we
5:59
Speaker 1: most people are probably talking about the one that began
6:01
Speaker 1: about seventy thousand years ago, uh during the Pleistocene era
6:05
Speaker 1: lasted about sixty thousand years UH. And if you're talking
6:08
Speaker 1: about the United States, uh, and the four major glaciations
6:13
Speaker 1: they hit the Midwest, the Nebraska and the Kanson the
6:16
Speaker 1: Illinois and the famous Wisconsin glaciation. Yeah, that's the one
6:21
Speaker 1: that just ended that. We just came out of the
6:23
Speaker 1: Wisconsin one, that's right. And they call him this because
6:27
Speaker 1: that's where they were geographically. Well that's where I think
6:29
Speaker 1: the greatest evidence of them has been discovered. Right. So, um,
6:33
Speaker 1: and in all this it's kind of confusing, actually, but
6:36
Speaker 1: just just the the current ice age that we're in
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Speaker 1: started two point five eight million years ago, right, and
6:43
Speaker 1: again it's still going two point five eight million years
6:46
Speaker 1: to present, the quaternary ice age. Um. And so those
6:49
Speaker 1: little other subdivisions have to do with when the ice
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Speaker 1: has been relatively scarce or when it's been all over
6:57
Speaker 1: the place. And then to make it even more slightly,
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Speaker 1: can using during periods of glaciation. There's even periods where
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Speaker 1: the glaciers retreat and advance. That's stadial and interstadial periods,
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Speaker 1: and those tend to be a little more local. Uh,
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Speaker 1: And and happened a lot a lot more quickly, and
7:16
Speaker 1: glacial or in an interglacial period, happened on the scale
7:20
Speaker 1: of tens of thousands of years. Yes, that's right. And uh,
7:24
Speaker 1: this is nothing new, Like you said, this has been
7:26
Speaker 1: going on since there was a planet Earth. But um,
7:29
Speaker 1: actually recognizing and and what is an ice age just
7:34
Speaker 1: sort of on the newer front, because in the old days,
7:38
Speaker 1: you know, they would see a big rock and they
7:40
Speaker 1: would say, boy, the thing looks like it slid down
7:44
Speaker 1: that mountain there, because you can see that mountains all
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Speaker 1: carved up and this rock shouldn't be here, and that's weird.
7:49
Speaker 1: So that was the Great Flood of Biblical Times. We
7:53
Speaker 1: treated an episode on Yeah, that was a good one,
7:56
Speaker 1: and um, so that was kind of how things were explained,
7:59
Speaker 1: how these things ended up places where they probably did
8:02
Speaker 1: not start out. Yeah, people noticed that there was just
8:04
Speaker 1: weird stuff going on in the geography around them, right, Um,
8:09
Speaker 1: but they didn't they didn't place it correctly. Until it
8:12
Speaker 1: turns out the Swiss peasantry and some German peasants as well,
8:16
Speaker 1: started to notice that their glaciers were receding. And as
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Speaker 1: their glaciers receded up there and say the Alps, it
8:24
Speaker 1: left some markings that they noticed also the same kind
8:29
Speaker 1: of markings further down the mountain. So the Swiss peasants
8:32
Speaker 1: put two and two together and said, you know what,
8:34
Speaker 1: I think the glaciers used to be way, way bigger
8:39
Speaker 1: than they are today, and that maybe that is what
8:42
Speaker 1: explains these boulders that shouldn't be here being here in
8:47
Speaker 1: the middle of this field. And I guess from what
8:50
Speaker 1: I can gather, it was kind of like common folk
8:52
Speaker 1: wisdom in some areas of like the Swiss Alps, long
8:56
Speaker 1: before science understood it. And it was actually a Swiss
9:00
Speaker 1: geologist who was the first one to advance a genuine
9:04
Speaker 1: bona fide hypothesis for ice ages. Yeah, Lewis Uh, I
9:09
Speaker 1: guess sees is how I'm gonna pronounce that. And um
9:13
Speaker 1: he in seven presented um his ideas about this glacial
9:18
Speaker 1: activity at a conference, the science conference, and everyone was like, yeah,
9:22
Speaker 1: m I don't know. I don't know about you. I
9:25
Speaker 1: don't know about that. Well, they didn't know about him.
9:27
Speaker 1: He was he was a smart guy, right, he was established.
9:30
Speaker 1: But they're like, you're just go back to your opium
9:34
Speaker 1: pretty much. And apparently his his first theory was that
9:38
Speaker 1: there there have been an ice age. It happened like
9:41
Speaker 1: very quickly. Yeah, he was off basically like night and day. Uh,
9:45
Speaker 1: and and that um it had followed a catastrophe, right, Yeah.
9:51
Speaker 1: I wonder if he would have that seems like the
9:54
Speaker 1: one thing that might have put them off. It was
9:56
Speaker 1: how unlikely that sounded right? Because he was wrong? Like
9:59
Speaker 1: I won. If you would have said it happened slowly
10:01
Speaker 1: over time, let's say, yeah, they may have said like,
10:04
Speaker 1: oh well, I'm not buy that he's presenting his finding.
10:08
Speaker 1: He's like, what do you guys want to hear? But
10:12
Speaker 1: I'll massage it in that way. Yeah, it happened overnight
10:15
Speaker 1: and they all just cross their arms. He goes or
10:17
Speaker 1: overnight over a very long period of time. Uh so
10:21
Speaker 1: before him though, um, quite a few years before him,
10:24
Speaker 1: there was a scotsman. Oh yeah, born in Edinburgh, Edinburgh,
10:31
Speaker 1: buried at Greyfriars Kirkyard. Wow, which did you ever go there?
10:36
Speaker 1: I walked past it. I never made it in Okay,
10:38
Speaker 1: well my hotel was right there, so I walked through it. Amazing,
10:41
Speaker 1: amazing cemetery. I went to Marry King's close instead, which
10:44
Speaker 1: is pretty awesome too. Oh you had to go to
10:47
Speaker 1: one or the other. They're close to each other. Um,
10:51
Speaker 1: there's only so much time in the day. Off not
10:53
Speaker 1: close enough? Uhive a man named James Hutton, uh man,
11:00
Speaker 1: this guy was He was a stud the father of geology.
11:03
Speaker 1: He had this idea that he he was one of
11:07
Speaker 1: the first people to look around and say, you know what,
11:09
Speaker 1: the Earth is always changing, Like if you look around
11:12
Speaker 1: and pay attention, look at it, that birds just died.
11:14
Speaker 1: Like he might sit for days and look and wait
11:18
Speaker 1: for something to move. But he said, the Earth is
11:21
Speaker 1: constantly changing, and I have an idea that it's probably
11:25
Speaker 1: always been this way. So if we look at what's
11:27
Speaker 1: going on now and we apply that to the past,
11:30
Speaker 1: we might come up with some pretty interesting stuff here, right. Yeah,
11:34
Speaker 1: he said that there's basically clues to the past in
11:37
Speaker 1: the present. Yeah, just like, look what's going on around you.
11:39
Speaker 1: This might have happened ten thousand years ago as well,
11:42
Speaker 1: and that might explain something like that boulder being someplace
11:45
Speaker 1: different exactly. And we keep going to the boulders. But
11:48
Speaker 1: the boulders are actually some really really high quality evidence
11:52
Speaker 1: for ice ages in general. Um, there's there. There's actually
11:56
Speaker 1: a term for it among people who study ice ages.
11:59
Speaker 1: They're called erratics. And an erratic is a very very
12:03
Speaker 1: heavy boulder, way too heavy to have been moved by humans.
12:07
Speaker 1: Um that is also too far from its point of
12:10
Speaker 1: origin to just say rolled downhill it doesn't make any
12:14
Speaker 1: sense that it's there, which is why it's called n erratic.
12:16
Speaker 1: There's some very famous ones. Um, there's one in the
12:20
Speaker 1: Swiss Alps. Uh, well, I'm sure there's many, but there's
12:22
Speaker 1: one in particular. This article mentions that's in the Swiss
12:25
Speaker 1: Alps that is, um, about fifty miles from its point
12:28
Speaker 1: of origin. There's one in Central Park that is many
12:32
Speaker 1: miles away from its point of origin. In New Jersey,
12:35
Speaker 1: it moved, tried to make it in the big city.
12:37
Speaker 1: It was a bridge and tunnel boulder, right. So, and
12:40
Speaker 1: that's actually one of the one of the ways the
12:42
Speaker 1: Germans figured out that there was such a thing as
12:44
Speaker 1: ice age because they said, see that bowler there in
12:46
Speaker 1: that field, I'm pretty sure that skinnin Avian rock, and uh,
12:52
Speaker 1: sure enough they were correct. And so you start to
12:54
Speaker 1: put all this stuff together, huge bowlders being moved, Um,
12:58
Speaker 1: valleys between mountains, carved out in a U shape rather
13:01
Speaker 1: than that telltale V shape that a river carves out. Um.
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Speaker 1: These are clues. They're not well they are erratics, but
13:09
Speaker 1: their clues into the past. Yeah that when you start
13:11
Speaker 1: to put all of them together. The only thing that
13:14
Speaker 1: that really explains them, is huge, massive movements of glaciers.
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Speaker 1: Glacial movement. Yeah. And and when you study that stuff
13:25
Speaker 1: and you look at these grooves and you study the boulders,
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Speaker 1: you can actually make calculations. And it's amazing that way
13:30
Speaker 1: back then they were able to make these calculations. Uh.
13:34
Speaker 1: Agazz in particular and some other guys got together and
13:38
Speaker 1: they said that the present ice age at its peak,
13:42
Speaker 1: I guess, um, was about a mile thick of glacier
13:47
Speaker 1: A mile of ice. Yes, it's amazing yeah. Um. And
13:52
Speaker 1: further studies have concluded that in the last ice age, um,
13:56
Speaker 1: I guess there was Wisconsin glaciation. Um. The the about
14:02
Speaker 1: a third of the earth was covered in glaciers. Have
14:05
Speaker 1: we said that glacier as yet? I mean, it almost
14:08
Speaker 1: goes without saying, but just in case. Yeah, it's just
14:09
Speaker 1: really densely packed snow it is, and it snow that
14:13
Speaker 1: that isn't allowed to melt. It's it's cold enough so
14:16
Speaker 1: that it never fully melts. At the base, it forms
14:18
Speaker 1: to ice, and on top you've got more and more snow,
14:22
Speaker 1: and as more and more snow doesn't melt, the ice
14:24
Speaker 1: builds up thicker and thicker and just from the sheer
14:27
Speaker 1: force of these things mass encountering gravity, they can actually move.
14:33
Speaker 1: They're like very slow most of the time, very slow
14:36
Speaker 1: moving rivers of ice on a massive scale. Yeah, and
14:41
Speaker 1: and well we'll get to that later. I was gonna
14:44
Speaker 1: tease something out. Uh, should we take a quick break?
14:48
Speaker 1: All right, we'll take a break and we'll get back
14:50
Speaker 1: to a little more amazing glaciers. All right. So we've
15:19
Speaker 1: talked about the sheer size a mile a mile thick
15:23
Speaker 1: of ice. Yeah, and I said, like a third of
15:25
Speaker 1: the Earth. I think it covered seventeen million square miles
15:28
Speaker 1: of the planet during the last glaciation cubic miles, my friend,
15:31
Speaker 1: cubic miles, right, So junk is deep. Yeah, a mile deep. Man,
15:35
Speaker 1: That is nuts. Uh. So Antarctica had about ten percent
15:39
Speaker 1: more ice than it does now. And the big change
15:42
Speaker 1: with the big difference, Uh, what sets that ice age
15:46
Speaker 1: apart was the amount of activity in the northern hemisphere.
15:49
Speaker 1: It was very unusual to have the amount of ice
15:52
Speaker 1: in North America and Europe extending down like through the
15:56
Speaker 1: midwest of the United States. It was it was a
16:00
Speaker 1: new scene, a new chili scene. Ye, a whole new
16:03
Speaker 1: jam basically, and Chuck. I mean like it was largely
16:06
Speaker 1: in North America, but this also, um really covered a
16:10
Speaker 1: lot of Europe too. I mean like Ireland was covered,
16:14
Speaker 1: Germany was covered, Scandinavia was covered by ice, and basically
16:19
Speaker 1: everything that wasn't covered by ice, and Europe was a tundra,
16:22
Speaker 1: very much like Siberia is today. I actually I saw
16:25
Speaker 1: a documentary on I think it was a History Channel
16:28
Speaker 1: show about the Last Ice Age, and um, somebody figured
16:33
Speaker 1: out how much all of that ice weight are you
16:35
Speaker 1: ready for this? Basilion pounds? This might be more than
16:40
Speaker 1: a bazillion sixty eight thousand trillion tons was the total
16:45
Speaker 1: weight of the ice of the Earth on the Earth
16:48
Speaker 1: during the Last Ice Age, during the last place. How
16:50
Speaker 1: many maxes that have no idea? It's like more than
16:54
Speaker 1: a hundred uh well a North America loan about thirteen, Um,
16:59
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, about ten million square miles of ice. And
17:03
Speaker 1: you know this all came from the ocean, which means
17:06
Speaker 1: the ocean level was hundreds and hundreds of feet lower
17:09
Speaker 1: during this ice age. Yeah, like Canada is used to
17:11
Speaker 1: having large parts of it being covered by glacier, the
17:14
Speaker 1: United States is not used to this, but it came
17:17
Speaker 1: all the way down into the plains in some cases,
17:21
Speaker 1: and basically from New York over to Washington State totally
17:26
Speaker 1: covered by again a mile thick sheet of ice. Like
17:32
Speaker 1: you can ice skate on that without worry. You're not
17:35
Speaker 1: gonna fall through, it's still gonna crack. Did you ever
17:39
Speaker 1: do that growing up? Did Ohio? Like like you'd skate
17:42
Speaker 1: on lakes? Yeah, And we were never allowed to do
17:45
Speaker 1: that until my dad went out and stomped on it,
17:47
Speaker 1: like jumped up and down, and if he didn't go through,
17:50
Speaker 1: then we were allowed to skate. He's like, kids, if
17:52
Speaker 1: I die right. It wasn't. It wasn't the most fool
17:55
Speaker 1: proof technique, but it was nice and dad to do
17:58
Speaker 1: that for us. I don't know, think I'm not much
18:00
Speaker 1: of a worry word, but I'm that still would have
18:02
Speaker 1: like creeped me out. I've seen enough movies, you know,
18:05
Speaker 1: left under ice. So the Mammi River would freeze over,
18:08
Speaker 1: but we weren't allowed to skate on the river. Some
18:10
Speaker 1: people did, we weren't allowed to. Instead, there was a
18:12
Speaker 1: golf course with ponds that would freeze pretty good, pretty good.
18:16
Speaker 1: There was your You weren't going to fall through these
18:18
Speaker 1: small ponds pretty rough though, right, like skating on it's
18:22
Speaker 1: not it depends it depends on and I don't remember
18:25
Speaker 1: what it depends on. Yeah, it's it's never like an
18:27
Speaker 1: ice drink. But certain type of weather, maybe non windy weather,
18:32
Speaker 1: I think is what it was, because then like if
18:35
Speaker 1: there was kind of like a choppiness to it from
18:37
Speaker 1: the wind, it could freeze like that freeze choppy, Whereas
18:40
Speaker 1: if it wasn't windy, I would guess it would it
18:43
Speaker 1: would be smoother. So sometimes it was pretty smooth. Other
18:47
Speaker 1: times you're like, I can't even skate on, but your
18:48
Speaker 1: dad would drive a zambonie out there and fix it
18:51
Speaker 1: all up. It over and if the zamboni didn't fall through,
18:54
Speaker 1: then we were allowed to skate, right. I just picture
18:57
Speaker 1: of the zamboni falling through. But it's a little pond,
18:59
Speaker 1: so you're a'd still like just a bove. I feel
19:04
Speaker 1: like I missed out, though, I mean not that life
19:06
Speaker 1: is over. You can still skate on ponds. I don't
19:09
Speaker 1: picture myself going to Minnesota in the in the winter.
19:14
Speaker 1: Give it a try. The trade off it wasn't It
19:17
Speaker 1: wasn't a very good trade off because the winners are
19:19
Speaker 1: pretty brutal. Yeah, like if you have local ponds that
19:22
Speaker 1: freeze over, you're cold too. I still feel like I
19:26
Speaker 1: missed out. Yeah, I mean you're fine. It wasn't that
19:28
Speaker 1: big of it was just teasing when I said, you
19:30
Speaker 1: did miss that. Uh all right, So people are skating
19:35
Speaker 1: all over the world. A third of the world people
19:37
Speaker 1: are ice skating on during during the ice age UM
19:41
Speaker 1: and like we mentioned these things, UM they've been described
19:44
Speaker 1: as bulldozers just plowing through uh the earth basically um
19:49
Speaker 1: leaving large swaths they call it glacial till. This debris
19:53
Speaker 1: that they leave behind, and these are you know, once
19:57
Speaker 1: you figure out how it works, the evidence is every
20:00
Speaker 1: where of exactly what happened. Yeah, Because as these glaciers
20:03
Speaker 1: move and that ice that has formed the basis of
20:06
Speaker 1: the glacier is in contact with the earth below it,
20:10
Speaker 1: it's picking up all sorts of crud that all that
20:13
Speaker 1: to breathe that glacial till you said, erratic boulders. And
20:17
Speaker 1: as it's doing this, it's actually creating a um a
20:21
Speaker 1: scrubbing mechanism. Right. So, like you said, if you look
20:24
Speaker 1: around at mountains and and and valleys with exposed rock
20:30
Speaker 1: that were um rubbed by glaciers. There's gonna be crazy
20:34
Speaker 1: grooves worked into them. Some look like roads almost, yes, um,
20:38
Speaker 1: some are kind of polished and rounded, And it's all
20:42
Speaker 1: from this glacial activity rubbing stuff over the tops of
20:45
Speaker 1: these mountains. It's pretty interesting stuff. And then other things
20:48
Speaker 1: like you'll know, you know, you'll see like a movie
20:50
Speaker 1: where um, this incredibly beautiful uh like river Valley has
20:56
Speaker 1: just gravel everywhere, like just scattered all all throughout, like
21:01
Speaker 1: the valley floor. That's not supposed to be there. The
21:04
Speaker 1: glacier deposited that. That's right, it's more evidence of the
21:07
Speaker 1: ice age. Yeah, that's interesting to think of it. It's
21:11
Speaker 1: not supposed to be there. No, and you think of
21:13
Speaker 1: that like that's what that's what that looks like. You know,
21:15
Speaker 1: of course that's what it's. That's that's that's supposed to
21:18
Speaker 1: be there. But no, it's technically not. Had we not
21:20
Speaker 1: had um these glaciation events, that stuff wouldn't be there.
21:25
Speaker 1: And that fascinating earth science. Uh is that your favorite science?
21:31
Speaker 1: I think it's become it. Yeah, yeah, it really does
21:35
Speaker 1: get me jazzed, all right. So it wasn't just um,
21:41
Speaker 1: the direct path of these glaciers that was affected out
21:44
Speaker 1: on the edges of these massive moving sheets of ice. Um,
21:50
Speaker 1: you had things like arctic deserts, and you had these
21:53
Speaker 1: big areas of dusty wind. Uh. And there's actually a
21:57
Speaker 1: few ways to pronounce this l O E s s
22:00
Speaker 1: heard everything from lowest to lows to less I like lowest, Yeah,
22:05
Speaker 1: like lowest too. Um covering all over the earth basically,
22:09
Speaker 1: and this is created by those glaciers just like grinding
22:12
Speaker 1: into the earth. Yeah, um, stirn everything up right, and
22:16
Speaker 1: then the wind just comes and picks it up, the
22:19
Speaker 1: finest of the particles and just deposits them. So in
22:22
Speaker 1: some places you had so if if your area wasn't
22:26
Speaker 1: covered by glacier, that didn't mean you weren't affected by
22:29
Speaker 1: the glaciation, because you would have these lowest deserts are
22:33
Speaker 1: glacier glacial deserts that formed. And in some places the
22:36
Speaker 1: lowest was like twenty ft thick, and apparently it's still there.
22:39
Speaker 1: In much of the Midwest, the sub straight below the
22:44
Speaker 1: soil is lowest, deposited from these lowest deserts UM. And
22:51
Speaker 1: so you would think when you hear about this kind
22:53
Speaker 1: of activity that it had to be like hundred degrees chillier, right,
23:00
Speaker 1: or fifty or forty even, but it was only about
23:04
Speaker 1: ten degrees fahrenheit about five point six celsius lower uh
23:08
Speaker 1: than temperatures now, which it's it wouldn't think that that
23:12
Speaker 1: would be enough, right, But it's not all just about
23:15
Speaker 1: the temperature. That's kind of the point. No, The point
23:18
Speaker 1: that Molly makes is that it's not like, oh, it's
23:21
Speaker 1: just so much colder than it was before all the time.
23:24
Speaker 1: The key to an ice age um forming glaciers a
23:29
Speaker 1: glacial period is that this the time when it's supposed
23:33
Speaker 1: to actually melt, is colder than usual, so that there's
23:37
Speaker 1: less melt than than before. And the less melt you have,
23:41
Speaker 1: the more chance you have for snow to fall and
23:44
Speaker 1: make up for whatever melted and actually add to it,
23:47
Speaker 1: which means that the glaciers growing. As long as more
23:50
Speaker 1: snow is added to the glacier than it loses during
23:53
Speaker 1: say the summer months, your glaciers growing. Yeah, and if
23:56
Speaker 1: it's not losing much, it doesn't take much snow. And
23:59
Speaker 1: this this cycles arts. There's something called albedo or albedo
24:04
Speaker 1: albedo and it's uh, it's the real reflectivity of ice.
24:08
Speaker 1: And you know once this ice gets going, it's reflecting
24:11
Speaker 1: away the sun. So it's while you're hotter in the
24:14
Speaker 1: summer wearing a black T shirt than a white T shirt. Yeah,
24:16
Speaker 1: and it's just it creates that cycle basically where it's
24:19
Speaker 1: all just compounding, all these different elements coming together absolutely
24:23
Speaker 1: to make ice super thick. So you have if you
24:25
Speaker 1: have a glacier form on planet Earth and it reflects
24:29
Speaker 1: a bunch of sunlight and makes it colder, well that's
24:32
Speaker 1: gonna create the conditions for other glaciers to form too,
24:36
Speaker 1: So it has a compounding effect as well that albedo does.
24:39
Speaker 1: All right, well let's take a break and we're gonna
24:41
Speaker 1: come back and talk about a very famous Serbian mathematician.
25:10
Speaker 1: All right, so I said, famous Serbian mathematician. Had you
25:15
Speaker 1: already heard of this guy? Yeah? Really, i'd heard. I
25:18
Speaker 1: had heard about the Milankovich cycles. Um. So his name
25:22
Speaker 1: was Milutin Milankovic. And it's amazing to me that in
25:25
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties, people like well, i'll just say him,
25:30
Speaker 1: was able to figure out with a lot of accuracy, um,
25:34
Speaker 1: the Milankovich cycles. Basically, he said, you know what, I
25:39
Speaker 1: have a theory on why these these summers are cooler,
25:43
Speaker 1: and why this ice age happened, And it's not just
25:47
Speaker 1: the temperatures, but it's because of the Sun's relationship to
25:51
Speaker 1: the Earth and how much sun the Earth is getting
25:55
Speaker 1: UH during the summer months. So he came up with
25:57
Speaker 1: three different factors, the tilt UH in the Earth's axis,
26:03
Speaker 1: the way the Earth wobbles on that axis, and then
26:06
Speaker 1: how close we are to that heat, how close we
26:08
Speaker 1: are the sun. He plugged those into a mathematical formula
26:12
Speaker 1: and he came up with every one hundred thousand years,
26:19
Speaker 1: he's predicting that we're going to get these ice ages.
26:22
Speaker 1: Pretty amazing math for back then, it is, especially if
26:25
Speaker 1: you go back. So he figured this out, and then
26:28
Speaker 1: they went back and looked at the fossil record, the
26:31
Speaker 1: geological record, because when he was working, they didn't have
26:35
Speaker 1: this understanding. He wasn't like proving that like yes, predicting right.
26:40
Speaker 1: So then um about that time and like the well
26:44
Speaker 1: after that time, but in like the forties and fifties,
26:47
Speaker 1: the US was building army bases all over the world
26:50
Speaker 1: in some really crazy places, including the Arctic, and um
26:54
Speaker 1: some scientists went along and started taking core samples from
26:58
Speaker 1: those places. And they found air bubbles trapped in there
27:01
Speaker 1: that were from like a million years ago, Like the
27:04
Speaker 1: air was a million years old and it was untouched
27:07
Speaker 1: virgin air. And um. They found that they could do
27:10
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff and learn all sorts of things
27:13
Speaker 1: from this air. And one of the things they found
27:15
Speaker 1: was the basically the time stamp for the ice ages
27:21
Speaker 1: during the Quaternary period. And they found out that in
27:24
Speaker 1: the first two million years, the first two thirds of
27:27
Speaker 1: the Quaternary um ice age, the ice ages, glaciation occurred
27:33
Speaker 1: every forty one years. And yeah, yeah, that's what I said.
27:38
Speaker 1: He's like, but wait for it, and they said, okay,
27:41
Speaker 1: in this this most recent million years, it switched to
27:44
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand years. And he just said his arms crossed,
27:48
Speaker 1: very smugly. Yeah. Um. And everybody said, that's amazing, that's fantastic. Scientists,
27:54
Speaker 1: you guys in the lab coats what causes an ice age,
27:58
Speaker 1: And there's just crickets coming back from the scientists, and
28:01
Speaker 1: there still is today. Actually, actually, no, that's the opposite,
28:05
Speaker 1: is true. Not crickets, but a ton of different answers
28:08
Speaker 1: and a ton of different theories. Yeah, lots of crickets,
28:13
Speaker 1: but not quite either. What would be the animal that
28:16
Speaker 1: would talking crickets, Jimmy crickets everywhere? Man, that I was annoying,
28:21
Speaker 1: putting forth, putting forth theories and and as with most things,
28:27
Speaker 1: we usually kind of center on. I bet it was
28:30
Speaker 1: like most of these things put together, which most scientists
28:33
Speaker 1: do well, dude, I was thinking about this, and I
28:35
Speaker 1: was like, yes, chaos theory, Like, we have such a
28:39
Speaker 1: propensity as humans to be like there's one true explanation,
28:42
Speaker 1: there's one factor that explains everything, and that is just
28:45
Speaker 1: not the case. This is a perfect example of that.
28:48
Speaker 1: I wonder if that's a tendency for humans to want
28:51
Speaker 1: to be right. Like the people actually doing the research
28:53
Speaker 1: say like, no, this is my ideas. Yeah, I think
28:57
Speaker 1: that's part of it, But I think it's more are
29:00
Speaker 1: just like our brains are wired to find like the
29:03
Speaker 1: least common denominator to find, um, the easiest route. Yeah,
29:08
Speaker 1: maybe you know, just for efficiency's sake, that makes sense.
29:12
Speaker 1: I kind of like the idea of like, I'm hands
29:14
Speaker 1: across America. Did you participate in Hands across America? Not
29:18
Speaker 1: hated it back then, but oh man, I get it now.
29:21
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. I think I did actually, yeah, there
29:23
Speaker 1: was huge, huge gaps, but it was still pretty great.
29:26
Speaker 1: We should do a show on that. I didn't know
29:28
Speaker 1: there were gaps, of course there were oh yeah, pretty
29:31
Speaker 1: pretty big ones. Yeah, there was at no point complete.
29:35
Speaker 1: I think our school did it. Wasn't that the deal?
29:37
Speaker 1: Like probably did this church, church, hippie church. I don't
29:41
Speaker 1: know if my church might have been like, no, we're
29:43
Speaker 1: not holding hands. You could be holding hands with an atheist.
29:47
Speaker 1: Probably you wouldn't even know it. That probably would have
29:49
Speaker 1: been the case. All right. So another theory is, um,
29:54
Speaker 1: we've talked a lot about plate tectonics and our geez
29:57
Speaker 1: and the volcano episodes and what else the plate tectonics episode.
30:03
Speaker 1: Did we do one on that specifically among the close
30:07
Speaker 1: to episodes? Man, I don't remember where it first popped up,
30:11
Speaker 1: but it's definitely come up. Clapped up another one of
30:14
Speaker 1: your non pun puns. Yes, I hope. I'm like creating
30:19
Speaker 1: a pretty a pretty extensive case for the fact that
30:22
Speaker 1: all of my puns are accidental. I don't think like
30:25
Speaker 1: that accidental puns a good banding too. Ironically, it's okay.
30:30
Speaker 1: Uh So plate tectonics is another theory. Basically, you know,
30:33
Speaker 1: everyone knows when you get to a higher altitude, it's
30:37
Speaker 1: going to be colder, and the conditions are more likely
30:39
Speaker 1: to for glaciers to form. And so when these these
30:43
Speaker 1: plates on the Earth are smashing together, everyone also knows
30:47
Speaker 1: from listening to our show, that's how we get these
30:49
Speaker 1: lovely mountain ranges and why there are higher altitudes. So
30:54
Speaker 1: that's another theory that that had a lot to do
30:56
Speaker 1: with it. Yeahs sense. Some scientists lay um the Quaternary
31:01
Speaker 1: ice Age, the whole shebang. That's two point five eight
31:04
Speaker 1: million year old ice age that we're in in still
31:08
Speaker 1: um basically at the feet of the creation of the Himalayas,
31:11
Speaker 1: where Asia and India collide, creating the Himalayas, and most
31:16
Speaker 1: importantly the Tibetan Plateau and this rising of land changing
31:22
Speaker 1: um the way that air moves across this huge portion
31:27
Speaker 1: of land Eurasia UM, and that it had an impact
31:32
Speaker 1: on climate, which has an impact on historical climate, which
31:37
Speaker 1: can change things, make things cold enough so that glaciers
31:40
Speaker 1: can form and really get a foothold. Right. More interesting, Chuck,
31:45
Speaker 1: is that it's apparently that's they're like, that's probably kind
31:50
Speaker 1: of a factor, but there's an even bigger factor that
31:53
Speaker 1: they think that came out of that upwelling of of earth.
31:57
Speaker 1: Bear with me. So, when earth meets earth and there's
32:02
Speaker 1: an upwelling and they form mountains or something like that, right,
32:06
Speaker 1: you know, the process of weathering, it's like breaking in
32:09
Speaker 1: genes or a strato various, Right, you break in mountains too. Well,
32:13
Speaker 1: that's actually a chemical reaction between like the air and
32:17
Speaker 1: the earth. And when rock is exposed, it becomes weathered
32:21
Speaker 1: because c O two reacts with the rock to basically
32:26
Speaker 1: form some sort of um uh equilibrium that's been interrupted
32:32
Speaker 1: or disrupted by the exposure of unweathered rock. Right. Well,
32:37
Speaker 1: to carry that out, c O two has to be
32:40
Speaker 1: drawn from the atmosphere, which means you're basically removing c
32:44
Speaker 1: O two from the atmosphere. When you create a new
32:46
Speaker 1: mountain mountain chain, and if you're talking about a mountain
32:49
Speaker 1: chain as extensive as the Himalayas, a lot of CEO
32:52
Speaker 1: two is going to be removed from the atmosphere. When
32:55
Speaker 1: you remove c O two from the atmosphere, you reduce
32:58
Speaker 1: the greenhouse effect. And when you deduced the greenhouse effect,
33:01
Speaker 1: the earth becomes cooler, possibly enough for an ice age.
33:04
Speaker 1: The timings right as well. The Himalayans formed right before
33:08
Speaker 1: the Quaternary Ice Age began. Ye aren't that amazing? It
33:12
Speaker 1: is or science? Uh. The other thing is dust atmospheric changes. Um,
33:19
Speaker 1: A lot of dust in the air is gonna keep
33:21
Speaker 1: the sun from shining down its warmth onto the Earth
33:25
Speaker 1: and keep temperatures cooler. And since I mentioned volcanoes, Um,
33:30
Speaker 1: there were a lot of volcanoes, a lot of activity
33:34
Speaker 1: that preceded the glacial ages. Um. But you know, launching
33:39
Speaker 1: a lot of dust in the air. I don't think
33:40
Speaker 1: it's coincidence. It's probably all tied in together. Yeah, I
33:45
Speaker 1: would guess that. Um, it's not just volcanic ash. I mean,
33:48
Speaker 1: there was just dust period, but the volcanic ash added
33:51
Speaker 1: to it, you know, right. And I think even after um,
33:56
Speaker 1: after the volcanoes stopped erupting gases that affect the atmosphere directly,
34:01
Speaker 1: they still interact with the water vapor in the atmosphere
34:04
Speaker 1: to mess with it in a continued way. UM. Sun
34:08
Speaker 1: spots are also another one too, right. Yeah, that's one
34:12
Speaker 1: of the main reasons for the little ice age, right. Yeah,
34:17
Speaker 1: but we talked about in the strata areas, so the
34:20
Speaker 1: little ice age. Um, so did you did you see
34:23
Speaker 1: that article I sent you? Yeah, it was pretty pretty interesting. Um,
34:27
Speaker 1: but there's a our understanding of the little ice age,
34:31
Speaker 1: which is not the best name for it, but there's
34:33
Speaker 1: a period should be little ice age. There's the from
34:38
Speaker 1: d to eighteen fifty. Europe in particular, well the northern hemisphere,
34:43
Speaker 1: but Europe got it pretty bad. Um. It was basically
34:47
Speaker 1: what amounts to an ice age for for this area. Um,
34:51
Speaker 1: Greenland and Iceland were cut off by ice for months
34:54
Speaker 1: at a time. They used to grow wine in England,
34:58
Speaker 1: not anymore. Scotland they grew wine, Yeah, like bottles would
35:04
Speaker 1: just pop up out of the grounds. The Highlands of
35:07
Speaker 1: Scotland would be locked into ice at like and up
35:11
Speaker 1: the Baltic Sea froze over. Yeah, the canals and the
35:14
Speaker 1: Netherlands routinely froze. It was it was a really rough time. Well,
35:17
Speaker 1: it wasn't. It wasn't. It's pretty interesting because this article
35:20
Speaker 1: you sent, you know, points out a lot of the
35:23
Speaker 1: history that you know, it affected everything from shipping to
35:27
Speaker 1: crops to you know, people turning on one another in
35:31
Speaker 1: some areas then other areas things flourished, right, So apparently
35:36
Speaker 1: areas and groups that had access to extensive trade networks,
35:40
Speaker 1: especially with the South or the tropics. Um, they they flourished.
35:45
Speaker 1: But if you were in like a marginal area, say
35:47
Speaker 1: like the Alps, you were toast like you suffered from famine.
35:51
Speaker 1: Apparently glaciers were advancing enough that they were just overrunning
35:54
Speaker 1: towns and it sounds it sounds absolutely nuts, but actually
35:59
Speaker 1: glaciers can move surprisingly fast. Right. There was a glacier
36:03
Speaker 1: in Alaska in that was clocked advancing at ten a day. Yeah,
36:11
Speaker 1: I mean that's thirty ft a day. That's you can
36:13
Speaker 1: watch that happen. Yeah, or the very least you could
36:16
Speaker 1: set up your your inner volometer camera and watch it later.
36:22
Speaker 1: Or if you're just super patient, Yeah, I bet what's
36:25
Speaker 1: his name? Yeah, the scotsman. I bet James Hutton would
36:29
Speaker 1: have sat there and until he's yeah, you know, yeah,
36:32
Speaker 1: patient man. Uh what else do we cover the sun spots?
36:38
Speaker 1: Well not Yeah, I mentioned that that might have been
36:40
Speaker 1: why the little ice age happened. And by the way,
36:42
Speaker 1: we on the Strata Areas podcast heard from a lot
36:45
Speaker 1: of people about this double blind study that um or
36:49
Speaker 1: where they had musicians play um the stratas and uh,
36:53
Speaker 1: then against modern violins, and um, they preferred I think
36:58
Speaker 1: generally preferred the modern violin or so people are like, oh,
37:01
Speaker 1: you're just getting the brand name. That's kind of a
37:04
Speaker 1: reductive way to say it. Um. And and then afterwards
37:08
Speaker 1: to the violinists they serge them cough, they're like, it's folgers. Well,
37:12
Speaker 1: the other thing we heard from other people that said,
37:16
Speaker 1: these violinists know what they're testing. They're testing clearly testing
37:20
Speaker 1: and strata varius against a modern instrument. They don't just say, like,
37:23
Speaker 1: put on this blindfold and you're two violins, which one
37:26
Speaker 1: smells neater. So we probably should have included that, But
37:29
Speaker 1: I don't think that like settles it in any like
37:31
Speaker 1: scientific way or any Yeah, I saw in our research
37:35
Speaker 1: that that was not necessarily the case. It's on a
37:38
Speaker 1: number of different sources that that they can tell a
37:41
Speaker 1: difference that it is actually the best violins, and these
37:45
Speaker 1: are people that have, you know, opinions. It's not like
37:49
Speaker 1: you can't scientifically prove that because every person you pick
37:52
Speaker 1: out is going to have a different take on the matter.
37:55
Speaker 1: And we weren't poopooing modern instruments because clearly they're only
37:58
Speaker 1: a handful of strads out there being played, and there's
38:01
Speaker 1: many many orchestras and they're not playing like pawnshop violins,
38:07
Speaker 1: you know. Anyway, I just want to mention that, So
38:10
Speaker 1: these sun spots, right, there's actually a cycle that was
38:14
Speaker 1: recognized by a British astronomer named E. W. Maunder. It's
38:19
Speaker 1: pretty British name, and he was living during the Little
38:22
Speaker 1: Ice Age UM and he noticed. Yeah, he was like, well,
38:27
Speaker 1: like how it's cold you can ice skate on a pond. Um.
38:32
Speaker 1: He noticed that the so the Little Ice Age should
38:36
Speaker 1: actually be called the little period where it was pretty
38:40
Speaker 1: cold and then really really cold and two different points,
38:44
Speaker 1: and those points were between twelve ninety and undred and
38:48
Speaker 1: then sixty five and seventeen fifteen. It was really cold,
38:51
Speaker 1: like kind of ice ages conditions for real UM. And E. W.
38:56
Speaker 1: Maunder noticed that, especially the time when he was alive
38:59
Speaker 1: during between the sixteen and seventeen fifty period seventeen fifteen period, UM,
39:05
Speaker 1: sun spots were not nearly as active. And he was like,
39:09
Speaker 1: I wonder if this correlates to little ice ages, and
39:12
Speaker 1: it would make sense, even though it makes sense in
39:14
Speaker 1: a really weird way, a roundabout way. Actually, Yeah, sun
39:17
Speaker 1: spot I guess we should just say what that is.
39:20
Speaker 1: It's a dark spot, a cooler spot on the Sun.
39:23
Speaker 1: But the key there is it contains magnetic energy. So
39:27
Speaker 1: you would think that sun spots are cooler than the
39:29
Speaker 1: rest of the Sun. So how would that well wait,
39:33
Speaker 1: now I've got it backwards, No, you got it? Yeah? Yeah,
39:35
Speaker 1: so how would that keep it warmer on Earth? But
39:38
Speaker 1: it's about that magnetic field cutting through cloud cover or
39:42
Speaker 1: cutting the cloud cover, right, So less cloud cover means
39:45
Speaker 1: that the heat from the Sun isn't trapped, it just
39:48
Speaker 1: escapes into space. Counterintuitive, but it makes sense. Yeah, because
39:53
Speaker 1: these sun spots are big enough that when it's facing Earth,
39:58
Speaker 1: it's putting out less heat energy. So you would think
40:01
Speaker 1: it would it would directly cool it. It indirectly cools it. Right. Weird,
40:06
Speaker 1: It is weird, but amazing earth science. Uh So, whether
40:13
Speaker 1: or not we're headed for another one is a lot
40:16
Speaker 1: There's a lot of debate on that because some people say, well,
40:20
Speaker 1: there's no strict definition even what an ice age is,
40:23
Speaker 1: so who's to say. Other people say, now you know what,
40:26
Speaker 1: humans have cause uh such an impact here that there
40:30
Speaker 1: probably won't be another ice age. It's extremely possible that
40:34
Speaker 1: we have altered the climate enough that we're not going
40:37
Speaker 1: to see like we may have ended on our own
40:41
Speaker 1: the Quaternary ice age. It may be over now or
40:44
Speaker 1: on the way to being over, in which case we
40:47
Speaker 1: have a whole other set of problems to deal with,
40:48
Speaker 1: but not an ice age, not glaciers. Um. There was
40:53
Speaker 1: actually a study that made the rounds, I think this
40:55
Speaker 1: year or last year, that really drummed up a lot
40:59
Speaker 1: of media engine because these researchers said that they predicted
41:03
Speaker 1: a period of very low sun spot activity in thirty
41:06
Speaker 1: years because we're due for one technically, right were a
41:09
Speaker 1: year point, Yes, yeah, we're due for another glaciation event.
41:14
Speaker 1: And these people said, well, there's gonna be sun spots
41:16
Speaker 1: in thirty years, and the media took it and said
41:19
Speaker 1: there's gonna be another ice age in thirty years. Um,
41:22
Speaker 1: And that's not necessarily the case. It's a pretty big
41:26
Speaker 1: leap from saying, yes, there's low sun spot activity, so
41:29
Speaker 1: we're gonna have an ice age. But if we hadn't
41:33
Speaker 1: burned all those fossil fuels, maybe that would be the case.
41:36
Speaker 1: Maybe we would start to see glaciation beginning again in
41:40
Speaker 1: about thirty years. Again we're probably not going to because
41:44
Speaker 1: we've raised the temperature of the planet by it a
41:47
Speaker 1: full degree celsius since night UM, so it's possible we
41:52
Speaker 1: won't ever see an ice age again, which is sad
41:55
Speaker 1: because some people say that it was this last um,
41:59
Speaker 1: this ice age, not just the last glaciation event, but
42:02
Speaker 1: the Quaternary ice Age as a whole that pushed humans
42:05
Speaker 1: to evolve to the wonderful, amazing specimens we are today. UM.
42:11
Speaker 1: A lot of advancements happened because of it. Adaptations and
42:14
Speaker 1: animals and early humans there were there was movement among
42:18
Speaker 1: around Earth because the sea levels were a lot lower,
42:21
Speaker 1: so you could make your way around bigger parts of
42:23
Speaker 1: the Earth. They weren't cut off like before like they
42:25
Speaker 1: are now. UM. Apparently, our brains grew tremendously in size
42:31
Speaker 1: during the Quaternary Ice Age at a in a time
42:34
Speaker 1: period that correlates with it, and one hypothesis is that
42:39
Speaker 1: the cooler temperatures allowed us to dissipate heat more naturally
42:43
Speaker 1: and to save our energy or use more energy, which
42:47
Speaker 1: would allow our brains to grow. Interesting and then other
42:50
Speaker 1: people say, well, you know what, the chro magnets also
42:53
Speaker 1: invented the sewing needle during this time because of the
42:56
Speaker 1: ice age, so that they could start sewing and close.
43:00
Speaker 1: Is the technology that allowed us to truly spread out
43:02
Speaker 1: over the earth. Yeah, because you could go live where
43:05
Speaker 1: it was cold, because you could make a big park
43:07
Speaker 1: out of a musk ox exactly. The muskox would say
43:11
Speaker 1: thank you for using me human. I don't know about that,
43:15
Speaker 1: But you got anything else? Nope, I think that's it. Man,
43:21
Speaker 1: This is good one, Chuck Uh. If you want to
43:24
Speaker 1: know more about ice ages, you can type those words
43:28
Speaker 1: into the search bar at how stuff works dot com.
43:31
Speaker 1: And since I said search parts, time for a listener. Mayo.
43:37
Speaker 1: Remember in the animal testing episode when I wondered aloud
43:40
Speaker 1: about the names of pork and beef and swine and
43:43
Speaker 1: all that stuff. I'm glad you're covering this. Apparently I'm
43:46
Speaker 1: the only person on the planet who did not know this.
43:48
Speaker 1: I didn't know it either, because we had a bunch
43:50
Speaker 1: of people right in Uh. And it's super interesting. So
43:53
Speaker 1: I picked one that was a good explanation from a
43:57
Speaker 1: gentleman in Bristol, United Kingdom. He said this before ten
44:02
Speaker 1: sixty six, in England, most people spoke a form of
44:05
Speaker 1: Germanic English Uh, and he says, by the way, I'm
44:08
Speaker 1: glossing over several centuries of linguistic history with that. However,
44:11
Speaker 1: after the invasion by William the Conqueror and his eventual coronation,
44:14
Speaker 1: Norman became the dominant language. UH. Norman is based on
44:18
Speaker 1: Northern French dialects, so would have used words such as
44:21
Speaker 1: mutton and booth for sheep and cows. These words were
44:25
Speaker 1: used by people who would have been able to afford
44:27
Speaker 1: to eat such food, namely the gentry. However, peasants who
44:31
Speaker 1: would have raised raise the animals still use the Germanic
44:34
Speaker 1: words like sheep and cow, and these words stuck. English
44:38
Speaker 1: is full of high and low words gentry or peasantry
44:42
Speaker 1: for similar meanings, with the high words being French based
44:46
Speaker 1: therefore Latin based. Really interesting. Um. Having stopped myself from
44:50
Speaker 1: going on, as is the subject I've always been obsessed with,
44:52
Speaker 1: and I hope that I have piqued your interest as well.
44:55
Speaker 1: Be warned the subject as a rabbit hole, I will
44:58
Speaker 1: also add I was gutted to miss your UK tour,
45:02
Speaker 1: and I hope you enjoyed it enough to come back
45:03
Speaker 1: one day. UM. I also cheekily plug Bristol as an
45:09
Speaker 1: amazing place to live and visit. Yeah, congratulations on your
45:11
Speaker 1: new sky pier. I don't heard of that. It's like
45:15
Speaker 1: a it's like a huge observation UFO that goes up
45:19
Speaker 1: on their coast. You can just see for miles and miles. Interesting.
45:24
Speaker 1: Much love to you both and thanks for doing what
45:26
Speaker 1: you do. Cheers. That is from Matt Gallaford of Bristol.
45:30
Speaker 1: Thanks Matt, We'll definitely be back. And thanks to everyone
45:33
Speaker 1: who wrote in with that good information. I wish I
45:36
Speaker 1: could have read them all. Uh. If you want to
45:40
Speaker 1: get in touch of us to let us know something
45:42
Speaker 1: we missed, or to tell us how grey we're doing,
45:44
Speaker 1: or well yeah, you can tweet to us at s
45:48
Speaker 1: Y s K podcast. You can also hang out with
45:50
Speaker 1: me at Josh Underscore, um Underscore Clark at on Twitter two.
45:55
Speaker 1: You can hang out with Chuck at Charles W. Chuck
45:58
Speaker 1: Brian on Facebook or our Stuff you Should Know page
46:01
Speaker 1: at Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You
46:04
Speaker 1: can hang out with us on Instagram. You can send
46:06
Speaker 1: us an email to Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works
46:08
Speaker 1: dot com and has always joined us at our home
46:10
Speaker 1: on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com For
46:18
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is It
46:20
Speaker 1: How stuff Works dot com